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HD DirecTiVo And Other CES Treats
Gadget Guy writes "The CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) has announced their CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Innovations 2004 winners. Within is a shot of the new Hughes HD DirecTiVo with some new LED's on the front including "Temp" for those sure to be occurring overheats. The surprise winners were the Motorola IM Free with no backlight along with it's "left un-justified" keyboard and the color SideKick who's black and white cousin was debuted at the 2003 CES show. Plus check out this Samsung DLP TV! Stealth bomber cool!"
Um, you can do a season pass for all channels. Just create a wishlist item for the title of the show and it will record it on every channel.
So make a wishlist for "Sex and the City" or Seinfeld and it will record the episode from all the channels.
720p gives you 60 frames per second. 1080 gives you 60 frames per second, but, interlaced (30 half frames, interlaces together to make 60 total frames). You watch The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King at the theater. You sit in awe. 24 Frames Per Second. Now, you think that the LotR is smoooooth. But you say that 1080i isn't? Your mind sees approximately 22-30 frames per second. This is why a 1080i is indistiguishable, frame rate wise, from 720p. Very very very very few people can see the difference.
again this untruth - people see much more than 30 fps. It's just that ~24 fps is sufficient to convey motion to the brain. You're just wrong about the diff b/t 1080and720 - the resolution is better (sharper), interlaced or not.
Bullshit. Modern science has not found the upper limit that the eye can distinguish. I found a nice link simply by searching Google, so you can do the research yourself about what information is out there.
Given various different tricks (motion blur, mostly), your eyes only really need 18fps to determine motion, but even at higher frame rates you'll still be able to detect flicker and jerkiness. Next time you watch Return of the King, look for any long horizontal pans (caveat: I haven't seen the movie yet, so I don't know if there are any good examples in the movie). If the pan is fast enough, you're going to see flicker and jerkiness. This is also why you need a much higher frame rate for video games, because proper motion blur is computationally expensive and current hardware still can't handle it and everything else while maintaining a smooth rate (the other issue in trying for the highest possible frame rate is that games measure averages, so a 30fps average means that the rate will drop below 30fps. A locked 30fps, like many consoles games do, guarantees the game will not drop below 30fps at the cost of visual quality). Look out of the corner of your eye at your computer screen. If you're using a CRT, you're going to be able to see flicker even if you're running a higher refresh rate (some people can't detect it past 85Hz or so, but most people can). Work in an office with all flourescent lighting, and see how long it takes you to get a headache. You may not physically see the flicker, but your eyes do and the headache is caused by strain because of it.
Between 480i and 480p, I can certainly tell a difference in refresh rate. Turn off progressive scan output on your DVD player, watch a scene, and turn it back on, or play with the progressive settings in the DVD player setup. If you can't tell a difference, you're a rare person, not the average. Just because you can't see the difference doesn't mean that other people can't either.
You are correct, but only for viewing moving video. Still pictures or text, and you'll defintely see the difference. Now, I know a lot of people that can't tell the difference between a monitor at 60 hz vs a monitor at 100 hz. If you're one of those people, 1080i is just fine for you. I, for one, can very much tell the difference, and I'd rather avoid the eyestrain headaches that go along with interlacing. :)
So, in summary, if you plan on viewing still images, or reading text (browsing the web, anyone?) - buy a TV that does 720p.
There was a picture of a mouse
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
The Taz I looks to be a better buy at $379 (60GBs) than the Archos AV380 (80GBs), which is selling for $899!
. html
Taz I:
http://www.tightsystems.com/gift.htm
Archose AV380:
http://www.archos.com/products/prw_500570
The only noticeable difference I see is that the Archose supports xVid while the Taz doesn't. However they both support Divx.
I'm almost sold... Just wish the product was already available today.
eTrade SUCKS
The gift certificate linked to says
d 71268a60568efdaa275d86f1e86c46&threadid=347 for example.
"So . . . here's what we've come up with for you. For $379, you get the following:
1. A very nice gift certificate worth $425 towards the purchase of a TAZ I. (We have not announced a suggested retail price for TAZ I yet.)"
And on another page "TAZ I will be available in limited quantities in early 2004".
So at the moment you can pay 379 dollars towards a product that isn't shipping yet and hasn't got a price announced yet.
