Author Topic: Time to throw away the VCR, but what to replace it with? (Read 1233 times)

SOB · « **Reply #30 on:** January 04, 2004, 06:02:01 PM »

cc that...cable internet around here has been absolutely fantastic in my experience through AT&T w/@home, AT&T Broadband, and now Comcast. No problems with gaming and it's very fast for the price compared to the DSL options around here. $45/mo (I already had $10 basic cable, otherwise the internet would be $55 by itself). Download speeds between 170 - 220 KBps, and Comcast said they'd be doubling the speed the first quarter of next year with no cost increase (we'll se

).

Digital cable around here, on the other hand, is beyond worthless.

Halo · « **Reply #31 on:** January 04, 2004, 07:22:34 PM »

Skuzzy, that shallow cable installation in your area sounds incredibly lax. Why waste all that effort to give cable such flimsy protection? That company is penny wise and pound foolish.

Cable in this area is buried pretty deep, about two feet I think. Never heard of any problems with that.

Cable has become an indispensable part of our household in spite of its expense. I remember when phone modem downloads would start at 3 kilobytes per sec and deteriorate to barely more than 1 KB sec.

Now it's nothing to download multimegabytes at speeds always over 200 KB sec and sometimes more than 300 KB sec. Incredible. And cable gives me an open phone line too, like having a second phone.

After some of the latest cable improvements, technician came out and upgraded the connections in my house cable box and yard cable box, and that definitely improved quality and stability.

We've had cable in this Northern Virginia area a long time, with Comcast being the latest operator.

Eagler, we have the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000, and to me the higher number channels, supposedly some sort of high definition digital, are definitely sharper than the lower number analog channels.

If I recall correctly, I think that box is supposed to provide HDTV if you have an HDTV monitor without any other HDTV box needed. I can't verify that since I don't have an HDTV monitor ... yet.

However ... the SciAtl box does not have connections for component cables ... yet. It does have connections for S-video, 1394, and Digital Audio out.

Go figure. It's all evolving.

Chairboy · « **Reply #32 on:** January 04, 2004, 11:44:06 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Eagler
wrong again cboy
1080i here with 5.1 sound - if the movie/show is broadcast in that format. sorry we don't upconvert on our own - yet

that is all the locals, discovery hd, showtime, hbo, 2 indemand movie channels, ESPN HD to follow...

starting a beta test this month with the new Scientific Atlanta HD-DVR 8000 series set tops.. DVR HiDef - can your tivo/sat_dvr do that?

Sorry Eagler, as usual, it is you that is in the wrong.

In my post, I said that the lowest HDTV signal was 480p. The digital cable signal is 480i, which is 1/2 the resolution of 480p since it takes two refreshes of the NTSC field to paint an image.

I have a 60" HDTV, and I also am using 1080i (which is the 2nd best HDTV rez). Before you tear a tendon in a spasm of righteous indignation, I am talking about 720p as being better then 1080 since it's a high resolution progressive signal instead of an interlaced signal. It's not that big of a deal if you have a good line doubler, and I do, but it's still real. If you go by pure numbers, 1080i is higher resolution, but I prefer the look of progressive signals. My TV doesn't support it, I finally settled on a TV that had other features I wanted (instead of 720p) because it didn't look like there was a lot of interest in cable or satellite companies offering 720p.

Perhaps you should really reconsider posting in public, you keep embarrassing yourself.

Eagler · « **Reply #33 on:** January 05, 2004, 07:02:30 AM »

sry cboy
if you state digital cable channels are not any better than VHS, I would like to see your VCR

as usual, you post inaccurate info to throw off the lesser informed

Skuzzy · « **Reply #34 on:** January 05, 2004, 07:27:15 AM »

I don't disagree Halo. It is why cable connections are very area dependent as to quality.

I remember, fresh after the fiber was laid, my neighbor was mowing his yard and destroyed the fiber cable (apparently the installers took the most direct route instead of adhering to the right-of-ways) and (then AT&T) was going to charge him just over $3,000.00 to repair the damage.
After 6 months of legal hassles, he ended up having to pay $500.00 for the repair. During that time the cable lay busted in his yard with several homes without cable.
The entire neighborhood was fed up with it, so everyone switched to DiSH.

The cable is pretty much destroyed in this neighborhood. The cable had surfaced in my backyard so I called Comcast and told them. They said it would be 6 months, or so, before they could repair it.
So, I took many pictures and pulled up about 50 feet of cable and tied it to the buried cable warning pole, which was about 25 feet from where the cable was really laid.

Halo · « **Reply #35 on:** January 05, 2004, 10:38:14 AM »

Whew, that is scary, Skuzzy. Amazing how some installations go awry.

In that vein (trench?), we've had a front gas lamp that has been turned off for years. With no plans to revive it, I got concerned when it began leaning a little bit.

I asked the gas company to disconnect it. Just before that, on another utility matter, all the buried lines in our yard (water, electric, telephone, gas, cable) were marked by another contractor.

