HD TV Tuners: Educate Me, Please

[LarryG]

Gosh, and I thought I was asking simple questions.

Bob (Harmsway) asked how we watch TV now. Until recently, we had a combination of satellite, plus local-channels-only cable. And I hated the complexity of multiple remotes, and so-called "universal" remotes that were too dumb to realize you can't rewind a satellite receiver (i.e., you had to remember to put the remote into "VCR" mode before pressing rewind, otherwise nothing happened). Also, I couldn't record satellite while watching a tape, and vice-versa. Major PITA.

Now we have standard cable only, connected to cable-ready TV sets and VCRs, and all the above strife is gone. I simply tune the channel I want to watch or record, and that's it. The most complicated thing I have to do is put the TV on channel 4 in order to watch a tape. I can record anything while watching anything. Although it's cable, it's essentially like OTA broadcasting; i.e., no cable box. (All analog, of course.) We don't have any premium channels that require a descrambler, and have no plans to add any.

I'd like to retain this simplicity if at all possible.

I know that shows are increasingly available in HD, but I really don't care if I'm watching "Deal Or No Deal" in hi-def or not. We don't watch all that much TV anyway: about 10-12 hours per week, virtually all of it taped so we can time-shift and FF through the commercials to compress the shows down into a shorter period of real time. I watch very few sports ... F1 car racing and MotoGP are the two biggies; a few baseball and football games here and there. The main reason I'm interested in buying an HDTV is to watch DVDs in widescreen format (the only format I buy).

[jziegler]

Larry,

I'd say that based on what you describe, your best bet is to get a TV with the HD tuner built in. Having the cable card slot would not be bad either. It will give you the experience closest to what you have now. It will keep the remotes simple. Even without a cable card, some cable compaines have the local channels (and sometimes a few other) available in hi def that any TV with an HD tuner should be able to receive. They are sometimes available with the small cable packages (my cable company says they are in the limited package which I have, I've never been able to check).

Of course, HD and timeshifting has it's problems, but that's getting even more complicated.

Jim

[Otter]

Gosh, and I thought I was asking simple questions.

Bob (Harmsway) asked how we watch TV now. Until recently, we had a combination of satellite, plus local-channels-only cable. And I hated the complexity of multiple remotes, and so-called "universal" remotes that were too dumb to realize you can't rewind a satellite receiver (i.e., you had to remember to put the remote into "VCR" mode before pressing rewind, otherwise nothing happened). Also, I couldn't record satellite while watching a tape, and vice-versa. Major PITA.

Now we have standard cable only, connected to cable-ready TV sets and VCRs, and all the above strife is gone. I simply tune the channel I want to watch or record, and that's it. The most complicated thing I have to do is put the TV on channel 4 in order to watch a tape. I can record anything while watching anything. Although it's cable, it's essentially like OTA broadcasting; i.e., no cable box. (All analog, of course.) We don't have any premium channels that require a descrambler, and have no plans to add any.

I'd like to retain this simplicity if at all possible.

I know that shows are increasingly available in HD, but I really don't care if I'm watching "Deal Or No Deal" in hi-def or not. We don't watch all that much TV anyway: about 10-12 hours per week, virtually all of it taped so we can time-shift and FF through the commercials to compress the shows down into a shorter period of real time. I watch very few sports ... F1 car racing and MotoGP are the two biggies; a few baseball and football games here and there. The main reason I'm interested in buying an HDTV is to watch DVDs in widescreen format (the only format I buy).

Larry

Most of this comes down to how much you want to spend. You can have a simple setup that dose just what you want from both cable or DSS providers, but thos serices come at a cost. Most cable providers for a cost will provide a HD PVR and then hit you for a HD service up charge. In most cases this is a 10 to 15 dollar a month upcharge. DSS providers want you to buy the equipment (what i did) and then hit you for a couple of service charges about the same as cable.

So it would be a HDTV display, a settop box and a remote.

[25]

If you are looking for a good universal remote start here:
http://www.remotecentral.com/

I recently picked up a URC MX-700, it allows me to program the remote from the computer and is pretty strait foward. It's not cheap though, $160, but I can make it very non-geek friendly. Also if you are looking at buying a URC brand remote make sure you get it from an authorized dealer otherwise you won't be able to get updates for their programming software.

Also the MX-700 is somewhat old and there are better options out there but for the price it is worth it to me. One of the nicest features is that you can program all the buttons on the remote to basically do what ever you want regardless what device you are on. So if you run your audio through a reciever the Vol+/Vol- always controls the reciever's volume, it's even more flexible than that but you get the idea.

This has made having 60 odd devices much easier to manage.