But if you go through the Tight Talk discussion they are suggesting more than 650 dollars, see http://www.tightsystems.com/bb/showthread.php?s=d
The new HD DirecTivo will have dual OTA tuners and dual Satellite tuners, meaning you can be recording up to 3 HD/SD programs while watching another one live. The HD is 250GB and will support all HD as well as SD output formats. The unit has recently entered Beta testing and hopefully will appear on store shelves soon. Check AVSForum for more info.
DirecTV HDTV actually delivers quite a good image. Flipping between the same game on Sunday Ticket HD on DTV and CBS-HD OTA reveals some artifacts being introduced occassionally from further compression but still delivers a good image that will only get better as more satellites get in the sky. Other channels such as ESPN-HD (when they are actually showing HD) and Discovery HD look excellent compared to full bitrate OTA channels.
http://www.s4biturbo.com/
So many bad assumptions.
.7). This means a 1080i image is about 810 lines of perceived vertical resolution.
.5. This means that the content of the video is moving so quickly that the next field of video samples do not line up at all with the previous ones and therefore add now new resolution content. For sports footage this means you are comparing 540 vertical lines (out of 1080i) to the REAL 720 samples at 60 Frame.
First. Everyone needs to read up on the kell factor to understand the impact that interlace video has on human perception of resolution.
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/kell.htm
For those of you too lazy to read, it is generally accepted in the broadcast industry that interlace video (1080i, 480i) conveys about 70-75% of the total available vertical resolution (kell factor of
This is IF the compression system in use is not filtering the overall frequency response to some even lower value.
All of the ATSC interlace modes run at 60 fields not 60 frames. (discounting drop frame modes) In interlace video there are only 30 frames of data which are spread out over 60 samples in time. Some people in the industry would argue that the kell factor for fast moving sports footage, especially panning footage such as car or bicycle races has a vertical resolution or kell factor of only
Sony spent a LOT of money testing human perception and found out that the human eye cannot tell the difference between 1334 horizontal samples of resolution and 1920 samples when the viewer is seated at normal theater viewing distances. Of course its this same logic that says people can't hear anything above 20Khz. YMMV. The upshot of this is that the highest quality sampling available on compressed HD equipment is around 1440 horizontal pixels. Panasonic would argue that they have 1920 samples but their compression is so high that the effective frequency response on moving video is not nearly that.
720P is far superior to 1080i for a number of reasons, all of which must be considered.
1. Most televisions are not capable of true 1920 resolution. In fact, most broadcast monitor engineers would argue that none of them are. Keep in mind that there is a big difference between being 1920 ready or capable and having the electronics to drive a true, stable, jitter free 1920 image.
720p solves this because it is a much easier resolution to drive on consumer displays and therefore there is less box induced artifacting (scaling, motion interpolation, etc).
This means that if YOUR televisions native resolution is less than 1920 it will have to format convert the video down to whatever your native resolution is. Chances are that your televisions native display technology is progressive scan (DLP, LCOS, LCD, etc) so it will also be frame rate converting at the same time. Going from an interlace format to a progressive format is not a simple task. Cheap televisions (or STBs) will do simple field integration or bob/weave as it is known in the consumer world ('vertical/temporal mesh' to the industry). Better televisions will try to do motion adaptive de-interlacing. This is any set driven by Faroujda, Sage, Genesis electronics (all owned by Genesis). I suppose that there will be some sets that will attempt motion compensated de-interlacing but consider that the cheapest motion compensated stand alone box out there is about $100K and ask yourself if you are really getting what you are paying for. I digress. The point is that it is much easier for your television to convert 720p to 1080i than the other way around, or even better for it to just accept the 720p signal and display it natively.
Toss in the fact that television stations are all broadcasting at different HD resolutions, your STB (set top box whether satellite or cable) has its own native processing capabilites (or necessities) and your television has its own limitations and you end up with some very ugly scenarios. The worst of which is a 720P->1080i->
Dirty little secret eh? My Hughes dual tuner recording 2 shows and playing back another would like to talk to you. Stop spreading FUD. While overheats do happen, they are rare. I've had a series 1 I bought 3 months after initial launch, and a Hughes dual tuner, and they both have performed perfectly.
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
Um, thats not a plasma TV.
You might just need to rearrange the space where you keep your Tivo. I had mine in a mostly-closed cabinet under the TV -- there was a large hole in the back, mainly for wires, and small cracks along the edges of the front glass doors. In this situation, the Tivo gradually built up to 50C (as reported by the System Information menu), and stuttered.