The gas company crew dug where the other contractor said the gas line was. And dug. And dug some more. After a three-foot hole on one side of the driveway, the crew came over next to the lamp and found the gas lamp line was on a diagonal to the main line, not a perpendicular line as the other contractor had marked.

In spite of some specific exceptions, sometimes it's amazing how well things seem to work in general. Your story about your cable, though, is the one of the worst utility goofs I've ever heard. I hope some day it gets fixed and you can enjoy the benefits of a good cable system.

Chairboy · « **Reply #36 on:** January 05, 2004, 10:56:51 AM »

I still have cable, but my friends assure me that a bad satellite system is still better then the finest cable. Can anyone respond as to how accurate that is?

Wanker · « **Reply #37 on:** January 05, 2004, 11:15:21 AM »

It depends if all the cable channels are in digital or not. Satellite is all digital.

One of the biggest reasons for me going to satellite tv was because my cable company has a monoply in my area, and doesn't give a crap about the quality of their product. The advent of Directv and DISH is a great thing for everyone who formerly had no choice for cable.

vorticon · « **Reply #38 on:** January 05, 2004, 12:26:22 PM »

hmm...heres a basic rundown of my horrific cable story

day 1. some new guy from out of town comes in and installs cable...turns out that due to our rabbits the cable in the house had been down for a looong time (luckily we never used it) so he says he'll be back soon to put in a new one
day 8. he comes back runs the line above ground on the fence...promises to have it buried as soon as the ground thaws...
day 400 after 1 year of maximum 40kb/s downloads and general poor performance we lose the computer...
day 410 new computer bought we transfer over to dsl hell (ive told the story before...)
day 415 after 5 days of bull**** with the dsl we transfer back to cable...guy comes in buries the cable and sets us up...also turns out we have basic cable with the internet...since then weve had generally good performance (though pings are a bit high)

and in generall satellite tv is better than cable (more channels easier use better picture quality...and the tv we had satellite on was over 20 years old!)

Eagler · « **Reply #39 on:** January 05, 2004, 12:52:20 PM »

one plus for sat is that it is portable

in-laws travel in their RV and have a set they take with them on the road

Charon · « **Reply #40 on:** January 06, 2004, 11:06:18 AM »

A few quick questions. If you have a good non-progressive DVD and a HD enabled TV that supports 480p, is it worth buying a good progressive unit? Is the picture quality that different?

I've also looked at setting up my own PVR (as with SOB's link) but this is the stumbling block for me.

Quote

On top of that, digital cable and satellite TV add complexity. Most TV tuners for the PC are still mired in broadcast TV. That means they work great with an antenna or through analog cable. But digital cable and satellite TV are self-contained, require a decoder and only output to one channel on the TV. This makes the nifty channel switching available to PC-based TV tuner cards moot.

I already have a fairly powerful PC in the entertainment center for MP3 playback (visualization studio is great with the unlimited, random 6 gigs of playback) and Web surfing, so the foundation is there. With the drop in DVD recorder prices it's even more compelling. Is there a solution out now that would make the scheduling process easier?

Charon

Vipermann · « **Reply #41 on:** January 06, 2004, 01:55:53 PM »

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Is there a solution out now that would make the scheduling process easier?

Charon

I use an ATI AIW 9800 for my PVR box that I built and it came with a program called guideplus from the company that writes TV Guide. It's channel display is exactly like a DirecTV channel listing and you simply left click on the programs you want and tell it to record them. you can search for shows and have it automatically record shows you put on your favorites list. It has 4 levels of recording quality, all of which are excellent. The card also came with an RF remote. In my search for different software I looked at sageTV and snapstreams PVR software but I liked guideplus the best. My PVR system is simply an Nforce2 board, 1ghz CPU, 200GB hard drive, DVD player, and the AIW9800. I use a wireless NIC card to hook it up to my network.

Just this past week I recorded the last 45 episodes of the original Twilight zone to burn on DVD. Now I have the entire series on DVD.

Charon · « **Reply #42 on:** January 06, 2004, 03:40:02 PM »

Thanks Viperman. Just to make sure its apples to apples, I have that comcast digital cable setup, and I figure it would work fine on the analog channels but I wonder about the digital channels that require the set-top-box.

Charon

Halo · « **Reply #43 on:** January 06, 2004, 08:39:37 PM »

Question for you satellite users: Do you get many interruptions? Today, as I was waiting at a car dealer for my car to be serviced , its waiting area TV had many interruptions of its satellite connection being broken or tested or something ... more text on screen than picture. That kept up for the several hours I was there.

Over the weekend, at a friend's house with satellite TV, same thing. Frequent interruptions, often brief, but interruptions just the same.

Friend tells me he is going to chop down one of his large trees because at certain times it disrupts his satellite signal. He also says in some heavy rain satellite signal can also get disrupted.

That sort of interruption never happens with my cable connection, though cable occasionally will get balky with the latest Video On Demand recording.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #44 on:** January 06, 2004, 09:15:45 PM »

In the last year, I have had 3 interruptions in service. The longest lasted about 10 minutes.

When I had cable it was down at least once a month and the longest outage was for 4 days, with the next one being 3 days, which we interrupted when we cancelled the service and went with DiSH.