Cable HDTV Not Ready For Primetime?

A reader writes: "Shelly Palmer head of the New York Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Advanced Media committee and the man that gave us the singing cats in the meow mix ads has posted a very entertaining article on his blog about finally getting a Scientific Atlanta SA8000HD High Definition, DVR-enabled cable boxes from Time Warner Cable in Manhattan, his adventures getting it to work, and its less than stellar performance."

Comments

HDTV?

[mbrix]

Can someone please explain HDTV to me? While I was in the states this summer, I saw HDTV on a ~60 inch television. It was amazing. What exactly is this technology, and more importantly, what's the status in Europe? :-)

I live in Denmark myself.

Re:HDTV?

[mknewman]

HDTV is High Definition TV, roughly 4-5x the resolution of a Standard Definition (NTSC) picture, but with many more features, such as 16:9 aspect ratio, multiple channels within a signal, and digital signal, with error correction capability, meaning you get a good signal even in a weak reception area. One downside is the "Do not record" bit, which allows broadcasters to block your ability to record certain shows. I have two HDTVs and they are awesome!

Re:HDTV?

[BenjyD]

It's effectively just higher resolution TV.

I think there's more of a drive for it in the US because their standard TV broadcast is slightly lower resolution than the PAL standard in Europe.

Re:HDTV?

[tonsofpcs]

You have probably heard of it in Europe as simply DTV or HDDTV or High Definition Digital Television. In Europe, the standard PAL/SECAM systems are considered 'High Definition TeleVision', so the abbreviation HDTV doesn't work there to describe the new technologies.

Re:HDTV?

[whiteSanjuro]

PAL has slightly more resolution to make up for slightly less refresh rate, IMHO.

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...we do have a slightly higher FPS in trade for that.

Jumping up to HDTV resolution is still quite nice for any continent, however. :)

Re:HDTV?

[BenjyD]

Yes, it would be nice to get the higher resolution. I can't say I've heard anything at all about it here (UK) outside of US-based websites.
My guess at the reason was that PAL resolution is just about good enough for most people, whereas NTSC is just the other side of the acceptability threshold. That, and the fact that American TVs are bigger than most British houses ;).

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's coming to Europe soon on Pay TV, there's a few HD feeds already about though, like Euro1080 on Astra 1 and various US networks come and go when trade fair's are on. There's also various tests, there's once coming up on Thursday by BBC/ProSieben on the Astra satellites. You can download a sample already.

TPS in France is going HD next year, Sky Digital in the UK are going HD 2006-07, Premiere in Germany are also announcing plans and I think Canal+ (inc Scandinavia) have something in the pipeline.

A consortium has just been set up to promote standisation in Europe, setting out minimum specs, the interconnects (HDMI) and issuing logos. Interestingly European kit also has to be able to scan at 720p60 and 1080i30 to be certified which are native HD resoutions in the US. There's various trials going on in the EBU setting out the desired format, it seems a progressive format is most disired because it matches the scanless native of modern displays (Plasma, LCD etc), so they're pushing 720p initially with the hope moving to 1080p by the time this is mainstream. The DVB group also has various developments in their newsletters.

The BBC are going to produce all their content in HD by 2010 and are already playing with their new toys

Re:HDTV?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

PAL has slightly more resolution to make up for slightly less refresh rate, IMHO.

It is more than just your opinion - it is pretty much a fact. PAL is ~50Hz but has about 100 more scan lines, where as NTSC is ~60Hz.

What hurts PAL sometimes is that NTSC video is often poorly converted to PAL using pretty sloppy methods. But if you use a 100% PAL signal chain (direct from camera or direct from film telecine), it will generally have a better picture than NTSC, all things being equal.

One thing that bugs some people is that 24fps film gets speeded up to 25fps so it displays well on PAL, but it also causes a 4% frequency shift in the audio to synch the audio to the video.

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital TV is just called that, or DTV, it's not considered HDTV nor is it called that, the commercial rollout of HDTV (i.e. 720p/1080i) starts next year.

Re:HDTV?

[Lehk228]

the reason for the differance in framerate is due to the electrical standards, PAL being ~25 fields/second to be half the electrical frequency in europe (50 hz) while the US uses ~30 fields/second to match 60 Hz AC electricity. by matching the frequency this way there is less interferance to the signal from beat patterns.

Re:HDTV?

[rco3]

Oh, please. There's not enough difference in the resolution of PAL and of NTSC to really matter at all. PAL has a lower framerate, too, so nyah!

HDTV has significantly more resolution than either PAL or NTSC. It's simply a matter of technology marching forward, and new standards improving upon old ones. It has nothing to do with N. Americans being jealous of European video standards.

Re:HDTV?

[Jeremy Erwin]

PAL/SECAM are limited to 625 lines of resolution. It's not considered to be High Definition. See this eu paper for more details.

(From a regulatory standpoint, it's important to ensure widespread takeup of DTV, as the old analogue channels can be sold off for other uses, once large majorities have switched. The paper speculates on how the HDTV aspect of digital television might be a better "selling point" than SDTV multicasting, which often is of poor quality.)

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got to see PAL while I was in the UK back in 1988. I found the resolution and color reproduction to be superb. Much more fine detail, and colors seemed more true to life.

However, the refresh rate really bugged me. Drove me crazy is more like it. I could easily see the flicker, and it gave me a headache sometimes. The picture just didn't look at "solid" as NTSC. Can't explain it, really.

Re:HDTV?

[Jeremy Erwin]

The trouble with NTSC is that the colors aren't terribly stable. (Never the Same Color). PAL may be better in this regard.

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say the differences in the number of lines or scanrates doesn't really impact that much. However PAL often appears better because of it's nicer colour encoding, you don't often see with bizzare pink looking faces which are sometimes even go green when the signal degrades, Europe also divides channels into 8Mhz instead of the 6MHz used in the US, so the chroma (colour) subcarrier has a lot more bandwidth, which looks nicer and allows for enhancements like NICAM digital stereo.

Re:HDTV?

[Oddly_Drac]

"There's not enough difference in the resolution of PAL and of NTSC to really matter at all."

625 - 525 lines or nearly 20% more lines. What would you consider a significant difference?

"PAL has a lower framerate, too, so nyah!"

According to your comparison, not enough to matter...but 20% faster in the US, but this does mean that PAL has a higher bandwidth.

Incidentally, we can actually drive most equipment from the past decade at higher refresh rates. 100Hz is not that uncommon from the past five years, but the real comparison comes from clamping colours, which NTSC has never really managed.

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say you would get used to it after a short while, it can be an annoyance if you're from a 60Hz country.

When I was in the US I couldn't get used to news readers having ill looking faces that seemed to change colour at a whim ;) I also noticed the 'suttering' and repeat frames on films because of the 3:2 conversion, we have to suffer the 4% speed-up instead but the motion is usually smooth.

The implementation is also critical, PAL is done very nicely in the UK, a universal UHF network covering the whole country and only 4 main channels to avoid any interference, each channel has 8Mhz of bandwdith to play with and has NICAM sound, which is linear PCM almost like CD but 32kHz instead.

The UK needs a worthy HD network to suceed such a nice analogue network, the current Freeview SD system isn't that worthy.

Re:HDTV?

[hattig]

High Definition Television

America and Japan are leading the way with this, mainly due to having more of a need for it because of NTSC than our PAL system.

We did all the work on Digital TV and Satellite TV though over in Europe first, so it is about time they did some work and then we can benefit from it in a few years time when it is cheaper. :)

Of course, they have much bigger houses in the US, so they need bigger TVs, so higher resolution is handier there. Over here due to our higher population densities we usually settle on ~30" widescreen TVs these days at most.

I expect a few satellite companies will start HDTV transmissions in Europe in 2005 or 2006 at the latest.

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

"According to your comparison, not enough to matter...but 20% faster in the US, but this does mean that PAL has a higher bandwidth."

You see PAL in 6MHz channels like Brazil.

However in the digital domain NTSC and PAL 'legacy formats' (since digital is component and doesn't use these ancient composite codings) is identical, the more lines off-sets the requirement of a high refresh rate. 'NTSC' and 'PAL' digital SDI feeds are both 270Mbps uncompressed, so they actually require the same bandwidth purely looking at the resolution x refresh rate.

However, Europe does assign more bandwidth to analogue PAL so the colors look nicer.

Re:HDTV?

[BenjyD]

I wasn't suggesting any jealousy at all, just trying to formulate a reason why (AFAIK) HDTV is so much bigger deal in the US than here. I'd love to get HDTV over here.

Re:HDTV?

[noscule]

A major proportion of people in the UK have digital satellite receivers, and the picture quality is vastly better than PAL analogue (or analogue satellite or cable). They even broadcast 5.1 AC3 along with some of the movie channels, and the settop boxes have been designed to support 16:9 from the outset. They output to the PAL standard but in RGB format (which virtually all TVs purchased in the UK in the last 8 years can support through the SCART socket). We also now can buy digital set top boxes for about £50 ($100) that receive digital terrestrial signals which can (given a high enough bit rate) be of similar quality to the digital satellite. There is a big market in the UK for widescreen (16:9) PAL standard TVs. The plasma (and many of the LCD) ones are, I imagine, HDTV capable, but the CRT ones probably aren't (correct me if I am wrong). However, Sky television is talking about launching an HDTV service into the UK shortly. Because we already have a number of the perceived advantages of HDTV, and "good enough" picture quality, it will probably be a while before HDTV takes off here.

Re:HDTV?

[BenjyD]

I've got a digital terrestrial box and the picture quality is generally worse than the equivalent analogue signal. Apparently, I'm on the edge of the reception area - this is Cambridge, only 60 odd miles from London.

It's fine for most things, but fast moving or detailed pictures (eg. a close up of a fountain) look pretty blocky.

Re:HDTV?

[El Cabri]

There are other benefits of European TVs : all of them are RGB monitors, which means a much better quality for console gaming out-of-the-box. Also most of those sold nowadays can display both in 480 and 575 lines, 50, 60 and sometimes 100Hz, with pretty much any color scheme (NTSC and all the flavors of PAL and SECAM), which allows to plug in any VCR or DVD player from around the world. US TVs rarely have RGB inputs, and adapters have to be added to game systems to use the YUV component inputs. Also they display NTSC and only NTSC, so when you want to watch PAL DVDs on a zone-free player for example, you have to go through a scaling that very often does not turn out good.

Re:HDTV?

[bigman2003]

Wow- is a 30" widscreen really considered standard there?

I would say that going widescreen, the smallest that most people would want in the US is 42". And then of course 60 is much better.

With a 4:3, 32" is what I would consider the 'standard' TV size. A 32" 4:3 is much larger than a 30" widescreen.

I guess I should stop whining about having JUST a 36" 4:3 HDTV...

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem over here is that every channel seems to have its own idea of how much color saturation is correct, so it's often hard to adjust a TV to get everything right. Add to that the fact that many cable systems seem to be run by idiots, and you're often lucky to get a decent picture.

As for news, I don't know what market you were in, but if you really want to see some bad TV, you have to check out local news on a small-market station with very little quality control. I remember one channel in Mississippi several years ago that was using old equipment and bad lighting. I swear, the anchors looked like their lips were black. It was painful to look at.

If you want decent video and sound in the U.S. you really have to get DBS. This isn't a perfect solution, however, since the satellite services sometimes overcompress their channels to fit more in, which can cause all kinds of artifacts. The old C-band dishes provided the absolute best video you could get, but those are getting scarcer by the day.

Re:HDTV?

[vrai]

The big difference is colour handling. PAL (at least in the implementations I've seen) has stable, life like colours; NTSC has terrible colour handling. I don't tend to watch much TV when I'm in the States, but that which I've seen reminds me of those old 'colorized' black and white films.

There's also the fact that digital PAL has had 16:9 widescreen and 5:1 surround sound for the last few years (in the UK at least). Widescreen sets are now the norm over here and with TVs tending to be smaller than those in the US the extra resolution provided by HDTV isn't considered that important.

Re:HDTV?

[dschmelzer]

I think the size of American TVs is an important factor and the willingness and ability to spend big chunks of disposable income to purchase new electronics. If you look through an electronics store in Europe (FNAC, for example), the TV section has maybe a dozen models, maybe one or two plasma HD sets. Compare to any Best Buy in the States with maybe 100 models, a third of which are HD.

If you are buying a 25 inch TV set, then HDTV is a waste of your time and money. If you are buying a 50 inch TV set, it's a whole 'nuther proposition entirely.

Re:HDTV?

[hattig]

Well I have a 24" Widescreen (I don't watch much TV though). My parents have a 28" Widescreen. My mate has a 32" Widescreen. Widescreen is pretty much standard in the UK now, I don't know why anyone would buy a 4:3 screen anymore. Most 576i content is widescreen too since the introduction of widescreen around 6 to 8 years ago. People tend to pay under £600 for a new TV, and at the moment 100Hz 32" Widescreens are at this price point. Note that I couldn't even find a listing for a bigger CRT screen on the website I just checked out.

Fact is, most people's living rooms are small in the UK unless you pay an awful lot for a house. There just isn't the land available. So people get a TV that is a suitable size for the room.

Of course when thinner televisions become more affordable, I expect people will move to 42"+ displays. CRTs are massive and take up a lot of room, and hence people are limited by the depth of the display. If I had to buy a new TV for my house now I'd look into 42" displays however.

Re:HDTV?

[bigman2003]

I'm probably a little bit abnormal (in a lot of ways, most of them psychological, only a few of them physical).

When my TV is on, 95% of the time I'm playing an Xbox game. MOST games are still 4:3. I thought about buying a widescreen TV, and all that would do for me is make my game screens much smaller, with black bars on the left and right.

The other 5% of the time, my wife is watching a movie. And even if she does watch it widescreen- which she usually does, watching it on a 36" 4:3 in widescreen mode (black bars on top and bottom) is still pretty big.

Oh, and 100% of the time my 14 year old daughter is whining that we don't get any TV reception (by choice (mine)) and her life is miserable, all the kids at school think tht we're poor..etc. etc...

Re:HDTV?

[Fred_A]

Frankly I'd settle for a VHS quality standard if only there was something worthwile to see with less ads.

As it is, my "PAL/SECAM" resolution 21" LCD TV will do nicely for the next ten years, thank you.

Re:HDTV?

[eamonman]

Incidentally, we can actually drive most equipment from the past decade at higher refresh rates. 100Hz is not that uncommon from the past five years, but the real comparison comes from clamping colours, which NTSC has never really managed.

Yup, as they say, NTSC: Never twice (the) same color.

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that bugs some people is that 24fps film gets speeded up to 25fps so it displays well on PAL, but it also causes a 4% frequency shift in the audio to synch the audio to the video

Since the average consumer doesn't really notice care about the idiotic aspect ratio jockeying that gives us NBA players looking like they weigh 400lbs, I don't think they realize John Cleese doesn't have quite so high-pitched of a voice.

Re:HDTV?

[connorbd]

Brazilian PAL (PAL-M) is unusual, though. It's NTSC resolution with PAL color encoding, so it's rather differently behaved than standard PAL.

Re:HDTV?

[Bertie]

I find that digital TV totally goes to pieces when showing something with coloured studio lights, such as a musical performance on Top Of The Pops or something like that. The screen goes blocky as hell and it doesn't seem to like the purples and blues these lights tend to give off. It's a total mess. I don't know if there's anything that can be done to sort it out, but putting such an obviously flawed system into widespread deployment seems pretty stupid to me.

Re:HDTV?

[Bertie]

I disagree. American TV shows are noticeably less sharp-looking compared with what's produced this side of the pond. And I don't think it's solely down to whatever they do to make the signal PAL-compatible - watching TV in America, it looked pretty similar. It's even apparent with live broadcasts - the 2002 World Cup, played in Japan and South Korea, both NTSC companies, produced far worse pictures than those from this year's European Championships in Portugal.

Re:HDTV?

[BenjyD]

I've noticed that too. I think it's a factor of the large changes per frame caused by the rapid moving lights requiring too much bandwidth. A better aerial or happening to live near a transmitter should improve things, I don't think it's a fundamental flaw.

Re:HDTV?

[cybpunks3]

Analog TV has to follow stringent standards otherwise you get no picture at all. Sure, the picture can get fuzzy, but generally you are guaranteed a certain standard of quality.

Compression is the downside of digital, whether it be digital standard def or high def.

When you leave it to the broadcasters/cable-companies to decide how heavily to compress their signals, they will ratchet it up as far as they feel the market can bear.

That's why digital cable and satellite cable generally looks WORSE than analog cable.

Just because it's a higher frame resolution doesn't mean you get even detail across the entire frame. If you compress it enough, you can make a 1080i image look like a 56K webcam because the blocks internally create effectively a lower visible resolution. You'll have small pockets of native res and large pockets of lower blocky res.

Not only that, but with no fixed resolution for HDTV, what incentive is there to go for the highest HDTV resolution? The lowest HDTV resolution is basically the same as NTSC, only progressive (think DVD's representation of stuff shot on film). That is not really progress, to me.

And big screen TVs, why is it that you see them in the store showing 4:3 content on 16:9 screens? You know, I find messed up aspect ratios to be completely ugly. I don't think there is any advantage in either cropping a 4:3 NTSC picture or stretching it to 16:9 but if you buy a big screen TV then people tend to do just that as a matter of routine because the vast majority of programming is in standard def. Or if you have a plasma you are concerned about burn-in so you wind up watching stuff in the wrong aspect ratio.

What the FCC should have done is enforced a minimum res on HDTV and a maximum compression ratio. The consumer is generally too blind to tell the difference between marketspeak and the actual picture quality so they get suckered into the hype.

Just wait until HD-DVD comes out. If it uses standard DVD disks with MPEG4 compression on it, it's going to such in comparison to blue-ray with milder compression. MPEG4 is great for bootlegs but its limitations are not acceptable for a videophile format.

Re:HDTV?

[libcoder]

Well local programming like news can really suck out in the middle of nowhere, fortunately I've never really run into this because I live right in the Chicago Suburbs, 2nd or 3rd biggest market in the country (probably 2nd IMO). Even in a big city like Detroit, their news looked to me like a production put together by some High School. Plus the big markets get all the hot anchors.

Re:HDTV?

[glindsey]

Yeah, as if it really matters these days. Films and reruns on television are subjected to so much time compression and hacking to bits, you're basically watching the film at 30fps anyway, with the audio corrected for frequency shift. (Ever wonder why orchestral scores have weird rhythmic popping noises in the background? Artifacts from the compression algorithms.)

It's a good thing, too, or else the networks wouldn't have time to cram in another CortiSlim ad.

Re:HDTV?

[The Snowman]

One good thing about HDTV is that it is digital. While component video is not digital, it is very high quality analog, and the signal tends to be very good. HDTV broadcasts are very crisp and have excellent colors. A few weeks ago my wife was watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on TV because she was too lazy to put the DVD in. I eventually put it in for her, and the difference is amazing. Besides going to a much higher resolution, the colors were amazing. Regular TV tends to be very washed out and has poor contrast and color. HDTV, both digital broadcasts and DVD video, is just the opposite. Discovery HD Theater is my favorite channel now because of the breathtaking detail and color. They do an excellent job with most of their HDTV programs.

Another benefit of digital HDTV broadcasts is that 99% of the time they broadcast in Dolby Digital 5.1. Even if they just mix two chanels up to 5.1 on the cable company's end, it still broadcasts that way on every HD channel I have seen. In fact my HDTV digital cable box has Dolby Digital built-in with optical and coaxial digital audio outputs.

Even though my HDTV and other home theater equipment is not the best, it is still light years ahead of the 1940s technology that low definition TV is built off of. I think that fairly soon, HDTV is going to take off. When I look around Best Buy, I see more than half the TVs are HDTV. The low definition ones are stuck in the corner out of the way, while the HDTVs are hooked up to 5.1 systems, have carefully set up lighting, and generally made to look more desirable. The price tags have fewer digits than they used to, even for high end models (excluding plasma). Of course, Wal-Mart has very few HDTV models and they all suck. When Wally World starts carrying more HDTVs than low definition sets we know the age of HDTV is here :-)

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except things made for UK TV are shot at native 25fps, including those crusty old Monty films and stuff with John Cleese.

Re:HDTV?

[Pope]

What the FCC should have done is enforced a minimum res on HDTV and a maximum compression ratio.

The FCC wanted to, but the industry lobbyists convinced them that "competition" for differing HDTV standards was a much better way to go, and now North America has a bullshit half-conceived war between 1080i and 720p, and in the end both everyone gets screwed. Total bollocks as usual.

Re:HDTV?

[ibennetch]

Others have commented about poor quality control and un-educated operators -- which are valid reasons for bad signal, but the AC (my parent post) is talking about phase shifting...with PAL you don't have the "hue" control that we have on NTSC TV sets because the color phase is referenced in the signal itself -- a signal will always be the same color. With NTSC (Never Twice the Same Color) every display device needs to be properly calibrated (to color bars, usually) to display the correct hue or else the skin tones look off, which is what the parent poster was talking about.

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that is mainly true of the NTSC signal since it was developed before color televion came around. You'll notice that NTSC sets have adjustments for color. PAL and Secam reproduce colo(u)rs more acurately by better correcting for the loss during transmission so those sets tend not to need colour adjustment knobs. http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Contrib/WorldTV/

Re:HDTV?

[tigga]

The trouble with NTSC is that the colors aren't terribly stable. (Never the Same Color). PAL may be better in this regard.

there are some advantages and disadvantages in both systems - here is a comparison:

http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Contrib/WorldTV/compa re .html

Re:HDTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think it's a waste of time and money on a 25 inch set, then you have clearly not seen HDTV. When done right, it looks absolutely amazing on any size set. We're not talking about small differences here.

Re:HDTV?

[connorbd]

Yeah, it's pretty amazing that NTSC even works, but it was the first... pioneers with arrows in the back and all that. PAL is apparently color television done correctly.

SECAM, though... that one is funny. The way the French designed the SECAM system, you can't do editing effectively in SECAM video -- you either do it with film stock or with RGB component video (or just transcode from PAL), because the implementation of color in SECAM uses a delay line that apparently throws everything out of phase if you try to stick two discrete sections of SECAM video together. Interestingly, I've read that no one makes high-band (SVHS, Hi8, DV) camcorders for SECAM... and you wouldn't need a DV standard for SECAM anyway because the image data is basically the same on the digital side.

What I find interesting about the color television world is that apparently before they created SECAM, the French had a working high-definition black and white standard.

Re:HDTV?

[ibennetch]

Thanks for the post - I know very little of SECAM and found what you said interesting...even more amazing about the hi-def b&w standard.

Re:HDTV?

[connorbd]

I actually looked it up after posting -- it was 819i25, pretty impressive for an early standard. I think they replaced it with the 625-line CCIR system to be in compliance with the rest of Europe, and more or less decided to do their own thing when Germany was working on PAL.

The interesting part -- the UK almost went NTSC 405i, but went with PAL instead for compatibility reasons. (Would have been interesting to see NTSC-625i25. Not terribly good, mind you, just interesting.)

Re:HDTV?

[noscule]

...which is why one is better off with a state run broadcasting corporation like the BBC which has motives other than profit...

Re:HDTV?

[Korpo]

I don't whether the quality of NTSC broadcasting increased a lot or not - I cannot observe whether it's that way or not (I am a PAL user).

But wasn't quality of a lot of NTSC brodcasts so bad it was dubbed "Never The Same Color"?

Was this resolved by better broadcasting equipment?

At least in the days when this little nickname rang true, PAL was surely the better solution.

Re:HDTV?

[ibennetch]

No, you're correct and the problem hasn't gone away -- it's part of dealing with the NTSC standard, with PAL basically the phase information is encoded into the signal but with NTSC you need to adjust it manually with the hue knob and since most people don't know how to calibrate their TV to color bars, you end up seeing green or purple people on impromperly calibrated sets.

It's not a limitation of technology, it's the standard. We still say "Never The Same Color."

Re:HDTV?

[Korpo]

On a far less "technical" note, many people may not yet have noticed anything wrong with "The Simpons". Only those "Futurama" toons have a strange color... ;)

Not ready for primetime...

[Chuck Bucket]

sounds like it's not ready for sale, what a mess. HDTV reminds me of the metric system, always a promise for a better future, but never grabbed hold of enough marketshare to make a diff. The best tech doesn't always win (eg- VHS vs Beta, MS vs Linux...)

CB*&^A(#@$

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[91degrees]

HDTV reminds me of the metric system, always a promise for a better future, but never grabbed hold of enough marketshare to make a diff.

All of Europe and Asia is a pretty decent market share.

The best tech doesn't always win (eg- VHS vs Beta,

Beta only offered 1 hour tapes when it was first released. VHS offered 2 hour tapes. Picture quality isn't everything.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 and as soon as you fill it up, it decides to stop recording all together. You apparently have to get a new unit. So it's basically worthless.

As I see it, if cable companies are going to continue to roll out with junk brands it will never be ready for primetime.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[tonsofpcs]

The reason BetaMax failed is that Sony would not license it to anyone. JVC licensed VHS to most everyone. The more licensees, the more units and media units can be made more quickly. Also, licensees helped in improving the technology, by making smaller and better VHS decks.

And BTW: In the professional world, a descendant of BetaMax is still used -- BetaCam. I'd say Beta won in the pro world.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[Citizen of Earth]

The best tech doesn't always win (eg- VHS vs Beta

Not this again. Beta lost because it could only record one hour's worth of programming whereas VHS could record two. Not being able to record a complete movie off TV unattended is a crippling limitation. The video quality for home users was pretty much indistinguishable.

MS vs Linux...

Twenty years from now, people will be saying "What's a 'Microsoft'?" It is inevitable that Linux will become the standard desktop the world over; it will just take time. The lowest-cost 'good enough' system wins in the long term. This is how Microsoft grabbed the desktop in the first place and also why they will lose it.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[enrico_suave]

I dont' think so much that "HDTV" persay isn't ready for primetime... it's that the junk/rushed DVR set top boxes being pushed out by the cable companies aren't up to snuff...

The pushing of higher rez digital TV content over the cable line isn't *that* hard/different, nor is the decoding/decrypting of it. I gotta think the PVR/set top box quality is the issue here NOT the transmission of the HDTV or HDTV content itself...

