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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."
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.
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(#@$
free ipod and free gmail!
The pain of early adoption at its purest.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
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?
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?!
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.
http://www.geocities.com/sethseekstruth/great_out
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.
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.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
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.
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.
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?
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.
--Spooky Action At A Distance
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).
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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
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)
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
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
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.....)
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
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.
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.
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 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.
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
If you've got any background in A/V design, you'll probably notice the following in his post:
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!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
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.
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.
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
/. or NPR addictions, OK? :)
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
/. peeve #274: The word is neither "walla" nor "whala", it's voila. Phonics is a tool of the devil.
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.
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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
The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.
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.
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!".
-Ryan C.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.