[vaking]

Larry,
I think there is still some confusion here.
Almost all DVDs sold today are still standard resolution, not hidef. Widescreen or not is about screen ratios, not resolutions. Hidef DVDs are beginning to appear but the cheapest hidef DVD player is about $500 and that is on top of hidef TV. There are competing standards for hidef DVD format (Blue ray vs HD DVD, Sony vs Toshiba), so this territory in my opinion is too early to enter. In order to watch standard resolution DVD in wide screen - any wide screen or big screen TV will do. If you are concerned with receiving HD broadcast - you effectively have one question to answer: Do you believe Hidef over the air (free channels) will be enough for you? If not - you need cable cards and forget about simplicity.
As I said - I am in a same boat. I have 1 hidef ready TV, 3 total TVs, I have basic cable + HBO, no proprietary boxes, no HD content and I am not prepared to sacrifice simplicity and cost to get that HD content. The only difference - I moved away from tapes and VCR, I have one stashed away in case I need to play a tape but all my recordings are digital on Media Center.

[LarryG]

Almost all DVDs sold today are still standard resolution, not hidef. Widescreen or not is about screen ratios, not resolutions.

Right, I streamlined my explanation a little too much. I'd like to have a widescreen TV to watch the DVDs that I already own, and the HD part is sort of like a bonus, or a hedge against the future. IOW if I'm going to buy a larger, widescreen-format TV, I figure I might as well make get an HDTV.

Also, the thin profile of these sets have advantages for me and the room in which it will be placed.

[Otter]

Larry,
I think there is still some confusion here.
Almost all DVDs sold today are still standard resolution, not hidef. Widescreen or not is about screen ratios, not resolutions. Hidef DVDs are beginning to appear but the cheapest hidef DVD player is about $500 and that is on top of hidef TV. There are competing standards for hidef DVD format (Blue ray vs HD DVD, Sony vs Toshiba), so this territory in my opinion is too early to enter. In order to watch standard resolution DVD in wide screen - any wide screen or big screen TV will do. If you are concerned with receiving HD broadcast - you effectively have one question to answer: Do you believe Hidef over the air (free channels) will be enough for you? If not - you need cable cards and forget about simplicity.
As I said - I am in a same boat. I have 1 hidef ready TV, 3 total TVs, I have basic cable + HBO, no proprietary boxes, no HD content and I am not prepared to sacrifice simplicity and cost to get that HD content. The only difference - I moved away from tapes and VCR, I have one stashed away in case I need to play a tape but all my recordings are digital on Media Center.

I have to do a little more reading on this but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/480p
I know that my pscan dvd player ($100 phillips) puts put the 16x9 non-square anamorphic because I told it to and the SXRD confirms it. So I would say that Larry would have a better viewing experience, no squished heads.

I could be wrong on this, I will have to look at the media creation and encoding information to see if the publishers encode it for this or see if it is a hardware level thing.

[LarryG]

So I would say that Larry would have a better viewing experience, no squished heads.

Wait a minute ... squished heads? You lost me.

[Otter]

Wait a minute ... squished heads? You lost me.

DOH! I would try to explane it and then mess it up, but here is a little reading on what happens. I have seen where 4x3 pictures are streched to 16x9. You get wide people, I have also seen where widescreen formated material is forced on a 4x3 screen and they people look "Squished". It does not always happen this way, the hardware players hve there setting involved as well, like shrinking the image and maintaining aspect.

Here is a great link to better demo the point.
http://gregl.net/videophile/anamorphic.htm

[sacherjj]

Those woodworking "geeks" out there might want to check out the HDHomerun device. It is sold at http://www.9thtee.com and produced by Silicondust (http://www.silicondust.com/zxc/content/view/5/26/). It is basically a dual HDTV tuner for over the air or unencrypted cable HDTV broadcast. It makes either tuner available over 100 Mb ethernet. You can play on your PC with VLC or run into a computer for a DVR. It currently works for MythTV and support is in the works for other systems. This will be my solution for time shifting HDTV content and also getting a tuner out to my HD monitor. If my GF comes through, this will be under the tree.

[HarmsWay]

I fear we're all just making it more confusing for Larry, but unfortunately the industry with some government help have made the transition perhaps more complicated than it need to be.

You want to be able to watch your DVDs in widescreen.
Great idea. Since I've been watching widescreen I find it difficult to watch a movie in 4:3 when I know it was filmed in a wider aspect ratio. Unfortunately two caveats: 1. not all your DVD collection may be widescreen (actually you said yours were). 2. Movies in 6:9 ratio are still cropped to fit so you still lose a bit of information but they fill a widescreen without black bars top & bottom. I don't have a problem with that.