*shrug*

e.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[BlackHawk-666]

Metric did manage to get a foothold here in "the rest of the world", it's mainly just the USA who are still on the imperial system. HDTV is catching on in Japan and they are already broadcasting anime in HDTV (Samurai 7, for the curious) so I suspect HDTV is simply not ready in the US. It's even worse here in Britain though...

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the same problem with computers... I don't know how many computers I've filled up with porn!

Houses too! I've got 17 houses filled with porno mags. I'm currently living in my 18th house. It'll probably bve filled up by Christmas. I can just barely squeeze down the hall from my bedroom to the bathroom.

F-ing 'tard!

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[warb]

Twenty years from now, people will be saying "What's a 'Microsoft'?" It is inevitable that Linux will become the standard desktop the world over; it will just take time.

Twenty years from now the world will be metric/Linux while the U.S. is English Units/Microsoft ;(

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[warb]

I have Hitichi 57 in. HDTV and with Comcast digital, it is ver much "ready for prime time" . Discovery HD, INHD, INHD2 , HBOHD all look wonderful. Upconverted Digital channels look great also. It's painful to drop in analog.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[mOoZik]

Stop with your pro-Linux B.S. Linux will NEVER make it onto the desktop the way Windows did. If you think Linux will capture the majority of the 90%+ that Windows enjoys, you are living in a world of fantasy.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[Jedi Alec]

and both of you are nuts for thinking it matters one tiny damn in the big picture. as am i for thinking my opinion on your opinions does...k, negative thoughts! bad! bad! think happy thoughts!

*waits for the men in white coats*

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[ExKoopaTroopa]

the metric system works fine in Europe you insentive clod !

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[TheRealMindChild]

Is this the same reason that Apple died when competing agains the IBM PC compatible.... oh wait...

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[garroo]

Metric was introduced in Canada when I was a kid... the morons of the Mulroney Government backed off it, in the 80's (15 years later) and many companies flipped at having to change their labelling AGAIN.

Now, we are a strange damned mix of mostly Metric, but also Imperial (British) standard.

Most younger people exist 100% in the metric world. I did too at one time, but I now use lbs and feet for personal measurement, and MPG for mileage. I never could get used to that litres per 100km idiocy. Why not say kilometers per liter? sheesh.

I'm sure not many will care about the US and it's foolish hold on ancient measures and hokey weights (To paraphrase Han Solo).

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[dschmelzer]

HDTV uptake is being led by the US and Japan, followed by Korea, Canada, and Australia.

HDTV is certainly ready for primetime, just perhaps not this particular set-top box that not many people use. The author was probably disappointed because he hadn't viewed HDTV with a good set-top box before reviewing the unit.

The majority of network primetime shows are in HD and there's lots of sports in HD. By the way, HD sports is amazing. For the last year and a half or so, I've been getting 10 or so HD stations on RCN/Starpower cable with a Motorola set top box. Very few problems.

Lately, the internet has been substituting for TV for me, but the TV that I watch contains a lot of HD content.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[tonsofpcs]

IBM never licensed its BIOS. Compaq reverse-engineered it to make the first 'compatible'.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[n8ur]

Are you sure about that 1 hour recording limit? My first VCR was a Betamax ("because it's better, honey") and we recorded full-length movies. This was in 1982 or thereabouts; perhaps the very earliest Beta had faster record speeds (or shorter tapes).

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[shotfeel]

The reason BetaMax failed is that Sony would not license it to anyone.

IMO it failed because 1) it was more expensive, partly because of 2) the tapes were one hour long (needed twice as many tapes). Nobody wanted to record a movie and have to split it across two tapes.

Even when beta reached parity pricewise, the 1 hr vs 2 hr tape length was a big factor when it came to buying a machine -at least based on what I remember from that time. How many here actually went to a store and had to make that decision? Just to put it in perspective, cable was just starting out and most people were taping over-the-air broadcasts. From a practical standpoint, the "quality' was a tossup considering the source signal.

Then about the time Sony was going to get that fixed, VHS tapes jumped to six hours and they were already way behind in market (and mind) share.

Say goodbye to Beta in the consumer space.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[operagost]

Later Betamax units introduced a slower Beta-III speed (I think it was Beta-III) that also managed to eliminate Betamax's image quality advantage.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[metamatic]

Informative?

I was around for the VHS-Beta wars. Betamax was of noticably better quality (on a PAL TV) than VHS. Apart from anything else it had twice as many frames (VHS averages adjacent frames) and higher resolution.

The "one hour" thing is crap too. There were multi-hour Beta tapes, and they didn't require any kind of slow-speed recording. What's more, Sony had a multi-tape loading device that would feed up to 5 tapes through the machine while you were away on vacation.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[metamatic]

I should clarify that I'm talking about every machine except the first two Beta decks; i.e. post 1978 or so, when the X-2 speed had been settled on. X-2 Beta was better than VHS, and had multi-hour tapes. Yet X-2 lost the war to VHS.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Is this the same reason that Apple died when competing agains the IBM PC compatible.... oh wait...

You mean to say that Apple restricted who was allowed to write apps for their computer?

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[91degrees]

But Microsoft licenced their OS. That wassignificant.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[LinuxHam]

Exactly. I just got this box from Comcast a few weeks ago, and I'm reading this like, WTF? As you said, the DTV channels are gorgeous, too. Its like watching NFL on Fox and Monday Night Football for the first time.

And don't forget, these boxes ship with firewire turned on! As the tv tech was flipping through the setup screens, I saw "IEEE-1394: On" and was like "WHOA!" He said, "oh, if you want to capture shows to a PC, just hook it up to these [firewire] ports back here." And that includes pulling off shows from the PVR.

The biggest problem is that the PVR functionality sucks compared even to my 1st gen TiVO. Getting a 'season pass' means searching for a show by name, viewing each episode currently in the guide and scheduling a recording. Someone out there has hacked up a web-based scheduler for this box, but it is a real hack in every sense of the word.

Honestly though, I feel bad for anyone who thinks HDTV "isn't ready". They really don't know what they're missing. Hell, for $130/mo for HDTV/PVR and hi-speed, it BETTER be awesome.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[a_nonamiss]

Yeah, but you have to ask yourself, which company is more successful right now, JVC or Sony? What JVC did was better for the format, but what Sony did was probably better for the company. They may have lost the battle, but they clearly won the war.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[tonsofpcs]

Microsoft did not license theire OS to other manufacturers.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[tonsofpcs]

VHS tapes don't come in six hour lengths. In NTSC format, they come in 180 minute lengths, and you can run them at 1/3 the speed (killing any quality left, and making it 9 hours) In PAL, I have seen tapes up to 210 minutes in length [again, can be run at 1/3 speed, killing quality]. BetaMax also later added speeds [B, BII, BIII] with much less quality loss. If Sony had licensed BetaMax to other manufacturers, they would have helped to figure out how to cram more tape in, et all.

Re:Not ready for primetime...

[spleck]

How about 120 minutes, run at 1/3 speed for 6 hours?

And aren't you a bit late to be pushing Beta over VHS?

Cheap at half the price

[fruey]

"$6,000 for the Sony monitor, $3,500 for the Bose Lifestyle Audio System, $1,000 for custom installations, cables, etc. $135/month for the "all you can eat" TW cable television service and the picture is about 1/2 as good as the $2,000 36" Sony WEGA SD set it replaced."

The pain of early adoption at its purest.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[dciman]

Know what they say though..... "No highs... no lows... must be Bose." Get a progressive scan DVD player and some HD programming to watch and your new monitor will certianly blow away your old SD set. Cable tv is notorious for crappy picture quality in SD. Your new set is likely just making that more obvious to you. Feed it some quality source material! Check out Voom.... 35+ channels in HD plus most other normal cable channels.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[PhoenixFlare]

The pain of early adoption at its purest.

Indeed. My other thought upon reading that was "God, I wish I could afford to blow that much on leisure electronics".

All that stuff together costs more than the total worth of my car and all the computer/video game/TV/DVD stuff I own atm.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[hipsterdufus]

Bose = User who doesn't know anything about audio.

Safe to say he might not know a whole lot about video as well. I've had to help many rich people setup their stuff: they just walk into a store, hand the clerk their checkbook, and assume they're getting the best. A Bose system wouldn't ever be found in a home of someone who knows what they're doing. It's for CEOs/CFOs or people who want to be like them.

I wonder if it's as simple as having the cable company remove a filter on his line, or maybe he's multi-plexed in his area. A call to the cable company wouldn't hurt, me thinks.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[tonsofpcs]

Most US cable companies are taking the HDTV and/or Digital streams from the already compressed satellite feeds, decompressing them, and recompressing them all into a few digital 'channels' (or feeds, kinda like TCP ports), and whenever one station has alot of motion, all the other stations compressed onto that channel loose quality and become over-compressed, sometimes even losing signal all together.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Blindly buying on brand name is silly. That quote didn't mention the cable brand but my guess, given the other brands mentioned, is that it is probably a brand that sells more on marketing than actual quality improvement. Monster is one such company. Bose is definitely one, they sound nice, but While I like some Sony products, they sometimes do have more problems, and very often have a stupid-short warranty, all at a premium price, although it is model-dependent. It pays to do some research.

The "problem" with HD displays is that they show many flaws in the signal that SD displays hide. So, an HD display will look worse on some signals. Turning off Scan Velocity Modulation and turning the sharpness to neutral (no increased sharpness, no added blurring) helps greatly, as it seems to makes things look worse on an HD display.

Also, the screen size plays a role in the perception of how bad a picture looks. Think of it like playing a small, poorly compressed video file. It looks acceptable when the image is small, but blow it to full screen and it looks nasty.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Le Marteau]

This guy spends $10K in the hopes of getting a 'pretty picture"?

That is obscene. I hope there is a Pearly Gates, and when he gets up there, St. Peter is a cat, and St. Peter tells him how many kitties lives he could have saved and made so much better for that wasted 10K.

For the kitties! Think of the kitties!

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Austerity Empowers]

I have a $2000 (2 yr old) 60" projection HD screen, a $200 sony crapass sound system and whatever set top box Comcast gave me. I've had HD on Comcast for about 1.5 years. I was actually expecting to play video games in HD before cable, but I was surprised. It works great for me and was painless, though I do not have DVI inputs. I have a few complaints:

1) Not enough channels (1 HBO, 3 Network)

2) Sometimes the picture is SO good you can see what cheap materials are used on the set. Spiderman was a good example, somehow the green goblin's costume looks like rubber under heavy paint in HD, instead of the steel or whatever it's supposed to look like.

3) The HBO HD channel contents are the same as the SD version of that channel. Not all movies played there apparently have good enough quality film stock to be worth encoding and playing in HD.

4) Network TV programming for the past 2 years has sucked in ANY resolution.

5) I wish there was a VoD HD channel.

Other than that, I wish I had bought a TV with a DVI input, but that's the price of early adoption. Optical audio is a bad idea unless you're dealing with high power amps, otherwise digital coax is the same data on copper, and the same quality. I'm happy with it and I control the volume via the sound system. I wish comcast didn't charge me a premium for HD. I wish such a thing existed as an HD DVD, but I suspect when that is invented the MPAA will fuck it up, and I will have to use other means anyway. Finally I wish my playstation 2 could output HD =) I refuse to buy an X-Box until someone can prove to me on facts that buying an X-Box and pirating X-Box games will cause MS to lose money.

People who pay $6000 for a TV are asking for disappointment. But if you are in the market for a TV anyway, and (depending of course on the size etc. you're looking for) can get one for a couple hundred more? I say go for it, how often do you buy TVs? The one I replaced I inherited from my parents which they bought 20 years ago.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Anonymous Coward]

$3,500 for the Bose Lifestyle Audio System

... that's worth $350 to anyone who hasn't blindly bought into the Bose marketing hype.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[IronChef]

While this guy is on a spending spree, he ought to invest in some off-the-air HDTV technology, assuming his location is OTA-friendly. (see antennaweb.org)

* $100-150 for a Samsung HDTV receiver off eBay
* $25 for a Zenith "Silver Sensor" antenna, which is a well-regarded inexpensive indoor model
* a few more bucks for antenna coax cable

As a long-time sat customer, and one who was scarred by poor OTA experience as a child, I used to think the idea of getting broadcast TV was just NUTS... then I tried it. Now I find that I can get all my local stations digital transmissions and the picture quality is awesome. Even SD digital looks good. Not HD... but good.

I do have two marginal (but watchable) stations so it isn't quite perfect... One is upping their power in November though, and I can probably bring the other in perfectly if I throw $40 into a better antenna (eg Channelmaster 4xxx).

This doesn't get me Discovery HD, but I get all my prime-time stuff in HD and I love it. I am also not paying more to The Man on a monthly basis. In fact, I may drop locals from my sat programming package since I get them reliably off the ether now.

Choose the right HDTV box (eg Samsung SIR-T151) and you will even get a simultaneous downsampled SD 480i output. I record downsampled HD into my ReplayTV and the picture is great... Not HD, but SD that as good as the Replay can possibly produce.

PS: Whoever called the article author a smacktard: Yes. Thank you.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Fake Trout]

I refuse to buy an X-Box until someone can prove to me on facts that buying an X-Box and pirating X-Box games will cause MS to lose money.

I don't understand your statement. if you buy an xbox and then pirate games, I can garauntee you MS will lose money. they lose money on the systems still, I beleive and without any game revenue from your pirated games, well they certainly wouldn't be making money! That said, I quite enjoy the progressive scan image my gamecube has as well as the xbox HD capabilities. I wont pay the mountain of cash my cable company wants for HD programming so games and DVDs are all I ever watch on my set (a comparably modest 42" toshiba)

Re:Cheap at half the price

[ed1park]

There is a much better bang for the buck that almost anyone can afford. It's called front projection. I have the equivalent of a 105" plasma screen running at 1360x768. (plv70, hipower, htpc) And the image is absolutely incredible.
You can spend less than $1500 and get 80"-100" with surround sound.

$900 Infocus X2 projector (800x600)
$100 progressive scan player
$150 5.1 surround sound home theater in abox
$50 cables and stuff
$300 Dalite Hipower 80" screen/portable tripod (use a white wall while you're saving up)

But I'd say getting a PJ like the Panasonic AE700 at around $2500 is the best value.

Oh and go get an xbox which will do alot of games in hidef like Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, underground, etc. Just look on the back of the box or search on the web.

And you can connect you PC to these and surf the web etc. And they're light as hell. 20lbs. Compare that with a $100lb+ tv. bleh.

THERE IS NO BETTER WAY TO WATCH MOVIES FOR SUCH LITTLE MONEY. Suffice it to say, i don't go to the movie theaters anymore. :)

List of highly recommended pj's:
http://www.projectorcentral.com/recommended -home-t heater-projectors.htm

a useful site.
http:..www.avsforum.com

Re:Cheap at half the price

[operagost]

It's clear that if TW had not inexplicably disabled all the high-quality outputs, he would have a much better experience. Of course the quality of RGB through a pigtail converter is inferior to DVI and even S-video - duh!

What is TW smoking? It makes no sense!

Re:Cheap at half the price

[snookerdoodle]

I agree. And had he, like myself, been willing to settle for the "plain" (non-dvr) set top box, he'd have been able to get it free.

I have more or less Basic Cable (no HBO) with Cablevision, and get several channels of HD - 4 networks, espn, msg, bravo, plus some I can't remember. The only thing better than watching the Yankees in HD is gonna be watching the Yankees whup the sox in HD. ;-)

Oh, Optoma HDTV ready projector.

Maybe my expectations were adjusted from watching too much Mad TV Lowered Expectations segments, but I'm actually very pleased.

Mark

Re:Cheap at half the price

[NetJunkie]

VoD HD is coming very soon. The SA8000HD box can handle it and that has been the hold-up.

As for channels..bitch at your cable company. We get: Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, HBO, ShowTime, PBS, ESPN, DiscoveryHD, HDNet, HDNet Movies, INHD, INHD2....and I think that's it.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[skubalon]

How do you figure that you are running 1360x768 on an 800x600 LCD projector?

800x600 is not HD anyway.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[tgd]

$2500 TV
$200 DVD player
$250 screen
$500 receiver
$1000 speakers
$500 furniture
$1000 couch.

Total: $5950

Movies around here, $9.50

626 movies.

Thats the best way to watch movies for so little money as long as you want to watch one movie a day for almost two years.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Blakey Rat]

BTW, pretty much all XBox games (excepting a few) output in 480p, and there are three at the moment (Enter the Matrix, Dragon's Lair, and Syberia) that output in 1080i. (Of course, Syberia is the only one that's any good, but eh.)

So if you're itching to use that setup for HD games you can do it already. A few Gamecube titles support 480p also, but I don't own one so I can't really speak for it.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If you think watching a movie in the theater only costs $9.50 you have very poor math skills:

1) Transportation - Most people can't walk to the theater

2) Scheduling - Most theaters play movies when they want to, not when you want to

3) Multiple people - Add another $9.50 for each person, for a family of four, that's more than $30 even assuming your kids get the cheaper tickets

4) Food - The theaters make no profit on movie tickets, only concessions, consquently the food is outrageously priced, so you can go hungry, sneak it in and hope the "anti-terrorism" searches don't find your contraband, or you can pay about as much as you paid for your ticket

5) Bathroom breaks - Try pausing the theater

6) Noisy kids - In your house, if someone is talking during the movie you can get away with slapping them in the back of the head

So, it is easy to see how a movie in the home can easy save $50+ over a trip to the theatre. That's more like one movie a week for two years. Then you get all the other uses like sports and regular tv shows, stuff you'd probably use a ~$500 - $1K TV for anyway.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[shaka999]

I looked into a projector but the major issue is you really need a room where you can control the light. Most modern houses in my area are meant to be open/airy. Lots of high windows and vaulted ceilings. Its very hard to get a dark room especially if you want to watch TV during the day.

Oh, and how about those bulbs? Have you had to buy a replacement yet?

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Overzeetop]

True, but he did point out that for $1600 more you can have the new Panny 1280x720p projector, and he could re-synch the HTPC to the native resolution.

Maybe his day job is in marketing?

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Overzeetop]

If its light outside you should be out there playing (that's what MY mother always said, anyway)

Movies can usually wait until after dark, and most major TV events are after dark, too, at least on the east coast.

Lamps can be a killer, I'll admit. The old JVCs were 1000h for $750. The new panny claims 5000h on a $300 lamp. That's not pocket change, but if you only watch at night, it'll last quite a while [/rimshot]

FWIW, fixtures hold lamps, lamps produce light, and bulbs are planted in the ground so you get pretty flowers in the spring.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[shaka999]

bulb ( P ) Pronunciation Key (blb)
n.
.
.
.
An incandescent lamp or its glass housing.
Anatomy.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bulb&r= 67

Re:Cheap at half the price

[waynelorentz]

For those of us who are not in the know, which brands are considered good?

Re:Cheap at half the price

[avdp]

With Adelphia the HD cable box is $3/month more than the non-HD digital cable box with no additional programming costs. I have an HD ready TV but I am not willing to pay $3 (or $2, or $1) more for the same network channels. No offense to NBC, but watching The West Wing in HDTV is not a very compelling reason for me to pay *anything* extra.

If they want people adopting HDTV they can't charge a penny extra over the regular stuff. If they want people adopting HDTV even FASTER, then it should actually be cheaper.

PS: They also have HBO and ESPN in HD, but I am not an HBO subscriber and I don't watch sports so those two are lost on me.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[ed1park]

I have a Sanyo PLV-70 PJ that does 1380x768 native. It has an MSRP of $8,000. But you can find one for about $4,000. I used the Infocus X2 as an example of a low cost entry level PJ.

My HTPC video card is configured right now to do 1360x768.

Front Projection/home theater stuff has become my new hobby now that upgrading PC's is so cheap and easy.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[ed1park]

Well you can always use a cheap $100 tv to watch the news etc. Or with the proper combination of a smaller high gain screen (80" dalite hipower) and a high lumen output pj (say >1500 lumens) you can get a very good image with ambient light.

Replacement bulbs will cost about 300-500, depending on the model. they can last from 2000-4000 hours, also depending on the model. So you could watch a movie a day for like 2 years for approx 25-50cents iguess. Peanuts really.

If you're ready to plunk down a few thousand on a plasma or hdtv, then front projection is hands down the best bang for the buck!!!

Re:Cheap at half the price

[egomaniac]

Some decent brands, in no particular order: JBL, Klipsh, Paradigm, Genesis, B&W, Theil, Onix, Energy. There are tons more that just aren't coming to me off the top of my head, but in any case you probably won't have heard of most of them (it's a sad but true fact that you can't get decent speakers at any mainstream place like Best Buy).

I have Onix Reference 3's myself. Damned fine speakers.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure how the Bose system figures into this guys problems with the DVR.

Re:Cheap at half the price

[tigga]

Check this site out - it's Audio Video Forum with a lot's of info.. http://avsforum.com

Re:Cheap at half the price

[Anonymous Coward]

"2) Sometimes the picture is SO good you can see what cheap materials are used on the set. Spiderman was a good example, somehow the green goblin's costume looks like rubber under heavy paint in HD, instead of the steel or whatever it's supposed to look like."

That's a matter of perception. There is no way an HDTV signal is going to reveal material looking cheaper than how they were meant to be seen when the HDTV resolution is less than what was used to capture the image in the first place. HDTV is 1080 interlaced lines of resolution. Spider-Man was filmed in 35mm film. It would take 4000+ lines of resolution to match the virgin film stock. The only way your scenario would work is if you were watching something shot on video for regular NTSC or PAL television (525/625 lines in theory) and had a line doubler bump it up to HDTV levels.

Nothing to do with HDTV

[mgs1000]

It has nothing to do with HDTV, it's just that the cable monopoly really does not need to innovate or provide good service. Is this news?

Re:Nothing to do with HDTV

[haydens]

Absolutely. I've had my HDTV working very nicely
from Comcast (Boston area) for over a year. I
don't have any of the problems he described. The
picture is beautiful, and my cable remote controls
the audio level. And I don't pay anything like
$135/mo.

Now, if I could only record HDTV shows....

Re:Nothing to do with HDTV

[jonabbey]

Hellooooo, satellite.

Re:Nothing to do with HDTV

[That's Unpossible!]

Actually, it has nothing to do with HDTV, and nothing to do with what you supposed, either.
The cable monopoly absolutely does have competition! They have to compete with the satellite providers, especially in terms of HD content and seamless PVR integration.

I have TW cable in the southeast, and they provide an excellent service. I get HD channels for all these: NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, WB, PBS, Showtime, HBO, Discovery, and some optional premium channels (InHD, InHD2, etc). It costs me about $7 a month extra to get their PVR, which while it doesn't have as nice a UI as TiVo, is completely integrated with the cable service and is easy to use. (Plus has the benefit of not decoding and re-encoding the digital cable TV channels, similar to the benefits of DirecTiVo.)

Re:Nothing to do with HDTV

[DragonPup]

Now, if I could only record HDTV shows....

With the 6208 HiDef/DVR boxes from Comcast you can, though they cost about $8-10 more a month than a normal HD cable box.

For disclosure, I suppose I should point out I work for Comcast up here in Malden.

Re:Nothing to do with HDTV

[gvonk]

Yeah, that's what I've got. The 6208, while extremely slow and kludgy compared to my S1 Tivo, has impressed me somewhat with the HD recording quality. For me it was either spend $1,000 on an HD Tivo or pay $10/mo extra for HD and DVR built right into the cable box.

Now if I could replace the 80gb hd in the thing, we'd be in business.

Re:Nothing to do with HDTV

[The Analog Kid]

This should change atleast in Verizon areas, they are rolling out fiber lines and plan to over HDTV service. It should break the monopoly atleast in Internet related areas, I don't know about TV atleast not yet anyway.

Dino-Tech

[orangeguru]

Television is dead and HDTV is even more dead ... how many years have they spun standard after standard?!

Computers and the net will take over as the receivers of the future.

HomeTheaterPC anyone?!

Re:Dino-Tech

[TheFlyingGoat]

HDTV is the only major change in TV's standards since they came out with color 50 years ago. What other standards have they spun?

Re:Dino-Tech

[DogDude]

Television is dead and HDTV is even more dead ... how many years have they spun standard after standard?!

I agree. I don't know of anyone in my age group (25-35) that watches "TV" anymore. Just about everybody has one, for watching DVD's or playing games, but I don't think that I know a single person my age with cable or even an antenna. TV is rapdily becoming something for the poor and uneducated. Good riddens!

Re:Dino-Tech

[jargoone]

TV is rapdily becoming something for the poor and uneducated. Good riddens!

You watch a lot of TV, don't you?

Re:Dino-Tech

[richy freeway]

poor and uneducated. Good riddens!

That would be riddance. :P

Re:Dino-Tech

[Tek Tekson]

Personally I'd rather have a high-definition signal digitized on my Home Theatre PC, thanks.

Re:Dino-Tech

[southpolesammy]

Dude, seriously. Go meet some more people. There are a LOT of people in your age group watching TV, even if you define it as network programming, or cable, or whatever comes through the airwaves or a cable connection.

I would venture to say that more than half the people in your age group worldwide watch TV to some degree, and in "high-tech" countries like the US, Britain, Germany, and Japan, that number is probably upwards of 80-90%. Just because you and your friends don't watch TV doesn't mean that you can extrapolate that to the general population. Your sample set is non-representative and far too small.

Re:Dino-Tech

[thoromyr]

I believe that he was referring to how long its taken in coming. Lots of infighting as to who was controlling the standard. I haven't checked, but given the use of HDTV in "Until The End of the World" and my recollection of when I saw that -- its probably been 15-20 years.

Thoromyr

Re:Dino-Tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Well a few other standards include EDTV, SDTV, competing HDTV, not to mention talk of adopting other country's standards such as PAL. It all gets called, "standards". Then there's the whole aspect ratio problem too.

you can't read too much into problems in the early

[Sethseekstruth]

early stages. One person can't figure out a new technology, that's no cause for panic. Not ready for prime time? Perhaps, but that is like saying you are worried because a 3 year old is not ready for college.

I've got one of these (not HDTV though)

[Spydr]

mine works just fine.. had it for about 6 months, and no problems at all.

it would be nice to have a little more storage space, and it seems to randomly reset about once a month (it just turns off, strangest thing).

i should note that i've never used a tivo or anything like it before though, so for all i know it could be a total steaming pile of shit.

Re:I've got one of these (not HDTV though)

[Ignignot]

it seems to randomly reset about once a month (it just turns off, strangest thing).

