Digital TV and HDTV for the naive technophile : Computer Hardware Buyers’ Glossary

There are three kinds of TV:

1. the old analog NTSC, now pretty much obsolete.
2. digital DTV. It is on the way out already even before it was officially mandated.
3. digital widescreen HDTV, the most costly.

Advantages of DTV

• Uses less power

  which puts less strain on the environment and means less greenhouse gas emissions to generate the electricity. This saving is because most modern TVs no longer use power-hungry CRTs, not because they are digital. The big question is how much does it cost per month to run a digital TV.

  TV Power Consumption
  Technology	Power Consumption 32” unit	Cost To Run Continuously for One Month CurrCon Applet needs Java 1.1 or later to display prices in your local currency.
  CRT	280 watts	$14.54 CAD
  Plasma	260 watts	$13.50 CAD
  LCD	180 watts	$9.34 CAD
  Energy Star any technology	121 watts	$6.28 CAD

  By comparison, a kettle is 1100 watts and a modern light bulb is 14 watts.

  To calculate the monthly cost of any TV or electric appliance running continuously, use the following formula:

  cost = ( w watts ÷ 1000 watts/kilowatt ) × 24 × 30 hours in a month × $0.07210 CAD /kilowatt-hour
  You can check your electric bill or your power utility website for a more accurate cost of a kilowatt-hour of power where you live. If the price is quoted in megajoules, multiply by 0.2777 to get the price in kilowatt-hours. If the price is quoted in gigajoules, multiply the price by 277.7 to get the price in kilowatt-hours.

• higher resolution

  optionally including HDTV (High Definition Tele vision).

  Analog NTSC	DTV	HDTV 720p broadcast	HDTV 1080p DVD
  648 × 486	704 × 480	1280 × 720	1920 × 1080
  4:3	4:3	16:9	16:9

  DTV is rapidly becoming obsolete. Toshiba for example no longer makes DTV sets, only HDTV.

• clearer picture

  Digtal transmission automatically removes static. Not all the channels you get will be digital. Typically there will be a digital or HDTV equivalent for only a fraction of the old analog channels. This means the analog channels will see no improvement over your old analog cable service. Old TV shows are blurry or have poor contrast or colour because of the quality of the original film. Digital transmission can’t help them. For most channels you will not notice any improvement. It is not so much that the images are all that much better than analog, it is the consistency. They are always clear. The place you most notice the increased clarity is nature shows. Even partner, who is rather scornful of digital TV, acknowledges the nature shows are much more impressive on DTV, particularly David Attenborough’s the Life of Birds and Planet Earth series.

• wider picture

  Theatre format 16 × 9 (aka widescreen or letterbox) rather than TV’s box aspect ratio of 4:3 for HDTV only. DTV uses the same old analog style 4:3. HDTV channels don’t always broadcast HTDV size images. Sometimes they broadcast DTV-size when a wide feed is not available for a given show. Modern TVs will stretch and chop the old square broadcast to fit the wide screen TV.

• more channels

  DTV makes more efficient use of bandwidth because DTV takes only as much bandwidth as needed for a given resolution so more channels can be packed into the same cable. Over the next years you should see more and more channels available. The old unused analog bandwidth will be freed up for used by police and emergency communications and for cell phones. There are in theory ten times as many available channels, numbered: 1, 1.1, 1.2… Your adapter box may convert channels to round numbers.

• Interactive Schedule

  Your digital box lets you look at the schedule for days into the future. You don’t have to wait for the channel of interest to roll around. You can scroll. Unfortunately, the service on Shaw shows you not only all the channels and shows you never watch, but also those you do not even subscribe to! Phht! You can click on a show in the future to get a reminder when it comes on. The guide shows you a line about the epsode of the show scheduled, so you can often tell if it a show you have already seen. Oddly, the feature I have found most satisfying is the ability to channel surf without ever having to see even a frame or a word from Peter Popoff (televangelist faith healer) or shout from Billy Mays (informercial huckster).

We will see gigantic hard disks replacing the VCR. This should bring down the cost of hard disks for computer users.

The catch is, the programming content is the same old same old you got on analog TV; it is just prettier.

Disadvantages of DTV

• Channel surfing is frustrating because it is very slow to change channels. The screen blanks for a second between channels and buzzes for a fraction of a second thereafter. I suspect this is because it the compression method transmits only differences between frames. You need a number of frames to prime the pump. What you do instead is scan the interative viewing guide, which does not have such a delay.
• Without an additional cable box, there is no way to remove a channel you don’t subscribe to, or don’t want to see from the viewing guide. You have to scroll through a lot of chaff to find the wheat.
• If you watch old analog TV or DTV on a new widescreen TV, the TV will have to stretch/chop the image in various ways to make it fit on the wide screen. The tops of people’s heads are chopped off. Writing at the bottom of the screen is chopped off. In some modes, images are stretched wider so that people look squatter than they really are.

Satellite vs Cable

• cable
• satellite disk
• DVD discs

Satellite tends to be less expensive. However you must have written permission of your landlord for the satellite company to install the dish, and you must have a clear line of site to satellite from where the dish is mounted.

Check the direction to the satellite for Star Choice from your city. For example, from Victoria where I live, it is azimuth:140°, elevation:32.3°, skew:76° for one of their satellites and azimuth:145° elevation:33.1° skew:79° for the other. The azimuth is the number of degrees clockwise/east of due north. The elevation is the angle above the horizon. The skew is an electronic trick to let one dish point at two different satellites simultaneously. I have not been able to find anything more detailed than that. The “experts” treat it is something you mindlessly tweak to the setting the satellite company tells you to.

