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

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: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!

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?

[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.

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: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.

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: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: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

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.