Digital Cable / Satellite / TV questions???

[stewchi]

I am trying to decide which way to go for TV service. Right now we have cable local service (12 channels) for $7 a month plus High Speed Internet for $45 (is was $15 more if we were not TV subscribers so signing up for local service make it cheaper by $8 per month) We have done this in the last 2 homes for the paste 6 years and found that in every case in order for the Internet service to work they had to remove the filter limiting out TV. So for $52 we got basic cable (60 channels or so) and high speed internet.
Well the gravy train has ended, our new house and new cable service provides Internet with the filter in place.
My wife is sick and will be for the next 3 month and is really sick of her programming choices so I am looking into cable and satellite. We currently only have older analog type TVs (Non digital No HD). But an upgrade is on the horizon. So to make a short story long, what the best system to get. I noticed with Cable you get basic channels on any TV but have to rent the box for digital channels. With satleite you get the box for free but have to pay $5 a month for each additional receiver to receive the signal.

RANT ON---- This really burns my A$$, I worked in the satellite business for awhile (In Europe) and I know perfectly well that a quad universal LMB or Quad LMB with switching are capable of supporting multiple receivers (watch different channels on different TVs at the same time) however what Direct TV is doing is charging a fee per month that pays for nothing, other than the right to not deactivate the decoding card in you receiver. If I buy the equipment and want to split it out however I want, it’s the same signal and my equipment they should not be charging $5 a month for each TV ----- RANT OFF

Is everyone else paying for this or is there a better way with switched and multiplexers etc to build your own system and not pay per month (I don’t like per month charges, they add up to a lot)

For TVs can you buy TVs that will decode the Digital Cable signal that does not require box (I know you need the box for HBO and other movie channels, but I am too cheap for those channels)? That would save me some of the per month cost of cable. Can you tell I have not shopped for TVs is 10 years?

What about these small flat screen TVs called monitors, do they have tuners in them? My master bedroom has a cable outlet and power high up over the sink in the corner, perfect for watcing the news in the morning while getting ready for work, but I don’t want a box, just a small TV I can mount on the wall.

Sorry for all of the random question and unnecessary information any education I can get will be helpfull

[LCHIEN]

bunch of stuff - mostly random thoughts about your possibilities...

You can get the digital box for one TV and still receive analog cable at the other TVs, I believe. They are not exclusive.

A monitor is theoretically strictly a TV without a tuner, although many still have a tuner but also have multiple direct baseband inputs for DVD, VCR, satellite.

If you only have one user you can get by with one satellite receiver and distribute that signal to all the TV,s but every set gets the same signal and you have to go to the place where the receiver is to change channels, not real convenient.

I got cable one because the satellite did not have the local sports coverage to watch the NBA games of the local team.

With 60 basic channels, I still feel there's nothing good to watch.
In the immortal words of one of the network executives, when we have 500 channels of TV, each channel will be 1/500th the quality of when we had justa few channels. Ain't that the truth?

Pretty soon, TV's sold will be required to have digital OTA (over the air) tuners instead of analog tuners. Most broadcasts are being duplicated and are using twice the bandwidth that Uncle Sam would like to get back. I think big sets by July and smaller sets maybe next year. I don't know what the cable guys are going to do when TV's no longer have analog tuners, make everyone buy/rent digital cable boxes?

Anyway, if you don't plan on being able to use OTA broadcasts, you might be better off buying a TV before digital tuners are mandatory - there may be some good sales on HD TVs with analog tuners.

[offthemark]

Just to add to what Loring said, I have three TVs but only two tuners. To solve the "walk to the other room" problem, I bought a RF repeater and a universal remote. Total cost about $45. The RF repeater has a receiver I set on top of the third TV and a transmitter I sit on a shelf in front of the primary TV.

BTW- we have DirectTV and LOVE it. Our local cable company has terrible service. Often, when I had a problem (about every 4-6 months) they would take 3 days before I got my cable back. The ONE time in three years I have had to call DirecTV, they stayed on the phone and walked me through until the problem was resolved.

I get local channels with my DirecTV. It's about $5/month extra but well worth it for us.

[jwaterdawg]

quote:Originally posted by offthemark

Just to add to what Loring said, I have three TVs but only two tuners. To solve the "walk to the other room" problem, I bought a RF repeater and a universal remote. Total cost about $45. The RF repeater has a receiver I set on top of the third TV and a transmitter I sit on a shelf in front of the primary TV.