Normally, you would point your dish half way between the two satellites. In my case the dish has to point south east, 37.5° east of due south, to the sky without any trees or buildings blocking the way. The geosynchronous Anik satellite orbits at exactly the same speed as the earth rotates at stationary orbit 37,014.91 km (23,000 miles) high above the ground. The radius of the earth is only 6,371 km (3,958.76 miles) . Thus is hovers about the exact same spot on the ground, one at 107.3°W and one at 111.1°W, above the equator roughly at the longitude of Moosejaw about 1,650 km (1,025.26 miles) west of the Galapagos Islands.

The satellite company will deal with disk installation and aligning for you. They need to install a more powerful type of disk to deal with HDTV. You don’t have to understand any of this technobabble. Just be aware, that satellite service can’t always be provided. It requires a clear line of site to the satellite. So for example if you lived in an apartment building with a northern exposure, you are S.O.L. even if your landlord does give you permission to set up a dish.

Bell TV (née ExpressVu) is vague about where there satellites are. They say only that they are south for western Canada and south west for locations Manitoba east. This implies their Telesat Nimiq 4 satellite is placed close to where Star Choice does.

You can buy or rent DVDs. To get full 1080p resolution, you must have a fairly expensive blu-Ray DVD player. With ordinary DVD players and discs, you will just get the same resolution image you did on your old analog TV.

Here in Victoria there are three choices of provider:

Bell TV Satellite Advantages/Disadvantages

• Adapter box is inexpensive and can be converted to a 1000-hour PVR with the addition of an ordinary $150.00 CAD 1 TB USB hard disk.
• All signals are digital.
• Bell use more modern satellites so needs only an 45.72 cm (18 in) diameter dish.
• The entry level HD plan is $32.00 CAD a month more expensive than Star Choice’s.
• Need to install a satellite dish, with line of site. You need the landlord’s permission.

Shaw.ca Cable Advantages/Disadvantages

• You get the kitchen sink in terms of channels in the basic package, even obscure independent local stations like KVOS.
• You get a $10.00 CAD a month discount if you get both your Internet and TV service from Shaw.
• Adapter boxes are very expensive.
• Most of the channels are analog.
• The entry level HD plan is $30.00 CAD a month more expensive than Star Choice’s.

Star Choice Satellite Advantages/Disadvantages

• Low monthly cost.
• You get a $5.00 CAD a month discount if you elect paperless billing.
• All signals are digital.
• The dish is included at no extra charge.
• Installation is included at no extra charge.
• The installer provides the necessary cables to hook up the adapter and your TV at no extra charge.
• Need to install a satellite dish, with line of site. You need the landlord’s permission.
• Not as many choices in optional channels.
• On the website they tell you that “digital favourites” bundle is their most popular offering, but don’t tell you what is in it. You can find out by sending them an email query or by downloading the PDF description of all their plans available from the QUICKLINKS section of the home page. What’s in it depend on whether you live in eastern or western Canada.
• Star Choice uses the ancient Anik satellites so needs a larger 60 cm (23.62 in) diameter dish. Star Choice assures me that despite their age, these satellites are in good repair and have plenty of spare capacity and will not need to be replaced in the foreseeable future. Further the programmable logic in the receivers will allow them to adapt to future technology without changing the dishes or adapter boxes.

Open Up Your Wallet

• An HD-capable DVD player. Your old DVD won’t do HD. You need a a Blu-Ray player for full HDTV resolution. Even though HD-DVD players cost half as much, Blu-Ray won the marketing battle and HD-DVD players are no longer manufactured.
• An HD-capable digital recorder. You old analog VCR won’t work.
• HDTV cable or satellite service, or at least digital service. You will need a set top box which may cost more than the TV (or a TV with a built-in cable ready unit), and a DTV or HDTV cable subscription that costs perhaps 3 times what it does now. Because of the expense we may see computers and Internet video content (U-tube) competition growing explosively.
• You need some electronics called a tuner to extract the channel data feed from the broadcast signal containing all channels. It also decompresses the MPEG stream. Currently HDTV in North America uses MPEG-2, but there is a gradual switch to the denser MPEG-4. This tuner functionality might be inside the TV, a separate box, or something you rent or buy from your cable/satellite provider.
• Home theatre sound. The assumption is sound will be processed through your stereo system, and its speakers so you will need to have some sort of stereo system beside your TV. Home theatre 5.1 sound uses 6 speakers 3+2+1.
  • Front left, front centre and front right (3).
  • Rear left and rear right surround sound (2).
  • Center woofer LFE (low-frequency effects channel) (1).
  There are even more advanced schemes with up to 14 channels, but you won’t see these in digital TV, at least for now.

Why So Expensive?

One Time Costs

Monthly Costs

What Channels Do I Get?

The websites were designed by the same guy who created the forms you use to calculate your income tax. I think the intent is deliberate bamboozlement to keep people from figuring out how much they will have to spend up front, what the monthly costs are, and what channels they will get. They never quote you the actual price of anything. They show some price, then a confusing set of discounts. Then in the fine print they explain why you don’t actually get the discounts much of the time. It is very hard to nail down all the charges with any certainty. I discovered that one vendor even had the gall to charge a fee if you did not return the set top box in pristine condition that you had supposedly purchased up front, if you cancelled service within a year. The lists of channels are not sorted in any order. There all kinds of weird rules about what channels you may combine, e.g. that you may not order the HD channel unless you also order the DTV version of it. This is silly. If you have the HD channel, you don’t even want the DTV version. You don’t just choose the extra channels you want above the basic package, you must select bundles. A given desired channel may appear in several different bundles, so you have to juggle to get the best fit to the channels you actually want. It burns me up to be forced to pay for religious channels. I don’t want to support those crooks with even a penny. The websites contradict themselves in rules, channels and prices. They need a computer program to help customers configure the channels you want for the minimum price. One of the most common dishonest ploys they use is to quote you an introductory price, and then in the fine print tell you the rate goes up after a year. It seems to me it would be ever so much simpler just to tick off the channels you want and have a computer program tote up the cost of the channels individually with volume discounts.

