#16
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In this part of the city satellite sucks. A little rain and no picture. The cable service is much more reliable. However the telephone service Verizon is coming with a much superior delivery FIOS: fiberoptics straight to your bedroom. I have seen it in the neighboring areas and it is awesome. The cable people dread FIOS.
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Blind tests reveal audio truths. IF you ride like lightening, you will crash like thunder ~ BIG YOUTH |
#17
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Comcast
I have 3 sets and a HDVR in daily use and only one digital HD box. This will not make me happy. The 70 analog channels with no box is the big reason I have Comcast in this house. I do have Dish in home #2 but only have 2 boxes feeding 4 sets and a VCR and that works out ok. I just recently saw an X-10 for a rebroadcast system to send 1 box anywhere in the house. I see a way to have just the HD box and one regular box that will send it's RF out to the other tv's in the house using the existing coax.
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#18
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So what available options are there as far as convertor boxes from digital to analog, if you wanted to stay with Comcast but didn't want to have to pay them a ridiculous $7 a month for their box?
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#19
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AS I see it the big issue here is not Analog vs Digital, but the Bandwidth. The satelite and cable providers all want to provide more bang for the buck on existing available bandwidth.
I understand the conversion from analog to digital. However the real issue is the amount of compression beng used. The more the head end compresses, the lousier the picture becomes, but the tradeoff is that the cable provider is able to offer more chanels int he same amount of bandwidth. Moving to digital is a good thing, but too much compression for the sake of craming an unrealistic number of chanels into a given bandwidth, is a bad thing. I have an old style 10 foot c-band dish. The picture quality generally much better than the little dishes (Dish and DirectTv). However depending on what chanel I am watching, I may have low amounts of compression or high amounts. Last night I watched a movie tha was so badly compressed that the images were wavering and out of phase not to mention the poor resolution. It was a digital signal, but so highly compressed that the picture quality sucked big time. By the same token, I get the primary signal of Discovery HD theater, and that picture is second to none. Over the air network digital transmitions from the major networks can be fantastic. Many of the prime time shows, and sporting events are now in HD. Tonight Show is great every night. Golf on tv is unbelievable, when the shots are done from a stationery HD camera, but the hand held cameras used by the camera men that walk around usually are of much poorer quality. HD is stil in its early stages. Just because you are watching a "HD" transmission dosent mean your will halways have a HD quality picture. And of course Digital does not mean HD in any way, shape or form. But back to my big dish. I get hundreds of chanels, both east coast and west coast feeds. I subscribe to all the premium chanels, HBO, Showtime, Stars, Cinemax, The Move Chanel, Flix, Sundance, Encore etc, and dozens of the usual basic package chanels that you normally expect on your cable or small dish. The difference is that my cost is about %30 less than cable or the small dish. My annual subrscription is only about $750 (62.50/month) Warner cable wanted over $95/month for the same amount of programming. For me, at least, this ist he best way to get my television. There are some inconveniences, like being able to only watch this on 1 set at a time, but for our home that works very well.
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Vacuum tubes are used in Wisconsin to help heat your house. New Web Site under developement ME http://AntiqueTvGuy.com |
#20
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Quote:
That's a long answer to a short question. The short answer is that I don't like to be forced to rent and use set-top converter boxes.
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You Rang? R.I.P. little buddy! |
Audiokarma |
#21
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Cablecard's will be big in a few years. All those boxes end up costing a lot of money for the cable operator.
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#22
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Quote:
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BUT I wanna see them go DOWN...... I DID to my GREAT delight, years ago, witness the "death rattle" and final auctioning off of, an OVER THE AIR, SUBSCRIPTION / PAY PER VIEW television operation (Channel 44) in the Chicago area .
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Nothing is ever completely fool proof, because fools are so ingenious. |
#23
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I am having some wierd electrical problem in my house that killed the outlet for my living room tv. I havent had time to track it down, so I have been using the roundie which means I have to sit in a less comfortable chair. I have watched almost no tv lately. Call me a dreamer, but I truly hope that when tv suddenly goes blank for a lot of people, they realize that internet, dvd, (or real life) fills the broadcast tv time quite nicely. I'd love to see a new-coke style backfire. ntsc 'classic'!
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From Captain Video, 1/4/2007 "It seems that Italian people are very prone to preserve antique stuff." |
#24
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The same 90% of the tv veiwers have no idea how to calibrate their own television sets or their Home Theater recievers.Same goes for HDMI 1.3,all people know is that its new so they MUST HAVE IT. As far as im concerned the whole HD & HDMI 1.3 craze is driven by the industry, not consumers.
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Main rig , 5 channel stereo. Mcintosh Mc1201. Mcintosh Mc7270. Mcintosh Mc7100. Mcintosh C-2200. Mcintosh MVP 841. Mcintosh XRT 22. Mcintosh XL1. Mcintosh XL1-W. JM Labs Centris. |
#25
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Audiokarma |
#26
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And today I find this,
THE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS ASSOCIATION reassured the NAB that digital-to-analog converters will be available to "every interested American." The converters will be necessary for analog TV sets when analog broadcasts cease in February 2009.
It's a conspiracy! Where is Muldar & Scully when we really need them? |
#27
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Regarding the end of analog cable and box-rental costs, there is always the option to drop your cable service entirely and use a "real TV" antenna. You can already buy a convertor box for less than US$100 to connect it to your analog-only TV sets. |
#28
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Channel 68 quit the subscription business around 1985, became an over the air MTV type channel, and later became a home shopping channel, and now is a Spanish language TV channel. |
#29
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building test boxes
In Miami we had OnTV in the late 1970s then HBO on MDS. We built our own converters and microwave down converters when HBO began microwaving their signal to hotels and condos before mass cable was run. It was more fun to build and tune the things than to actually watch the programming.
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#30
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Audiokarma |
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