BTW- we have DirectTV and LOVE it. Our local cable company has terrible service. Often, when I had a problem (about every 4-6 months) they would take 3 days before I got my cable back. The ONE time in three years I have had to call DirecTV, they stayed on the phone and walked me through until the problem was resolved.

I get local channels with my DirecTV. It's about $5/month extra but well worth it for us.

Nothing to add other than comments regarding internet service. I personally would not recommend using satellite internet. We got spoiled at our previous place with cable modem internet and now are stuck with satellite internet (nothing else available, yes we live in the boonies). Not to mention that they are seperate services, seperate dishes, etc., etc. At times the performance feels comparable to dialup and many times the signal just goes kaput independent of any discernible weather conditions. Rant off.

We are generally happy with the DirectTV though, we have three tuners hooked up to 2 TV's and one computer. It's nice to be able to watch TV while you are working on the computer and/or record shows (if you have something comparable to gigapocket).

[lago]

quote:Just to add to what Loring said, I have three TVs but only two tuners. To solve the "walk to the other room" problem, I bought a RF repeater and a universal remote. Total cost about $45. The RF repeater has a receiver I set on top of the third TV and a transmitter I sit on a shelf in front of the primary TV.

Can you give a little more informatio about the RF repeater, such as where you got it and how it works. I am stuck with DirecTV. Had cable for 20+ years and no problems. I would prefer to have it so I can have TV's where I want them, even though there isn't that much on that I watch.
Thanks
Ken

[scorrpio]

It all depends on who is your local provider. I second the comment about the satellite internet - bad. I do a bit of online gaming (Everquest) and satellite doesn't cut it at all for things like that, so for me, it was not even considered an option.

We currently subscribe to Cablevision's triple play: cable internet, basic 60 or so channels TV, and phone, all for $90/month.

Far as boxes go: there are two types of boxes. Some descramble and output only the channel they are switched to. Some descramble and output all channels the subscriber has. You can split the cable out to 10 TVs, and watch 10 different channels. Too bad the second type box is not offered by any provider I know of - they are not as profitable as having the customer pay for 10 separate single-channel boxes. So the answer is, if you want to watch different channels, you need extra boxes. The exception here is something called 'DCR TVs'. DCR means Digital Cable Ready, and I believe that I've only seen this on large, high-end sets. It is basically is a built-in cable box, all you need is get an extra descrambler card from your provider, stick it into a slot in the back of TV and you are good to go. This has its limitatons as well. For example with Cablevision, a DCR TV will let you watch the channels, but all the advanced stuff like games, on-demand, channel guides and DVR will not work without the box.

On monitors: I believe these are display-only units with no tuner - just like your regular computer monitor, and you need to connect them to something with video output: PC, game console, DVD player, cable box, etc.

Oh, and you also might want to introduce your wife to Netflix. For about $20/month, she can watch whatever movies she likes.

[Tequila]

Here's my experience and what I did to save a few bucks.

I live outside of Phila, and have Comcast digital cable. In my living room I have a digital cable box, and in every other room in teh house I just connect the cable line to the TV's. I get all the analog/non-scrambled channels on every TV, but the digital extras (premium & digital channels) only work on the TV with the box. We occasionally like to use the digital features in other rooms (like watching a digital channel while in the kitchen), but not nearly enough to justify the $5/month per tv to rent extra boxes.

Here's where it gets interesting.
I've taken the signal that comes out of the cable box and run it through a video modulator. It's similar to what's built into VCR's that allow the signal to come out on channel 3 or 4, but it allows you to send the signal out on a higher channel - I have mine set to channel 125.

I've run that signal back to the main branch where all my cable lines split through the house, but after the split for internet and the cable box. That signal gets fed back into the main line, allowing me to see what's on the cable box just by tuning any TV in the house to channel 125.

The equipment runs about $100 for a good modulator and low-pass filter, so it's cheaper than 2 extra boxes for a year. If you're comfortable with running and splitting cable lines, it should only take an hour or so to do the work. You might need to add an amplifier to the cable line if you've got a weak signal or are splitting it to a lot of TV's.

Since everything connects to the regular TV-out of the cable box, and there's no worries about opening your cable box or hiding stuff when the cable guy comes out. This is the same sort of equipment you'd use for a closed-circuit security camera, so it's readily available.

The only downside is that you've still only got one digital tuner, so you can't watch one premium channel in the living room while someone else watches a different one in the kitchen.