I found printing the PDF files produced the clearest information.

You also want to know what sorts of output the adapter box provides so you can be sure your TV supports one of them, and to have the appropriate cable on hand if that is your responsibility. Bell gives none of this information.

The other piece of questionable business practice that these companies indulge in is forcing you to buy an adapter box from them an inflated prices. They excuse themselves by saying they can’t be expected to deal with hundreds of different models, so they force everyone to standardize on one, and buy it from the cable/satellite company. My nephew, a movie actor, managed to talk Shaw into breaking this rule, but the hassle was not worth the savings. They need to understand how the box works so they can use it to align the dish pointing directly at the satellite.

A Shaw technician explained why some channels you get with digital service are still delivered over cable in the old analog form to the adapter box. It is because some TV stations are still broadcasting analog. As they flip over to digital, then digital service customers will get them in digital, and Shaw will convert the digital signal to analog for the legacy analog service customers. Some stations such as CHEK already provide both analog and digital via fibre optic to Shaw, who then pass the digital on to digital customers and analog to the analog customers. The flipover to digital in the USA is due to be complete by 2009-07. There is no corresponding date mandated for Canada.

Satellite companies have no choice but to deliver digitally, so they convert any signals from TV stations broadcasting only in analog to digital before sending them up to the satellite.

Display Technologies

1. CRT

   cathode rate tube. Old style. Consumes a lot of AC power and produces a lot of heat.

2. LCD

   liquid Crystal display: sharp, low power, limited viewing angle.

3. LED-LCD

   liquid Crystal display: sharp, low power, limited viewing angle, with an LED backlight. This gives high contrast and a bright image. The Samsung LED is actually an ordinary LCD screen, with LEDs to provide the backlight. The LEDs are not used to create the picture the way the would be on a football scoreboard. For viewing sports, to reduce motion blur, there are 100Hz and up models that refresh the picture more frequently. In contrast, theatre film movies work at 24Hz. Analog TV works at 30Hz.

4. gas plasma

   bright, high contrast, more expensive than LCD. Uses more power. It uses so much more power, some countries are considering banning them.

5. OLED

   Organic Light Emitting Diode, latest out the lab, vibrant colours, from Sony, obscenely expensive.

Monitor vs Digital TV

• A TV is about twice as bright so you can sit back.
• A monitor usually has more adjustments for position and angle.
• A monitor usually has higher resolution e.g. 1920 × 1200 pixels. An HDTV will have only 720p: 1280 × 720 progressive, 1080i: 1920 × 1080 interlaced (half speed) or 1080p: 1920 × 1080 progressive. SDTV (Standard DTV) will have only 480i: 704 × 480 interlaced or 480p: 704 × 480 progressive. In other words HDTV images are relatively wider but not as tall compared with monitors. Full 1080p HDTV produces clear images than you will get from film in a theatre.
• A computer monitor will have an 15-pin analog connector, or four discrete analog cable, or sometimes a digital connection.
• The TV contains a tuner to filter out one channel out of many on a coax cable. A monitor can deal with only one signal on its input.
• Monitors typically update the screen 70 times a second. Progressive scan TV updates it 60 times a second, and interlaced 30 times a second. This makes monitors more immune to flickering in the presence of fluorescent light.
• Monitors are usually faster, with a response time of perhaps 6 ms (milliseconds) where a DTV might be 12 ms. The smaller the number, the crisper the picture during action shots.

Some HDTVs now come with computer connections, with VGA analog and HDMI digital connector, so you can treat them like huge monitors.

HDTV cables and Connectors

Image	Video ?	Audio ?	Notes
HDMI connector			HDMI (digital, latest and greatest). The signal is the output of a tuner, a single video channel (with theatre sound channels), uncompressed. It uses a 19-pin connector that looks at first glance similar to a USB connector. Digital means noise-free. These cables cost $50.00 CAD to $150.00 CAD so check if they are included and factor them into the cost of your new TV. Coming soon, HDMI 1.3 which will have increased bandwidth.
coax connector			Digital coax cable from the cable/DSS (Digital Satellite System) company. At a casual glance these look like RCA phone jack cables. Read the label. These cables cost $25.00 USD to $100.00 USD Also analog coax cable from the cable/satellite dish company.
6-pin Firewire connector			Firewire IEEE 1394 so you can hook up your Mac. There are 4 and 6 pin versions and three speeds 1394a, 1394b and 1394c. The 6-pin type are most commonly used in HDTV. Apple collects royalties on every Firewire port in the universe. This is mainly why they are more expensive than USB ports. These cables cost $6.00 USD to $35.00 USD
DVI-D connector			DVI-D (older digital scheme). Video-only, no audio.
component A/V connector			Component Video (analog). Uses colour difference, not simple RGB. Connectors are labelled [Y R B] (yellow red blue) or [Y, R-Y, B-Y] (yellow, red minus yellow, blue minus yellow) or [Y, Cr, Cb] or [Y, Pr, Pb]. That handles the video. In addition you have two more cables for left and right audio. These cables cost $30.00 USD to $105.00 USD
S-Video DIN connector			S-Video DIN (analog DTV, low quality). The signal is the output of a tuner, a single channel, decompressed, analog. It uses a 4-pin mini DIN connector. It separates out brightness and colour signals. It is video-only. $6.00 USD
S-Video coax connector			S-Video dual coax (analog DTV, low quality). The signal is the output of a tuner, a single channel, decompressed, analog. It uses a dual coax connector. It separates out brightness and colour signals. It is video-only. $50.00 CAD
VGA analog PC connector			PC VGA, analog, so you can hook up your computer. 15 pins, often with pin 9, a keying pin missing. That handles the video. In addition you have two more cables for left and right audio. These cables cost $7.00 USD to $30.00 USD
S/PDIF PC audio digital optical connector			S/PDIF Sony/ Philips Digital Interconnect Format. Aka Toslink (Toshiba Link) PC Audio, so you can hook up your computer. This could be a variety of connectors including mini plugs, RCA phono jacks, S/PDIF digital 5.1 (front left/right, back left/right, woofer) optical fibre or S/PDIF coax. You may need to buy adapter cables to convert. S/PDIF optical is shown. Audio only.
S/PDIF PC audio digital coax connector			S/PDIF Sony/ Philips Digital Interconnect Format. PC Audio, so you can hook up your computer. This could be a variety of connectors including mini plugs, RCA phono jacks, S/PDIF digital 5.1 (front left/right, back left/right, woofer) optical fibre or S/PDIF coax. You may need to buy adapter cables to convert. S/PDIF coax is shown.
composite A/V connector			Composite NTSC A/V analog legacy, aka yellow RCA connector. You will get an old-style analog NTSC picture. These look a lot like digital coax. Make sure you read the label when you buy cables.
Above images are not shown to the same scale.