This could be a hardware watchdog reset. It probably means that your thing just crashed spectacularly or ended up in an infinite loop, and then it resets everything to fix that. Maybe if there are firmware upgrades you can avoid that in the future.

Re:I've got one of these (not HDTV though)

[mhocker]

That's funny, my Pioneer HDTV box (not DVR) from Time Warner powers off every so often as well. New box didn't seem to replace it. Must be something with their cable system. FYI, the Pioneer box DOES have DVI (HDCP) and SVideo output enabled. I use the S-video as input for my Beyond TV PVR and get decent, non-HDTV, results.

Re:I've got one of these (not HDTV though)

[SoCalChris]

It's a steaming pile :)

I wrote about the trouble we were having with our Explorer 8000 a few months ago.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=118405&cid=100 03404

Re:I've got one of these (not HDTV though)

[Anonymous Coward]

I was watching my parents DishPVR, punching some buttons, when suddenly I got the X-Windows grey-crosshatch-with-black-X-cursor screen of death. I had a good laugh, but I had to powercycle it to recover.

Re:I've got one of these (not HDTV though)

[bobwoodard]

Supposedly, according to TW, these are firmware or service upgrades that are controlled at the office.

Another Time Warner (presumably SDTV) snafu

[enrico_suave]

DVR Customers Get Autumn Freeze

(found via TV harmony blog)

Have to give credit to TiVo for remaining (ever so slightly) ahead of the generic cable company DVRs (for now...)

e.

Re:Another Time Warner (presumably SDTV) snafu

[RockClimbingFool]

Yeah, the SA8000HD is not as advanced as the TIVO equivilent. However, for what most people want its just fine. Surf through the guide, check the shows you want recorded and its recorded, even the HD shows.

An HD Tivo reciever for Direct TV will cost you $1000. The Time Warner SA8000HD box will cost you $5 dollars a month for the box, $7 dollars a month for the PVR service. $12 a month * 24 months (just a guess at the worthwhile life a box) = $504 (including the service). I don't care how good Tivo is, it just can't touch that price.

Re:Another Time Warner (presumably SDTV) snafu

[RockClimbingFool]

wow, i can't multiply. its only $288.

Re:Another Time Warner (presumably SDTV) snafu

[enrico_suave]

but if it doesn't *work* that's $288 bucks out the window...

Granted, there's definitely an early adopter surcharge, just like most emerging technologies, but presumably if you want a device that works the HD tivo extra duckets might be worth it to you...

especially if you consider all the other dough the guy in the original article spent, 1k vs 5/month isn't probably an issue as far as equipment costs.

One of the reasons i'm so into building my own PVR (SDTV and HDTV), is the control over the ports/content (prior to broadcast flag that is)... how stupid is it to get an HDTV STB with DVI/etc disabled?! grrr...

The HDTV STB (and TV) folks have to do a better job on average of dealing with SDTV display on high res HDTV TV's... If that means upscaling, black boxing, whatever... if you spend X amount of grand on a fancy HDTV, your SDTV stuff shouldn't look worse IMHO.

e.

The World is 4:3

[stecoop]

Just accept the fact that 4:3 TVs and go on. See in HD the width is 16:9 and if you want to watch 90% of the Broadcasts in today market than that 16:9 is going to have to be stretched or chopped from the 4:3. Now lets say that you accepted that 90% of the broadcasts are 4:3 and that neither chopping nor stretching is acceptable then what do you do - get a 4:3 TV.

Ahh, I here but what about HD 16:9 signals - well we have watched DVD that can range are even wider than 16:9 on 4:3 TVs for years and I can accept the black bars at the top and bottom.

Do I hear more rumbling about screen size and weight as the wight of a 4:3 is quite high - Well I have two Tivo machines and a replay (for comparisons) driving a projector as I don't have digital TV at my local yet. In the past with digital, I could hook up directly from my digital turner to my audio tuner to handle the audio video distribution.

Let me tell you that anyone that sees the Projector is astounded and its only an cheap HP with 1500 Lumens @ 800x600. Yeah it needs to have the curtains closed but at night it like a movie screen. The cost was only like ~700 bucks and the weight savings is a factor of like 500 pounds. The projector can't show true HD quality but it is more than enough for DVD 480p; thus, save your money if you go this route and wait until more Lumens (brightness) and resolution (something that can show 1080p) comes along at a cheaper price.

Re:The World is 4:3

[Malc]

4:3 is only standard here in N. America. We're backwards you see. Other countries have had 16:9 (non-HD) televisions for years and years. I remember visiting the UK 7 years ago and seeing 16:9 TVs everywhere.

All reasonably priced projectors I've seen make more noise with their fans than computer does, and my computer drives me nuts. Furthermore, it requires a complete rethink of the living room layout as the projector has to go the other side of the room. Personally I'd be happy with a 16:9 TV that consumed no more than a 25" wide cabinet - unfortunately they all seemed to be over-sized monsters. I don't want my living space controlled and dominated by a damn TV. Here in Canada, the only TV I've seen that's even close to being reasonable is from Samsung (27" screen) and about $700 or $800 from Futureshop.

Re:The World is 4:3

[SpookyFish]

Crap in, crap out. Analog SD signals usually suck, and when you show crap blown up huge, it is extra crappy.

16:9 migration is rapidly speeding up though, and with a good HD signal it looks fantastic. I wouldn't advocate buying a 4:3 TV unless you are looking at = 32"

With a typical 16:9 rear-projection TV that uses tubes, or a plasma, 4:3 content is decidely sub-optimal, because of burn-in issues. You either take stretching, which makes an already marginal analog signal look even worse, or you deal with gray bars on the left and right sides.

With LCD or DLP based projectors & displays (or the fairly rare standard tube widescreen), you can safely watch 4:3 content 'sideboxed' with the left and right sides black - preserving the original aspect ratio. IMHO this helps significantly.

Re:The World is 4:3

[BenjyD]

Most terrestrial analogue TV in the UK is 14:9 now, I think. Kind of a compromise for the 16:9 and 4:3 TVs. The small black bars are kind of annoying.

Re:The World is 4:3

[Malc]

That would explain why the BBC news over here only has thin black bars top and bottom compared to the thick ones of DVD movies. I thought that maybe they were chopping off some of the edges ;)

Re:The World is 4:3

[fahrvergnugen]

I have a Sony 32" HD WEGA set with a 4x3 aspect ratio, and even here, I'm screwed. If the set detects an HD / widescreen signal, it will automatically letterbox the top and bottom of the screen, in order to get a 16x9 aspect ratio.

But! If the HD broadcast is in 4x3 and has side letterboxes, then the picture is effectively 50% of my total screen real estate. I wind up with an incredibly clear 16" picture in the middle of my 32" tv, surrounded by black boxes on all sides. And of course, there's no way to override this "feature."

Some numbers: Interlaced SDTV: Frame resolution: 640x420, 153,600 pixels per frame. Also known as 480i Progressive Scan SDTV: Frame resolution: 640x480, 307,200 pixels per frame. aka. 480p progressive scan HDTV: Frame resolution: 1280x720, 921,600 pixels per frame. aka. 720p. 6x the resolution of 480i Interlaced HDTV: Frame resolution: 1920x540, 1,036,800 pixels per frame. aka. 1080i. 6.75x the resolution of cable / broadcast TV

Despite all the naysayers, this is not an incremental jump. The electronics superstores and the HD subscription services are largely to blame for creating this perception. The stores will run a DVD or other non-HD content through the HD sets, and try to sell the picture quality. Another place where they fail is that they will often not set up side-by-side comparisons of the same material being presented in both HD and SD. The true difference is astounding.

Meanwhile, DirecTV and the cable companies overcompress the ever-living shit out the video signals, adding nasty artifacts and degrading image quality to the point of it being barely acceptable. One would think that since DirecTV & digital cable are 480p MPEG-2 signals, you would receive DVD-quality video and audio, but in fact the picture quality is strikingly inferior most of the time (check out Family Guy or Futurama broadcasts vs. the DVD sets to really see the difference). It's funny, but right now for HD free, over-the-air broadcasts offer the best picture quality of any of your options, should you be lucky enough to live near a transmitter.

Re:The World is 4:3

[aldoman]

He is referring to the analogue system. Most analogue TVs are old and therefore not widescreen.

However, 60% of homes now receive digital TV and I'd say a good 80-90% of the new content in it. The only thing that isn't seems to be foreign sporting events (like the damn olympics!)

Re:The World is 4:3

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, it's a compromise format between cropping the 16:9 digital feed to something else, if they broadcast analogue in 16:9 deep letterbox like your DVD then people would bitch, if they cropped it down to 4:3 (12:9) then it would make a nasty mess of the framing and graphics so they use 14:9 as a compromise format between the two.

Re:The World is 4:3

[GigsVT]

Yeah animation is particularly bad with the compression.. Tons of weird pink halos and ghost images with fast movement.

Since I have a DishPVR with Dish network, I can back it up to see frame by frame just how bad it is. Some frames are really really bad.

Re:The World is 4:3

[jmcmurry]

If the HD broadcast is in 4x3 and has side letterboxes, then the picture is effectively 50% of my total screen real estate. I wind up with an incredibly clear 16" picture in the middle of my 32" tv, surrounded by black boxes on all sides. And of course, there's no way to override this "feature."

I really hate this. And it's worse when you get commercials that are in a faux 16:9 format, like most IBM commercials. Then you get this:

1. horizontal letterboxes from the TV going from 4:3 format to 16:9 signal
2. vertical letterboxes because the 16:9 signal is actually 4:3 content
3. inner horizonal letterboxes as part of the 4:3 content because the ad agency wanted to shoot in 16:9

...such that what you see looks stupid on your 36" television.

It's not that I care that commercials look good, but I feel absurd trying to explain this to visitors who ask why the picture is so small. It looks like Picture In Picture without the outer Picture.

Re:The World is 4:3

[Mr.Radar]

I completely agree. When I first saw HDTV it was at an Audio King and they were showing the Discovery Channel HD sampler on a 60" plasma TV (the best I've seen to date) and it looked ABSOLUTELY ASTOUNDING in full HD. However, the last time I went there (it's now an Ultimate Electronics, but they sell the same stuff) they were demoing it using a 480p football game (on EDNet) that was incredibly poorly upscaled to 1080i, making it look worse than the SDTVs they had on display. Until the cable and satalite companies realize that people want full resolution HDTV (720p/1080i/1080p) at decent datarates, with the ability to record whatever, whenever, then I think that HDTV will be a failure.

Re:The World is 4:3

[shaka999]

It would have been nice if the HDTV implementors had allowed multiple compression schema. Animation is very compressible even when using lossless algorithms. It just doesn't like the lossy (dct) compression.

MPEG/JPEG relies on gradual changes from one frame/color to the next. Animation doesn't follow this rule and thus looks crappy.

Re:The World is 4:3

[xs650]

Tell your guests it's the automatic commercial de-emphasizer.

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Re:The World is 4:3

[Frizzle Fry]

Don't you find it a bit arrogant that you are definite "The World" as being content that is of interest to you? I could just as easily say "The World is 16:9. If you want to watch 90% of films in today's market, they are going to have to streatched or chopped to fit on a 4:3 TV."

Perhaps you care more about "broadcasts" (ugh) than movies and are willing to contort your movie watching to accomodate your broadcast watching, but you can't assume that's true of everyone.

Re:The World is 4:3

[AlphaJoe]

I keep seeing all the upscaling and letterbox complaints, but really, the problem lies not with the cable companies (with the exception of overcompression techniques) but with the decoder box provided by the company. I have TW cable in Florida, and the initial offering of HD boxes was not compatible with my 4:3 HDTV. It would only receive 16:9 and would not put the signal into letterbox format. Thus, all my HD channels broadcasting in 16:9 would stretch vertically to fill the screen.

So, I returned the HD box back to TW and stuck with my PVR for a year. This past spring they got a new brand of box that provided letterbox format for all HD signals, plus a zoom feature for programs not shot in 16:9, thus eliminating the side bars.

The comparison between my HD and standard channels is quite simply amazing. If you have crappier quality on an HD set than you do on a standard TV then there is something seriously wrong with your setup. I would take a long hard look at your equipment and setup.

Re:The World is 4:3

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the screen size of the computer monitor you just posted /.? I bet 100 dollar bill at 10:1 odds that it was 4:3 instead of 16:9.

Re:The World is 4:3

[Zakabog]

I have the same small picture problem with HDTV. Except my TV is 56" instead of 32". I also have an added feature for changing the aspect, so if I want I can make it stretch the image with the bars on top, or I can zoom on the small picture (chopping slightly some of the outer edges, which I usually don't notice until I view the smaller picture.) It's pretty nice but I'd still rather see the full picture take up the full screen.

Re:The World is 4:3

[Frizzle Fry]

I don't see your point. I use my TV primarily for watching movies. Therefore, I want it to accomodate movies as best possible. If I sometimes choose to watch broadcasts on it (which I currently don't, but might someday), I would like it if they fit my television. Saying that people should give up on 16:9 tv's because they don't accomodate most current programming is silly since current programming isn't why many of us own those tv's. Since the question is about whether movies should conform to tv standards or vice versa, I don't see the relevance of my computer screen which I don't use for movies or tv. I could just as well point out that your cell phone or digital watch doesn't have a 4:3 screen. But you win the bet. So I owe you a tenth of a $100 bill now? Are you aware that that has no monetary value? Betting $100 at 10:1 would have made more sense.

Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[Anonymous Coward]

So, one guy has problems getting a new HDTV DVR to work correctly, and the conclusion is that cable HDTV isn't quite ready for "prime time"?

After reading the article this guy seems like someone who thinks they know a lot about digital electronics, but doesn't.

"No volume control on the digital audio output?" - No, volume is controlled through your receiver. Who, with a nice setup, expects that they'd be controlling the audio output with their cable remote? He has a bose lifestyle system. Run your digital audio through there smacktard.

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[Mattintosh]

this guy seems like someone who thinks they know a lot about digital electronics, but doesn't

He has a bose lifestyle system

'Nuff said.

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need to know a lot about electronics to get your HDTV set working correctly, then it's not ready for prime time.

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[Anonymous Coward]

So, one guy has problems getting a new HDTV DVR to work correctly, and the conclusion is that cable HDTV isn't quite ready for "prime time"?

Of course, he is rich, insanely rich, and everyone knows that the wealthy are smarter and better than the rest of us.

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[Politburo]

Who, with a nice setup, expects that they'd be controlling the audio output with their cable remote?

Any normal person who has used a cable box in the last 15 years.

He could use the Bose remote to control the volume, yes. However, when you're flipping channels, you use the cable box remote. The volume control on that remote cannot control the Bose. It will usually control the volume output of the cable box (this is also usually an option and can be set to a fixed volume output.. it can also control the tv's volume on some systems).

So, he can get a super fancy learning customizable remote.. or he can pray that the cable box manuf. puts in (or enables) a variable audio out. I don't have much experience with digital audio, but my intuition would lead me to think that the former option is better. To control the volume of the digital stream, I would think that the cable box would have to decode/process/re-encode, which isn't something you want a cable box to do.

Incidentially, this isn't what the average user is thinking about when they hit volume +/- on the remote and it does nothing. What they're thinking is "Hmm.. this used to control the volume. Now I have to use 2 remotes? This is stupid."

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[John Napkintosh]

Exactly. Because DVRs and HDTV are the same thing!

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[Overzeetop]

You can thank the CE folks for this. Everybody has the next greatest thing, and they want IP revenue for it. If you're sending bits, use a simple cable with the bandwidth to hold it. If you're sending analog, use RGB. It's amazing how easy it is to match the red, green, and blue RCA cables to their respectively color ports, just like everyone is used to with red and white audio, or yellow composite video. There's no magic here.

As for royally fucking up HD, you need only look at the multitude formats in the ATSC spec to figure out what the problem is. Amazingly, my $99 (1998 dolllars & tech) KDS 15" computer monitor can sync to 720p without a hiccup. But don't tell the TV manufacturers...they're certain that requiring progressive scan will cost hundreds of dollars extra per TV set.

Unfortunately, we've fallen into the "my solution is marginally better" trap, where each revision must be incorporated to stay current (i.e. video compression). The market is very bad at sorting out winners and losers in this game, because the stakes are so high ($5000 TVs) that many people will sit on the sidelines as long as possible, slowing adoption and preventing a winner from emerging in an efficient fashion.

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[Stucifer]

It doesn't take much to get all of our devices on a standard (see: cheap from the cable co.) remote. With about 5 minutes of time looking up the codes, my remote easily controls the HD monitor, cable box w/ DVR, audio receiver, dvd, and vcr. Not sure why you would have to go out and spend ~$100 on a fancy remote when the cable remote (and other cheaper ones) already do just fine.

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[ed1park]

I believe the remote for the cable box is programmable to control the receiver as well. Mine came with a pamphlet with a list of remote codes for various vendors.

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[javaxman]

The problem is that it's the cable company's half-baked DVR implementation.

Tivo it ain't, and this guy clearly needs the simplicity of a Tivo.

Time-Warner doesn't have DirectTV's HD lineup either ( googled DirecTV HD Tivo link here ) which is definitely the way I'd go, IF I were blowing a ton of cash on HD ( er, I'm going to wait, thanks ). If I were to get an HD set right now, it'd be (1) a clear sign I have too much money (2) mainly for playing video games and watching DVDs (3) I'd get an off-air HD receiver, and *maybe* get a satellite HD feed... but even though my local Comcast HD cable is pretty good, it doesn't beat DirecTV's offerings, it just comes close.

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[Politburo]

My cable remote doesn't control audio equipment. However, I don't have an HD cable box.

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[kbeast]

People with "nice stereos" generally use their receiver remotes as their universal remote rather than the TV remote because you run every component you own through the receiver, not the TV.

With all that money that guy had to waste on a plasma, he could've gotten a real stereo instead of his 4 easy payments of $50 bose system.

I hope his plasma burns out. .kb

Re:Not ready for Hi-Def DVRs

[Anonymous Coward]

DVR: Digital Video Recorder
HDTV: High Defintion Television

One replaces your VCR (DVR)

The other is digital motion picture format (HDTV)

One has nothing to do with the other.

Yeah, why all the stops and starts?

[FunWithHeadlines]

"What's all of that digital noise, why does the picture stop and start? "

I don't have the HD version, but I do have a Scientific American digitial cable box using Time Warner service. I also get the picture freeze, then start up again in a second or two, problem. Digital noise I understand, but I'm wondering what is causing the stops and starts. Can anyone enlighten me?

It does lead to the bizarre result that my two TVs can go out of sync while watching the same program. It's amusing to put them both on and then hear something in the living room and know that a few seconds later you can hear it on the bedroom TV too. Pushing the "live" button seems to fix that, so I think this out-of-sync condition is a result of this stop-and-start issue. Instead of jumping back to the live feed when it stops, it just picks up from where it left off. The more stops you get, the more out-of-sync you wind up being. So what's causing this?

Re:Yeah, why all the stops and starts?

[whiteSanjuro]

my mother has the SA fake-tivo from TW and it is an abomination. i routinely watch televsion at her house and a friends house. my friend has directivo and it is like comparing apples to oranges...the SA unit performs horribly and horrible search/record options and interface. the directivo is so simple and logical a child could use it. TW sucks.

Re:Yeah, why all the stops and starts?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a non-HD Scientific Atlanta unit, and I did try their PVR for a while -- it lasted 2 days at my house. Why? Absolutely horrific design.

The fans (?) and hard drives spun constantly, caching was non-existant, and to achieve the 30-second replay I believe the write-head was in constant use rather than caching this in RAM. It needed to be rebooted several (!) times a day and often severely chopped up recorded (and current) A/V.

That being said, I'm avoiding PVR technology from Scientific Atlanta like the plague. I wish Time Warner would cooperate with Tivo to create a unit that worked over the USB connection, or equivalent. The Time Warner PVR was a piece of junk!

Re:Yeah, why all the stops and starts?

[LWATCDR]

Isn't that a Scientific Atlanta digital box?
Scientific American is a magazine last time I checked.
Easy enough typo to make.

Re:Yeah, why all the stops and starts?

[ldspartan]

The product is shitty. Really shitty. You should consider getting rid of it, since it's so shitty. That's what I did.

Re:Yeah, why all the stops and starts?

[RPI Geek]

The answer is "Garbage In, Garbage Out."

When I worked at Time Warner in summer of 2001 (Albany, NY), we had a few calls for people who wanted to get the new HDTV digital converters. Since we only had about 4 of those installations the whole summer, each one was a half-day event for one or even two of the most skilled technicians we had. They would make sure everything ran perfectly before they'd leave.

I was in a position in the company to hear a lot of what the actual problems were, and the most common complaint was just a weak signal to the converter. Even coaxial cable loses signal strength over distance, and as anyone who's tried hooking 6 TV's up to an unamplified signal can attest, the quality sucks when you split it too much with bad equipment or have a 500' coil of cable behind your TV. So with the highly-compressed HDTV signals when you lose a small amount of data, it makes a big impact on the picture.

Each of the HDTV installations that summer (except one) required the techs to install a new drop (the wire between the pole and the house). They all required new splitters, new wire to the HDTV converteres, and sometimes an amplifier right at the input to the house. There were always bad feelings toward "the Radio Shack s**t" that people install themselves, and as a result every tech always carried replacements with them, and many times this fixed the problems with regular TV and RoadRunner (internet service).

So back to HDTV: I'm convinced that the graininess and the pausing of this guy's picture can be traced back to a weak signal. He lives in Manhatten so the wires in his building are probably old and failing, and even if they aren't there are many other potential problems that could be causing his poor picture quality. Because he obviously doesn't know about signal degredation, he may have simply hooked up too many TV's to the same signal. Also, Sony WEGAs are very good TVs. They take a regular picture and make the most out of it, so quite frankly I'm not surprised at all with his results. Like I said at first: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

My advice to him is to call Time Warner and have them send a technician out to test the signal and inspect the set-up. That, and to not jump to conclusions about the infrastructure not being prepared. He may be right about the entire area being unready for the HDTV invasion, but no amount of work on Time Warner's part will ever be able to fix the problems inside the end user's apartment if they split the signal 32 different ways.

Re:Yeah, why all the stops and starts?

[FunWithHeadlines]

Yup, mangled the name in my brain as I was typing. Kinda funny typo, though. Just the sort of thing I would love to make fun of on my site!

Re:Yeah, why all the stops and starts?

[sampspoon]

It's most definitly a weak signal. I work at an audio/video store and we have HDTV fed through dishnet, directv & insight cable. The insight cable has been a NIGHTMARE from the start. First, the picture freezes constantly. This is a weak signal problem. The signal is only fed to 3 tvs so it isn't a problem with the building. Every hour or so the picture freezes & audio drops out. Gotta love digital data :)

Also, ODTV(ondemand television) relies on a strong signal too which can be EXTREMELY annoying to toy with considering the weak signal...1 in 5 tries actually gets through and you lose your movie halfway in. The techs have been out numerous times, one time the entire parking lot was full of them. They even ran new wires all throughout the building, a bi-directional amplifier and still we have a weak signal.

Now to at home, we got the same service with the same box (Motorolla something or another) and we too have the same exact crappy signal problem. It's nowhere near as pronouced but it's still annoying to say the least. They had to install all new wiring in our house because we had RJ59 run by the cable company and HD needs RJ6. The install job to say the least was appauling as there are cables hanging from our basement ceiling and they just drilled up through our wooden floor to run the cables. There isn't even a common distribution block, the wire runs into our house and then hits what I have dubbed "splitter hell;" a spaghetti knot of splitters to feed all the tvs in the house.

Overall I'm not very happy with cable HD service. It's still extremely buggy and the cable companies don't want to do anything about it. The tech when installing mentioned to use we couldn't run all our digi boxes we requested because we needed an amplifier and then had left that day. When we called about getting an amplifier, they want to charge $40 just to have a tech come out and screw a metal box inline to our house. Even though it's their fault that we need it and they never provided it.

Re:Yeah, why all the stops and starts?

[phoroszowski]

One of the most common problems with all cable boxes and especially ones that have DVR capability is one of heat disipation. As a set top box these things have to be silent.. in other words no fan. This causes many of them to overheat causing problems in the mpeg decoder chip. Probably the single hotest thing in your set top box. Doing something as simple as not uting other components such as a VCR on top may go a long way to preventing the stops and starts..

HD is ready for Prime Time . . . This HD-DVR isnt

[Qwest94]

I have one of the TimeWarner HD-DVRs he writes about. The box is really flaky. Go over to AVS Forum and you will see a lot of complaints on it. Im almost sorry I gave up my rock solid Tivo for it, but am hopeful that through firmware updates that the constant stuttering of sound and video and lockups will stop.

Previous to getting this particular box I had a standard HD set top box, which never had a hiccup. And for what it is worth, watching a sporting event on a big screen in HD is spectacular.

I guess the point is that his conclusion that HD is not ready for primetime is really not a valid one, rather, I can attest that this particular HD-DVR is clearly not ready for prime time.

Well in Canada...

[otlg]

At the risk of this sounding like a Soviet Russia type line...

In Canada HDTV works just fine thank you. Our cable companies have that, video on demand and a 5Mbps pipe to my house all figured out and working perfectly... best part is the price.. my 5 megs at home only costs me $40cdn/month

Re:Well in Canada...

[Malc]

Where are you living and who provides the service? Here in Toronto I definitely can't get that. Digital cable (without digitial channels or internet) costs more than $40/mo. It might have changed since I dumped cable 18 mos ago, but I doubt it.

Re:Well in Canada...

[Anonymous Coward]

And you have decriminalized personal use pot and topless beaches.

Why, again, do I live in the US? It isn't the jobs. Or the commander-in-chimp. It must be our world class health care, that I can't afford, or maybe the college (loans).

Re:Well in Canada...

[otlg]

Well I was referring to the charge for my bandwidth. My total cable bill including HDTV, Cable TV (including a full specialty lineup), and cable modem + bandwidth is $105cdn a month (plus our ludacris taxes).

As for where I am, I'm in cogeco's service area in Hamilton.

Re:Well in Canada...

[myov]

The original poster was probably refering to the 5Meg option from Rogers for about $45/month (it went up by $5 about a year ago). You need to buy a DOCSIS modem though at your expense.

Cable TV though costs more. An internet/digital cable bundle (including the box but with no digital stations) is $99, iirc. Digital stations are $2 each/month,

Re:Well in Canada...

