yup its a great feeling when you've done your research, scoped out the options, got the right thing and prepared yourself for future trends as well. the more the months go buy and after trying out a few games here and there, i feel very happy with how i approached setting up my amd64 rig and dumping all the old parts into a "bittorrent slave" pentium2
next challenge is how i can own a mac of my own again
oh yeah if you don't have one already you can invest in a nice progressive-scan component-out dvd player.
This brings up some questions, chief of which is whether to go with cable (Comcast) or satellite (DirecTV). If I read DirecTV's website correctly they offer an HD package but the only way you can get your local channels in HD is off the air, which because of topography won't work where I live. It also appears that Comcast offers the local channels in HD but nothing else. I'd really appreciate if anyone can shed some light on their HD experience with either cable or satellite.
The CR article also states that DVDs "look better on HDTV then they do on a regular analog set." This leads to another question, does the HD set-top box that comes with cable or satellite have component imputs for a DVD player?
As you can tell, I'm totally clueless on the whole HD situation. Thanks in advance for any information.
I've got a Sony LCD-projection TV with a comcast/motorola DVR box and digital cable service. HD looks great. We get the local channels, INDH1/2, Discovery channel and for some reason we're getting HBO-HD, Showtime HD and another HD movie cahnnel for free for the last few months. Recording with the box is great, although i wish I could use the built-in, but unsupported, firewire connection to offload the movies. HD movies take a lot of space.
My only complaint is that the tuner in the DVR is great for HD but results in blurring on analog signals (most of what is on TV). This is even worse when vieweing on a very large screen and cartoons with their clean lines are really bad. I still have my old VHS recorder connected as well and watching through it is noticably better. However, lazyness in flipping between the boxes (it is just a matter of pushing buttons on a remote) keeps me watching through the DVR box. I think the onscreen menu on the DVR also keeps me hooked to it.
Overall, I'm happy. I'm used to Jon Stewart being a bit fuzzed out on comedy central, but HBO-HD makes up for it very nicely.
As for your last point: Your DVD player should hook up directly to the TV. On mine I have the DVR box on video channel 5, DVD on channel 6 and VHS tape on channel 1. This all assumes that you have this many inputs on your TV, but I think most HDTVs have more than a single input. Indeed, they probably come with several kinds of input options.
Comments
next challenge is how i can own a mac of my own again
oh yeah if you don't have one already you can invest in a nice progressive-scan component-out dvd player.
Originally posted by OldCodger73
This brings up some questions, chief of which is whether to go with cable (Comcast) or satellite (DirecTV). If I read DirecTV's website correctly they offer an HD package but the only way you can get your local channels in HD is off the air, which because of topography won't work where I live. It also appears that Comcast offers the local channels in HD but nothing else. I'd really appreciate if anyone can shed some light on their HD experience with either cable or satellite.
The CR article also states that DVDs "look better on HDTV then they do on a regular analog set." This leads to another question, does the HD set-top box that comes with cable or satellite have component imputs for a DVD player?
As you can tell, I'm totally clueless on the whole HD situation. Thanks in advance for any information.
I've got a Sony LCD-projection TV with a comcast/motorola DVR box and digital cable service. HD looks great. We get the local channels, INDH1/2, Discovery channel and for some reason we're getting HBO-HD, Showtime HD and another HD movie cahnnel for free for the last few months. Recording with the box is great, although i wish I could use the built-in, but unsupported, firewire connection to offload the movies. HD movies take a lot of space.
My only complaint is that the tuner in the DVR is great for HD but results in blurring on analog signals (most of what is on TV). This is even worse when vieweing on a very large screen and cartoons with their clean lines are really bad. I still have my old VHS recorder connected as well and watching through it is noticably better. However, lazyness in flipping between the boxes (it is just a matter of pushing buttons on a remote) keeps me watching through the DVR box. I think the onscreen menu on the DVR also keeps me hooked to it.
Overall, I'm happy. I'm used to Jon Stewart being a bit fuzzed out on comedy central, but HBO-HD makes up for it very nicely.
As for your last point: Your DVD player should hook up directly to the TV. On mine I have the DVR box on video channel 5, DVD on channel 6 and VHS tape on channel 1. This all assumes that you have this many inputs on your TV, but I think most HDTVs have more than a single input. Indeed, they probably come with several kinds of input options.