Old Style CRT TVs

Round televisions have a rounded picture tube, with a rounded cabinet. This gives the television a bubble effect.	Virtual Flat televisions have a rounded picture tube, with a flat frontal cabinet. This gives the television and picture a flat effect (but is still a rounded tube)	True Flat televisions have a flat tube and flat cabinet giving a true flat picture effect.

Digital Video Recorder

Real World Equipment

Check the native resolution. If it is not 1920 × 1080 or higher, your screen will not do full HDTV. It may display the image, but not in full detail. Only the largest TVs offer 1920 × 1080. Most offer 1366 × 768, ¾ the full resolution.

It costs about $100.00 CAD extra for a digital tuner built-in to the TV. You will need this to receive broadcasts through the air over an antenna. You probably will not need it for cable service since the cable company provides the tuner box specially designed to hook into their network. An analog NTSC tuner, nearly always built-in, will let you continue to receive analog cable service.

If you can’t afford the digital service of HDTV service, and are going to continue with the old analog NTSC cable service, there is not much point in getting a TV that can do all the high resolutions, unless you get a Blu-Ray DVD player and rent movies.

Digital TV Equipment
HDTV	Component	Standard Digital TV
recommend Amazon⇒Panasonic Plasma HDTV asin: B000LCPVMY Panasonic TH 65PF9UK. Bright plasma display. It is 65” wide. It has 1920 × 1080 resolution, full HDTV 1080p. Does not contain a tuner. The cable company set top box must provide channel selection logic. Has one DVI connection. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr	Plasma TV	recommend Amazon⇒Panasonic Plasma DTV asin: B000HAWAL0 Panasonic TH-50PH9UK. It is 50” wide. It has 1366 × 768 resolution, not up to full 1080p HDTV snuff. S-Video, 9 and 15 pin VGA. RGB component video in. HDMI is an optional accessory. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr
recommend Amazon⇒Samsung Plasma HDTV asin: B0015PBTHM Samsung PN58A650. I like Samsung. They make solid no-nonsense gear that does not break down, and that gives good value for the money. This model is 58" wide. It has 1920 × 1080 resolution, full HDTV 1080p. 100,000 to 1 contrast ratio (bigger is better). amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr	Plasma TV	recommend Amazon⇒Samsung Plasma DTV asin: B0015AR7AK Samsung PN42A450. I like Samsung. They make solid no-nonsense gear that does not break down, and that gives good value for the money. This model is 42” wide. It has 1365 × 768 resolution. 100,000 to 1 contrast ratio (bigger is better). amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr
recommend Amazon⇒Sharp Aquos LCD-LED HDTV asin: B001KQ3US2 Sharp LC-65XS1U-S Aquos Limited Edition LCD-LED HDTV. This is the biggest most expensive LCD TV you can buy It has an astounding 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio for deep blacks. It is 65" wide. It has 1920 × 1080 resolution, full HDTV 1080p. Has HDMI input. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr	LCD TV	recommend Amazon⇒LG LCD DTV asin: B001L1A6HY LG 26LX2R LCD Television. 26” wide screen and a 1366 × 768 resolution. Not up to full 1080p HDTV snuff. Contrast ratio 500:1. Requires separate receiver to view HDTV signals. Up to 1080i (HDTV). DVI and DMI connectors. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr
recommend Amazon⇒Samsung Series 7 LCD HDTV asin: B001418WF4 Samsung Series 7 LN52A750 LCD HDTV. I like Samsung. They make solid no-nonsense gear that does not break down, and that gives good value for the money. This model is 52" wide. It has 1920 × 1080 resolution, full HDTV 1080p. 50,000 to 1 contrast ratio (bigger is better). 4 ms response time (smaller is better). 4 × HDMI inputs. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr	LCD TV	recommend Amazon⇒Samsung Series 6 LCD HDTV asin: B001415FZY Samsung Series 6 LN22A650 LCD HDTV. I like Samsung. They make solid no-nonsense gear that does not break down, and that gives good value for the money. It is 22” wide. It has 1280 × 720 resolution. 50,000 to 1 contrast ratio (bigger is better). 4 ms response time (smaller is better). 4 × HDMI inputs. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr
recommend Amazon⇒180-hour TiVo Digital Recorder asin: B000ER1G3E TiVo TCD649180 Series2 180-hour TiVo Digital Recorder. Magnetic tape-style VCRs will not longer work with DTV. Instead you use a digital recorder. This one from TiVo will record your favourite programs for you without you having to explicitly tell it when they are on since it consults an online TV guide it accesses via a telephone call. Further it will let you pause and rewind a show you are watching live. It can record 180 hours digitally. Can record a basic and digital channel simultaneously, but not two digital channels. Some TVs come bundled with a digital recorder. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr	Digital Recorder	recommend Amazon⇒80-hour TiVo Digital Recorder asin: B00006LIQL TiVo R24008A Series2 80-hour TiVo Digital Recorder. Magnetic tape-style VCRs will not longer work with DTV. Instead you use a digital recorder. This one from TiVo will record your favourite programs for you without you having to explicitly tell it when they are on since it consults an online TV guide it accesses via a telephone call. Further it will let you pause and rewind a show you are watching live. It can record 80 hours digitally. Some TVs come bundled with a digital recorder. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr
