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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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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)
"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.
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.
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.
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.