Slashdot Mirror

"Most people that have a good HDTV can tell a large difference in good HD content."

You mean, some people _think_ they can tell the difference (notably TV salesmen and people who've bought a HDTV).

Despite many agreeing with you, I cannot, because like so many things in consumer electronics, users are too often fooled into thinking they're assessing one thing when they're assessing another.

To begin, "good HD content" is already qualitative rather than quantitative. HDLite seems prevalent on DirecTV - please see http://www.stophdlite.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Lite (probably in that order). I'd consider it "good HD content" and appreciate it a lot compared to SD - but it's not highest quality HD, as might be found with the OTA ABC or CBS broadcasts. What we call HD Lite is more along the lines of what you get from good DV tape - which I'll admit might qualify as "good HD content" but isn't HD.

Next - and I'm going to contradict myself a little bit w.r.t. the above paragraph and I'm ok with that - comes native resolution of the TVs themselves. My DLP has a native res of 1280x720p. The sign at the store calls it a 1080i set - because it accepts and converts 1920x1080i to native (all HDTVs convert whatever to their native formats) - so you have to beware of marketing crap. I haven't looked at the latest models, but most plasmas sold to the date I'd checked last year were native of 1024x768, and LCDs are very often 1366(or so)x768 native res. On those models, you're not going to get 1-to-1 mapping of HD anything without processing inside the TV - so like it or not, further signal degradation occurs in the format changeover.

Next, not all HDTV inputs are created equally. See http://www.dbstalk.com/ if you're a satellite TV user (or want to check my references) and you'll see plenty of newbie posts answered by very qualified TV engineers telling that no, they're not crazy, for their set / brand / production run, the component inputs are noticably better than their HDMI inputs or no, they're not crazy, for the same reasons, the HDMI inputs are noticably better than the component inputs.

Next, tuners. I have 3 ATSC tuners in my house, until recently, two were hooked to the same DLP HDTV - and just switching between the two caused guests - drinking beer and watching the game - to exclaim, "WTF did you just do?!?!?" So, even though the source could be qualified as "good HD content" the differences in h/w quality was easily observable by people with no vested interests in oooohs and aaaaahs of HDTV ownership.

Next, cabling. Yes, yes, yes, anyone paying too much for cables is an idiot. Try it. 'Nuff said. Now add in store cabling (have you ever worked in a consumer electronics store?) and you'll know all bets are off for controlling that part of your experiment.

Next, as you point out, color engines. Two HDTVs with same native resolutions? The one with the better color engine wins everytime - in fact, it's often been shown that given the choice between higher native res and color engine, spend the money on the better engine. My Helio Ocean phone with its 2 megapixel camera looking like crap (knew it before I bought it, didn't care) is an excellent proof point on this.

Next, SD upconverters built in to HDTVs all vary - and there are some very scary good ones. Ditto on set-top boxes.

Finally - the source material itself. Hitchhiker's Guide on HD (Lite) is better than on DVD - it's slight, but not subtle. I switched between the two without telling my wife what the switch was (to see if it was just my bias, as you suggest), and got one of those, "WTF did you just do?" moments again. Take something that really cared about HD during production and it's just no contest.

So - there's a lot more to HD comparisons and good HD content and what to invest in the HDTV world than just what

Why not one? Because there are a hundred and one usable frequencies in the FM band... fifty-one if you throw away all the first adjacents (which is commonly done on either side of higher power stations). If you really had fifty-one stations all competing independently, you'd have to have an extremely large market area to support anything approaching that level of competition effectively. Most stations would probably just shut down if you limited it to a single station per market.

Also, some markets are fairly large geographically. Limiting it to a single station in a market would likely mean that some areas of the population would not have any radio stations that are less than an hour away. Far from promoting local station ownership, that would actively discourage local station operations.

For example, take a look at the Tennessee TV market map. In particular, look at the Nashville, TN market. It's that light green area that covers roughly a third of the state. For TV, a limit of one station in a market that size is okay, as most TV stations are in significant metro areas (Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Memphis, Jackson, and the tri-cities area). For radio, though, it's insane. At last count, there were 406 radio stations in Tennessee, many of which are in smaller areas.

For example, my home town of 8,000 people had radio stations. The most significant grouping of independent stations was the Thunderbolt Broadcasting family of stations, which consisted of four FM and one AM. That didn't seem too far out. They had one country, one oldies, one adult contemporary, and one classic hits. Going much beyond that number of stations in a single market, however, would be too much. They were, IMHO, a really good example of what radio broadcasting should be. They had an AM talk/news station associated with it, they regularly covered local events (high school athletics, band supper, etc.), and pumped money back into the community, sponsoring college scholarships, etc. I don't want to see the desire to regulate radio conglomerates result in laws that hurt folks like Paul.