recommend Amazon⇒Sony Blu-Ray DVD player asin: B000PALZE0 Sony BDP-S300 Blu-Ray DVD player. You can no longer rent movies to play on magnetic tape-style VCRs with DTV. Instead you use a DVD player. Ordinary DVD players cannot provide the full HDTV resolution. This one can, when it plays the new Blu-Ray discs, at 1080p. Some TVs come bundled with a DVD player, as do home theatre speaker systems. Make sure it is HDTV-Blu-Ray capable. HDMI output. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr	DVD player	recommend Amazon⇒Toshiba DVD/DivX Player asin: B000MXB0TK Toshiba SD-4000 DVD/DivX Player. This can play ordinary and DivX DVDs, often used for ordinary resolution movie rentals. This player provides inputs to a DTV, or a HDTV, but it cannot read the high res HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVDs. Output S-video. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr
recommend Amazon⇒Samsung DVD Home Theater System asin: B000PU5BXG This is a high end six-speaker system, front pair, back pair, center, subwoofer, 1000 watts, optionally wireless, bundled with an HD-DVD. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr	home theatre surround speaker system	recommend Amazon⇒Audiovox DVD Home Theater System asin: B0000A2U5M This is a six-speaker system, front pair, back pair, center, subwoofer, 200 watts, bundled with an ordinary DVD that cannot read HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr
recommend Amazon⇒Haupauge HTDV tuner card asin: B000MGGTY8 This is a cheap way to get HTDV. Fits inside your computer. Uses your computer monitor and computer speakers. It has 1920 × 1080 resolution, 1080i not full HDTV 1080p. It can connect to an over-the-air antenna or a S-Video connection to a cable box. If you buy a tuner make sure it accepts suitable inputs. The catches: You can’t use your computer while people are watching TV. The screen likely won’t be all that big. The viewing angle on your screen will be narrower than for a true TV. You need to hook your computer up to your stereo to get decent sound. amazon.co.uk amazon.ca amazon.de amazon.com amazon.fr	Computer HDTV Tuner card	Nobody makes pure DTV tuner cards; they are all HDTV/DTV.

Roedy’s HTDV

Advantages

• Good value.
• Handles HTDV 720p broadcast HDTV.
• I wanted a reliable brand I was familiar with. Sony, Sharp, Toshiba and Samsung were ones I preferred.
• Compared with many other models I looked at, it has accurate colour and a nice crisp image though the CNET review was not as impressed.
• It does not have a glossy screen. I don’t like glare.
• It has a wide variety of inputs including: HDMI, digital audio, S-Video, analog cable, NTSC and VGA. The connectors at the back are well-labelled. There is an imput for almost cable/device you have ever heard of. This was a major selling point for me, future flexibility.
• It has solidly built base. The mounting hardware is exceptionally sturdy and of excellent quality.
• Getting it going is simple. You just turn it on, and it configures itself. The menu system is the easiest to use on any TV/Monitor I have ever used. It is also beautiful with proper fonts.

Negatives

• When you channel surf, the screen goes black for 1.5 seconds between channels. This really slows down channel surfing. This is the main thing I don’t like about the TV. This is using analog cable. I don’t know how it behaves with digital or HDTV service. I would presume for HDTV service you set the TV on channel 4 and leave it there, and use the channel changing mechanism in the cable-company provided adapter box. Hopefully, it will not have this delay.
• The built-in sound is bearable, but I decided to hook the sound into my stereo to get decent sound. Unfortunately the remote has no effect on the stereo volume.
• The controls are mounted on the top, but the indicators are along the bottom. It is extremely puzzling how you turn the ruddy thing on until you notice that.
• Does not do 1080p. Given the resolution of the screen and the size of the screen, and the fact TV stations don’t broadcast 1080, I thought that a reasonable feature to forgo.
• Does 1080i poorly.

Tips

• To configure the four favourites button on the remote, tune to a favourite channel then click menu ⇒ Option ⇒ Favourite CH ⇒ Register and follow your nose.
• To suppress a poor quality channel, select the channel and click menu ⇒ Setup ⇒ CH Setup ⇒ CH Memory ⇒ Enter ⇒ Down ⇒ Left/Right to turn skip on or off ⇒ exit.
• To play a DVD, use the DVD remote to play the DVD and on the TV remote, click input ⇒ Select which of the 6 inputs the DVD is connected to.
• The mysterious small round connector beneath the S/PDIF fibre optic digital audio out port is the stereo mini jack from the PC sound corresponding the VGA analog RGB PC video connector, input 6.
• The remote works best if you point it the green light in the bottom right corner of the TV.

	recommend Amazon⇒Sharp Aquos LCD HDTV
	asin: B0012TTX1K
Sharp Aquos LC-32D44U LCD HDTV. This is model I bought myself. It is 32’ wide. It has 1,366 × 768 pixels resolution HDTV 720p. Has HDMI input. See further notes above.
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Bandwidth

Besides the air, cable, satellite, and DVD rentals you can also download programming over the Internet sometimes free and sometimes for a fee.

