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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."
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
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.
Video Production Support
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.
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.
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.
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....
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.
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.
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
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
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.)
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
i have the 8000hd, the gray bars are configurable too. you can make them black if you want to. i guess he didnt rtfm..
Personally I'd rather have a high-definition signal digitized on my Home Theatre PC, thanks.
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.
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.
"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.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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.
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.
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..
Pocket Girls. Mobile Adult Mini Mags for your Phone.
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.
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.
:)
d -home-t heater-projectors.htm
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/recommende
a useful site.
http:..www.avsforum.com
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.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
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.
It took a real world war to end the airplane's patent wars. - Fâché Rouge -
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.
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Swearing is the crutch of inarticulate mother fuckers.
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.
Comment of the year
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.