Maybe this receiver won't suck quite so badly with open-source user input! As it is, it's a $500+ boat anchor!

Don't believe me? Go visit the 921 user support forum over at dbstalk.

Directv is switching to MPEG-4 encoding this year with the launch of the spaceway sats. I'm sure there will be a transition period so your HDTiVo should work for a while, but there will come a point where you will have to upgrade.

A couple of good sites to find more info are:

http://www.dbsforums.com
http://www.dbstalk.com
http://www.tivocommunity.com

I wonder how hackable these units will be and if DirecTV will look the other way like TiVo has. Somehow I doubt it.

However, like the Roku, the sucker is unstable and crashes at least once a week. I mean, the whole bloody thing just shuts down, and you end up with an awful burst of snow and white-noise on the TV. Then, it takes something like 5 minutes for it to boot back up again. It's either poor hardware design, or poor software engineering to support the hardware.

Tivo showed us that a company is fully capable of doing the right things with Linux. But, what's amazing is that nobody appears to have bothered to learn from Tivo as an example in how to do things right: whether Roku or DishNetwork.

As an aside, according to this, older versions of the DVR ran XFS for file management. My 522 DVR probably does as well. I wonder if the file system is unstable?

= 9J =

This thread in particular (http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=6558) discusses the internals of the DishNetwork PVR 721. YMMV.

FWIW, Google returns three pages of links in response to the query "dish network pvr webtv hack" of which this was one.

Dish is a superior alternative, and should be rewarded for not acting like DirecTV (or your typical cable provider, for that matter). This reward is provisional, but there are other reasons to go with Dish:

1. Doesn't compress its signals as much as DirecTV.
2. Isn't owned by Murdoch (Mr. "Fair and Balanced"), but is run by Americans.
3. Offers good PVR's, and doesn't charge extra for using them like DirecTV does (you'll hardly notice it's not a Tivo).
4. Offers lower-priced basic service.

I'm quite happy with Dish so far.


Sorry to go OT, but you went OT and got modded up, so what the hell...
Although I can't argue with the fact that DirecTV employs some very scummy tactics, they're service is pretty decent.

As for your points... I can't speak for 1 or 2, however
3. According to some people who've defected from Dish Network, the TiVo's are vastly superior to the Dish Network offerings. They don't lock up, the software is more user friendly etc.

And I quote...
"I was a Dish customer for years.I actually thought that mini-dish TV, and PVR's, meant you had to live with buggy software, and lousy hardware. Wow, was I ever wrong. The 6 months I've been with Directv have been pretty much painless. I hate Dish Network.I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!! Ok now, I'm sure glad I got that off my chest."

Besides, Dish just announced that they WILL start charging MONTHLY fees, sometimes in EXCESS of the DVR fees that DirecTV charges. See this thread for details.

4. Dish is 5 dollars cheaper per month ($29.99 vs. $34.99) for the most basic of service with local channels and you get less channels with dish for that price. Besides, if you use a DVR with this pricing scheme, the price is the same between the two, and as I mentioned, you get less channels.

Example...
DishNetwork
$29.99 basic package with locals (50 channels +locasl)
$9.99 for DVR service
=$40

DirecTV
$34.99 for basic with locals (80 channels +locals)
$4.99 for TiVo DVR
=$40

Whatever, I'm done with my rangent (=rant+tangent) now.

Dish Network offers another option to TiVo and DIY PC PVRs. The DishPVR has fewer features than the TiVo, but also does not require a monthly fee. See a comparison.

I'll love it when they give me free channel listings over the dish and a good user interface. :) Is there a Tivo with dual tuners?

The new dish PVR is linux-based too, BTW. A review is here. I'm not sure there's a tivo unit that compares. I'm at the point where I'm either going to switch services ro renew with Dish, so maybe it'd be good for me to look into that... :)

Tivo's only do standard resolution television. Therefore, you would need a HDTV box that has a s-video out to record, and it would be recorded at standard tivo resolution (480x480) on a stand-alone (non direcTV) Tivo.

Dish network is working on an HDTV PVR, the 921, and Sony is rumored to be working on an HDTV unit as well, but no word whether tivo technology will be used on that.

You should check out this forum For the latest on tivo technology. A few tivo employees are active contributers-- and the news always hits this place first.