Stages

1. Analog TV with analog cable service. Problem with interference on some channels, with mild to severe degradation of picture and sound.
2. Analog TV with digital cable service. Removes interference introduced in the cable system. Still has minor interference on the cable from the box to the TV.
3. Digital TV with analog cable service. Some channels, usually the local ones, will be quite sharp and clear. Others will be blurry or greyed.
4. Digital TV with digital cable service. Removes all interference. You can still get complete loss of picture with a weak signal, but you won’t get snow. You get the full size letterbox picture broadcast by the TV station.
5. HD TV with analog cable service. Some channels, usually the local ones, will be quite sharp and clear. Others will be blurry or greyed. The TV chops the top and bottom of the analog broadcast off to make it fit on the wide format TV, giving you the effect the camera is always zooming in for a closeup.
6. HD TV with digital cable service. No interference. The TV chops the top and bottom of the DTV broadcast off to make it fit on the wide format TV, giving you the effect the camera is always zooming in for a closeup.
7. HD TV with HDTV cable service. No interference. Large clear 720 pixel high picture, at least for shows broadcast in HDTV and for HD DVDs.
8. HD TV with HD TiVo with record function. Ability to record shows while you watch another one. Ability to pause shows you are watching live, or replay.
9. HD TV with HD TiVo with record function and HD TV and theatre speaker system. Theatre-like surround sound. 720 pixel high picture for broadcasts and 1080 high for blu-Ray DVDs.

Unfortunately, the more channels there are the lower the quality of the programming content on each channel. Stations with nothing but infomercials may well have technically crisp images and sound and the latest HDTV. There is a fixed advertising budget spread over more and more channels. The future Internet based on fibre will allow each channel to have world wide distribution. This should cause the total number of channels to drop, and hence for quality of each channel to rise again, along with tens of thousands of amateur, low-budget and niche channels, some of which will be available on a subscription basis.

HDTV Pleasant Surprises

• The Frame channel shows beautiful still landscapes in high definition. It feels as if you could reach out and touch the leaves.
• Late night talk shows give a greater sense of being in the audience.
• It is easier to read the credits or signs in the background.

HDTV Disappointments

• The Motorola DC6200 control box is enormous. It has all the drawbacks and bugs of the much smaller Motorola DCT700 DTV controller. I was hoping they put the bugs in the DCT700 to annoy you into upgrading.
• Nominally HDTV channel broadcasts are not all HD size. They annoyingly flip back and forth, especially during commercial breaks between sizes, displaying black bars on top or bottom of the picture. Your TV can’t do anything intelligent about these the way it can with DTV since the station puts the bars into the image. The TV thinks it is displaying HDTV.
• Most of the HDTV content is live, i.e. news shows, talk shows and sports. There are also old movies. Everything else only uses only a fraction of the screen, less than with DTV! I am a big fan of nature shows, science documentaries, political documentaries and mysteries. These are rarely available in HD.
• I could detect no improvement in the sound either with speakers or headphones. Perhaps an SP/DIFF cable or a new set of speakers might help.
• Most of the content is so visually uniform, e.g. newsdesks or news anchors plastered in pancake makeup, the extra resolution makes so difference. Sometimes you have to look carefully to even notice it is HDTV.
• There is no co-ordination between the DTV and HDTV channels. The controller will happily let you watch a DTV version of a show when there is an HDTV version of it on another channel.

Motorola DCT700 Adapter

Advantages

• The unit is tiny.
• You don’t have to precisely aim the remote to operate it.
• If you ever find a show you like, you can find all the other times and channels it also appears.
• Hitting twice takes you to a menu where you can search for shows by typing their names. The remote has no keyboard. You type by picking letters off a grid on the screen. It is slow but not difficult.
• The remote flashes lights under buttons so you know if you are talking the TV, the adapter box, the DVD etc.
• The ergonomics of the remote are very good. Buttons are various shapes and patterns, easy to use purely by touch.
• The setup process is unusually easy.
• There is a button to take you directly to the music channels.
• When you surf, the box delays turning on the sound for a second or so. This means you avoid the cacophany of phony faith healers etc. as you surf.
• When you surf, even if a commerical is playing, you know what channel you are on, what the name of the show is, and a line telling you a bit about which episode is showing. This means you can make your selection on two rounds. You don’t have to wait for all the commercials to end.

Disadvantages

• The most infuriating feature is that the program guide shows all the zillions of conceivable channels, not just the ones you are subscribed to. There should be a way to hide the non-subscribed channels. It takes forever to step through all the channels. You need a piece of paper with a list of all the subscribed channels. Without it, you would spend your entire time trying to find a subscribed channel. Further subscribed and non-subscribed channels are not differentiated in any way, e.g. with an icon, or a different colour of background. To find out if you can view a channel, you must select it and wait a second or two. I suspect Shaw does this to deliberately frustrate users into subscribing. Perhaps they do it to sell more expensive adapter boxes without his appalling defect.

  This is not quite true. There are no instructions, but after three weeks of use I discovered by accident you can turn on favourites-only in the schedule grid. Turning it on has the annoying side effect of jumping to channel 2. Hitting almost any button but up/down arrow takes it out of this mode. You must keep turning favourites-only mode back on over and over. Spit! To add insult to injury, about one in 20 times when you hit the down button to go to the next favourite, it flips back to all-channels mode, but display the heart symbol on the screen indicating it thinks it is still in favourites-only mode. This is the most annoying feature of the entire setup. Unbelievably, the upgrade controller has the exact same bug.

