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CableCARDs and HDTV
An anonymous reader writes: "HDTV is the next big thing. I attended the NAB conference in Las Vegas last week and everyone was pitching HDTV or asking about it. DesignTechnica has an interesting article on CableCARDS, which allows viewing HDTV through a CableCARD compatible HDTV set without needing a set top box. Cable companies are required to enable CableCARDs with card-compatible HDTVs by July 1, 2004. So here's some questions: Has anyone heard of CableCARD? Is anyone planning on buying a CableCARD compatible TV? How many people actually get HDTV in their area, and how many channels? HDTV is so hyped right now but seems that there is barely any deployment."
If the TV has the decryptor card, this means no DVR. No deal.
Since I have built my own DVR (four tuners, hardware decoder, using this software, I would really like to be able to upgrade to HDTV tuner cards and keep my DVR.
Are you listening Hauppauge?
The dogcow says "Moof!"
What exactly turns you people on about watching TV in higher resolution? I've been watching TV on a standard television for decades now and I've never sat there and said "you know, this episode of Law and Order would've been much better if it was broadcast at a higher resolution". I'm a computer geek and love my new toys, but I have absolutely zero interest in buying an HDTV compatible television set. The paradigm of a central broadcaster feeding me content without interactive control over it is boring to me. If my TV died tomorrow I'd probably go for years without replacing it. It's just not a focal point of my life.
For me, the actual television shows wouldn't matter. I don't watch broadcast or cable, I use my TV as a monitor for watching DVDs on.
I would love to have an HDTV so I could see more detail in the films I watch. I'm not interested in paying the ridiculous amounts of money that they cost right now, so it will probably be a few years before I have one.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
We dont have HDTV in the UK, but our digital services are now really very good. (quite low compression on most channels less artifacts). From what I've seen of cable in the US, (comcast) you seem to have a mixture of digital and analog going into the same box. And on a number of the digital channels you can definitely see the tell-tale mpeg artifacts. Over here our cable co's switched completely from analog to digital (all the cable channels are digital, and i think the same can be said for satellite now) We still have 5 analog terrestrial channels ; supplemented by terrestrial digital which requires a set top box (picture quality is also very good)
However having great picture quality is not a huge incentive for many people to pay the cost for the hardware. Sure from a geeky perspective its great to have sexy hardware etc. But at the end of the day it doesnt make the tv programmes any better. TV in the UK has really gone down hill over the past few years, there is rarely anything worth watching on TV anymore.
The main reason I would buy a HDTV if we had them available over here. Would be for playing video games, and watching HD-DVD's if and when they are available. I simply cant imagine the incentive to watch crap like Eastenders or Coronation Street in HDTV, Higher resolution is not going to make these programs any better.
I'd much prefer to get a space saving tv like an LCD or Plasma to be honest. CRT's should have been consigned to the scrap heap years ago.
nick.
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Try to find a true HDTV Monitor. No, not HTDV compatible, but really HDTV.
It's not 1024x768 (DMD) or even 1280x1024 (LCOS). It's 1920x1080. Didn't the industry learn from the lawsuits on disk drive size and display diagonal measurements? (Of course they did, they learned that lying generates far more profit than the resulting lawsuits consume.)
I think it's kind of a rip that there's a ton of hype over HDTV, and that people are rushing off to buy HDTV "compatible" TVs, spending nearly $10,000 for some, and not one is true HDTV. Of course, in a year or two when the plasma screen finally fades away, the replacement model might actually be HDTV.
OK, there are videophiles who know the difference, and dig up something real like a nice Barco CRT projector. But most people are being defrauded.
Nicolas Negroponte said it best:
"When you look at television, ask yourself: What's wrong with it? Picture resolution? Of course not. What's wrong is the programming."
I'm an electronics salesperson at Sears and I looked up this CableCARD business a month ago when I was reviewing the new lineup of televisions we are slated to get around August. From what i was able to gather, the cable companies will be required to issue you a card, probably some form of smartcard, that you can insert into your CableCARD/HDTV ready set and it will instantly unlock all of your standard/digital/high definition programming. To me this seems like a big plus in making HDTV deployment easier for "the masses". I cannot tell you how many people come to me and want an HDTV integrated set believe that it will allow them to recieve HDTV programming from either satellite or cable. After explaining that they will only recieve broadcast and they still need a set-top box they are usually rather peeved at the whole HDTV transition nightmare. So, from my POV i would have to say that this is a good thing. Now if only it was a DirecTV card instead of cable i would be even happier. Cable in my city is absolute trash (Comcast). So when these sets arrive i will have the dilemna of whether or not to advocate them just because i don't want to force crappy service on my customers. I still like the old RCA 38" widescreen CRT HDTV with integrated broadcast and DirecTV reciever. I just think that set was released ahead of its time and was an RCA :(