tomwid

This is no longer true. There are 50" LCDs available now. Only downside to LCD is that they cost A LOT more than the same size plasma.

LCDs are much better, there's no doubt. Check out the contrast ratios and response times on the new Samsungs.

alex123

Comcast has cable cards in my area, the only downside is the are "one way" only, meaning no PPV ONDEMAND or tv guide

HughH

Umm, no not really. Satellite TV is not as dependable as cable. It's not just rain that will cause your signal to break up, sun spots will do it too. It's especially bad on the HD channels as there's more data being transmitted.

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Sun spots can occur at any time, however they usually occur on schedule during spring and autumn and unlike with my 10 foot dish, I have yet to see any effects on dbs. Judging from what I have seen with my 10' dish it only lasts a seconds/minutes per satellite. It's NOT especially bad on the HD channels from what I have seen. The interference happens equally on ALL terrestial comunications carried by a particular satellite.

All cable companies download their programming from satellites as well. The interference usually causes fast moving video spots accross the screen. At it's worst, it can burn components on big dishes as the sun energy is momentarily concentrated in a spot.

Remember, this interference only lasts from seconds to a few minutes. With my 10 footer, as soon as I see the interference, I move the dish to another satellite in order to minimize any chance for damage.

UUronL

I'd certainly second the recommendation to look into a video processor.


Many many many plasmas have odd resolutions, which means that unless you get a pricey scaler, you're not going to get 1:1 pixel mapping. I don't think this is necessarily the determining factor in picture quality however.

I personally went with an external deinterlacer instead of an upscaling player recently. The current crop of upscaling players deinterlace horribly. I repeat - they are horrible. This introduces all sorts of bad things and degrades the picture quality regardless of resolution.


If you're looking for a good cheap solution, I'd say to go the route that I did - the DVDO iScan Ultra. I think I picked it up for less than $400. It's hard to find now (discontinued), but still available new on some Internet sites.

The quality of DVD fed from a 480 interlaced player is superb - nearly the quality of HD (and I have a good TV and good signal for HD. You'd be able to run other sources through it - so standard TV could be deinterlaced properly which should improve the PQ. It did wonders for my PS2.


The other option is to build an HTPC and run dScaler on it. If you're really really serious, you can get sat/cable receiver boxes modded to output SDI, and there are SDI capture cards available to feed the interlaced signal to the PC.

hoopsrob

[/quote]


Umm, no not really. Satellite TV is not as dependable as cable. It's not just rain that will cause your signal to break up, sun spots will do it too. It's especially bad on the HD channels as there's more data being transmitted.

[/quote]

Again, I'll go back to my personal experience. It averages 30 minutes of down time per year. I can live with that.

Centurion

I'm sure you meant this the other way around.

tomwid

Yes, it is quite true the cable companies use satellite on some of their programming, however... they use 100' dishes vs our 10" dishes.

Don't get me wrong, I have DirecTV and I like it a lot, but it's not as dependable as I would like it to be. You'll understand when you're engrossed in an episode of the Sopranos, it starts raining, and you missed 30 seconds of someone getting "whacked".

Lomag

Welp! I've finally got my hd digital cable box but I need to get a DVI to HDMI cable and digital coax cable also to acctually use it.

As I've been watching the TV with my old box, the analog signals look not so good as I mentioend before. They are farily grainy and wavy... just because of the larger screen size I think. They look just as bad on my old 53" projection tv but look alright on smaller CRT TV's like my 27". What's worse is that the cable company doesn't offer the "regular" family channels in digital format.. channels like the weather channel, CNBC, etc..etc... The digital channels they do offer are all pretty much useless to me which makes me want to seriously consider DirecTV. All directv channels are digital right?

As for getting a video processor or something extra I'm not sure if I want to go there just yet. I mostly watch the local channels like 2,4,5,7 which are available via cable in HD hence are digital so they should be OK. I'll see when I get the proper cables I need to hookup this box.

I'm curious about this SmartCard/CableCard they are using. I'm guessing this card controls what channels you get and don't get because I know for certain all channels are sent through the cable, you just need a proper receiver to see them. I imagine there's ways to get a "fixed" card... hmm...

I'm still waiting for Finding Nemo and Star Wars 3 to come in from Netflix to complete my DVD player testing.

Thanks Guys!!

UUronL

Pacific Cable is the only way to go for cabling. You'll be overpaying otherwise.

http://www.pacificcable.com/HDMI_Cables.html

1,2,3,5,8,10 Meter lengths for HDMI-DVI.


Cable card sounds better in theory than in practice. You end up with really wacky channels in the subcarrier - stuff like 120.8. Surprisingly, the picture quality was worse via the internal QAM tuner in my friend's new TV than from his Sci Atl HD-8300 DVR being fed from component.

Using a digital cable box can also provide some upscaling for standard resolution channels. Check the manuals, most are downloadable from the manufacturer websites. It's usually best to "pass-thru" the HD at native rez untouched, and upscale the 480i to something higher - ideally as close to the panel's native rez as possible. I noticed a marked improvement in quality by selecting the pass-thru setting on my TV, although it adds a second or so while the TV syncs to the settings if you change to a channel with a different resolution and scan rate.

HughH

It's been too many years since the argument on digital has been relegated to the back burner. From what I remember, that was a spin by the dbs companies. Their signal (analog channels) is digitally compressed (MPG2) for transmition and soon will be going to MPG4.

These days, the only digital channels I get from DTV are the ones in the HD Programming Package. All other channels are analog. A good example if you have the HD package are the NY CBS, FOX and NBC. When not broadasting in high def, they broadcast digitally in standard def (480p). The definition is similar to what you get from a DVD player with progressive connections to a HD tv. You can see the same thing if you have a HD TV connected to an over the air antenna. If the area you live has stations broadcasting digitally, then it is possible to see both the analog and digital signals for the same station...e.g., 5, 5.1, with 5.1 being the digital station. In this case it will be 480p, no snow or ghosts. You either get a perfect signal or you get macroblocking if the signal is not stong enough.

The analog stations being broadcasted by dbs will show a lack of resolution, at worst, causing the signal to look very soft. This effect varies from channel to channel. But due to the digital compression, the signal is free from other artifacts, such as ghosts, snow, etc.

I hope I didn't confuse anyone and if I am not up-to-date, I hope someone will chime in.

Hugh