• After hitting channels over and over and being told they are “not authorised” to view them, users might subscribe to everything to avoid the continuous petty insults. That wording is offensive, implying I don’t have sufficient status to obtain permission. They should say simply “not subscribed”. Could you imagine how many customers a theatre would get if they put up a sign “You are not authorised to enter”. It is not a matter of getting some totalitarian authority’s permission, but merely of paying a fee. The blunder may be a result of the unit being designed in China by non-native speakers.
• The second most infuriating feature is modal nature of the beast. Much of the time it ignores you when you key a channel by number, or when you hit the or buttons.
• You can set up favourite channels, and cycle through them agonizingly s l o w l y. If you hit the button too soon, it ignores you. The box should remember your command and execute it as soon as it can rather than ignore it. You can only go forward, not back.
• You can add channels to your list of favourites, but if you add one by mistake, there is no way to remove it.
• You can create new lists of favourites, but you can’t remove them unless you know the secret. Hit twice, then scroll down and hit . The check and x icons to include exclude favourites don’t work. Hit instead to toggle inclusion status.
• There are separate buttons for changing channels when you are viewing the guide and when you are viewing a show. Up arrow on the guide gets a lower number channel. Up arrow when viewing a show gets a higher number channel. Why can’t they make up their minds! The channel change buttons don’t work when you are viewing the guide. The process of changing channels is infuriatingly slow. Further if you hit the channel change button before it has complete changing to the next channel it ignores your press. You never know if you just have to just wait some more or if it lost a command. This further slows you down.
• When viewing the guide, there in nothing to indicate which column represents what is showing now. You have to know what day of the week it is and what time it is. Thankfully there is a clock, but not a current day of week indicator. There are no day of month indicators either.
• The salesperson said the guide would show two weeks in advance. It usually shows only 4 days. It turns out the problem is if ever there is a momentary loss of power, or a momentary loss of signal, the box erases the entire schedule and downloads it slowly from scratch. The process is preposterously slow, given that a coax link is available. I would guess it runs at 300 or 1200 baud. Clicking the video-on-demand button also seems to clear the schedule. The proper way to do it would be to use a checksum to verify the guide data, and keep existing good data, while replacing it with more up-to-date data.
• Each member of the household can have their own personal list of favourite channels. You can switch between lists. However, the box often switches lists all on its own without being asked to.
• The button does not work while the guide is showing. You could surf much more rapidly if it did.
• It has so many different modes, and it hops between them in an overly complicated way. Once you get it into an unfamiliar mode, you can’t get back to familiar territory by hitting a standard button. You have to fiddle around randomly pressing buttors to escape the trap. The problem is it either ignores the basic buttons or reassigns their meanings in some modes. It is a bit like setting a digital watch. This is largely laziness on the part of the programmer. There is no reason most buttons should not trigger their ordinary meaning no matter when they are pressed.
• These flaws are so glaring, it occured to me perhaps they are deliberate, as a bait and switch tactic, to sign people up with a cheap box, that they will detest and replace with a much more expensive one.
• If my partner attempts to use the remote, the TV is soon frozen. No matter what I press, I can’t unfreeze it. I have to power off the box to clear the problem, which of course loses the entire guide which takes an extraordinarily long time to refresh. All states should pay attention at least to the button. The thing is designed for a computer nerd, not just an ordinary human who wants to watch TV. Perhaps there should be two remotes, the complicated one and a simplified one with no access to anything complicated, just cycle through the subscribed channels up/down.
• The mute button makes the TV go mute, but not the stereo, which is actually delivering the sound.
• If it sits for too long on the same channel it just freezes and refuses to pay attention to any commands from the remote. Perhaps Mr.Gates had a hand in its design. You have to unplug it it clear its pea brain.
• The reminder you get when a program you wanted to see starts is purely visual. It does not actually take you to that channel. If you have been listening to an audio-only music channel while you waited for your show to come on, you will necessarily miss the reminder, ditto for some news channel you listen to but don’t actively watch. There should be a chime as well.
• I get the impression the box was designed on paper and never tested in the real world by virgin humans — only by its techno-geek designers, who already knew its quirks.
• I muse that the box is deliberately mal-designed to encourage you to upgrade to the more expensive box.

Rant

• The cable/satellite company gets its signals by taking them out of the air way a TV with an antenna would, with a digital signal delivered by satellite (or fibre optic) or with an analog signal. The cable company pays a fee to American TV stations for this service. However, they pay nothing to Canadian stations. Canadian stations have to make it totally on advertising revenues. This is unfair, and is part of the reason Canadian stations like CHEK are on the verge of bankruptcy and A Channel just laid out a sizeable proportion of their employees. We need Canadian stations to provide Canadian content, Canadian local news and Canadian political commentary.

  I would prefer more expensive TV service without commercials. When the station works to please viewers, rather than the advertisers, you get spectacularly good results, such as the Knowledge network in BC or PBS in the USA. I would like it if I could subscribe on a channel by channel basis, or if the set top box monitored my usage of each channel, and this information were used to reward the channels I viewed most. I strongly resent even a penny of my money going to support crooked religious broadcasting, and other garbage TV, such as deceptive infomercials.