[jo42]

Just don't get the Rogers HDTV PVR - it's the same POS box that this guy ran into. Problem, as others have stated, is not with HDTV itself, but the junk hardware Scientific Atlanta makes.

I've been enjoying HDTV on my widescreen Sony WEGA for around a year now. All of the shows are HDTV - Enterprise, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, West Wing, Las Vegas, LAX, CSI, etc., etc., etc.

No compelling reason to switch

[Gothmolly]

This is not the difference between over-the-air TV and cable. This is not the difference between 8-track and CD. HD and digital cable are merely an incremental upgrade, using non-trivial technologies, to an already OK-for-most-uses/people setup. For everyone with a 25" TV screen, the people who don't have an entire 'home theater' room, HD and digital is overkill. Why would Joe Sixpack need composite, optical digital, DVI and Svideo outputs? People like TVs, existing cable, DVDs and VCRs because they are simple. RedOut->Red In, WhiteOut->WhiteIn, YellowOut->YellowIn, done. When digital shenanigans like the article happen, who can fix it? The drones at the TW help desk? The drones at the TW 'self service' center? Joe Sixpack? Its not ready for prime time because Nobody Wants It, thus it remains convoluted and kludgy, with competing standards and definitions (try explaining to your average Walmart shopper the difference between 480p, 720i, and 1080p and watch their eyes glaze over).

Re:No compelling reason to switch

[Zach978]

It's not very hard, get 1 DVI cable, connect from the Box to the TV. The cable will tell the TV what mode to go into, the TV switches automatically as the source changes. I really don't see the problem.

The consumer doesn't *have* to know what 480i/p, 720p or 1080i are, the TV does.

Re:No compelling reason to switch

[rkischuk]

It's not very hard, get 1 DVI cable, connect from the Box to the TV. The cable will tell the TV what mode to go into, the TV switches automatically as the source changes. I really don't see the problem.

The consumer doesn't *have* to know what 480i/p, 720p or 1080i are, the TV does.

Ideally, you'd be correct, but practically, the manufacturers are still getting a handle on this stuff. I have a Philips 60" HD-capable (no tuner) projection TV. It has 2 inputs that appear to be HD capable, both have component inputs, one also supports DVI.

The component-only input only actually supports 480i, with the component cables simply giving you a cleaner video input. Feed it 480p, 720p, or 1080i, and all you'll see is garbage. The other input supports 1080i and 480p, but not 480i and 720p. When I first received my HD Dish Network receiver, it was defaulted to 720p, which once again caused my TV to display garbage. I had to set up a temporary composite video feed to my TV so I could dig through the menus and tell the receiver to output 1080i instead.

As a technophile, this wasn't a huge problem. But to the average consumer, this would be out and out maddening. And just try to explain to them why the TV won't let them properly connect their HDTV receiver and their progressive scan DVD player at the same time. All of this rubbish is temporary - the manufacturers will eventually work it out. But for now, consumers *do* need at least an understanding of the different resolution options, and possibly some outside help to get their HD rig running.

Re:No compelling reason to switch

[Overzeetop]

Isn't it amazing to see that a ($xxxx.xx) TV cannot auto-synch? I've got monitors ranging from $59 to $499 in my office and all of them will autosynch to just about anything in range, including p and i HD signals.

Re:No compelling reason to switch

[charyou-tree]

HD and digital cable are merely an incremental upgrade

Have you ever actually seen HDTV? It's not an incremental upgrade - it's as close to a paradigm shift as you can get without a scratch-n-sniff panel on the TV so you can smell the rotting corpses on CSI.

Why would Joe Sixpack need composite, optical digital, DVI and Svideo outputs?

Because when Joe Sixpack sees his first NFL game in high definition, he'll need a 12pack's worth of beer-goggles to make watching football in SD tolerable.

Seriously, once you've seen a live sporting event in 16:9 HDTV, or a broadcast HD movie with 5.1 surround, there's just no going back. The NFL is HDTV's killer app in the US. It's already happening. Compare last year's Sunday Ticket HD lineup to this year's; look at the satellites DirecTV is launching just so they'll be able to add HD locals in every market.

try explaining to your average Walmart shopper the difference between 480p, 720i, and 1080p

Nah. The average Walmart shopper would have no trouble plugging in a new HDTV and STB. Just a couple of cables, and they're even color coded.

BTW, it's 720p and 1080i.

Re:No compelling reason to switch

[RPI Geek]

...try explaining to your average Walmart shopper the difference between 480p, 720i, and 1080p and watch their eyes glaze over...

That reminds me of last night, when I went to the local WalMart and looked for a laser pointer. None of the 3 of the employees that I talked to even knew what it was. I used the word "laser pointer" and they repeated those same words back to me... but they had never heard of them. I'll just have to take a drive to Circuit City or Radio Shack or something. :-)

I Have HD. My Response

[TheFlyingGoat]

There's a lot of factors that go into setting up a HD system, just like setting up an over-the-air system. The SA8000 box does have some problems, especially when compared to the DirecTV HD Tivo. Additionally, the cable company might have problems. Our local cable company in Milwaukee does a decent job, but they've been ahead of the curve for HD for a couple years now. Some cable companies are just jumping into it and having some problems along the way.

Does this mean that the HD format is flawed or not ready for widespread consumer usage? No. It means that you should be aware of the problems you could run into, like any informed consumer. You should ask a salesperson at a reputable store (not Best Buy or Circuit City) about your options: OTA vs Sat vs Cable, the pros and cons of each, and how to determine which equipment you'll need.

Re:I Have HD. My Response

[Control Group]

As a fellow consumer of Milwaukee cable, I agree - TW has so far impressed me with their HD service. OTOH, their inability to add ESPNHD to the lineup without an additional fee really has me irked.

I realize it's not their fault, but it still torques me. Much as I want to watch Sunday Night Football in HD, I'm not gonna pay anoth $6.95/mo for ESPNHD and four in-demand HD channels.

Even worse, though, I'm planning to move to Madison in the relatively near future...and man, have I not been impressed with Charter.

Re:I Have HD. My Response

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean that the HD format is flawed or not ready for widespread consumer usage? No. It means that you should be aware of the problems you could run into, like any informed consumer.

It's amazing to me that they expect us to spend good money on such things and make them incredibly difficult to use. When I spend more money on something, I expect it to be better. With SD, I buy a TV set at best Buy and plug it into the cable. Done. With HDTV (judging by the posts here), I have to pay more for a crippled set-top box, and deal with problems with aspect ratio, crappy signals, I have to be a cable genious (wtf - RCA/RGB to D-sub 15?), many of my favorite channels/movies not being in HD, and deal with no audio control.

I don't see the average consumer, including myself, wishing to deal with this. As much as I would enjoy a clearer picture from my set, I have enough grief with my current SD system.

Re:I Have HD. My Response

[Anonymous Coward]

Even worse, though, I'm planning to move to Madison in the relatively near future...and man, have I not been impressed with Charter.

Mwahahahaha! Charter is complete garbage, and last time I checked they don't even offer HDTV (at least when I moved from Eau Claire several months ago). And their "digital cable" boxes only have analog output. I've asked them when the S-Video version is to arrive, and they said "it should be here in a few months". I stopped asking after 3 years. Plus, the "digital cable" reception is about as good as broadcast television. I switch to their "digital cable" because my analog connection was lousy, only to find out there was no difference, but it cost more! I could have gotten better reception from a rotten head of cabbage in a cigar box with a cord hanging from it, with the cord serving the dual purpose of providing current to the unit and also acting as the antenna. TW is king. /rant

Re:I Have HD. My Response

[HedRat]

We've been getting some stuttering/pixel issues the last few weeks in West Allis. Prior to that, it was rock solid. I wish they would "undo" whatever they did that causes this.

And for those that think there is little difference between SD and HD broadcasts, CSI:(All of them), Monday Night Football, etc, etc, is simply breathtaking on a 50" LCD Sony Grand Wega III.

After hearing all the complaints with the SARA software, I'm glad T.W. in the MKE metro area chose to go with Passport.

Mark F from boing boing

[enrico_suave]

also had issues with his explorer 8000 DVR and ended up getting a TiVo IIRC.

*shrug*

e.

Comcast's works OK

[djaj]

I just got Comcast's HD PVR box, and despite its limitations (30 hr regular TV, 7 hr HDTV, only one tuner), it works as advertised. Of course, I just have regular consumer-grade equipment, not the fancy-schmancy stuff. And yeah, the regular digital cable doesn't look stunning like the HD stuff does, but it's decent enough.

It is true, though, that 3-second channel changes are a pain. The HD box I had before this one (without the PVR features) changed channels nearly instantly, so I don't know what broke. Fortunately, the menuing system is properly responsive, so I can at least see what's on without wasting time changing the channels.

Re:Comcast's works OK

[Anonymous Coward]

It's buffering...

Cable HDTV sux.... not HDTV on the whole

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Ok... read the article. Time Warner cable sux... he has nothing to say bad about the hardware other than the crippling done by TW. He also is displeased with the channels that TW provides.

Hate to say it... but this is one place where over-the-air has kicked butt. You may not be able to get as many channels but even in podunkville where I live I can get 11 HDTV sources and they all look beautiful. My pcHDTV card renders them flawlessly on my monitor (which is set up for HDTV resolution).

Over-the-air is getting fairly standard and stable now. HD dish channels are actually starting to work out nicely now as well... but cable is gonna die if they keep moving at the current snail crawl they have going for their HD/SD rollouts.

And for those wondering about HDTV and their future.... don't go to someones house with HDTV unless you want to buy it yourself. I about killed 2 peoples credit ratings by letting them watch the Olympic ceremonies at my place.

(Current Setup 3.2Ghz/512Mb/320Gb AMD box running MythTV with a pcHDTV card displaying on a 21" CRT)

Re:Cable HDTV sux.... not HDTV on the whole

[Anonymous Coward]

> even in podunkville where I live I can get 11 HDTV sources

You must define podunkville differently than I do. I live in one of the 50 largest metro areas in the country, 60 miles from one of the 30 largest metro areas, and there are over 700,000 people in the two counties I (literally, since my house was built in 1820 between the county lines) live between. I have *zero* HDTV channels that I can receive. I wasted almost $750 to buy a HDTV receiver and over $3k on the TV. My laserdiscs look great, but the over the air TV sucks. Also, I have TimeWarner cable, and they have no current plans of offering HDTV. I want to move just to get decent TV.

Re:Cable HDTV sux.... not HDTV on the whole

[Blakey Rat]

Where the hell is your Podunkville?

I live about 45 miles from Seattle, about 12 miles frmo Everett, Washington, and I get, with a HUGE antenna, 3 HD channels that cut-out frequently. And one of those is PBS which I never watch. I gave up, took down the antenna and just watch the 480i feed from Dish Network now.

I don't know where the hell you think "podunkville" is, but it must be like within 10 miles of Chicago or something.

Re:Cable HDTV sux.... not HDTV on the whole

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Berrien County, Michigan... I am 20+ miles to the nearest station with HDTV (WSJV).

I did just purchase a 7db amp but that was just so I could pull in Chicago HDTV stations more reliably.

I do also live on a relatively high point (20ft+ higher than most local topography) but... nothing special other than that.

Most of my channels I pull from South Bend, IN... but I also grab a couple from Chicago and Kalamazoo areas.

Re:Cable HDTV sux.... not HDTV on the whole

[Brew Bird]

directv has good HD coverage, they are even adding 'big three' HD support (alrady have CBS)

Re:Cable HDTV sux.... not HDTV on the whole

[Jerrry]

DirecTV doesn't carry any local HD channels. They do carry CBS, but only in areas when the local CBS station is OO (owned and operated) by the network. If your local CBS station is not OO, and they won't give you a waiver, you are out of luck.

DirecTV plans to launch two new satellites next year that should give them enough capacity to carry the local HD channels in the major markets.

Re:Cable HDTV sux.... not HDTV on the whole

[Brew Bird]

Heh, Thank you for repeating exactly what I said... The word I got is you had to be out of area for a CBS station broadcasting HD, and they would let you access it (I'm in Houston, so I had to go OTA for the Super Bowl)

The new sats are gonna be AWSUME, enough transponder bandwidth for several hundred HD channels... of course, that will not change the fact that NOTHING IS ON!!!

Let go already

[blackmonday]

For the life of me, when will cable companies find a new vendor for their equipment? Scientific Atlanta is the worst. I have their Tivo-like box offered by Charter. The thing pales in comparison to a TIVO, the menus are shit, its slow, etc. Why doesn't someone step up to the plate and take over these clowns? As far as this article is concerned the problems are not all inside the cable box, it seems, but we need better!

Re:Let go already

[michael_cain]

For the life of me, when will cable companies find a new vendor for their equipment?

A very large part of the problem is that the cable companies are locked into the proprietary encryption systems used by SA and Motorola (each has their own). The cable companies have a big investment in the necessary compatible headend equipment. Neither vendor is in a hurry to license the encryption technology. So while other companies can build much better set top boxes (STBs) in terms of the UI, they can't build boxes that are compatible with the existing digital system. I used to work for a cable company that desperately wanted to have more vendors building STBs, but the options of (a) licensing the security IP or (b) building a logical overlay network using some other technology were both ridiculously expensive.

If ever widely adopted, CableLabs' OpenCable system shows some promise of separating the security functions from the rest of the box and making it possible for other companies to get into the business. In the mean time, we're stuck with the crud built by the incumbents.

Re:Let go already

[mink]

Pioneer licensed something, because I have seen in my Time Warner area both Pioneer and SA for digital cable subscribers.

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[chill]

Having the DVI, RF and S-Video outs disabled on the box, along with "can't control the digital audio volume via remote" isn't a "one person can't figure out" thing. It is crap, and not ready for prime time, just like he calls it.

-Charles

Not a problem with HD

[Anonymous Coward]

Time Warner obviously has no clue.
Cox Cable and Comcast customers have had HD DVRs for weeks/months and run them without issue.

Those of us with Comcast use DVI out, can capture via the Firewire port, etc...
Comcast is holding off on the Moto 6412 until Cox works out all the bugs (hehe), and then we'll even have Dual-tuner!!!

It pays to shop around for your service...

Re:Not a problem with HD

[geniusj]

Agreed.. This sounds like Time Warner's issue. I have had no problems with Comcast's HD DVR service. Granted, the DVR portion could be a little smarter (like knowing when shows are rescheduled and changing the recording as appropriate), however, overall, no complaints.

Re:Not a problem with HD

[91degrees]

Cox Cable and Comcast customers have had HD DVRs for weeks/months and run them without issue.

Could this be why Time Warner are rolling out Cable HDTV before it's fuly tested?

The Issue is bandwidth

[ralf1]

The spec for a full HDTV signal with DD 5.1 audio is an uncompressed 18 megabit/sec stream vs like 1 for a regular channel. No way is the cable company going to allow an HD channel to consume 18X the bandwidth than a regular channel, so they trhottle the heck of of them. Leads to poor picture, artifacts, slow tuning, all the things the article referes to. Right now (SW Houston) the OTA HD signal from my local affiliates is FAR superior to anyhting the TWC puts out. Problem is most folks either a) are not sophisticated enough consumers to know the difference or b) are so happy to get any HD content after buying a 5K TV set they accept sub-par signals as the best they can get. Gonna be a while before this resolves itself, till then go buy a yagi antenna from Radio Shack and enjoy real HDTV (assuming you have an OTA set top box.....)

Re:The Issue is bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

The bandwidth of a regular channel is far above 1 megabit/sec. Try at least 50.

Re:The Issue is bandwidth

[cybrthng]

Sounds like Time warner just has crappy service for HDTV.

My comcast service works great. And most certainly i don't see it throttled down. Enable the service codes and you can see the bitrate if you really want to.

OTA out here on the east coast doesn't look nearly as good as what i get over cable.

Re:The Issue is bandwidth

[farnz]

Your bandwidth figures are completely wrong.

Uncompressed SD is 270MBit/s. Uncompressed 1080i HD is around 1.5GBit/s.

MPEG-2 compressed SD is barely watchable at around 2MBit/s, OK at 4MBit/s and good at 8MBit/s (DVD).

MPEG-2 compressed HD is barely watchable at 8MBit/s, OK at around 12-13MBit/s and good at around 18MBit/s (coincidentally the bitrate ATSC requires OTA broadcasters to use in the USA).

So, yes HD takes up more bits, but it's not nearly as bad as you make out.

Re:The Issue is bandwidth

[Lumpy]

which is why everyone that drop's 13,000 on a HDTV at the store get's it home and becomes INSANELY pissed.

at the store you are watching a full resolution uncompressed 1080 video feed that was recorded on the best HD equipment.

At home on discovery HD and the other HD channels. you are compressed heavily with not everything recorded with the best gear.

so your cable HD is a very far cry from what you saw when you bought your overpriced TV.

then the funny stuff begins. these people put their new monster TV so far away from themselves that they lose all the HD resolution to their eyes and they might as well have bought a EDTV for 1/10th the price.

HDTV is for sitting up close to, not 14-18 feet away, yet the typical buyer places it that way in their home.

Get up close, enjoy those inches you paid horribly for, otherwise it's an absolute waste of money and time to simply have a "look at what I bought" item to try and have your friends stroke you over.

Re:The Issue is bandwidth

[frinkster]

My comcast service works great. And most certainly i don't see it throttled down. Enable the service codes and you can see the bitrate if you really want to.

Here in Chicago Comcast does a lot of compression on the HD channels and the artifacts are quite noticable. Over the air broadcasts here are much nicer and even the non-technogeeks can tell a difference when I have shown them.

I'm so fed up with cable that I dropped it and don't subscribe anymore. A small $3.00 single bowtie antenna from Radio Shack gets me all the HD channels, and they're crystal clear and free from artifacts.

Re:The Issue is bandwidth

[charyou-tree]

No way is the cable company going to allow an HD channel to consume 18X the bandwidth than a regular channel, so they trhottle the heck of of them.

True ...

Gonna be a while before this resolves itself,

Less than a year: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&t hreadid=443890

till then go buy a yagi antenna from Radio Shack and enjoy real HDTV

Absolutely right. $100 or less and most people can get outstanding HD off the networks, free. OTA is the best thing HD has going right now, except for Sunday Ticket. :-)

Re:The Issue is bandwidth

[connorbd]

Maybe on the production end, if you've got the budget for DV50 or DigiBeta gear. But you get a damn good picture off of MiniDV, which is only 25 Mbps, and a compressed MPEG-2 signal is substantially less (not sure exactly what the broadcast standard is, but it's somewhat lower than the data rate on a DVD).

to each their own

[harumscarum]

I live in Tejas and have had a good experience with hdtv and time warner. I just have the hdtv box (you have to get a seperate one) and the picture looks great. My only complaint is the lack of channels moving to hd. I also have found, at least on MNF, a 3 second delay on the hd channel. A guy I work with has the dvr box and he and his wife love it.

Maybe I am just crazy but I would think since this is somewhat of a new technology shit like this is going to happen. I would also like to note that you don't have to shell up to 10 grand to get a hdtv. The projection hdtvs have great pictures and they are much cheaper (especially if you get one without dvi).

Box need more Work.

[JabbaTheFart]

I have had one for about 2 months. It sucks. I think they needed more testing on the firmware. The aspect Ratio keeps changing on the 4:3 shows. I set it and a week later it resets it self back. The option for keeping only a number episodes doesn't work ether. I set it for 5 shows and it don't stop at 5. And it really needs more diskspace.

Can't be more wrong..

[cybrthng]

You silly, HDTV isn't a competing "format" - it is a technology. HDTV is merely high-res displays and a picture quality that is set to take advantage of souch displays.

HDTV can ride over the internet as soon as the internet has the bandwidth to do so. Until then it rides on satellite and cable systems.

HDTV is here to stay - its a standard in resolutions. I can use my HDTV projector as a video, tv or computer projector as long as i tell my radeon what the native resolution is.

16:9 is used on every DVD done today - don't tell me that format is dead either.

16:9 is a more natural field of view - watch sports, wildlife, movies and documentaries or play video games and you won't go back.

HDTV has nothing to do with the transport it rides on - if you cable company sucks go to satelite or beg your isp for a 100+mb/sec link to download live hdtv.

Unfortunately, you can read lots

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article; the cable company actually disabled the outputs that would give the poor guy his HDTV picture easily.

Hollywood has no interest in giving us HDTV. They don't understand why we're not satisfied with what we're allowed to look at today.

No joke. Read it.

Re:Unfortunately, you can read lots

[tonsofpcs]

Hollywood has nothing to do with HDTV. The only things that corporations from Hollywood might be doing is PUSHING HDTV. If you get a HDTV [not HD-Ready, but an actual HDTV with a tuner], you can already get most major broadcast stations in HD via terrestrial transmissions [antenna].

Re:Unfortunately, you can read lots

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not the cable companies turning off the DVI and Super outputs, that's the MPAA insisting that they be encrypted.

Don't want to let that perfect HDTV quality out there so people don't have to pay for it over and over.

Works fine for me

[dnixon112]

On a rear projection HDTV I can watch HDTV programming from satellite no problem. Watching the Olympics in HDTV was amazing, really stunning detail and quality. The only problem for me is lack of content which is growing. This headline is rather alarmist, which is the norm for /.

Not a universal problem

[nonmaskable]

I have the exact same box on Comcast in Virginia, and it works very well. You only get HD on the HD channels (which start at 200. These duplicate some of the normal channels (which start at 2) and some digital channels (which start at 100). There are also specific HD versions of premium channels like HBO and Showtime in the HD range.

Occasionally, a HD channel will show something (usually sports highlights or news interviews) which was originally not HD and will be much poorer quality. Also, live HD MLS soccer feeds are prone to the transmission glitches of a live situation, but what would be an almost unnoticable problem in low-res is a big ugly artifact in HD.

My parents have one

[spacefrog]

My parents have this exact SA unit, with Cox service, and their experience has been vastly different.

The only real issue with it they have left is recording the Dolby Digital track on an HD feed will result in choppy audio. This is supposed to be fixed in the upcoming firmware. In the meanwhile, they record the 2-channel audio with their DVR events. Boo-hoo.

Having dealt with both Cox and T-W at various times, I can pinpoint exactly where the problem is, and it aint the technology. Hint: The problem has the initials T and W.

HDTV will suck until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hollywood will "let" us look at the picture through the DVI output, or the firewire output, or something more than an old-tech analog output.

Until then, HDTV is effectively screwed.

Re:HDTV will suck until...

[cybrthng]

You can use DVI - as long as you have the copy protection enabled.

Infact i have my comcast cable box hooked up to my projector through DVI and it looks great. Although i preferr analog since my receiver can't switch DVI ports yet and i hate yanking cables to watch dvd's, play xbox or watch tv.

8000 is outdated anyway, 8300 is much better.

[787style]

8300 has HDMI out, and most software bugs that plague the 8000 are gone. Plus, there is a multi-room model. The bigest problem is still lack of content. HDTV junkies will get VOOM once their DVR is released.

This guy is a mornon

[dciman]

"Why does the box use gray letterboxing for 4:3? Why is my 1080i picture so blurry? How could 480p SD look this bad?"

Jesus... stop crying like a baby....

First off... the 4:3 issue. The STB displays it with gray bars on the sides because that is how it SHOULD display it. The monitor should be set to stretch the image to the fill the screen if you want to get rid of the bars.

The 1080i image likely looks blurry because you need you monitor calibrated for convergence... geometry... and color. This is a common problem with displays as they arrive from the store. And sadly almost no one goes to the trouble of having them properly set up.

And 480p likely looks bad because it is just 480i sources that the STB is upconverting to 480p. If your normal cable channels look like crap... then you are just upconverting crap... Do you expect it to look stunning? Now... if you use a good progressive scan DVD player and have it setup correctly... and it still looks like crap, then I would say it has to do with your display not being calibrated... which seems obvious from some of his other comments.

Re:This guy is a mornon

[Ignignot]

Did anyone else read this as "this guy is a mormon?"

Egads, what is he doing on slashdot! Get him away!!

Re:This guy is a mornon

[dciman]

OOPS.... Now I look like the Mornon... I mean Moron ;-)

Re:This guy is a mornon

[VoiceOfRaisin]

i have the 8000hd, the gray bars are configurable too. you can make them black if you want to. i guess he didnt rtfm..

Re:This guy is a mornon

[dciman]

Imagine that... someone not reading and then complaining when it doesn't work the first time he plugs it in.....

The world is 16:9

[cybrthng]

I'm not sure where you live or what you whatch, but yes - standard tv is 4:3 - i don't watch standard tv :) This is an HDTV thread.

HDTV is 16:9 and there is tons of content in 16:9 - not too mention it is the standard format for dvd.

Leno is 16:9, CSI is 16:9, Not to mention all the HD special channels and premium channels. Heck PBS in 16:9 is great.

Widescreen is the standard for Hi-def. You don't go to a movie theater to watch a 4:3 cut of your movie - i'd rather see a limited black bar then miss half the film.

But your right on projectors - they are awesome. I have one and it's great. For 1,000 you can get ones with a very capable scaler that can handle 1080i/720p (ofcourse not native pixel to pixel sizing but usually at a better resolution then anything you can buy at the "box" stores)

Re:The world is 16:9

[stecoop]

You know that 16:9 can fit within 4:3 with no problem right? As long as the resolution is high enough on the display it doesn't matter. HD is 1080i or 720p at 16:9 - My (remember cheap) 800 x 600 4:3 DLP Projector is just a few pixels shy of HD at Progressive scan. Now when my projector poops out in a few years, I will then buy most likely a 1080p native Projector or something even higher (?) but the price will lower than today.

As for price, the current HD (16:9) projectors cost quite a bit more than the current run of the mille 4:3 computer projectors. Save your money and it 16:9 will still fit within the 4:3 frame. Best part is that nothing is preventing me from getting a HD turner and using it, my configuration is modular.

Re:The world is 16:9

[enrico_suave]

"Heck PBS in 16:9 is great."

That's what the world needs... hidef elmo!

j/k there's lots of cool stuff on PBS that looks brilliant on HDTV.

E.

Wait for the 8300HD box and not TW fault...

[Zed2K]

The newer 8300DVR HD box is supposedly better.

"Let's cut to the chase. Time Warner has disabled the DVI output, the RF output and the S-Video output on the box."

