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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.
The Samsung isn't a flat plasma TV though; its a DLP rear projection that, since the single DLP unit is much smaller than the multiple bulbs of a traditional CRT rear-pro, they've hollowed out the stand to the bare minimum for maximum cool looks.
If you want flat plasma, then get flat plasma. I wouldn't hang one on my wall though, as not only do I need the stand space underneath it to house DVD, Laserdisc, Amplifier, Satellite decoder, VHS recorder, Minidisc player and multiple consoles, but the sheer weight of a 43" plasma screen means you need blooming great bolts in it to ensure it doesn't fall off.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
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.
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/
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.