• Providers do not clearly list what channels you get and do not get with each bundle. For example, Shaw told me that I would get all the analog channels I get now plus a few more. It turns out I don’t get all of the French language channels, except at extra cost.
• The on-line viewer guide shows you all the channels theoretically available, not just the ones you are subscribed to. Further it does not even mark the ones you have subscribed to. This means you have to scroll through tons of crud, even the HD channels your box can’t even receive! The intent is to deliberately tantalise and frustrate you into subscribing to more channels. We need more competition so providers don’t deliberately irritate and screw their customers like that.
• It would be much simpler if you just ordered your channels à la carte, dim sum style. You might get a discount for how many you ordered. I don’t like being pushed into buying bundles containing channels I don’t want, and don’t want to support. Such bundles greatly complicate configuring. The hardware itself works with blocking/allowing individual channels. That is how customers think. Why not have billing reflect this?

Future

Power surfing: there are two buttons on the remote marked and . Hitting either button skips to the next higher channel. If you hit the , that channel is temporarily disabled, taken out of the running, until the current program on that channel ends. You might continue until you have it narrowed down to three active channels. Then you can rapidly cycle between them as the programs play out, by repeatedly tapping  e.g. to find the most interesting news story at any moment playing on any of three news programs. To help speed the process, the TV knows the daily schedule, and hence can display the name of the program and the episode in overtext, even when there is a commercial playing. The adapter box has to look ahead to the next channel to surf to get it ready to display to avoid the usual delay in switching channels.

nut gathering: While you are watching a show, you can tell the TV you really like or really dislike this show by pressing then or .

For shows you like, it will automatically record that show any time in future it appears (even when you are not watching the TV) on any channel. You then don’t have to keep track of the frantically changing schedules to catch your favourite shows. When you sit down to watch there will be a fat library of materials waiting for you. The TV might even be smart enough to go looking on the Internet for content.

If you don’t like a show, and mark it as such, whenever that show is playing, its channel will be temporarily disabled, and skipped over as though it did not even exist.

To deal with the problem of accidentally marking shows as bad, they come back after a week. If you mark them bad again, they stay bad for a month. If you mark them bad again, they stay bad for a year. If you mark them bad again, they stay bad indefinitely.

The TV records each family member’s preferences separately, and for various groupings of people.

The TV knows the episodes as well as the shows. That way it will not bother to record an episode it already has.

It remembers your preferences, so that when these shows appear in future, it treats them the same way you did last time they aired by default.

Reminders: You tell your box about your favourite shows. If I have recording ability, they are automatically recorded, no matter what channel or time. If you don’t have recording, it flashes a reminder they are currently on some other channel, and allows you with a single button push to jump to it.

This could be implemented by a computer/hard disk in the TV, in a separate TiVo box, or by computers housed at the cable company. The advantage of having the cable company do it is they can handle backup and recovery automatically. Even if there is a local box at the client site, the cable company should handle back up for you. They don’t need to keep multiple copies of the same show. One copy will suffice for all customers. This efficiency might lower the cost of the service.

You could subscribe à la carte to individual shows, so for example I could subscribe to Le Plus Grand Cabaret du Mond instead of the entire TV5 channel. Part of the motivation for this is to give the cable company more precise idea of what content is generating revenue, and hopefully direct money to create more such content. You should get a discount for letting the cable company precisely monitor your viewing habits.

TV, computer and Internet should be integrated, so that you can use your computer to do all the functions of the remote, with the advantage of mouse and keyboard, e. g. You could type the name of a show you were interested in and find out when it was playing. You could select shows of interest or ones you never want to see again with a mouse click, and have your video guide collapse down. The computer might be tied to the TV via the Internet, wireless LAN or cable LAN. You should be able to view video on your computer, and manage your collection of recordings using the computer and the computer’s mass storage and backup. The computer could keep track of what you watched.

I feel rage every time I turn on the TV or watch a DVD. From the user’s point of view, that is a single atomic command. Surely I should have to press only one button. But no, you have to press half a dozen to talk independently to the cable box, the TV and the DVD player, in a magic incantation, meaningful only to a technophile. If a novice gets it wrong, they have to call me to get the system working again. I could spit at the gross incompetence of the sound equipment engineers. Here are the instructions necessary for anyone else to use my TV even casually:

Turning on TV

1. Point remote at the Shaw box.
2. Hit TV (upper right).
3. Hit Power (red, upper right)
4. Hit CBL
5. Hit Power

Using TV

1. Hit Guide
2. Hit FAV
3. Hit Up or Down Arrow to change channels.
4. Hit OK/Select to view a channel.
5. Hit Info to see more about a show.
6. To see another channel, go to step 1.

Playing a DVD

1. Power on the DVD player on the bottom left.
2. Turn right small knob on stereo to DVD.
3. Turn left knob on stereo to STEREO.
4. Use TV remote. Select Input 2.
5. Use DVD remote. Hit Play.

Reverting back to TV

1. Turn right small knob on stereo to TV.
2. Turn left knob on stereo to STEREO.
3. Use TV remote. Select Input TV.
4. Use DVD Remote. Hit Eject.
5. Power off the DVD player on the bottom left.

Power Off

1. Hit TV (upper right).
2. Hit Power (red, upper right).
3. Hit CBL.
4. Hit Power
5. If DVD is on, hit POWER with the DVD remote.

Turning on TV

1. Point remote at the Shaw box.
2. Hit TV on the remote.

Using TV

1. Hit Up or Down Arrow to change channels.
2. Hit OK/Select to view a channel
3. Hit Info to see more about a show.
4. To see another channel hit Guide and go to step 1.

Playing a DVD

1. Hit DVD on the remote.
2. Follow instructions on the screen to select episode to view.

Reverting back to TV

1. Hit TV on the remote.

Power Off

1. Hit OFF.

Internet TV

• It shows on your computer rather than your TV.
• If the internet is congested, the picture will break up.
• The picture will be small. If you blow it up to full screen, it will be low-res. Your Internet pipe does not have the bandwidth to support an HDTV picture.