TW hasn't disabled the ports, Scientific Atlanta has. The firmware to enable those ports doesn't exist yet or TW NY hasn't gotten it from SA yet.

"How is this experience worth the $10,000+ I spent to achieve it?"

He spent 10k? Why the hell does he want his cable box to control what resolution he displays in? Put it in one on the box and let the tv do the hard work. Afterall the tv will do a better job of up or down converting.

"$3,500 for the Bose Lifestyle Audio System"

Oh, that explains everything right there.

"Yes, DiscoveryHD and ThirteenHD look like HDTV, but the other 300 channels are practically worthless."

There are not 300 HD channels. Basically he is complaining that the non-hd channels look like crap. Maybe he should have done his research and he would have found out that when you get a large 50" tv or so the noise on the non-hd channels will just be amplified even greater the larger the tv you use.

Re:Wait for the 8300HD box and not TW fault...

[DigiShaman]

As someone who works at TWC in Austin, I can tell you that is correct. SA has not enabled the SATA and DVI ports yet. I'm not sure when we will get the new firmware to be pushed, but that only when SA is ready to release it. As for DVI in general, it uses a form of encryption. So I'm only guessing SA has it's hands tied due to legal matters such as copywrite and MPAA shit. I seriously doubt the DVI not being enabled is a technical issue.

In addition

[Andy Dodd]

Europe has an existing digital TV standard (DVB) and has had it for quite some time, which I BELIEVE (but can't be positive) supports 480p. 480p is by no means HD, but a digital 480p signal is far, far better than even a good analog 480i signal.

In the US, ATSC IS the digital TV standard for OTA broadcast, it just happens that here, HD support was included in that standard.

Re:In addition

[Anonymous Coward]

DVB in Europe at present is mostly 576i, 480 is a NTSC resolution. However DVB is able to transport HD streams if required, there's already a 1080i DVB-s stream on satellite.

Re:In addition

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible to broadcast HD resolution TV via DVB. A few test channels are running at 1900(?)x1050 over the Astra satelites(sp?).
Atleast with the linux drivers it's possible to capture and decode them with a software player. (just not at full framerate, unless you have a really beafy machine ;))

Re:In addition

[jusdisgi]

Atleast with the linux drivers it's possible to capture and decode them with a software player. (just not at full framerate, unless you have a really beafy machine

I wonder, could you get two boxes, set each to half framerate, and sync them so that between the two of them they get all the frames? If you could, could you reconstruct the video when you were done?

Perhaps it's a bit over-the-top....but that's kind of the point.

Re:In addition

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do deinterlacing from a single stream from a single box, if you play a DVD on your computer it does this already, your computer has to reinterpolate the two fields to form a progressive picture, it can be done quite sucessfully, however you can't get information from thin air so ultimately it's just a conversion.

Much better just to keep everything progressive these days.

Re:In addition

[jusdisgi]

Well, yeah, deinterlacing. That's entirely different. We're talking about trying to overcome an inability to decode in realtime (due to processor limitations) by decoding in halftime on two machines at once.

Re:In addition

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, yeah, or you could spend just under $90 of something in excess of a Athlon 2800 ;)

Re:In addition

[jusdisgi]

Will that do the resolutions and framerates we're talking about in realtime? Are you not reading the parents, or did the parent have low ideas of "beafy[sic] machine"? To tell you the truth, I don't know, I was just posing the theoretical in response to the stated problem. But either way, even if reasonable hardware will do the resolutions we're discussing right now, there would certainly be other, if very exotic, uses.

Re:In addition

[jovlinger]

decode?

Isn't it just a raw mpeg stream?

HDTV, not yet

[tokki]

I bought a 27 inch Sony HDTV a few months ago. It wasn't that much more expensive than a Sony SD TV. While the other brands of TVs have really caught up (and in some cases surpased) Sony in regulat TV quality, the comparison between Sony and non-Sony HDTVs (tube-based) at least was quite dramatic. Sony was just much crisper, much clearer. I got a 4:3 TV since most of the content I'll be watching is regular (Adult Swim, HGTV), and either stretching or showing the gray bars on the sides of a 6:9 was more annoying than black bars above and below. On Time Warner, there are only 5 or 6 HD channels, 2 more if you subscribe to HBO HD and Showtime HD. So there isn't that much choice. I'd say I only watch one or two shows in HDTV a week. The networks that do have HD, most of the programs with the exception of some prime time shows, are in regular definition. If you're a DVD movie buff, DVDs will play better on an HDTV, even though DVDs are standard defintion. If you've got a progressive-scan DVD player and a 480p input for your HDTV, film-based DVDs (not video/TV-based) will play about 30% sharper on an HDTV (interlaced TV reduces apparent resolution by about 30% because of the optical effect of interlacing). If I had to do it over again, I'd probably just go with a regular defintion TV.

Whoa!

[Anonymous Coward]

"$40cdn/month"

Whoa, that's like $5 a month in US money isn't it?

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[GraZZ]

"can't control the digital audio volume via remote"

I'm assuming they have the digital output setup like a line out. You can't change the volume of the line out on most equipment either. He should be changing the volume on his speakers.

Simple works-for-me HD DVR shopping list

[bmetz]

A reasonable HD DVR Shopping list:

DirecTV HD-Tivo ($900)
Panasonic 42" 7UY Plasma ($2200)
Onkyo HTS-760 6.1 Receiver/Speakers ($350)

I have this setup and I am very happy with the result. The key, IMHO, is to find a display that does a good job of cleaning up regular 'ol 4:3 NTSC signals so you the 80% of your channels that are not HD still look good enough, if not stunningly great like HD content does. Every nice display can do HD content justice, but not every nice display can do SD content justice.

Re:Simple works-for-me HD DVR shopping list

[jargoone]

Panasonic 42" 7UY Plasma ($2200)

Um, if you're going to create an HD shopping list, wouldn't it make sense to have a display that can display full-HD resolution?

At the same site you linked to, there's one for about a grand more:

Panasonic TH-42PHD6UY

Re:Simple works-for-me HD DVR shopping list

[Anonymous Coward]

One small correction, according to the product literature, the TH-42WD7UY (to which you linked) is NOT (852x480) HD. The TH-42PHD7UY is the HD (1024x768) model, but lists @$3,595.

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

its good shit

Works great, just need more channels

[jusdisgi]

I've got a Motorolla digital cable hdtv receiver from Mediacom Cable, attached to an HD-capable LCD projector. It works flawlessly. I had to get a component->VGA cable (not a scan or color converter though, the projector does YPbPr and all the HD scan modes), but other than that, no worries. So, looking at all this guy's troubles, I guess I'd have to say your mileage may vary dramatically.

That said, I'm a bit annoyed with the limited channels. I get about 8 HDTV channels that come in at 760p. That's ESPN, Discovery (fucking awesome), Bravo, Encore, Showtime, HBO, and a couple of others just thrown together by Mediacom. The rest of everything comes in at the normal digital cable rate; I tell the cable box to send it in 540p.

The HDTV channels just blow the others away. Switching back and forth is really like night and day...you need to see it to appreciate it at all. But I'm paying about an extra $25 a month, just to get those 8 really clear channels. I'm starting to wonder whether it's really worth it.

Oh well...c'est la vie, I guess. But what I wouldn't give to have Comedy Central, and maybe Fox, in HD.

Re:Works great, just need more channels

[JustNiz]

>> I had to get a component->VGA cable

It sounds like you're potentially going to be one of the people who's system will stop working when the turn on the broadcast flag before next June.

Has your HD supplier promised not to force you to upgrade to an HDCP-compliant projector?

Re:Works great, just need more channels

[jusdisgi]

Interesting; I've heard nothing of this sort until now. Naturally, I haven't asked them whether they will force that on me. Do you know where I can go to get some more information on that? Sure would be a shame to lose the HD....I'm not upgrading that projector any time soon. I've only got it because I bought it broken at an auction for next to nothing and then fixed it.

Re:Works great, just need more channels

[JustNiz]

Sure. Check this out:

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_10.php#001 96 8

Needless to say, its an outrage.

HDTV is better than you think

[branchingfactor]

The technology of HDTV provides a better viewing experience than you can imagine if you haven't seen it yourself. Not only does it have more resolution, it also has more color depth. The resulting picture is jaw-dropping, as anyone who has seen it first-hand will attest. Once you've seen your favorite sporting event in HDTV, there's no going back. The biggest problem with HDTV is the lack of HDTV content. Most providers transmit SD content most of the time on their HD channels. Only a few of the HD channels are HD all the time. Even so, it's fantastic when it happens.

Indeed...

[pergamon]

I just got the same box and saw many of the same problems. However, this guy apparently hasn't looked at the config menus -- you can easily change the letterboxing color from grey to black. You can also avoid the delay from changing video formats by properly setting up the box, though documentation on this configuration isn't easy to find.

I will agree that this box is a major POS. The non-HD tuner on it is indeed horrible compared to the Motorola HD boxes TWC distributes. I was pleasantly surprised to find how well the box handles HD "pause live TV" functionality though, but other than that the thing is crap.

Playback is fine as long as you want to watch beginning to end of a recorded program, but seeking is a pain. If you're watching a program being recorded that you started to watch after it began, it will sometimes stop playing when it stops recording. Menu/guide display is very slow.

There are more problems, but these are the big ones I've found so far. However, a moderately well known (maybe?) guy writing a hissy fit in his blog doesn't mean that "cable HDTV isn't ready for primetime". The non-DVR HD boxes that TWC distributes (which this guy explicitly says he doesn't have) work extremely well.

Shame

[rts008]

Well, it's a shame it doesn't work for him as advertised, but I don't have much sympathy for someone that would sink 10 grand into TV!?

Worked for me (maybe I'm just lucky)

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Just a couple weeks ago my tv of 10+ years died, and thanks to a small windfall from some stock options I had to use or lose I decided to take the plunge. I got a 46" Samsung DLP HDTV and upgraded my Comcast cable to their digital service with HD. For an additional $4.00 a month I'm getting HD from all the major networks (when they choose to broadcast in HD) as well as ESPN, Discovery HD, and INHD (& INHD2). Those last two are channels devoted entirely to HD programming. It's all worked quite well for me, and the HD programming is quite spectacular. The INHD channels routinely show IMAX movies, concerts, and other things that look amazing. I've had the setup for about two weeks now and have only seen the picture freeze once for about a second and a bit of digital interference one other time for about a second. Other than that it's been perfect (knock on artifical wood-finished surface).

I've Got One Also

[ec_hack]

I've got one of the boxes also. I don't have most of the problems that he does. My system works well - I feed the video to my Mitsubishi HD system, the audio to my Sony amp. I can easily control the volume with the remote supplied - hint: RTFM.

The delays in changing channels are about what he notes, but I've had a rock solid picture from the network feeds, HBO, TNT, INHDTV, etc. The DVR is adequate and does what we need it to do.

One hint on getting a good, stable picture. According to the techs that have done work on our system, the HD feeds are sensitive to signal strength - tight connections, good quality splitters and a feed that is like Goldilocks' porridge (neither too strong or weak) is required.

HDPorn

[Mr.Sharpy]

Well, HDTV won't be ready until you can get the Adult channels in HDTV. Until then, all that money is just idling. I'm not sure who the cable companies have doing their market research, but I thought everybody knew that porn was the technology pioneer. If porn hasn't gone there yet, nobody else will either.

Re:HDPorn

[slammin'j]

Voom! recently began offering Playboy Hot HD.
Let the revolution begin!

Interesting-but not from a techie perspective

[Gizzmonic]

Anyone who hasn't read his blog posting, check it out. It reflects poorly on the National Academy of Television Arts & Scientists that this guy is the chair of the advanced media.

If you've got any background in A/V design, you'll probably notice the following in his post:

• Complains that the box doesn't support BNC or Dsub15 connectors for component out. Consumer grade boxes generally do not.
  
  
• "What! No volume control? Nope, the digital audio output is not controllable from the cable remote. You are expected to pipe that digital output through a receiver, where it can be converted to waves that your ears can hear. You adjust the volume there, just like any other device that has digital output (DVD player, DVHS, cable box, etc).
  
  
• "How is this experience worth the $10,000+ I spent to achieve it?"
  Various appeals to brand name and amount of money spent. This reveals that he doesn't know what he's talking about. BOSE (outside their marketing department) is not respected among Pro A/V circles. This guy clearly expects he can spend his way to a great A/V setup, a decidely anti-geek and anti-A/V professional stance.
  

Complaints about the 'blurriness' of SD material A good TV will reveal flaws in source material. Large screen TVs, HDTVs, and poor scaling are the likely culprits here-as any A/V professional would know.

This blog post is still useful-you wouldn't believe how many people who have more money than sense buy and HDTV and hook up all the sources through the RF input (channel 3). Mr. Palmer's disappointment with HDTV mirrors the uninformed early adopter experience happening across the USA!

SA is bad, GI/Moto is worse... DTiVo is better

[PenguinOpus]

People here are complaining that SA and TW are terrible, but they clearly never experienced the wonders of the General Instruments (now Motorola) DCT-1000, DCT-2000 (upgraded 27Mhz CPU), and the HD DCT-5100. Horrifyingly slow CPUs, single tuners that lead to long channel-change times, and, with TCI/ATT 12:1 compression (twelve channels on one 27Mbit(?) transponder) of SDTV. Comcast is rumored to have reduced the compression.

Microsoft, though, is forcing higher performance systems so that it's "TV Platform" software can be used. Moto's new DCT 6208 is an HD-PVR model with an 800Mhz CPU (wow). The problem with these higher-performance systems is that they are so expensive to make for the cable industry (duopoly pricing) that they won't get widespread distribution.

My DirecTV HD-TiVo works exactly the way my old DTiVo does, with 4 tuners (including dual OTA). The biggest problem with it is that it is still "TiVo 1" software and the Home Media Option isn't available. Something about Rupert Murdoch trying to screw TiVo by introducing boxes built by a (mostly unknown) competitor he owns.

Re:SA is bad, GI/Moto is worse... DTiVo is better

[robhancock]

The slowness of those GI boxes seems to depend on the program guide software that gets loaded on them. The DCT-1000 boxes Shaw used to use were really slow with the previous crap software, but now they've got a new program guide system that's much better and faster. Makes you wonder what the hell the code was doing in the old software..

Problem == TW Cable?

[Meostro]

I have the feeling that the only problem with HD Cable is his specific system. I have Comcast HD at home, and it looks great. There is an incredible difference between HD and non-HD, especially for live sporting events.

Discovery HD does look fantastic (think National Geographic Magazine in motion), as do the 10-15 stations in HD (at least one each network plus movie channels). Probably half the time the broadcast stations aren't broadcasting HD, they do show up as 4:3 letterboxed on my 16:9 (Sony Vega). Commercials do too sometimes, you can tell pretty clearly when a commercial has been reformatted versus shot in native HD.

I've never seen any noise/etc. on the digital broadcasts beyond a cool transition effect between channels as the reciever resets its MP2 decoder and the channel "blocks" in for half a second. My only problem has been with locking into the signal, sometimes after setting the channel I have to pop it up-and-down one to get the picture to appear.

Comcast uses Scientific Atlanta boxes too, will have to check out the DVR version if it's available locally. I live 20 miles from the nearest large city (Baltimore or Washington DC, take your pick), so that might be a factor in my signal quality too, not 5000 neighbors draining my bandwidth. Cable modem is awesome, too, 1.5 or better sometimes.

No, I don't work for Comcast. I was REALLY mad at them for a while, but for a couple months i've been a happy customer.

Re:Problem == TW Cable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the same DVR with Cox cable in San Diego, CA and I have no picture probs. I was disappointed to find the DVI non-functional, but my TV only has one anyway and I use it for my progressive scan DVR. Not that I could tell the difference between DVI and component pictures anyway. :o) The lack of remote volume and mute with digital audio is a bit of a pain but I generally use "pause" instead (it's a DVR, remember?) or switch the remote to AUX to adjust the volume on the home theater receiver. The "singing cats" guy is not as techno-ficient as he thinks he is.

Re:Problem == TW Cable?

[Postalbunny]

I'm not sure why you all don't have volume control. In houston we program the remotes to control either the tv's volume or the stereo (whichever you use) and the volume on the remote will mute as well. I use optical out, and a sony reciever.

His problems are mostly user related.

[IMarvinTPA]

If you're using digital sound, the volume control is on the expensive box you bought to process that signal, not the cable box!

The DVI and a few of the other really good outputs aren't ready yet in the software. (Bad SA!, At least the copy to VCR feature works the older ones after about a year.)

The old channels probably look only as good as they used to. And YAY for gray letterbox! I have some dark burn-in on the sides of my screen because of the black letterboxing the old HD box uses.

Now, time to see if Comcast Alexandria has this box. (I hate having two cable boxes in my living room. (SA DVR and HD each). They use the same remote signals...

IMarv

Uber-weenie suits expect too much

[skwelch]

Blame TimeWarner for disabling DVI and not building the right infrastructure. HDTV over cable is done perfectly well for me using Comcast and the new Motorola 6800 box. It all depends on your cable company's decisions when it comes to recompressing/remuxing the real HD feeds, and having the channelspace (Something like 3 standard "channels" needed for 1 HD channel) to not cut corners.

The lag in channel changing is also nothing new as things turn digital, just like your ReplayTV or Tivo, and the guide style of navigating instead of blind channel flipping makes it a non-issue. The aspect adjustments are a function of your box, the only lag on my Motorola one is when you switch between HDTV and standard tv channels, and it goes from 1080i to 480p. When you change ascept and the TV, it takes less than second, and this is a $800 refurb rear projection set.

For less than $1000, you could but a 46" HDTV and a cheap all-in-one progressive scan DVD/receiver. Add digital cable with support for HDTV, and use digital connections from the box (DVI and TOSlink), and you are set. When you spend a crapload of money for something like this guy, you are gonna have some pretty unrealistic expectations.

Except TimeWarner isn't a monopoly in NYC

[lordpixel]

I've not yet lived anywhere in NYC where I couldn't get service from RCN.

Hell, I wish there was some way to prevent them from sending me endless flyers trying to persuade me to switch.

Truth is, the Manhattan Time Warner service is pretty reliable.

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[snoig]

One person who happens to be President/CEO of Palmer Advanced Media and Chairman of the Advanced Media Committee for NATAS. Seems to me from his resume that he knows what he is doing.

Satellite HDTV

[SpeedyG5]

A friend bought an HDTV $3000, an HDTV Satellite Reciever with locals module $1000, a new roof antenna to get the locals broadcast $100.

Now the most he gets on his Dish Network

espnHD 1 channel - premium charge
DiscoverHD 1 channel - Premium Charge
TNT 1 channel - Premium Charge
HBO HD 1 channel - if you get HBO at premium charge
Showtime HD 1 channel - for showtime premium charge
PPV HD 1 channel - ppv charge for 1 crappy movie per month

Free channels for HD primetime programming over the antenna. ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, WB and PBS(Receiver above required). Mind you these are not always in HD only during primetime or at special events.

So thats $4000 plus programming fees for almost NO programming and no hope in sight for at least 9-12 months. Seems to me that its better to wait and let them develop the TV's and gear as well as let the prices drop, than to spend the money right now and get no real benefit. Funny thing is he can't wait to spend the $1000 on a standalone Tivo box for his hdtv.

progressive scan is grand

[whiteSanjuro]

i recently got a 27" Samsung EDTV and let me say it like this...480p is glorious. dvd's and gamecube look stunning and that annoying refresh rate noise is all gone too. until 1080p LCoS is out, its not worth upgrading to anything beyond 480p. I find that 480p looks better to me than 1080i because of the progressive. 12.5% additional vertical res is not as good as 2x framerate for me.

Re:HD is ready for Prime Time . . . This HD-DVR is

[bitzar]

I have the standard Time Warner HD box now. Would you prefer you waited before getting the DVR box or are you happy with the "upgrade"?.

My experience with an SA Explorer 8000 DVR...

[Hollinger]

First off, I have the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 (no HD) DVR.

We added digital cable and DVR service around August of this year, and, after the newness wore off (we record exactly 5 shows on a recurring basis) the software glitches really started to show themselves.

Take a look at the DVR Issues Quick Reference. Note that several of the solutions to the problems listed are unplug your DVR set-top from the AC power source and reconnect!

So, which of these from that URL do you think is worse?
a. DVR may intermittently delete all recorded programs and scheduled recordings without warning.
or
b. You may see the box display live video while powered off. In order to correct the issue, you must turn the box back on, change the channel, and then power the box back off.

I think it's pretty scary that this thing made it to public release when they sometimes can't keep the device TURNED OFF, let alone that it sometimes erases all recordings (we haven't experienced either of these issues, by the way).

My personal issues with the box:

1. Recording of shows from the program guide is "All or nothing"
The program guide lets you record a given episode of a show, OR record ALL episodes of a show. This works when a show appears once a week, but for things that show multiple times a day, you either end up with a LOT of duplicates. I can't say "record all episodes that show at 7PM on Thursday," for example.

2. Software locks up or freezes
This happens usually about once a week. The device will stop responding to things like channel changes or menu functions, and will reboot and reset itself. We can make this happen pretty consistently when we're recording a show, and watching another via Picture-in-Picture.

3. Popping on the audio track
This appears to happen if the box has been on for an extended period, and even gets recorded to disk! We get an intermittent popping over both speaker channels (using either the co-ax connector OR the rca connectors).

All in all, this thing is rocky, at best.

Re:My experience with an SA Explorer 8000 DVR...

[TheRealFixer]

Sounds like your cable company hasn't pushed the latest firmware to you. The latest firmware versions have an option to record all occurances of a program, or only in that one time slot.

I haven't had a lockup in a while. I do still have popping on the audio track, but that seems to only happen when I pause a show for a while and then resume. It seems to have a problem with spooling to disk and playing back at the same time. Overall it's leaps and bounds beyond what it was 2 years ago.

Re:My experience with an SA Explorer 8000 DVR...

[servoled]

1. Recording of shows from the program guide is "All or nothing"
The program guide lets you record a given episode of a show, OR record ALL episodes of a show. This works when a show appears once a week, but for things that show multiple times a day, you either end up with a LOT of duplicates. I can't say "record all episodes that show at 7PM on Thursday," for example.

I had the same box through Cox Cable in Fairfax, VA and had the same problem. However, I recently moved into Comcast cable's area and ordered a DVR through them (also a SA-8000) and it has the option of recording once, recording all, or recording all on this channel in this time slot.

The time slot option will record a show everytime is broadcast in a certain time slot (e.g. M-F 7:00-7:30). You still can't specify a certain day to record on every week, but it is a definite improvement. There is also a "record first-run" option which I havne't played around with yet, although if it works it would probably be what you are looking for.

You might want to call you cable company and see if they can give you an updated version of the firmware.

Re:My experience with an SA Explorer 8000 DVR...

[luugi]

Agreed. Here's some more issues I'm having.

Move along..nothing to see here...

[Seabass55]

And being an "ubergeek" means you have a few cables lying around the house? Guess we have more geeks in this would then one would be led to believe.

I have the Explorer 8000HD (thru TW) and I'm quite content with it. HD channels are HD channels and if someone buys a bigscreen TV and bitches about non-HD channels looking like crap then they didn't do their homework. When I bought my 57" Sony I knew what to expect. Ofcourse the people are circuit city don't tell you this because they only show HD channels but if you demand it they will show it.
Freezing happens occasionally when watching recorded shows but I mean really occasionally. Maybe mine just works better than some but at most it'll happen one time during a show.
If you're unhappy with your DVR then get a Tivo or make yourself a MythTV setup. Just because your experiance isn't up to par doesn't mean HDTV doesn't rock.

My exeperience

[spludge]

I have one of these boxes and I would say that for the price it was a pretty good experience for me.

I exchanged my old cable box, brought the new box back home and plugged it in and it just worked. Didn't have any problems with it. It took about a minute to boot up the first time and then it is pretty quick after that.

I had some difficulty in figuring out how to switch the display between HD and SD output. The instructions in the manual are for a different version of the software on the device (the new york models come with the Passport version of the software). My TV does HDTV but not very well so I wanted to use SD via the s-video port. I don't remember the key sequence but there is a key sequence that you press using the buttons on the front panel that will cause the device to switch between HD and SD (the display on the front will show HD and SD depending on what mode it is in). I found the sequence in an online forum, I'll see if I can dig it up again. The scaling of HDTV for 4:3 format works well with my TV. Getting to the advanced options menu is not documented but basically you hit the settings button on the remote and then press the yellow A button.

Pros:

1. Tons of space! 160 Gig hard drive.
2. Great recording options for recording shows.
3. Can record HD shows
4. Can record two shows at once or watch one show while recording another.
5. The recording interface is very intuitive and works well.
6. It is very cheap, about 9 bucks a month I think.

Cons:
1. It has crashed 2 or 3 times since I have been using it. When it crashes it freezes up and then reboots. I watch quite a lot of TV and it hasn't done it enough times to be annoying.
2. Switching between HD and SD is fiddly and not documented.
3. Navigating recorded shows is slow because they are just put into one big list.
4. Searching for shows by name is very slow and does not have a good interface.
5. Switching between channels is a lot slower than my old set top box but is still acceptable because the info display comes up very quickly even if the picture does not.

My experiences with HD-DVR

[JoshMKiV]

I recently received three (3) HD-DVR boxen from Comcast. These are the Moto jobbies, 80 gigs, single tuner. I run one on a projector, the other two on 32" cheap-o Samsung tubes. Picture is great, interface is trash. They are OK for now, but they have none of the features of TiVo. I am keeping two TiVo until they get the interface right, or TiVo releases a stand-alone HD box which I would buy in a second.

Just like color TV from say 1958 to 1973...

[dpbsmith]

Color TV was launched in the late 1950s, amid heavy advertising. I lived in a very upscale suburban community at the time and knew a number of early adopters.

It was a mess. Nothing on them was watchable but cartoons, where it didn't really matter whether if a red shirt became orange when the character walked to the left side of the screen or magenta when he walked to the right. On ordinary programs people could sort of get the flesh tones in an acceptable range by jumping up every five minutes to fiddle with the controls, but everything would go to hell whenever there was a commercial break or a different program.

Basically everybody denied that this happened--in theory it didn't happen if your set was properly set up by a technician and never moved and all the broadcasters did what they were supposed to do. In practice, people just enjoyed the fact that the picture was in color, even if all the people on the screen looked as if they were about to die of cyanosis.