You want to hedge your bets against future HD requirements.
Also a good plan. The resolution required to play your DVD collection is not that high, but material in HD resolution is available over the air if you live in a major US city, or through your cable company or off satellite or off your PC, or off one of the new expensive competing HD DVD formats. Since you have no immediate desire for any of those, I wouldn't recommend buying anything leading edge (like a 1080p TV).

If you're looking at say a 37" LCD, it should already have the tuner to receive HD over the air (I think the spec would say something like ATSC-8VSB although some manufacturers drop the 8VSB part). I wouldn't worry too much about the TV's built-in HD cable support. That seems to be a hit or miss feature so far.

Most of this is repeat of what others have said, but make sure it has at least one HDMI (with HDCP) input and one component input - even better if two of each.

The TV's native resolution should be something near the 720p spec (typically 1366x768 or 1024x720) and support at least 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i. I don't think that's narrowed the choice down much unfortunately. There are lots of models at a wide range of prices. I believe you get what you pay for.

If possible, try to view the TV with a few different sources. Watch a DVD that you're familiar with, watch a bit of regular analog TV and also the stores canned HD stuff. Their HD stuff should look great but some sets have a problem converting non-HD source material to the sets native resolution.

This may be more difficult, but try to watch under the range of lighting conditions you'll use it in. The current LCDs do an amazing job in bright ambient lighting but not so good in a dark room.

Also keep in mind that if you're a fan, once you've watched baseball or football in HD on your couch you will want that from then on. I can take or leave the bulk of the prime-time HD programming but sports events and movies can be bloody amazing. And my experience is only with 720p. I would imagine 1080p would be another big step up.

If it gets too complicated for all family members to control, there are better remotes coming out all the time but they are not cheap and not necessarily easy to setup but you or someone else only does that once.

Have fun and enjoy it.

Bob

[LCHIEN]

it appears to me that the cable card feature is being phased out - it was hot last year but appears to have fallen out of favor and many new sets don't have it.

The cable card was to have been the way that cable provides could provide you with the way to decode their digital and or digital/HD encoding.
I think it fell somewhat short and the cable box with HDMI has become the preferred (along with the demise of DVI). So I would recommend getting a set with two *OR MORE* HDMI inputs (unless you have a high end A/V receiver to do the HDMI switching, in which case it should have 2 or 3 HDMI inputs).

[25]

it appears to me that the cable card feature is being phased out - it was hot last year but appears to have fallen out of favor and many new sets don't have it.

The reason for the Cable Cards in the first place was to allow the 3rd parties to build devices with integrated tuners and allow the 3rd party products access to the encrypted content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_card

CableCARD2.0 is coming some time in the future to allow an option to allow users to completly do away with cable boxes. This will allow all 3rd party manufactures access to all the interactive features cable companies provide through their cable boxes.

It is currently a FCC regulation, curious to see what will happen if TV manufacturers are not providing an interface for them anymore. I think once CableCARD2.0 is out people will start demanding them again.

We don't use any of the interactive features so it doesn't bother us one way or another. I do however like the idea of dropping another AV component in favor of a plugin card for my TV.

I second the rest of what Lchein is saying though.

Also look at optical outputs, my reciver has 4 optical input/outputs and 1 digital coax input. My TV and my DVD player have coax digital outputs so if I really want to listen to digital audio for some channels I have to manually switch the plug. It seems optical sound connectors are what everyone is going to now.

[HarmsWay]

I like the cable card concept, but I've heard a lot of complaints about them. OTOH, the set top boxes are not without problems. I was surprised to learn that a large part of their firmware is provided by the cable companies. So company X buys the same Motorola HD receiver that company Y is successfully using but company X's software is crap so it crashes regularly and takes 5 seconds to change channels when browsing. A guy I work with had that problem. It also took 30 seconds to change if it was going from an HD channel to a non-HD one. After 3 months and many software revisions, it works great but it was painful getting there.

On A/V I/O, I'm all for a bazzillion inputs on the TV, but if you've got more than 2 or 3 sources you're probably better off switching everything through an A/V receiver.

Bob

[Otter]

Larry sorry for going off the track there. I have been in the profesional and broadcast AV industry for 21 years now and this stuff trips my trigger in a big way.

I would ask you to look at the Sony SXRD series RP units. The curent models are all 1080p native, do not have the croma lag that single DLP, plasma, or LCD have and is the higest native resoultion. Plenty of IO and support. Best of all they are price compeditive with ther lower rez counterparts. To be fair JVC DILA is also a 1080P native afordable RP units.

Best of luck
Jon