:-)
I tried leaving the front doors open, and that brought down the temperature considerably -- maybe 42C, though I don't clearly remember. That was enough to stabilize it. But it also let all the noise out, and the open doors were awkward.
So finally I closed the doors, and instead pulled off the cardboard back of the cabinet. (The sides, top and bottom were (are) thick particle board; the back had little or no structural value.) To my surprise, the temperature went down even further, to around 37C, while the sound was muffled just about as well as with the cardboard on. Plus, I now had easier access to all the cables in the back.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
About two years of Beta's now
And if you're currently participating in a beta then you're breaking your NDA. For some reason, I doubt you're participating in the current beta though -- you'd have a clue then.
But, what is so special about the new Hughes DirecTivo?[...]other than HDTV. Ooo.. A piture that the Sony Tivo still kicks ass over.
First off, the make of the TiVo has absolutely zero impact on the PQ. They're all the same design and components.
That said, the big thing is HD. Your Sony can't do HD. Nor can any other TiVo on the market. This one can. And it'll beat the pants off of your Sony when it comes to PQ because of it. Oh, and it has component and DVI output, which your Sony doesn't. It'll even look better with SD material.
I havn't looked into DirecTV's specs about their broadcast of HDTV, but, I'm guessing it's highly compressed
You're right. You haven't looked into it. DirecTV is now broadcasting all of its HD channels at full bitrate. They were previously doing some bit combing to reduce the bitrate to ~12 Mbps, but they have apparantly stopped that and now HD channels are broadcast at up to 21 Mbps.
How much more bandwidth can you get out of older comm. satelitte? HDTV has about 4x the number of pixels over normal broadcast. You can't support both without giving up something.
The bandwidth is static. They could allocate all of the bandwidth on a transponder to HD -- they'd just carry fewer channels on that transponder. The more HD channels they put on a bird the fewer SD channels they can broadcast (which basically affects how many locals they can broadcast; all the major channels are on the 101 bird anyway. HD is on the 110 and 119 birds). Oh, and they have a new bird going active in January. It'll have enough bandwidth to transmit every single channel they carry in HD. Including the locals. All of the m. It's unknown what they're going to use the new bird for yet, except that it will be HD related.
Oh, other new things about the HD DirecTiVo? Four tuners. Two HD DirecTV and two ATSC. You'll only be able to record from two at a time, but you won't have to worry about whether the signal is coming in OTA or DBS.
Actually, it doesn't always work -- for instance, I get local chanels via DirecTiVo, but a season pass will only grab either the local channel shows, or the DirecTV shows. Never both. So If a show (such as Stargate SG-1 appears on SciFi and my local FOX affiliate) I have to have TWO season passes to grab all the shows, or setup a Title Wishlist (which I have done for Stargate) unfortunately a Title Wishlist doesn't always work -- for instance, I'd like to get all of the Friends episodes, but a Friends Title Wishlist would get me loads of other crap. Oh well. It's still drastically better than a VCR.
People see the world as they are, not as it is.
Totally agree on the enclosure issue.
I have 3 Tivos (1 original that's now 4 years old, and 2 series2) and have never had a problem with heat.
If you sandwitch it in a cabinet in with a bunch of stuff, or (yes, people do this) put them on top of your receiver/amplifier
But so will anything. Before installing a couple small fans into the cabinet where everything lives, my Toshiba pro-scan DVD would overheat and refuse to play because it didn't have enough room to "breathe" (the shelf above it is too close).
- Brian Roach
I do have a TIVO and it does not have an overheating problem.
I took the cover off once to upgrade the hard-drives and it's basically a PC inside.
It has a cooling fan which pulls air from the bottom and pushes air over the hard-drive(s). The fan is just a run-of-the-mill PC cooling fan. Easily disconnected (see adventure below) and replaced if necessary.
If you block either the holes at the bottom or the holes on the side/top then you will probably get a heating issue.
Two hard drives in a small box do tend to run fairly hot.
And if you're a bozo like me and forget to hook back up your cooling fan the TIVO has internal circuitry that shuts it down if it gets too hot.
That's what happened to mine. I got up the day after upgrading my drives to find my TIVO shutdown. Immediate thoughts went through my head of "Oh no! I've killed it!"
Only to discover a screen on my display from the TIVO that said I had an overheating issue.
Lastly, the TIVO has an on-screen diagnostic screen which will tell you your TIVO current temp.
You can easily monitor it that way.
Caution: Contents under pressure