It took a good decade-and-a-half before broadcasting practice and self-adjusting television sets co-evolved to the point where an ordinary joe could just shell out $400, have the set delivered and set up, connect it to an ordinary-quality antenna or cable TV outlet, and expect to be able to sit down and watch television all evening, switching channels freely, without having to leap up to fiddle with the knobs.

It will probably take a decade-and-a-half for HDTV to "be perfected," as they used to say.

Of course, maybe people won't care. I have a friend who bought a more expensive digital camera than she wanted last year because someone else convinced her that she had to have five megapixels. It came out of the box with a 16 megabyte card and the resolution set to "standard quality" which happened to be 1600x1200. Having paid a premium for five megapixels, she has happily shot pictures all year at two megapixels and is perfectly pleased with the results.

So perhaps people will be perfectly happy with low-definition HDTV, just as they were happy with off-color television.

Mainstream, ladies and Gentlemen.

[Puls4r]

Mainstream. I think a number of you folks should go back and read up on what that means.

I'm pretty decent as far as tech stuff goes - when people in the neighborhood have an issue they call me.

But I read through some of your posts and all I could think of was "This is your idea of mainstream?" Mainstream means a wall socket and a plug. Mainstream means a single cable to connect and you're done. Mainstream means that OVER HALF of the "mainstream" folks still can't plug their computer in correctly, much less what you folks are talking about.

So, in that vein, the article is DEAD on. HDTV is NOT read for mainstream. Take off your geek-blinders for a second and realize that having to plug together more than one or two components is going to be FAR too difficult for most folks when they still have trouble programming their VCR.

Re:Mainstream, ladies and Gentlemen.

[entrigant]

So should we all stoop the that level or force them to have to actively use their brains from time to time? I vote for the later.

Get me a new box!

[edgar_is_good]

I have a (non-HD) scientific Atlanta box from TWC in manhattan, too, and let me tell you it blows. When I have people over to watch something, it constantly freezes for a few seconds, then starts again. I feel I should apologize to them for the poor quality I am providing as a host! That, and no 30 sec forward skip button, which makes skipping commercials a major chore. I'm thinking about getting an El-Gato Eye-TV on top of it, since the 2-station record option is actually pretty useful.

I have the same box

[Gregoyle]

I have the same box, and I'm convinced the problem is heat. I bet you have the DVR version, right? The digital video processing is getting bogged down. Try this: unplug it when you aren't using it. You can't just turn it off because it doesn't really turn off, it just dims the picture. I bet that for the first hour or so you won't get any jumps. On analog stations (below 70 or so) you can also try changing the channel up and then down again. This turns off the digital playback.

Those SciAm boxes really do suck. I wish Time Warner would switch to something more ready for market.

Re:I have the same box

[FunWithHeadlines]

Yes, I have the DVR version. A heat issue? Hmm...I'll play around with it. The bedroom one is one a table with a TV stand on top of it and the TV sits on the stand. There is an air gap above the cable box, and air all around in on four sides. The only area where it actually touches anything is on the bottom where it sits on the table. So it's about as ideally located as I can get it. It's also near the window, and as winter approaches it will get cooler.

The living room one is inside a wall unit, behind doors when not being watched, and sitting directly on top of the TV. This HAS to be running hotter than the bedroom unit. I'll pay attention and see if the problem occurs more frequently on the living room unit. Thanks for the tip.

I agree that we are in the early stages of this technology as far as cable companies go. Overall, I'm pleased, very pleased, with the functionality. I figure things will improve over time.

Re:I have the same box

[Gregoyle]

To tell you the truth, I've pretty much gotten fed up with the DVR version I have. I just got a new HDTV, and I was going to trade my DVR for an HD-DVR, but I heard those are just as bad if not worse.

I think my "solution" is going to be cancelling my DVR service with TWC and just going with a plain vanilla box. I might decide to get an HD-Tivo.

The unplugging it bit can work if you have something important that you really want to watch, but as a rule it gets slightly ridiculous.

Good luck with yours, though.

I have one of these boxes

[Mean_Nishka]

First, everyone should check out the AVS Forum site to discuss the 8000HD and other recorders.

The 8000HD does what it's supposed to do (record HD programming) but it doesn't do it as well as a ReplayTV or similar.

I came in with no expectations for features, so that helps. The 8000HD does not do theme based recordings, has no search capability, and I'm finding my PBSHD schedule is not accurate. Even more jugheaded, you can't start a show that's recording from the beginning. You have to actually REWIND manually through the show to start from the top.. Stupid stupid stupid.

In the end, I don't mind it. Movies on HBO are incredible, and I hope they will eventually match the aspect ratio for 2.35:1 films. I already have two hacked ReplayTV units for recording standard programming (200 hours of it per device :) ), so the ability to capture some of my favorite shows in HD is gravy. The ability of the unit to record two HD streams simultaenously is also nice.

I'm hoping they'll add capability for 1394 output soon, since I appeared in the background on an HD documentary on the Demoratic Convention and would like to archive it.

I don't need the high end features (I already have them on the Replay) so just having a fairly spartan recorder does the trick. I do, however, look forward to the day I can utilize 'cable card' technology and choose my own hardware. Comcast limits me to just the 8000HD.

Re:I have one of these boxes

[eXoXe]

What's a "Demoratic" convention?

Go with EDTV plain and simple

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

if you wan't 16x9 and a picture that's damn near as good as HDTV, get one of the EDTV sets (a good one). With HDTV just really starting, you can let the problems work themseves out and then pick up a true HD set when the prices come down further. Plus, normal signals look better (on the EDTV as opposed to the HDTV) due to the lower amount of upscaling required. Hell, then you will probably have 2 TV's for the same price as if you bought a true HD set today.

I speak from experience, I've got a 42" Panasonic EDTV Plasma and a 30" Sharp - which is a true HD (at least for 720p). I know, one is plasma, the other LCD. Nevertheless, not only do normal signals look better on the Panasonic, but HD as well! The panasonic was cheaper to boot.

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[ergo98]

Having the DVI, RF and S-Video outs disabled on the box, along with "can't control the digital audio volume via remote" isn't a "one person can't figure out" thing. It is crap

Disabling the outputs is a nuisance, though generally as they roll it out they enable features through the wire as they work out the kinks. I've had a standard digital box for about 4 years, and they just enabled the Dolby Digital on it.

However regarding the digital audio output - of course they don't control the "volume" of the digital output : Digital output obviously has a fixed amount of headroom, say 16-bits, and if you digitally control the volume you're effectively increasing distortion by limiting the granularity. If the manufacturers followed this gentleman's suggestion then listening to the TV quietly at night would sound like garbage.

My personal experience.

[Gondola]

I waited months for the SA8000HD DVR to be released in my area (Fayetteville; not far from the Raleigh/Durham area in North Carolina.)

Previously, I had an SA8000 DVR (SD) and the non-DVR high def box. HD cable was useless for me at this point, because I rarely sit down and just surf for programming; I almost always have a goal in mind when I sit down in my home theater area. (65" Mitsu HDTV, Onkyo 7.1 receiver, etc.) Most of the time, that goal is watching DVDs, which my HT setup does very well.

Now that I have the HD DVR, I was able to turn the two other boxes back in, and lower my monthly charges a few dollars. I've set up a few programs to record in HD on a regular basis, but without functionality similar to the TiVo "suggestions", I often have very little HD programming to look at. However, I do have the expanded tier of HD programming, so I have at least 3 HD movie channels, which is nice, when I take the time to go through the next week's movies and schedule them to record.

As for the quality of the recordings. HD recordings look amazing, but sometimes the audio stutters, especially when it's recording at the same time I'm watching a show.

Non-HD channels can still look like shit.

For you people bitching about the gray bars; the bar color can be changed in your box's setup. However, gray is recommended by HT professionals so that your CRTs get burned for the same amount even when watching 4:3 content. That is, if you want to watch a lot of sideboxed programming, projection TV's will benefit from gray bars versus black bars.

If I decide to stay on a 4:3 channel I just switch the view format via my TV anyway. Often my brain automatically compensates and I have no issue watching the show with that ratio.

I still drool over the television 8 months after I purchased it. Definitely worth the price for me ($2800) considering the enjoyment I get out of it. It depends on how much expendable cash you have; I make decent money.

My SA8000HD looks fine

[... James ...]

My SA8000HD through Wide Open West in IL looks just fine. This is on a 110" front projection setup (BenQ 8700+). I believe DVI is disabled, but I use the component video outs, so it's not a deal-breaker for me. 1080i looks great, and the gray bars on 4:3 material can be changed to black using the settings on the box.

Oh -- and Radio Shack sells RCA->BNC converters if you don't want to go out and buy a 'special' cable.

SA 8000

[ctwxman]

I have the low-def version of the SA 8000. Maybe the problem with the HD version is Scientifc Atlanta's and not native to HD in general?
I understand what SA's trying to do, but it just isn't implemented well at all. When I got my 8000, I posted this observation to my blog. Not much has changed since then. I posted a follow-up last month. They have updated the software a few times, never telling me and sometimes busting recordings I've set. The channel guide has been moved farther from the main menu. The video-on-demand features a different keystroke for the same function on back-to-back menus. Sometimes a keystroke won't register for a few seconds. Of course you think you just missed with the remote, so you hit it again, only to have two clicks register.

This guy is a joke.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone attempting to be an "Ubar geek" or know anything about TV, Home Theater, HD, or set top boxes, would know that Bose is shit, and would never pay that much for it.

On top of that, that box has been available through TWC Manhattan since November 2003!!!!! This guy sure is on the ball of technology, since hes only a whole year behind.

Each TW market maintains thier own software updates for thier boxes from SA, and they are not all the same, there is even 2 different software groups within markets, some with certain features others do not. My DVI works, and I love my box, they just added a new update that now will figure out what size and resolution to correctly display at. I have had my 8000HD box for 8 months and I love it. This guy should not even claim to know anything about HD, and should have his "column" removed.

Content is King

[adamjone]

I've been a subscriber to the HDTV service from Insight in my area for over a year now, and while I haven't had any technical problems, I feel that the content still has a long way to go. There are currently a handful of HD stations available:

• HBO-HD
• SHOWTIME-HD
• NBC-HD
• ABC-HD
• CBS-HD
• ESPN-HD
• Discovery HD Theater
• Bravo-HD
• PBS-HD
• HD-NET
• HD-Movies

And the pricing is a little crazy too. It's $13 a month to rent the HD Digital set top box with DVR (Motorola). When you rent the HD box, you get NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, and Bravo in HD. For an extra $10 / month you can add HD-NET, HD-Movies, ESPN-HD, and Discovery HD Theater. That's $2.50 a channel. HBO-HD will run you another $10 (you get the standard set of digital HBO's as well), and SHO-HD is $13. Essentially, if you wanted to subscribe to every feature available in my area, and rent only one box, your total cable and internet bill would run in excess of $180 / month. Mine currently sits at $117 (digital box, digital subscription, HBO, Starz, internet). If all you were interested in getting were the 11 HD stations, you would be paying:

• $40 Digital Subscription
• $13 HD Receiver rental
• $10 HBO
• $13 Showtime
• $10 HD-NET, HD-Movies, ESPN-HD, Discovery HD Theater
• TOTAL: $86 / month + tax!

That's nearly $8 per channel! Even more discouraging is that there is very little network programming that is broadcast in HD. What you end up with are standard resolution programs that have been upconverted to HD resolution. This looks terrible, as you end up with all sorts of distortion, tracing, jaggies, and artifacts. America's Funniest Home Videos is notoriously bad, as they are upconverting the already poor video from home cameras.
If you are thinking about upgrading your service to include HD, be sure to check what content is available in your area, and set your price limit ahead of time. Otherwise you might find yourself disappointed with what you get. Also, you may want to look into the HD content that is available over the air. Over the air decoders have come way down in price, and I know that in our area there is more HD content available by broadcast than by cable.

Re:Content is King

[figleaf]

Wow! That is a lot for cable.
You should move to satellite TV it comes out to be much cheaper.

Re:Content is King

[adamjone]

I looked into switching, and it came out to be a wash as far as cost. My cable and internet services are combined, and to get the HD, premium channels, and DSL service through a satellite company would run about the same amount.

The best deal I could get would be to get an OTA receiver and waft the Wi-Fi from my neighbor. Not ethical (for the data anyway), but cheap.

RTFM

[Postalbunny]

He needs to read the manual... hold info+guide to change svideo&coax to comp output. Go into setting to change from fixed audio out to variable... personally i use optical and use the reciever to control sound. If you don't want GREY bars around your picture, go to settings and change border from LIGHT to DARK. the 8000HD is one of the best DVR's i've seen so far, once all the channels hit HD you'll never want anything lesser. RTFM

Does TiVo work on Timer Warner Digital Cable?

[rgelb1]

Does TiVo work on Timer Warner Digital Cable?

Re:Does TiVo work on Timer Warner Digital Cable?

[Postalbunny]

tivo works on whatever you plug it into... it's not nearly as fast as the DVR at changing channels and last time i checked there wasn't a HD tivo available, /w the 8000HD you can record in HD quality. But yes, it should work

Digital "volume".

[Otto]

"can't control the digital audio volume via remote"

Of course you can't. Digital audio doesn't HAVE a volume adjustment. It's just the audio signal, not a signal with an analog amplifier behind it.

NO digital audio source has a volume control. That's not what it is. If you have a device, like a DVD player, that has a digital audio output, then you program your remote to control your amplifier's audio volume. In his case, he could have done some kind of learning mode trick on his cable box remote to let it change the volume on his stereo system, because that's what he'd be plugging the digital audio into anyway, one would hope.

I agree that disabling those outputs is stupid, and I agree that HDTV over Cable is shit for quality in most places. But let's face facts: consumers are quite often too ignorant to install a proper home theater setup themselves. If he didn't even know that digital audio doesn't *have* a volume on it, then can we really expect him to understand how to correct picture and signal issues?

You can only make things so simple. At some point, you have to expect the user to learn WTF they are doing. I admit that home theater is ripe for simplification, but digital audio ain't ever going to have a volume control and that is that.

Re:Digital "volume".

[Anonymous Coward]

NO digital audio source has a volume control.

Moron alert! This is what happens when lay people try to discuss technology. They know just enough to sound ridiculously stupid to those folks who really know what's going on. As other posters have/will note, all (perhaps most) digital audio formats actually encode amplitude/phase at a specific sampling frequency (they don't record frequency of the sound). Volume can be merely thought of as a ratio of the original recorded signal amplitude to the desired analog listening level. For example, if the encoded 16-bit words of a signal were 888, 2222, 1000 then equally scaling these three words up by doubling them would "increase volume" but not change the "frequency" of the original signal (I know the purists out there will hate this explanation since it doesn't quite work out like this). So a digital volume control need not have any sort of analog signal/power amplifier, but rather simply needs to do some "simple" math.

Re:Digital "volume".

[Otto]

Moron alert! This is what happens when lay people try to discuss technology. They know just enough to sound ridiculously stupid to those folks who really know what's going on.

I understand perfectly well what's going on, thank you very much. I stand by my original statement.

For example, if the encoded 16-bit words of a signal were 888, 2222, 1000 then equally scaling these three words up by doubling them would "increase volume" but not change the "frequency" of the original signal (I know the purists out there will hate this explanation since it doesn't quite work out like this). So a digital volume control need not have any sort of analog signal/power amplifier, but rather simply needs to do some "simple" math.

Oh really? And what happens when your linear transformation exceeds the values of the 16-bit word? You get peak clipping, that's what. Remember, you're LIMITED to 16 bits there.. You can't go above it.

So, essentially, you can't allow the user to go higher than 100%. Well, since a lot of music is normalized or already at the limits of the 16 bit range, this means your volume control only goes DOWN, doesn't it? You can't actually RAISE the volume with it or anything.

But maybe you want to play a game of trick the user, yeah? You can automatically lower the volume on everything you pipe out the digital audio output, and that way the use can "raise" the volume all the way back to the actual original volume, and thus be happy and think he's done something. Well, that's fine, if you don't mind the loss of dynamic range and making everything sound really muddy *by default*. And anyway, it'll sound just fine if he pumps up the volume ALL THE WAY.

Digital volume is possible, it just sucks. That's why most all audio devices don't support it. I grant you that some do, now that I have read some other responses. Those products I'll simply have to remember to avoid.

I posted this at EmmyAdvancedMedia too

[sdelement-x]

The problem with this persons article is that:

A) He probably doesn't realize that,
(i) all 300 channels are NOT HD,
(ii) the 5-25 HDTV channels do NOT always broadcast in HD
(iii) his HD terminal should have settings to change from that crappy 4:3 Letterbox, READ THE MANUAL

B) He thinks that digital terminals (including HD terminals) will work magic, if a signal is brought into the cable headend in analog, processed and spit out in digital, it CAN look crappy, it just means that the source is just as bad as the destination.

C) HD is ready for primetime (pardon the pun here), but it's the only time they actual broadcast in HD (aside PBS and a couple other select HD channels). They're trying to hook you on watching primetime shows, so that when they switch the entire lineup, you have something to be eager about. Of course, they also broadcast monday night football and other bigger sporting events because they know they will have the coverage, and have more than enough in the budget to afford the hundred of thousands of dollars to record the game from 10 different angles, with those $100K+ camera's that allow them to broadcast with HD.

Re:I posted this at EmmyAdvancedMedia too

[sdelement-x]

I forgot to mention...

I suppose some things are a bit different, but the cable company that I work for was one of the first in Canada (correct me if I'm wrong, Mountain Cablevision) to go 100% digital.

True, channels we pickup off-air may see "fuzziness" or come through poorly, but it's not like that's degradation within the cable system, that's straight from the off-air feed. Temperature inversion and Sun Outages (as far as satellite feeds) can cause a lot of the problems straight from the digital headend.

I think the consumers are highly mis-informed, and a lot of them just want "clear pictures and sound" and forget about all the technical reasons for why it is so difficult to get it to their homes during certain parts of the year.

Sure, if the cable plant sucks, and you're 2-10 amplifiers deep, your reception is going to be horrible, but that in itself is the only problem the cable companies should have to worry about.

Could not be happier with my comcast HDTV...

[SensitiveMale]

I have a Samsung 17" HDTV monitor, comcast HDTV cable tuner, and a Klipsch ProMedia 4.1 sound system and I couldn't be happier.

I'm watching in 720p and everything is incredibly detailed.

I just think they guy spent too much money and couldn't get everything working.

US DTV/HDTV directory

[daveschroeder]

dtv.gov is a site set up by the FCC that attempts to bridge the gap between ordinary consumers who want DTV/HDTV programming, and the actual information about where and how to get it. It also links to checkhd.com, with directories of free over-the-air, cable, and satellite HDTV programming in your locale.

lowly...

[iplayaguitar]

i'm just a lowly college student, so an hdtv is definately just a dream for me. i want one though. would anyone happen to know a good place to search for cheap ones?

Not My Experience

[HedRat]

I have a 50" Sony Grand Wega III LCD with Time Warners SA-8000 HD box and I couldn't be happier. All the prime time showings on ABC, NBC, FOX, etc. are all in H.D. I haven't had one single issue with my box except an occasional pixelation/stuttering and a re-boot usually takes care of that. I watch all non-hd, non-digital channels through the coax input and they are as clear and sharp as ever. I do know that there are different softwares that are used on the head-end; SARA and Pioneer. I have Pioneer which is much more stable and feature-laden than SARA.

SA 8000HD

[Syncalot]

man this is a piece of crap. I just recently moved from San Fran to San Diego and my loft doesnt face a direction where I can get DTV, so im forced to use COX. You can tell that the GUI of the SA8000HD is done by programmers, its just plain ugly, and the lack of alot of missing features is really a turn off. I come from the Tivo background and these other companies really need to look at what they have done as far as user interactivity. the SA8000 has many problems that I find really annoying and talk about expensive.. basic cable, hd package, pvr rental and pvr service .. come on guys who's ever gonna pay for your stuff if it costs 70-100 a month? and the lack of missing channels WB HD, UPN HD.. :( boo thumgs down..

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[Postalbunny]

RTFM. Hold info+guide to change the output mode. The box is made to output to component, you can switch to coax/svideo. The analog out puts are for recording to VCR while you're wathcing a show AND recording TWO other shows =) this box is great, its the best i've seen so far. Has room for improvement, but i wouldn't take that retards word for it. I can control my volume fine /w optical out... the nob for that is on the reciever. =) I gladdly pay an extra $5 a month to record in HD quality on 2 channels while watchign another... this rox.

How much resolution do you need?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been argued to death elsewhere, but it comes down to two issues:

1) Most content is SD.

2) Higher resolution is only useful if you can see it. At typical viewing distances, you need a pretty large screen to notice the difference between HD and ED. If you sit close to the 42" screen, HD may be worth it. At 12', ED may be good enough. Save your money for a larger screen, where the HD really is needed.

I'm considering replacing my 27" CRT with the Panny, which would be a nice upgrade. I'm not going to invest in a huge HD display until prices come down, HD cable/sat/ota technology improves, and my local rental shop carries HD discs. It's not worth it to me, yet, although it may be to you.

Re:How much resolution do you need?

[egomaniac]

Higher resolution is only useful if you can see it. At typical viewing distances, you need a pretty large screen to notice the difference between HD and ED. If you sit close to the 42" screen, HD may be worth it. At 12', ED may be good enough.

Only if you have poor eyesight. I have a 42" HD plasma at over fifteen feet viewing distance in my bedroom, and I can still easily tell the difference between HD and SD images on it. I admit that it's not as dramatic as on my other TVs (which are both larger and closer), but it was still worth the extra money IMHO.

Video connectors: RGB, YPrPb, s-video, ...

[MobyDisk]

I am shocked at the ridiculous number of connectors on today's TV equipment. I want to smack the person who created these things. Even if I I buy the best TV I can find with every connector I could find, it still won't hook to my computer, and still has less resolution than my 10 year old monitor!!

Perhaps someone can explain to me how/why most of these connectors exist:
1) Composite coaxial connector: Original, standard TV. Compatible with color or B&W. This make sense.
2) Composite video: Same exact thing, just a different connector. No better quality AFAIK. Why was this created?
3) S-video: Supposed to fix the problems of "composite" video signals, but it doesn't look any better. Still a crappy analog interlaced YRB signal.
4) Y-Pr-Pb component output: Silly. RGB is better, and was already supported by monitors, computers, and projectors. What is the point of this?
5) Y-Cr-Cb component output: Digital version of Y-Pr-Pb. DVI is better. Usually mislabeled as Y-Pr-Pb anyway.
6) VGA - Been around for >20 years, and is superior to all of the above.
7) DVI - Digital replacement for VGA. The best.

Even more frustrating is that TVs are RGB, so why did the industry continue to adopt YRB signal standards when it is both inconvenient to send, and to receive?

Re:Video connectors: RGB, YPrPb, s-video, ...

[SamBaughman]

1) Composite coaxial connector: Original, standard TV. Compatible with color or B&W. This make sense.
The original, over-the-air, frequency-modulated signal.

2) Composite video: Same exact thing, just a different connector. No better quality AFAIK. Why was this created?
This is an unmodulated, single video connection. It saves the cost of a modulator/demodulator, which is needed to put the signal on a "channel" over standard co-ax. Also, the audio signal is carried separately.

3) S-video: Supposed to fix the problems of "composite" video signals, but it doesn't look any better. Still a crappy analog interlaced YRB signal.
Separates luminance and chrominance onto separate wires, eliminating the mux/demux of these two analog signals into the single "composite" signal. (Which is composite only due to the upgrade from B&W to Color, which was a very neat backwards compatibility trick.)

4) Y-Pr-Pb component output: Silly. RGB is better, and was already supported by monitors, computers, and projectors. What is the point of this?
Splits the chrominance into two separate signals. Not entirely sure why. (Educated guess? The chrominance was split into Red (r) and Blue (b) components. But that's just a guess.)

5) Y-Cr-Cb component output: Digital version of Y-Pr-Pb. DVI is better. Usually mislabeled as Y-Pr-Pb anyway.
I'll have to take your word for it. (I think they're just using the standard chrominance (C) label instead of the 'P' label.. for partial? Again, just a guess.)

6) VGA - Been around for >20 years, and is superior to all of the above.
VGA is 640x480, no more, no less. The physical VGA link has been co-opted for higher resolutions. The physical link is pure analog, and it's better only because we've demanded better quality out of the transmitter (video card) and receiver (monitor), such as higher resolutions (1280x1024) and refresh frequency (85Hz).

7) DVI - Digital replacement for VGA. The best.
As long as you have an all-digital path. But, then, any digital transmission mechanism would suffice. FireWire (IEEE 1394) makes a good digitial transmission link. With digital, it's all about the signal bitrate and the medium's maximum bitrate. FireWire has plently of room for HD signals.

Even more frustrating is that TVs are RGB, so why did the industry continue to adopt YRB signal standards when it is both inconvenient to send, and to receive?
Because of backwards compatibility! The original B&W TV only used a luminance (Y) signal. This was great, but when TV's went color they wanted a backwards-compatibile system. So they used some nice signal magic and piggybacked a chrominance (C) signal over the Y. This meant a color receiver got colors, and a B&W receiver still received B&W reasonably. It's been a backwards compatibility game since the beginning.

Re:Video connectors: RGB, YPrPb, s-video, ...

[Jerrry]

1) Composite coaxial connector: Original, standard TV. Compatible with color or B&W. This make sense.
The original, over-the-air, frequency-modulated signal.

TV picture is amplitude modulated. The audio is frequency modulated.

2) Composite video: Same exact thing, just a different connector. No better quality AFAIK. Why was this created?
This is an unmodulated, single video connection. It saves the cost of a modulator/demodulator, which is needed to put the signal on a "channel" over standard co-ax. Also, the audio signal is carried separately.

"Unmodulated" is not the term I'd use. Baseband is a better description. Broadcast video is baseband video mixed with a carrier frequency. This generates a video signal in the correct frequency range for transmission.

A baseband video signal occupies 0-6MHz in frequency. Broadcast TV frequencies (in the U.S.) start at 52 MHz.

In a baseband video signal (NTSC), the luminance part of the signal is a VSB component centered 1.25 MHz above the lower edge of the channel. The chroma (color component) is QAM modulated on a carrier 3.58 MHz above the luminance carrier. The audio is FM modulated 4.5 MHz above the luminance carrier.

