HDTV Equipment Question

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Both of the Verizon FIOS Settop boxes can down convert. I cant find the docs but somewhere on

there are specs on the stb's.

Cheers

Heres a users guide for one of the dvr's Verizon is using.

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Jim,

Newer teevees have what's called an ATSC tuner. They will demodulate the DTV (digital teevee) stuff. HDTV is a subset of DTV. Stick a UHF antenna on your roof, point it toward Mt. Whatever, and you'll get tons of DTV (and HDTV) material. The HDTV feeds are absolutely amazing.

Some of these teevees also have a Cable Card slot. They can, with the proper card and subscription, descramble the scrambled cable provider's digital signals. However, from what I've been told, they do not support pay-per-view services. So, you'll still have to get a set top box or buy DVDs if you want to get that Debbie Does Planet Of The Apes type of material.

Bob

...if the cable provider supports it.

Which most don't. :-(

Well, OK, I don't know the actual numbers, but from talking to people it doesn't *seem* as though it ever caught on.

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

First off, according to a NY Times article, only about 3% of sets with a card slot are actually installed so as to take advantage of that feature.. Comcast has been out here with 5 different cards. The first one worked for 3 months, the other one for about a month. It may be OK if you don't sign up for any premium channels. After the cable card quit on me, I pulled the card, and could still get all channels from 2 - 74 in digital mode, and local HD from 231 to 240; no channels between 74 and 231, or above 240. Without signing up for the cable card, I only got 2 - 24 plus the local HD. Besides on demand, the TV Guide on screen will probably not work either. The thing to get is the dual channel HD DVR rather than the straight cable box. The difference in price here turned out to be less than $!0/month.

Don't even think about watching analog TV with an HDTV. Compared to digital "standard definition", it sucks.

Tam

[snip]

Debbie DID Planet of the Apes ?:-)

Wow! That must have been some movie ;-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

There already are several HDTV models that have a slot for a "cable card". The real question is whether your cable company will communicate with it, I'm betting they won't. There are even more models available that already have a QAM tuner built-in (like my Vizio GV42L for example). This will alow you to view any digital cable channels that happen to be non-scrambled. Federal law says the cable company has to feed you the digital locals "in the clear". TW here in houston supplies about 75 digital channels unscrambled. Of course you have to be paying for digital cable in the first place. It's probably goes without saying that any premium channels (HBO etc) will likely be scrambled.

SD (standard deffinition) TV often looks very poor on an HDTV, it's all in the upconversion processing of the TV. Do your research before you buy, they all have problems, be sure to get one you can live with.

You should deffinitely get an outside antenna, so you can see how truly beautiful HDTV can be. The major players (FOX, NBC, ABC) also like to demonstrate how sucky digital TV can be by providing a feed that might have the audio/video out of sync by full SECONDS. Of course NASCAR and NFL football don't seem to suffer that fate. It's obvious that the major networks hate this whole conversion to digital broadcasting thing with a passion. OTOH, PBS likes to show you how it's supposed to be done by providing tons of high-quality, HD wide-screen content, go figure.

DVD's are only SD (720x480 for NTSC), time to look into the new technology. The VHS/Beta wars are back with HD DVD tech. These offer 1920x1080P resolution, now how sweet is that?

Debbie doing the apes sounds more interesting ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I think he means "Amazon Women on the Moon".

--
Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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Error reading FAT record: Try the SKINNY one? (Y/N)

[snip]

It has always sucked. The high resolution display just makes it that much more obvious.

-- Paul Hovnanian mailto: snipped-for-privacy@Hovnanian.com

------------------------------------------------------------------ It's easier said than done. ... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than said, and you'll see that it's easier said that `it's easier done than said' than it is done, which really proves that it's easier said than done.

On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:15:12 -0800, "Joel Kolstad" Gave us:

It depends on the city, the cable provider, and the local arrangement.

On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:39:20 -0600, "Anthony Fremont" Gave us:

They are the ones that provide the card.

It isn't any different than a set-top box. Of course they support it.

On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:39:20 -0600, "Anthony Fremont" Gave us:

That is silly, boy, and the delays you are experiencing are anomalies of your display device. Switch the source device to something else and then back, and I'll bet it resets the synch.

As you said, "It depends on the city, the cable provider, and the local arrangement." As for set-top boxes, purchase one from a third party and then try to get it activated.

Funny how I've not seen them on PBS. I think the beginning of the Thanksgiving day parades spoke for themselves, in terms of how much the major networks currently care about HD. And then there's TNTHD..........(rolls eyes)

On Thu, 14 Dec 2006 04:29:47 -0600, "Anthony Fremont" Gave us:

YOUR TUNER is setting up the delay. I will bet on it. WHY would ANY broadcaster transmit a signal with the two not synched up?

Your mistake was not suspecting YOUR equipment from the get go.

Your shit is WAY cheaper than their shit is.

Use some common sense.

Why would they start the TD parade by transmitting a 4:3 picture with horribly scratchy audio, immediately cut away to a commercial not more than

10 seconds into the opening ceremony and then cut right back to the parade? It's the same reason you can go to a movie theater and see the picture out of focus, they simply don't care since it's not hurting their revenue at this point. Things will change of course, once the majority of the masses have tuned in and the sponsors start throwing their weight around. Like I said, NFL and NASCAR seem to always put out a good pic when the time comes.

Do you have any HD equipment? Of course I suspected my equipment, but After reading 50 pages of comments about the TV I bought on

I'd like to think I'd know if my equipment was to blame. This model is not know to suffer these problems on _any_ inputs. As usual, your mistake is in pretending to know all about that which you know not.

I did, I put up a good OTA antenna (outside of course). Now with >95% signal strength on almost all digital channels, I still see phase errors in the picture and sound. Not allways, just off and on. Of course the Dish HD channels rarely have these issues, excepting the major nets that is.....

On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:03:59 -0600, "Anthony Fremont" Gave us:

Sorry, chump, but mis-synchs with the audio and video typically ARE the fault of the local processing hardware, NOT the broadcast source.

Way over 99.9% of the time.

Jim, you animal.

--
 JosephKK
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