If anybody's interested, I can try to put together a writeup with some pictures and a shopping list, or answer whatever questions come up.

[offthemark]

quote:Can you give a little more informatio about the RF repeater, such as where you got it and how it works. I am stuck with DirecTV. Had cable for 20+ years and no problems. I would prefer to have it so I can have TV's where I want them, even though there isn't that much on that I watch.

I'll try.

I have my DirecTV box sitting next to my primary TV in the den. It has both red/white/SVideo ouput and coax output. I attach the red/white/SVideo to the primary TV. The coax runs up the wall, through the attic, and down to the TV in the bedroom. This would also work by splitting coax output to each (or more) TV.

I bought the RF repeater at either Radio Shack or WalMart. They go for about $20-25. It's composed of two 4" or so boxes. I have one sitting on a bookshelf and one on top of the TV. I bought a universal remote online somewhere. Try either Amazon or Surpluscomputers.com. They also have those at WalMart I believe. Make sure it supports DirecTV.

[mmcduffie]

google "free to air" or "fortec life time FTA".

Not all sat signals are encoded so if you don't mind adding a dish rotator, or up to four dishes for some receivers, you can get upwards of 100-200 channels free.

http://www.lyngsat.com seems to be down right now but http://www.dmsiusa.com/charts.htm
shows how to read the charts as to what is "clear".

Michael

[sacherjj]

I use DirecTV with TiVo. I have a DirecTiVo and a single receiver with a TiVo attached (which I already owned). Instead of getting seperate receivers for each TV, I put the TiVos near the TVs where I care the most about quality. Then I use an AVCAST system to modulate the video signals through the rest of the house. TiVo 1 is Channel 65 and TiVo 2 is Channel 70. You can think of it like my own cable system. Then each of the remote TVs gets an IR receiver and can control the TiVos in the other room. This is how I can play back New Yankee Workshop in the garage.

[stewchi]

So you have 2 DVRs and use those to capture all the TV you would like to watch in the other rooms? Thats sounds like something that would work for me, except I thought Tivo had its own monthly charge. I have a few old PC if I ever get the time maybe I will make my own DVR, I am sure there is some freeware or software that comes with the capture/tuner card

[Otter]

i use DirectTV HD and a duel tuner TiVO. I pay 10 extra for Local HD off dish and the 6 other HD chanels (Atlanta is 1 of 12 new MPEG4 markets and i do hav OTA as well) and 10 more dollars for the extra tuner and TiVO service.

[sacherjj]

quote:Originally posted by stewchi

So you have 2 DVRs and use those to capture all the TV you would like to watch in the other rooms? Thats sounds like something that would work for me, except I thought Tivo had its own monthly charge. I have a few old PC if I ever get the time maybe I will make my own DVR, I am sure there is some freeware or software that comes with the capture/tuner card

There is a $5 charge per month for the TiVo. You could do this with anything that sends a signal (i.e. a DVD player or a standard DSS receiver). The components are sold here: http://www.crossbarmedia.com/ I purchased some of mine from eBay for a reduced price, but I received a notice from that seller a while back that they were clearing out the rest of their inventory.

They instructions on the web page describe how it works. There is only one change when using it with DSS systems. To control the polarity of the incoming signal to the receiver, a certain DC voltage is applied to the signal wire. This isn't good for standard COAX components. Special splitters and joiners are needed for "injecting" this "local cable" signal in through the same wires as the DSS signal travels to the receivers, and then break it out again. These are called Diplexors. DO NOT purchase them in you local brick and mortar store. You will get reamed. $20-25 there, versus $8 online. If you do not need to receive video from elsewhere in the house, you could use a spare COAX to get the video out to the main video sender, rather than use the diplexors. We have a TiVo in each room and want to watch it in the other rooms. This means we have 4 diplexors (two to inject the "local cable" signal to the satelite line and two to remove it at the receiver).

Hopefully that makes a little sense.

[stewchi]

quote:Originally posted by jxyoung

Craftsman micro torque wrench $26 off. Now $48. 9/16 to 9/18

I would consider something else.
These do not have lifetime warranty, Husky@HD,and HF ones do. I have both and the Husky is better in 1/2" drive size due to 250

[sacherjj]

quote:Originally posted by jxyoung

Craftsman micro torque wrench $26 off. Now $48. 9/16 to 9/18

I would consider something else.
These do not have lifetime warranty, Husky@HD,and HF ones do. I have both and the Husky is better in 1/2" drive size due to 250