Color is encoded as follows:

Q=0.21R - 0.52G + 0.31B
I=0.60R - 0.28G - 0.32B

These two signals are then quadrature modulated onto a 3.58 MHz carrier such that the amplitude of the signal represents the color saturation and the phase represents the Hue. The color carrier is phase synched with a 3.58 MHz reference "color burst" transmitted on the back porch of the horizontal sync. Phase shift during transmission affects the hue and this is why NTSC is sometimes known as "Never Twice the Same Color".

Since the color information is encoded on the existing luminance signal, some overlap occurs in the frequency spectrums, and this is what makes it difficult, if not impossible, to perfectly separate the luminance from the color information. Newer 3D comb filters help, but it's best to keep the two signals separate, if possible. S-video and component connects separate the luminance from the chroma. Component goes further and separates the chroma into two color difference signals.

Re:Video connectors: RGB, YPrPb, s-video, ...

[Cid Highwind]

Even more frustrating is that TVs are RGB, so why did the industry continue to adopt YRB signal standards when it is both inconvenient to send, and to receive?

Backward compatibility rears it's ugly head again! Encoding color TV signals as Y/Pr/Pb instread of RGB allowed black-and-white TVs to recieve color broadcasts without an add-on decoder. Just chuck the Pb and Pr components and you're left with just Y, a standard monochrome TV signal.

DVI and S-Video disabled? WTF?

[Kosi]

What in the world does TW think of disabling any of the features in a device, especially ones which are a main reason to buy this device?

This is like buying a Maybach because of all the comfort and then learning that the backseats, air condition and the bar have been removed.

Re:DVI and S-Video disabled? WTF?

[JustNiz]

WTF is a maybach?

Re:DVI and S-Video disabled? WTF?

[RockClimbingFool]

I don't know about the S-video, I will need to go home and try out that connection. I do know about the DVI though. It isn't disabled. It's just not supported. At least that is how it is in TWC Houston area.

I know for a fact that if you plug in a DVI cable, the component video outputs get disabled. If you plug in component video cables, the DVI is disabled. Its basic copy protection required by the entertainment industry. They won't allow two high definition outputs at the same time from the same box.

S-video may get disabled if he has component video cables plugged in. Not sure.

Some people can hook up to the DVI and it will work. Others (like me) hook up the DVI and get a message saying:

"High Definition Copy Protection (HDCP) is not supported by you tv or monitor. Please use the component connections to view."

Why is that? Its because the industry as a whole has refused to agree on a standard implementation of HDCP. So some tv's work with SA's current software, some don't. TWC just says DVI isn't supported (or de-activated if you get the "really knowledgable" techs) because there is nothing they can do about it until SA gets them new firmware.

I am defending TWC very lightly here. They have problems all there own. But this one isn't entirely thier fault.

I am thinking the SA8000HD roll out is just a big beta test for the SA8300HD coming out next.

Re:DVI and S-Video disabled? WTF?

[Kosi]

It's what you get when Mercedes-Benz people build a Rolls-Royce-like car:

http://www.maybach-manufaktur.com

That's a lot of money to watch ads.

[tcs]

Where does this madness end? The poor bastard threw $10,000 down the crapper to be infuriated in the course of attempting to watch nauseatingly boring content (or the propaganda they call the evening news) peppered with ever-increasing quantities of advertising. This sounds like the behavior of a crack addict desperate for that next fix.

Kill your television! You will wonder how you ever found so much time to waste on the damn idiot box. Spend that time bettering yourself and sharing your time with friends and family. Get informed, get inspired, get out of the house; but do yourself a favor and get rid of your television.

But let's not discuss my /. or NPR addictions, OK? :)

This is getting old

[debian4life]

Day after day, one guy has a problem with something and then the old blanket statement that it is no good comes out.

I know people running HD on all kind of equipment and providers and they don't have the problems that this guy has.

I run HD at home on a cable company provided box with cable company provided cables on a 42" Mitsubishi projection TV and it looks freaking awesome. Now if someone wants to say there are not enough channels yet, I will listen to that. But if somebody can't figure out how to get their hardware to work right, take it to the other sites where people still can't change the time on their VCR.

This is probably the same guy who's Windows XP crashes all the time, or the same guy who says KDE and Gnome are slow on his P4 3.6 Gig processor and his 2 gigs of RAM.

Is it that they're disabled...

[deadsquid]

...or that he can't figure out how to route the signal through the right output?

I have an HD receiver, and it has all the same outputs as what this guy talks about. For my receiver, you have to select the output you will use. By default, this is the component out because that's what pretty much _any_ HDTV set has. If you want the DVI out, you select it.

I'm not in NYC anymore, so can't comment on whether TW disabled that output (I can't imagine why, because it is more encumbered than any analogue output), but it'd be nice to find out if it's because it's administratively disabled, or if buddy just didn't bother to RTFM.

I don't think HD is crap, but then I actually did my research _and_ understand how to use my gear. Something a lot of the "media" people in NYC I met when working there didn't have a clue about.

Re:Is it that they're disabled...

[CharlieHedlin]

I had the SA8000HD (and it isn't new in some parts of the country).

While it sucked, I can't say it was anywhere near as bad as this guy is saying. It was connected to a 57" RP CRT 1080i display.

The HD channels were great, the digital channels were ok, the analog channels sucked. This was also the case with the non DVR HD box.

Unfortunatly the HD TV was barrowed from a friend and I don't have it anymore. He has it hooked up to a SD DirecTivo and has commented that it looks much better than it did on my cable, mainly because so many of the cable channels were analog. I can see that it would probably work great on an HD TiVo, pulling all stations either from the satalite, or over the air HD. Of course, you probably can't get a satalite signal in NYC (or at least not Manhaten).

The Quest Continues

[DumbSwede]

Quite some time ago I posted an Ask Slashdot about pursuing HDTV with a NEC 135LC projection monitor (Making the HDTV Vision Quest? . Now years later the quest is not quite complete, though I am watching some HDTV. First off, the Over the Air Transmission in this area is almost totally lacking. Only NBC and ABC have any HDTV signal. NBC only just kicked off during the 2004 Olympics and even then isn't at full power, so can be spotty. ABC I can't pull in at all. ABC is about 30 miles away. I have a Channel Master Antenna, but not up on a large pole. A year after purchasing a My-HD cable card I finally started getting some HDTV. ER looks nice in HDTV, real nice, but having waited almost 3 years, and sunk $5,000 plus into this project with projector, computer, and HD card, I am not satisfied, and feel betrayed by the Broadcaster Community in this area.

Cable started offering HDTV about 6 month ago, but I assumed it wasn't compatible being component only, I then discovered Component to RGB converters. So I finally got a Motorola (9800? DVR) cable box about a month ago, and an Xblaster Component to RGB converter. Almost got the job done, but not quite. Probably would work fine for Xboxes, but not true HDTV. A had something viewable, but full 16:9 pictures often had dimmed horizontal streaked areas thru them that I assumed was from not having some kind of proper blanking interval on the left side of the screen. Another similar converter later with a horizontal-trim adjustment and I'm in business.

Cable does not carry the two local HDTV feeds (there outta be a law, and I'm sure will be soon). HD-Discovery Looks glorious, but doesn't really carry all that much hard science and is more of a travelogue. HD-Net has some really crappy original programming, but almost worth watching just because the picture is so good. HDNet-Movies has an occasional thing worth watching, but not much. I shelled out for HBO-HD, but it too is slim in the kind of big box office offerings I was expecting. Hopefully they will repeat the last Season of Sopranos and Six Feet Under in HD before the next season commences. For Music lovers, especially Jazz and Blues, Bravo plays a lot of music, and the picture is about the best of all the Channels. I don't watch much Sports, just as well, since 90% of the ESPN-HD is up-converted standard definition (granted at about DVD quality level).

Two things have happened since I started by HD project. One: Broadcast TV has just about died for me. Every year they offer less that I would want to watch. Two: Getting some HD content has made me unsatisfied with what regular content I would watch, so I watch even less of it.

Ironically this is probably not a bad thing. The cost of Cable with 6 HD channels and HBO included has not that much higher and with a DVR thrown in to boot. So now I DVR only what I want to watch, and go on with my life. I plan on getting an external firewire hard-drive, and will archive some "must-keep" movies past the 10 hours of HD my box can store locally. When Blu-Ray comes out, I think I will finally be happy. I have lots of DVDs, but now I want my collection in HD.

When HDTV is Good, it is VERY GOOD. I prefer my picture to the local Cineplex, and it is far better than any of the consumer HDTV offerings at BestBuy. But the consistency of Quality is spotty, and there is damn little to choose from.

Re:The Quest Continues

[formvoid]

DS, My experiences with HD have been close to the same... Now that I have had my head out of a terminal for awhile, I can finally begin to look into emerging HD options. Being a bit lazy here, but Blu-Ray? Any link info on this? Thanks, void

anyone putting HD thru a projector?

[bobalu]

I've got an InFocus X1 and have been wanting to put Monday Night Football through it in HD (if nothing else) and I'm wondering if anyone's tried this. I've been holding off going full HD for for obvious reasons, but it seems to me the 800x600 would be a lot better than the normal NTSC signal.

I think it would really makes a difference on the long shots where you're looking at the whole field from above...

Anyone use this with a terrestrial HD receiver?

p.s. The weight aspect of the projector mentioned above is very cool - I can palm the thing. And when it's nice I take it outside and shoot against a drop-cloth on the back of the house for my person drive-in. Highly recommended.

Actually, not true..

[Argyle]

People want to watch television programming. In fact, these days, they want it more than ever, desiring a wide selection.

People are not going to start watching television on desktop computers or start sticking PCs in the living rooms. The lean forward/lean back experiences are well defined and they aren't going to change.

TV may adopt methods and technology that are in use by computers today, but the idea that Television is dead is like declaring books dead because we have computers...

An ATSC HD bitstream is 19.3 Mb/s. All those with 19.3 Mb/s net connections at your home raise your hand. Now consider what bandwidth you need if youhave two TVs in your house.

Skip the 8000, wait for the 8300HD

[doormat]

SA's 8300HD PVR will be much better than the 8000HD, because it will have a function similar to Tivo's Home Media Option. You'll be able to watch recordings from other PVRs in the house. And you only need a PVR in one place, you can have non-PVR clients, so you dont have to spend lots of money renting many PVRs from the cable co.

The Read Deal

[kkovach]

This guy seems a bit biased to me. I just got the same SA 8000HD box myself last week. Here are my thoughts...

First, he spent too much for his display. I got one of the new Mitsubishi 62725s and it was only $5000.00, and to be honest, I think it's much better looking than the Sony LCDs out there now. Mind you, this is coming from somebody that owns a lot of Sony hardware, and is quite happy with it.

Second, there are plenty of options when it comes to connections, and while he does say that it wasn't that big a deal, I still think he made too big a deal about it.

Now on to the quality. This is where I do tend to agree with him on some things. I too have seen some issues with the picture stopping for a second. It is a little disappointing at first, but it's never been more than a second. I have also seen some noise in the picture from time to time. I don't know if this is a problem with the signal of the fact that we're coming off the disk or what.

However, I'm very very happy with the picture quality on most of the stations. It looks awesome! It's true that some stations look better than others, but the overall quality of the picture is more than worth the money if you ask me.

I found myself giggling several times this weekend while watching football. The picture is unbelievable. I stayed up several nights watching IMAX type productions on "The Serengeti" and "Mystical Cities of Asia". Like I said, the football is amazing! I can't wait to go home and watch more!

One thing that sucks about Time Warner is that they don't have CBS HD available. At least where I'm at.

There are some good and bad things that's for sure. However, I don't think it's as bad as this guy leads you to believe. Overall, I give it a B+ experience thus far.

- Kevin

Why does this remind me of Phantom...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they are disabled because just like Phantom, they're hot-glued onto the case and has no connection to any of the actual electronics inside...

You're high, all cable is compressed

[swb]

You're high. Cable companies have never broadcast any digital channels uncompressed. SD and SD signals are transmitted compressed.

I don't doubt that they step on the HD (and SD) signals harder than they should, the HD content I've seen from TW here in Minnesota has been good, especially the video-based content on Discovery HD and basketball in HD.

I'll agree with other posters that the quality isn't as much the issue, it's the lack of content available. I can get about 8 channels max, and that will cost me an arm and a leg (adding HDNet and Showtime) -- the content isn't worth it.

Joe Sixpack bait

[Ryan C.]

Absoulutely spot on. When any of my Joe Sixpack friends come over, I show them my HDTV projector setup and they ooh and ahh a bit about the nature program or whatever is on. Then I switch to some recorded Mondy Night Football and they plop down in a chair and start to twitch. This usually gets me in trouble as their wife complains two days later that their bank account is mysteriously missing a couple thousand dollars.

Sidenote: they also seem quite smitten with HD baseball, which I can't for the life of me understand, my favorite meduim for basball is radio.

On the beer goggle front: Sometimes when we're all watching something like Sunday football in HD, I'll switch over to the regular SD channel of the same game for effect. This causes everyone to groan, boo, and yell "Turn the game back on!".

This guy is an idiot.

[NetJunkie]

Uh...I have the SA8000HD. It works just fine. No volume on the digital audio? Yeah. Know why? Cause you plug it in to a receiver that handles all that. Starts? Stops? Problems? Check your signal buddy. Mine is smooth.

HD is most certainly ready for prime time. Well over half of actual prime time is in HD. I can watch football all weekend in HD. I'll be watching Monday Night Football tonight in it. If anyone says there isn't enough HD content yet they are WRONG...or just mainly watch a channel that hasn't moved yet. If you watch the major networks they offer plenty of content.

Re:This guy is an idiot.

[skink1100]

Absolutely correct. The box is not without problems, but overall I am very happy. HD is great and it IS Prime Time at my house.

S

How about Wireless HDTV!

[UpLock]

That's right...I just put up an antenna and--can you believe it--started receiving network broadcast HDTV in 1080i with a 12 foot diagonal image FOR FREE! First wireless networking, now wireless television. What will those clever technologists think of next? Sure, I needed some equipment: Try a $900 InFocus X1 projector, a $350 DaLite Screen, a $400 MIT MDR-200 HDTV tuner and a Terk-55 antenna. That leaves me $300 towards an all-in-one home theater system...or HDTiVo some day...assuming I only want to pay 20% of what Shelly Palmer did.

Analogs Disabled

[NetJunkie]

The reason that you can't use the s-video and/or RCA audio connections is they were disabled to keep non-HD users from getting the boxes. The boxes have a much bigger HD than the SD DVRs and cost a lot more due to the HD capability. Time Warner didn't want non-HD people saying they had HD just to get the boxes for the longer recording time.

HDTV is complete crapola!

[Gigantic1]

HDTV...so what? I've already got a big screen that does just fine and more resolution via HDTV isn't really going to "better" the experience. Yeah...it's more "High Tech" - or whatever - but it doesn't add much considering the hassle and expense.

Also, you can add DVD to the list of "Crapola", too. DVDs are the biggest sham ever thrust on the american public - Expensive, Unreliable and subject to Scratches/dust. Let others have them.

On the bright side - TiVo seems like a product that could add value and I'm looking into purchasing one now. Would be a great format to record shows until I decide whether or not I'll transfer then to VHS via a high quality, but very inexpensive, player/recorder - THAT DOESN'T LET ME DOWN!

Just my rant for the day.

Get an Antenna

[Moe Taxes]

Near Orlando, FL I get 12 free broadcast HDTV channels. If you like TV so much you are willing to pay for it there are lots more available on satellite.

Scientific Atlanta and HD

[xodiak]

Talk about a pain in the arse. Scientific Atlanta's HD boxes (the 8000SD and the 8000HD) are just that. btw, the DVI output does work, but is incompatible with some tvs. They will only output in 16:9 (which pisses off a lot of subscribers) and seem to have a problem creating a clear picture. If you have a 4:3 screen you're stuck with letterbox (unless if your TV will zoom it, then your stuck without the right and left side of the picture). Ok, enough about sa and their horrible HD Boxes.

If you want to get an HD box from Time Warner. Make sure to get their Pace 550p. Don't even think about accepting the SA boxes. And don't even bother with the HD DVR. The Pace 550p has zoom, stretch, and normal output supported by the converter. On top of that, you can choose an output being 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i (which you can alter on a menu that doesn't require your tv, which is invaluable) as well as passthrough. Also, you can specify if you want 4:3 or 16:9 with those resolutions. Really, the only HD converter you should bother with from time warner.

Also, unless you know about cable you should have your cable company install the bloody box. It should assure you that the FDC (data going to the box) and the RDC (data being sent from the box to the cable co) are at proper levels, FDC being significantly more important to the average viewer. Actually, more than likely the installer is a lazy kid that gets paid $9/hr. So I suppose you just need to get lucky in order to recieve the level of service you expect.

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[NetJunkie]

RF and S-Vid are disabled to keep non-HD users from getting the boxes just because they have more recording capacity than the normal SD DVR. These boxes cost too much to give them to non-HD subscribers.

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[thoromyr]

I'm still trying to figure out how this makes sense. Maybe its because I don't have digital speakers, but I'd assume that the best place to control sound would be at a central point before dispersal to umpteen different speakers.

"Okay, we've got the subwoofer, left and right speakers turned up. Now for the center. Not sure if we need to turn up the rear speakers."

If you want fine-tune control over the volume to each speaker its still preferrable to have a central point to do this from/with.

thoromyr

Adelphia users aren't impressed either...

[antdude]

See this Adelphia forum thread on BroadbandReports.com.

If it's anything like its non-HD cousin

[Anonymous Coward]

That Explorer unit is only the worst piece of cable equipment I have ever used. Channel changes were much slower than a non-digital replaytv I used as well as the standard non-dvr cable box. The unit (Ive had 2, one just quit working one day) would reboot itself at inopportune times and really did not handle the record 2 programs, watch a recorded program behavior very well.

Not to mention, there were NO features to speak of. My cable company or Scientific Atlanta, not sure which, had just figured out the week I canceled my service (beginning of august) how to show me how much recording space I had left.

Ubergeek He's Not

[Jerrry]

It sounds to me like this guy made some good choices and some bad choices in picking his equipment, although anyone who'd spend $3500 on a Bose audio system shouldn't call himself an "ubergeek" (idiot, maybe, but not ubergeek).

I recently upgraded from a 32" CRT to a 50" plasma HDTV and have not had any of the issues he's had. My cable company (Comcast) uses Motorola DCT-6200 cable boxes, and is has DVI, Component, S-video, and composite outputs all active at the same time. It even has working firewire outputs for connection to a DVHS recorder.

Some points from his article:

1) I can't figure out why he's complaining about no volume control from the cable remote. All the cable box does is pass the digital sound bitstream through to the decoder. To implement a volume control, the cable box would have to decode the sound, adjust the levels, and re-encode before sending it to the decoder. Doesn't his Bose sound system have a volume control? If he doesn't want multiple remotes, he can buy a universal remote.

2) The box uses "gray letterboxing" to prevent screen burn-in.

3) His channel switching time seems excessive. My STB switches channels in well under a second, even when the display needs to switch aspect ratios. It's hard to tell from his description if this is primarily a cable box or a display problem, but I suspect the cable box.

My experience with HDTV couldn't have been more different than this guy's. Everything worked right the first time for me--the total setup time was only 2-3 hours, and this included drilling 1/2" holes in a solid brick wall to mount the plasma display. I get 6 local HTDV channels (including all of the networks), INHD, INHD2, Discovery HD Theater, ESPN, HBO, Showtime, and one or two more. Picture quality is fantastic on all of these. There are times, however, when I see digital compression artifacts, or dropouts on the HD channels, but these are rare.

Watching the CBS shows (CSI *, NCIS, JAG, etc.) in HD is really great. The widescreen picture and surround sound has to be seen and heard to be believed.

Some DVDs look better on the HD display, and some don't. You can really see who took the time to do a good job (Star Wars trilogy) and who didn't (Harry Potter movies) on the transfers. The good transfers are fantastic and the poor ones are almost unwatchable, but that's not the fault of the display.

So is HDTV for everyone? No. I certainly wouldn't expect someone like my mother to be able to install and us a HD setup as complicated as mine, but anyone reading Slashdot shouldn't have any problems with the technology.

um, 16" from 32"

[way2trivial]

that would be 25% of your screen, not half.
we're talking area SQUARED, which means the double letterboxing reduces it to 25% of available area

Why bother with HD?

[coaxial]

I'm not trolling. I honestly wnat to know, why are we as a society bothering with HDTV? What does it give us, that we don't already have? A different aspect ratio? Letterboxing gives us that. Higher resolution? I've been to Best Buy and have seen their HD sets. I wasn't impressed. Broadcast flags? I can do without that, thank you very much.

It strikes me that something is wrong when you have to legislate a technological upgrade. Even with that HDTV market penetration is lagging far behind expectations.

Yes, I know that we're all going to have to upgrade. I just wish it didn't reek of the corps finally getting a law pass requiring me to buy buy buy.

Re:Why bother with HD?

[Jerrry]

Why bother with HD?

Indeed. Why bother with higher resolution PC displays? Why don't we all stick with 640x480... Why does anyone need more?

Re:Why bother with HD?

[Anonymous Coward]

The displays at most stores are not set up with HD and non-HD side by side for comparison, or the signal is split 20-way to run to all of the TVs on display, which reduces the signal quality, or its not even an HD signal that they are showing. It wasn't until I saw a tennis match in HD at my parents' house (set up properly with okay signal strength, etc.) that I noticed a difference, and it was impressive. This was broadcast CBS I think.

I don't think there are enough cable channels yet for what they charge.

Re:Why bother with HD?

[coaxial]

Indeed. Why bother with higher resolution PC displays? Why don't we all stick with 640x480... Why does anyone need more?

You do a lot of reading on your television?

I knew he was an impostor the second he said Bose.

[mr. methane]

I've got one of the same boxes. Luckily I happen to be in a city which, surprisingly, has a lot (16?) HD channels on cable. Some are better than others - Fox, for example, broadcasts very little in HD, while CBS and NBC have almost their entire prime-time schedule in 1080i 16x9.

HBO and SHO both have two HD channels - and SHO typically does letterboxed 2.35:1 while HBO usually does pan-and-scan 16x9 (but their telecine work is good enough that I am very happy with it.

My only grouse about time warner's HD box is that the menu/navigation is not as incredibly intuitive as Tivo, and their remote has too many buttons for my taste.

Being able to record two hi-def shows while watching a third... No complaints at all about that. :-)

Re:HD is ready for Prime Time . . . This HD-DVR is

[Fnkmaster]

Agreed, the SA8000 boxes do suck, but so do the Pioneer boxes. Unfortunately, for most of us who live in Manhattan (i.e. big apartment buildings, no satellite option available unless you have a terrace with unblocked southern exposure like my buddy over on West End Ave.), cable in the only option, and generally most buildings are cable monopoly by building. So if you don't like your cable company you can always just buy a new apartment for a cool few mil. :) In my case, I've decided to just live with Time Warner.

So I'm stuck with this POS Pioneer HD box attached to my otherwise excellent 60" Grand Wega III LCD RP set. I also have my Tivo attached, so I can switch between Tivo mode and direct box access for HD viewing. I generally don't leave the Pioneer box tuned to HD channels overnight because it has a tendency to freeze and require a reboot every few days if it's left tuned to HD. Yup, it thoroughly sucks. What I want: HD Tivo box with CableCard support, so I can ditch this Time Warner equipment for equipment. When is it coming Tivo? Where's the innovation guys?

Blu-Ray is Da Bomb

[DumbSwede]

Goto Google News, type Blu-Ray.
LOTS of stuff

ROM capacity of 27-Gig Single, 50-Gig Double layer, with prototype re-writeable of 8 layer 200-GIG

HD-Movies at upto 36 Mbit. Almost double the head room of over the air HDTV. With MPEG 4 encoding this should be a bump up in quality over standard HDTV. Assuming they don't just try to fill it up with unnecessary DVD extras (yes I know some people really like the extra stuff).

I've mentioned this before in other threads, but Movie makers need to up the frame rate on filming to 60fps (instead of the standard 24). We have enough spatial resolution now, but fast pans still look like crap because of the low frame rates of standard film. Blu-Ray would have more than enough capacity for 60fps 3-4 hours in MPEG 4.

Re:Blu-Ray is Da Bomb

[formvoid]

Thanks bro... You is a rocking with the insight.

Very much appreciated!

void

I don't think so

[orasio]

I have a digital audio source. It's called xmms.
It has volume control.
Then I use ESD, and then an audio driver.
It has volume control.
After that, I have a DAC, and then a set of analog speakers, and those have an audio knob, too.
See?
I have digital volume control, and analog volume control.
If you mean that they shouldn't expect to have volume control, maybe it's because you are not thinking about regular people. The correct assumptio is that if I have an appliance that is a source of audio, and it has a remote control, it has to have a volume control.
Just because _professional_ digital audio systems shouldn't have a volume control, it doesn't mean that _consumer_ sets shouldn't.

Programming their remote to command a different device is a feat above most users expectations. Assumptions like that are guilty of the blinking 12:00 fiasco.

Re:I don't think so

[robhancock]

The Motorola/General Instrument boxes they have around here don't control the output of the box at all, either analog or digital. That's done entirely though the TV or amp the box is connected to. The remote defaults to controlling the TV's volume when you use the volume control on the cable box's remote.

I think it may actually have the ability to control the volume, but this is only intended for use with a crap ancient TV that doesn't have a remote..

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[angle_slam]

The digital output audio is NEVER volume controllable. It gets input to your receiver, and you control the volume from the receiver. The receiver figures out the volume of each channel and where to send the signals. The blogger should have hooked the digital output to the receiver and used the receiver's remote to control volume.

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[angle_slam]

Only an idiot would use RF or S-video to connect an HD box to an HD TV.

System of the World Spoiler Question

[Dwindlehop]

What on earth was Catherine Barton thinking when she slept with Daniel Waterhouse? In my experience, attractive young women do not sleep with old men, especially immediately after their former lovers die.

Re:HD is ready for Prime Time . . . This HD-DVR is

[ad0gg]

DirecTivoHD is $1000+ if you can find it, my adelphia HDTV reciever is $15/m(including hdtv service). My adelphia box is getting software updates every couple weeks, just last week I got a guide that actually shows the next couple hours of shows instead of what was currently on. Still waiting for the DVI driver to get written, adelphia says they are working on it so i'm stuck with component.

Other than the box is slow and no dvi yet, its lot cheaper than shelling out a grande for directivehd.

Digital cable isn't all digital

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing to be aware of, and I was not, was that when you sign up for digital cable and HDTV cable, its not all going to be digital. You typically get X number of digital channels while still tuning the analog signal of the first 60 or so channels.

It was a big let down. The digital channels look great, but the analog channels still suffer from the same static, snow, and interference that I was trying to avoid by spending the money on digital cable.

My take on it is that I will probably switch to DirectTV or VOOM or something like that.

I have been pleased with the digital DVR that my cable (insight) supplied. Its the Motorola box and appears to record Highdef content. However, I'm not certain that the hidef content is being recorded in full highdef quality. I get a sense that its not, but can't say for certain since its a little hard to distinguish the truly highdef (720p, 1080i) channels from normal digital (480p) with my projection tv.

Regardless, I think the analog signal was a big letdown and I plan to switch over to all-digital satelite at some point.

Ditto here...

[malakai]

I'm in Manhattan and have an Explorer 8000 DVR (non-HD). The freezes started about 2 months ago, at least. Even when nothing is being background recorded, your live broadcasts will stutter. It will actually lose frames, it's not like it's buffering.

Recording late night/early morning ( 2am-5am) has far less stutters. Before this problem, the probelm my friends and I had were with the VoD not working (buy it, play it, wait wait wait, error message).

I think their network is exceptionally overloaded. I can only imagine what HD is going to add to the saturation point.

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[thoromyr]

Right, but parent asserted that "he should be controlling it from his speakers" -- which seems nonsensical. I control my PC speakers volume by a volume knob on the speaker, but that is a case where the "receiver" is part of the speaker -- and it applies the volume to both speakers, not just one.

And if you want to give the article writer credit you can suppose that his assertion was about proliferation of remote controls.

Having recently purchased a DVD player and separate receiver I have a comment on that: the salesman convinced my wife to buy both as Sony (I had picked out different brands initially) with the argument that we would only need one remote. However, this is not the case: to actually fully control the Sony DVD player requires the DVD player remote and to control the volume requires the receiver remote.

The last stereo equipment I purchased (now deceased) at least provided a reasonably competent multi-function universal remote that I was able to program for everything except the vcr (which is rarely used anyway).

The point being that for a product like this to be "ready" it needs to provide features consumers want: and most want to avoid a stack of a dozen remotes.

thoromyr

[As a side benefit to having a multi-function remote I was able to program the IRman for it with only minor problems. The TVs multi-remote provided better component separation, but fewer of the buttons I wanted. I have yet to tackle the Sony remotes, but because they are single function there will probably be issues with commands being received by multiple components.]

TimeWarner HD

[lusid1]

I've got a different HD box, a pioneer without DVR, and the image quality of the SD channels is rancid. Black levels are light grey, and the whole image has a heavy blur applied. Sure, they blurred out the noise, but it looks like a 60" VCD.

If I take the svideo (active, thankfully) from the same box and run it direct, it looks good. Run it through my HTPC and it looks great.

Conclusion: The image processor was designed by a blind man. This box is a POS.

The actual HD channels look incredible.

Truth in Advertising Needed

[DumbSwede]

Cable, Satellite, and even Over-the-Air transmission should be force to list the quality of the signals they are providing. In the pre-digital NTCS world there were differences in quality, but they where hard to quantify. If you had a clean signal, it could theoretically be 330x480 max in resolution. Once Cable started going digital this all went down hill very quickly. They claim DIGITAL quality, but the Sci-Fi channel I get is compressed down to something like Quarter VGA and looks like crap on a big screen. The various digital channels obviously have different bandwidths and compression used on them, and these numbers should be stated explicitly for posting in viewers guides like Yahoo TV or TV-Guide.

Some HBO channels (Standard Resolution) are near DVD Quality, while others are terrible like the afore mentioned Sci-Fi channel. BTW I do have to pay extra for Sci-Fi so I find it's poor picture quality especially galling.

Now that I have HDTV on some channels, I just about want to retch when I tune in other channels over the same cable. Just to be clear, the 50 or so channels offered in uncompressed analog NTSC are all far superior in quality to the Standard Definition digital channels, cable propaganda aside, with the exception of a couple of Subscription Movie Channels, where I assume the paying public won't pay a subscription for something worse than Over the Air.

It shouldn't be hard to post the 3 relevant pieces of info: Resolution, Bandwidth, and Compression Scheme.
This should be mandated under some truth-in-labeling law

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[robhancock]

It doesn't make any sense to control the volume of the digital audio output from the cable box. The volume should be adjusted from whatever that's plugged into (i.e. the surround amp).

Comcast...

[ethanms]

I've had a Comcast HDTV DVR box for over a month now... It's Motorola branded and I believe it has an 80GB drive...

It has USB on the front and rear, as well as DVI, optical and component outputs...

The quality of the picture and the controls are fantastic, the DVR (and live TV pause) quality are also outstanding... blows away Tivo by a huuuuuge margin even on the analog channels.

The amount that you can fit on the 80GB leaves something to be desired... I think it's only 10-20 hours for HDTV recording, but Hitachi has a 400GB drive out, so I'm guessing that soon enough it won't be an issue.

The only complaint is the method to select shows... you can browse your guide and hit the record button to schedule recordings, or you can search out shows @ specific times and record them... but you can't issue a blanket record statement that records a certain program any time it occurs on any (or even a specific) channel... which is something I miss from BeyondTV.

Another minor complaint... it would be nice to have a dual tuner setup (which Comcast says is on it's way) so that I can record something and watch something else (or more accurately, my roommate can record while I watch).

The box is relatively cheap, ~$8.50/mo... I say relatively, because that includes the equipment and "service" which Tivo/Replay/etc all require... and I get new equipment if this breaks and I get upgraded equipment when it becomes available if I want.

In regards to HDTV via cable (which is what this about)--

You do not get the multiple channels like you get over the air... for example, we have 3 available PBS stations in Boston (liberal state...) and each offers up to 4-5 shows at a time, but we only have the main HD channel from the largest station, none of the side channels. We're missing all the other HD channels from the area except for the bigger networks: CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX...

You also need to be extra careful about signal qualities... our HD channels will drop-out / break-apart while the other digital channels and the cable modem don't seem to notice... I don't know if this is an issue w/ the signal quality coming into my home, or an issue at the cable plant itself, but it can be annoying.

All in all, it beats rabbit years and 90% of the time the HD channels locally are just playing some garbage anyway... channels like HBO, SHO, STARZ, etc, are what make HDTV worth it... true 16:9 and 5.1 is kick ass... X-Men 2 looks much better then the DVD...

Odd priorities

[iluvatar5150]

You spend $1300 on video equipment (including $300 on just a screen), but only $150 on your entire audio setup? Do you have tin ears?

-Dan.

Re:Odd priorities

[ed1park]

Well, i was illustrating the minimum acceptable scenario. Shoe string budget if you will. I have some Creative 7.1 speakers i bought from newegg for about $150 that work great. For my home theater I'm using the Klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1's. A pretty good bang for the buck I'd say for about $400. Alternatively, you could buy a great pair of headphones for $150 and buy a cheap subwoofer and sit on it. Is that better? :)

Here's a link to a bunch of screenshots btw of another pj.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s= c9 2f03422f2044632b093a123255466b&threadid=445003&hig hlight=screenshots

Re:Odd priorities

[budly]

I know several girls that would prefer to sit on the subwoofer ;-)

Not talking about computers, dude...

[Otto]

Did I sound like I was talking about computers?

Your standalone DVD player, does it have a volume control? How about the VCR? It outputs audio, where's the volume control on it?

Why in the hell would you expect a cable box to have an audio control? Especially on the digital output? A digital output is to output a digital signal to the amplifier/decoder in the stereo or TV. That's the whole point of having the digital signal there, either using coax or the fiber connection. You don't have a volume control on the cable box because the digital signal isn't being DECODED in the cable box, it's being decoded in the amplifier, into DTS or Dolby Digital 5.1 or something like that.

Your computer is doing the audio processing all in the PC. Your cable box is not. The point of digital audio lines on consumer level devices is to preserve the undecoded raw digital signal all the way to the amp. That means you can't have a volume control on the source.

Re:Not talking about computers, dude...

[dododge]

Some consumer devices, such as the Roku Soundbridge, do actually have volume control for their digital audio output. Whether you consider these computers is a judgement call.

However, as you suggest there are issues with specially encoded audio. The Soundbridge normally expects to be handling plain stereo PCM, in which case it can manipulate the digital stream as it passes through. If you want to stream something like DTS or AC3 through it, you have to set the volume to 100% and it will then pass the data through without trying to interpret it.

Re:Not talking about computers, dude...

[orasio]

That's what I was talking about in the second part of my post. Expectations. Consumer level devices shouldn't need configuration, or knowledge about what digital stuff can or cannot do. They should just work.

I don't own a stand alone DVD box, my computer is my media box. My VCR _remote_control_ does have a volume control, that controls the tv volume, _with_no_ configuration, transparently. In fact, if it didn't work out of the box, it would have seem too clumsy to me. When I want to configure things, I use Slackware, and get extra featres that consumer sets don't give me, but consumer stuff should not require consumer knowledge, because consumers don't enjoy learning stuff.

I don't want to hear all that technical gibberish about encoding and decoding audio. Consumer stuff doesn't work that way, it just works. My cable decoder has volume control, so I can hold just one remote in my hand while watching cable, and I don't need to read any manual to configure it. The part about XMMS was just about explaining that digital volume control is something that can be done, even when you have to decode audio.

Re:Not talking about computers, dude...

[Otto]

I don't own a stand alone DVD box, my computer is my media box. My VCR _remote_control_ does have a volume control, that controls the tv volume, _with_no_ configuration, transparently. In fact, if it didn't work out of the box, it would have seem too clumsy to me.

Lemme guess, same brand TV and VCR? Of course it worked out of the box. Most people, however, don't necessarily stick to brand name. However programming a remote is something most people DO know how to do. They've been doing it with universal remotes for frickin' years. Look up the brand in the book, hold a key down, type in a code from the book, see if it works. Not all that difficult here. ...but consumer stuff should not require consumer knowledge, because consumers don't enjoy learning stuff.

I realize consumers are idiots. That's not the point. The point is that what you ask for, the cable box controlling the digital audio volume, is TECHNICALLY IMPOSSIBLE because that violates the whole fucking point of having digital audio in the first place.

The point of having digital audio is to get the best possible sound. If the source, the cable box, is doing the decoding and changing the freakin' data, then it's no longer the best possible sound. The Amp adjusts the volume using an analog control. The cable box sends the digital audio to the Amp. This is not rocket science and this is not required learning and this is not that difficult to understand.

You plug one cable between your stereo amp and your cable box and it just works. Simple. Easy. It really, truly, can't get any easier than that.

I don't want to hear all that technical gibberish about encoding and decoding audio.

I don't give a SHIT what you want to hear. I was explaining WHY it is the way it is. If you want to make it simple and easy then it is simple and easy: Plug the digital audio into the receiver box, program the remote by typing a code, done. Simple. Easy. Any consumer can do it. Any consumer that can't do it is a moron who probably doesn't know how to wipe his ass properly either.

Consumer stuff doesn't work that way, it just works.

Hah! You, sir, obviously are a fool who buys all in one integrated systems from Radio Shack or something like that. Fine. Enjoy your overly expensive shitty hardware. :-P

The part about XMMS was just about explaining that digital volume control is something that can be done, even when you have to decode audio.

Yes, except that I don't WANT my cable box to decode my audio. That's the WHOLE FUCKING POINT. If my cable box is decoding my audio, then I've LOST AUDIO QUALITY. Do you understand? Do you comprehend WHY we have digital outputs and inputs in the first place? I want that signal to stay digital all the way to the amp. Why? Because that's what sounds the best! I don't want some 25cent chip in the cable box fucking with the audio stream, I want the cable box to pass the stream to the expensive well designed dedicated decoding hardware in the amplifier. That's why I use the digital output in the first place. That's the only REASON to use a digital output.

If you want the cable box to decode your sound and fuck it all up, then by all means use the analog outputs. That's exactly what they do. And yes, most cable boxes have a volume control on them. But putting volume control on the digital output of the cable box is not only missing the point, it's RUINING the digital output by subjecting it to a D2A and A2D conversion. Get it?

XMMS doesn't enter into this because XMMS is not a signal source, and is not a valid comparison to a cable box or a satellite decoder or a DVD player or any of those things.

Re:Not talking about computers, dude...

[Otto]

Some consumer devices, such as the Roku Soundbridge, do actually have volume control for their digital audio output. Whether you consider these computers is a judgement call.

I would consider these computers for the most part, as they're doing processing of the data already, in decoding it from MP3 to analog or PCM waveform data. Anyway, they could be adjusting the global gain levels in the audio stream before decoding for all of that matter (although they're probably not, I grant you).

Changing the volume of a PCM waveform by scaling the waveform data is a totally shitty way to adjust volume. If the devices have a way to disable that, then that's what I would use.

Re:Not talking about computers, dude...

[orasio]

You are losing the point, and it, at the same time.

I was just trying to explain to you, and you refuse to understand, that digital volume control is feasible, and easy. There is a difference between decoding, and DAC. You can decode the digital stream, resample the digital audio with a smaller aplitude, and then recode it, all that without loss of digital quality. More important, cable boxes do have to decode the lossy stream, and encode it as plain audio, so they can many non-lossy transformations to the resulting wave, including amplitude control. Even pitch could be changed without loss of quality, at the decoder.

On the part about the expectations of consumers, I agree with you in the fact that consumers are idiots. I disagree in your assumptions that they can change. I refuse to believe that consumer people are happy to program a remote control.

Consumer-ready means "no config required". Maybe you believe programming a remote control is acceptable for a consumer. You are wrong. The same happened to me. I used to believe that installing a GNU/Linux distribution was so easy and quick it was ready for most people. They proved me wrong. People want to but stuff and using, and learn nothing in the process.

Re:Not talking about computers, dude...

[Otto]

You can decode the digital stream, resample the digital audio with a smaller aplitude, and then recode it, all that without loss of digital quality.

No, you can't. You'll have rounding error. Not to mention that you're lowering the dynamic range of the sample and making it sound flat and muddy.

More important, cable boxes do have to decode the lossy stream, and encode it as plain audio,

No, they don't. My cable box is more than capable of outputing a DD5.1 stream to my Amp. No decoding in the cable box necessary or desirable. If you want decoded audio, the analog outputs are right there.

I refuse to believe that consumer people are happy to program a remote control.

Let's be clear. By "program" a remote control, you mean to look up a code in a book and type it into their remote. I mean, it's not extremely complex or anything here. EVERY remote with volume controls supports this. My DVD's player remote supports programming the volume and channel buttons to work with my TV or cable box or both. My cable box remote supports the volume control on my amp or TV, and also supports controling my VCR and DVD player. My TV remote supports basically everything in the AV rack.

I've programmed a universal remote with my own custom setup, and I admit that this is more than normal non-geeks would do, but everybody is capable of setting a couple of remotes by reading the book. This is generally a one time event when they buy the equipment. Even my 4 year old DVD player had this programmability in it. It's easy. Consumers are idiots, but they are NOT stupid.

Consumer-ready means "no config required".

There is no such thing. People have different preferences, different setups, different configs. Even plugging in wiring is "config" and there will always be configuration required. It's a fact of life.

And you're also totally out of touch with what "consumer" equipment is. I consider anything that you can buy at, say, "Best Buy" to be consumer level equipment. Professional grade equipment is found at higher end, professional grade stores.

As someone who MAY work in the industry.....

[SiliconJesus101]

I can safely say that this guys experience can partially be blamed on himself. If his picture constantly macro-blocks he really should get a service tech scheduled to investigate. A great forward signal level would be anything between +3dBmv and -7dBmv; anything outside of that and you start to have issues with macro-blocking on digital cable boxes and packet loss on a DOCSIS cable modem.

There most definitely are good reasons why they do not want you to just pick up a high definition cable box. The first reason is to ensure that you do in fact have high definition capable equipment. It's absolutely amazing how many people want to have a high definition cable box simply because it's newer and must be better whether they have an HD capable television or not. The second reason, and the more important one in his case is that a meter ( http://www.sunrisetelecom.com/broadband/cm1000.sht ml )is used to test the outlets that his high definition equipment will be connected to. Any signal level issues can and will be corrected.

As for the outputs not all working on the box, well, this is a known issue in the firmware of the SA Explorer 8000HD. When the technician comes out to install this particular box the customer is informed of the current limitations of the equipment pending a firmware update from SA. I would hardly expect for the counter people to be fully aware of this (non-technical customer service reps) but the installer most definitely could have given him the information and suggested alternatives. The SA Explorer 8000HD works great as long as you use component for the video and coaxial digital for the audio. I think most people that actually have a high definition television also have a home theater receiver capable of handling that particular setup.

For me personally, I grabbed the Pace branded HD cable box ( http://www.pacemicro.com/corporate/products/prodin fo.asp?PID=DC550 ) and it works absolutely flawlessly.

I spent 1,000$ and I find HD is ready.

[Anonymous Coward]

750$ 30" 16:9 Philips
200$ Samsung HD Tuner
25$ DVI 2 HDMI Cable.
10$ Jenson VHF/UHF Antenna.

I get everything but FOX, I dont need cable since there are very few shows id be interested in watching, which are easily obtainable off BT sites.

I feel sorry for the folks who spent a boatload of money on HDTV and actually thought everything was going to be in widescreen crisp 1080i hd. I feel that alot of the HD is in 720p, and upscaled to 1080i. Hard to be sure, you end up having to check your local station to find out.

HD *IS* ready for Prime Time, the cable co aren't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, HD is ready for prime time.

Check out Monday Night Football on ABC on their HD channel.
It is the most incredible picture I have ever seen!
Even the 5.1 audio is spectacular!

The problem is the cable companies. They don't want to allocate the bandwidth space required for true HD for all your local HD channels, that is *IF* you are lucky enough to have your local cable co OFFER local hd channels.

Digital Volume Exists!

[bbahner]

Um, actually digital audio CAN (and in certain cases DOES) have a volume adjustment.

Digital signals consist of samples that encode both frequency and amplitude. Without the amplitude bits, all parts of a given digital recording would have the same relative volume. By mathematically manipulating the amplitude bits, you can achieve the equivalent of a volume control.

Case in point - the Apple Airport Extreme base station I own has an optical digital output that is connected to my receiver. And the iTunes prefs on my computer provide a setting to continue allowing use of the onscreen volume control even when routing music to the stereo through the Airport.

So iTunes/Airport must reduce or increase the amplitude bits encoded in the digital signal being sent to my receiver by applying some kind of mathematical transformation. I know this because the signal is digital all the way into my receiver, but still I can control the volume from my pc.

FWIW, it works great - with lossless encoding, a decent receiver and B&W speakers, I get something approaching audiophile sound quality.

Re:Digital Volume Exists!

[Otto]

So iTunes/Airport must reduce or increase the amplitude bits encoded in the digital signal being sent to my receiver by applying some kind of mathematical transformation. I know this because the signal is digital all the way into my receiver, but still I can control the volume from my pc.

Yeah, it's scaling the PCM waveform data by some percentage based on whatever volume level you set. I know it's possible, I'm just saying that it sucks.

FWIW, it works great...

No, it doesn't. It fucking sucks.

First off, you cannot increase the volume of most signals this way without clipping the waveform because they already have peaks at the upper end of the range (they're normalized). That causes peak data to be lost and sounds terrible, like spikes of static bursts in the middle of the music.

If you build the thing so that it can "raise" the volume, then what that means is that the default volume on the device is actually lowering the volume of the waveform by some amount.. so you can later "raise" it without getting that clipping. But this scaling down of the waveform causes a loss of dynamic range, making the audio more muted and kinda annoying to listen to.

The short of it is that digital volume control freakin' sucks when you're limited to modifying the waveform directly, which is all a digital output will let you actually do. Analog volume control is so much the way to go. Keep the signal steady, change the amplification. Not the other way around.

On the cheap.

[KrackHouse]

If you are a picture quality purist like myself and you don't need a 60" TV have a look at some of the direct view(tube) HDTVs. I got one for about $740 through the deals section at AVS forums. There is a difference in quality between 1080i and 720p, I know because my tv does both. Most projection/DLP hdtvs can only display 720p. Football looks better in 720p especially on Fox, CBS does games in 1080i and while there is more detail it doesn't look quite as good and you can see compression artifacts.

I think the lack of programming depends on your location. TimeWarner in San Diego has Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, TNT, Discovery channel and a bunch of the Padres games in HD as well for free if you have digital cable. ESPN HD is $10 a month, way too much money IMO.

If this turns out to be true....

[azimir]

Would a nice metric/Linux using country take me in? I don't take up much room, I have a college education and I love to watch Soccer (sorry, Football), and Hockey.

Just tell me where I can send my resume.

Over the Air HD is GREAT! (and cheap)

[bwags]

I get OTA HD on a radio shack antenna hung from the rafters by shoe laces in my attic. The signal distributes through the house via coax. I do have an amp between the antenna and the HD box. All the major stations come in great (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX). You should see CSI and Monday night football! Our local PBS station (KET) also does a fantastic job. Their HD programming is extensive and they have 4 digital channels. You do NOT need cable or sattelite to get a great TV signal. Use your brain, don't rely on some cable TV or sattelite salesman! Save your money. Drop your cable. You probably watch too much TV anyway!

I have Comcast HDTV

[Anonymous Coward]

on a 50" DLP with HDMI. Plugged the HDTV tuner box in via an HDMI->DVI cable and it worked right away. We get ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO, Discover, ESPN and a couple others - no FOX unfortunately. It looks really nice and I haven't had any problems. I'm hoping they bring out more channels, but I know the bandwidth they require is the limiting factor right now.

Re:you can't read too much into problems in the ea

[angle_slam]

It is unfortunate about the proliferation of remotes. A pro-level universal remote (Home Theater Master MX 700) is the best home theater purchase I've made. It is totally customizable by me and you can do all sorts of neat tricks such as punch through controls and macros. Also, it is learning remote. You don't have the problem the generic One For All remotes have in that not all functions are available.

As for neat tricks,, in a secondary system I have, it is set up so that, in one mode, the play button controls the VCR, the volume buttons control the TV, and the channel buttons control the cable box. On my main system, the volume is always controlling the receiver, but the channel buttons can control the VCR or the cable box, depending on what mode it is in.

Of course, it is probably beyond the desire of Joe Sixpack to program (though it is actually quite easy to program). But my stack of 5 remotes is now in a drawer for emergencies only.

No satellite?

[deadsquid]

We managed to get satellite in Manhattan. I lived at Broadway and Rector, and the apartment backed onto Church Street facing jersey. This gave us a pretty good Southern exposure which allowed us to grab a signal.

The tricky one was at work. We needed a view at the DirecTV birds, but our building was only 10 stories high. We were on Centre, and backed onto Lafeyette. It took a couple hours, but we actually managed to find a spot on the roof where we could shoot the gap between the buildings down toward Battery Park.

There were also a bunch of bldgs that had a community dish which fed a splitter system that allowed you to get DTV, but you had to make sure the bldg. was wired _before_ moving in.

Ok, I'm babbling. Satellite signals are possible, but it definitely takes some work, some roof access, and some luck in having line of sight.

It's Scirentific Atlanta that sucks.

[luugi]

Here's something I wrote about their PVR. It's not the HD version but I wouldn't be surprised if they had the same problem.
The article is located here.

I am currently leasing an Explorer 8000 wich supports digital video recording (DVR).

This DVR and I have a love-hate relationship. I must admit that watching TV will never be the same. I don't watch more TV, I now watch better TV.

But boy I hate it...

It's crippled by, as far as I know, inexcusable bugs. Here's a quick list of the ones I noticed so far.

* Duplicate recordings result when recording "all episodes" of a show. Simply a waste of space.
* Misses the first few seconds of the scheduled time. Why can't I be able to set a default start and end offset? For example, start 5 seconds before the scheduled start time, and finish 5 seconds after the scheduled end time.
* the DVR doesn't display how much time is left to record. It's like driving without a speedometer.
* Watching a program as it is being recorded in "delay", that is the show is still being recorded while you start the playback at the beginning, the DVR will kick you out of the show when it stops recording. Probably the most annoying bug of all because you then have to reselect the show from your list of recorded shows and fast forward to where you left off.

I can't see how hard it would be for Scientific Atlanta do fix these bugs. If they send me the equipment and their SDK, I'll do it for them.

Re:It's Scirentific Atlanta that sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right about that. I hate scientific atlanta products. These guys couldn't code if their life depended on it.

I'm posting as AC because..

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at TWC in Austin. The issue if signal stability and HD bandwidth is an issue for some people. We try and address all technical issues as best as we can. But we are doing some testing on a new method of bandwidth allocation.

Normally with digital channel, you are getting everything at once. But, your just viewing what ever digital channel your box is tuned to. This new scheme however only sends you the channel you are currenly tuned too. So lets say you change to Ch 701 (HBO), your box will make a request to have the channel sent to it. This is good in that you can have more bandwidth allocated to the current channel you are watching. Also, in theory there is less of a chance of errors (the leading case of macroblocking) with more bandwidth and better error correction.

*TWC employee slips back into the shadows*

Re:Spiderman

[dododge]

HDTV is 1080 interlaced lines of resolution. Spider-Man was filmed in 35mm film. It would take 4000+ lines of resolution to match the virgin film stock.

Well, since it's an effects-laden movie, there are probably plenty of scenes that are no longer anywhere near the original film stock resolution.

But more likely the real issue is the contrast ratio and the settings on the display. The video (even HD) isn't going to have the dynamic range of the film, and the display settings can easily make this even worse. I recall seeing old video tranfers of sci-fi movies where the mattes for spaceships were blatantly obvious, whereas they were probably nearly invisible in a theatrical presentation.

Another Front Projection Convert

[Timtimes]

Excellent post. I own a Benq 6200 DLP ($1100 after rebate). The DLP projectors are going to take over the HD market IMHO. If you haven't seen one yet, you're missing out. So much more bang for the buck than anything else out there it isn't even a competition. Enjoy.

Mod Parent up - Techno informative

[spleck]

How come I never have mod points when I need them?