Category Archives: HDTV and Home Theater

Thanks to a little fiddling, and some wiring, I can now extract video from my TiVo and burn it to DVD. With TyStudio, it’s actually pretty easy, and it will sure make my upcoming trip more pleasant since I can watch what I want to instead of whatever’s actually on TV.

So far I’ve tried three antennas for local HDTV reception, none of which has worked very well. My goal is to be able to get Fox and ABC without moving the antenna; if I get CBS or NBC, that would be nice but I rarely watch either of them. The local PBS affiliates aren’t broadcasting HD yet. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

• The Zenith Silver Sensor is highly directional but butt-ugly. That wasn’t a big problem, because it’s also fairly small. The real problem was its inability to get a signal from more than one station at a time. If you look at the Antennaweb map of my location, the locals are clustered between 59°-68° magnetic from me, but this antenna was so directional that I had to move it to get channels whose towers are fairly close to one another. Rejected.
• the Jensen TV920, a flat bar-style amplified antenna. It got zero channels with the amplifier off; when I turned it on, I could pick up NBC and CBS. Its shape made it impossible to rotate in the spot I had available for it. Rejected.
• The Terk TV42, which clips onto an 18″ satellite dish and uses a diplexer to send the OTA signal over the satellite cable. Even though the AVS Forum HD boards are full of “don’t buy Terk” advice, I had high hopes for this because it was an outside antenna that would be mounted above the roofline. However, once I got it wired correctly (a small adventure in itself), I found two things: it would only get Fox, and it screwed up my satellite signal, apparently by blocking the current sent to the LNB to switch it between horizontal and vertical polarization. Rejected.

I have two more candidates in mind, both from this review. We’ll see if they work any better; if not, it’s time to put the beam up in the attic.
Update (29 February): I’m finally ditching my Radio Shack indoor unit in favor of an attic antenna, either a small omni or a Yagi with a rotator.

Arlene and Thomas were off to some huge craft store in Monroe, so Thomas, Matthew, and I went out for pizza and ice cream. Both were excellent. We then came home and played on the Xbox; Matthew won every game, oddly enough. In the background, I was struggling to get Panther running on my dual G4 downstairs. The first time I booted, the machine hung at the pale blue screen; after I unplugged my Powermate and my external DVD burner, the boot worked OK. For some reason, though, the stuff on CD #2 (printer drivers, languages, etc.) wouldn’t install. I manually installed everything I wanted (French language files, additional voices, and a few printer drivers) and bang! it worked. Several other folks reported getting a Panther Server CD #2 in their Panther packages, so I shouldn’t complain. Kasia and Mike have pictures of their installations, and now I do too. (For you non-Mac users, here’s a partial list of cool new features.)
After some more Xbox, and flush with my Panther success, I put the kids to bed and popped a Western Digital 120GB drive into the TiVo, using the fastest and most dangerous upgrade method (BlessTiVo, which just requires you to bless the new drive and then bolt it in place). I had good guidance from two separate books: Keegan’s Hacking TiVo and Krikorian’s TiVo Hacks. Keegan’s book includes a ton of material that isn’t in the slimmer O’Reilly book; I’ll post a more detailed review later. Unfortunately, when I plugged everything back in the TiVo happily booted without paying the slightest attention to the new drive. According to the Hinsdale how-to, this is probably because I forgot to change the jumper on the factory drive to master from cable select… oops. I’ll open it up again this morning and fix it.

This is pretty cool: Discovery is holding seminars to explain to their content producers what they’re looking for in HD programming. The best news: there are plans for an HD season of the “Extreme Engineering” series.

WBGU is supposedly already broadcasting a digital signal, but I haven’t been able to tune it. I wrote to WGTE to ask what their HD plans are and got a nice letter back from the station manager. They plan to go live over the air on 10/31; if they can work things out with Buckeye, they can make a digital feed available to them sooner. Given how the ABC and NBC negotiations with Buckeye have gone, I don’t hold out a lot of hope, but it would sure be nice if they could get a signal out there sooner.

The installer from Digital Dish left a short while ago, after having hung a new dish pointed at the 61.5° satellite. This is hopefully temporary, until Dish starts shipping their “superdish” antenna. He also installed the 6000u receiver and we tested it to verify that I get the HD feed properly. It looks great, slightly crisper than the Buckeye DCT-5100.
I bought two antennas (more on that later) so I could find out which one worked best and looked least dorky, but I’ll have to wait a few days to hook them up; the installer didn’t have any of the 8VSB modules, so I still can’t get over-the-air HD. Dish is offering a free 8VSB module to any subscriber who owns a 6000, which is a great deal for those who haven’t already bought one yet– just call them and ask for one, preferably waiting until after mine’s shipped so they don’t run out. Hopefully mine will arrive in time for Thursday’s Threat Matrix, or at least in time for college football on Saturday.
The installer, alas, made one major faux pas: he forgot to reconnect the new receiver’s S-Video and audio out, so no one could watch standard TV. That would have caused some consternation, but luckily I caught it before anyone wanted to watch TV.

Arlene offered to buy me a gadget for my birthday (which isn’t actually until November). No fool I, I immediately took her up on it. On Tuesday, the Dish installer should arrive with a new Dish 6000u receiver that can receive over-the-air and satellite HDTV broadcasts. Dish has a promo: if you sign up for 12 months of their HD package ($9.99 for ESPN-HD, HDNet, HDNet Movies, and Discovery HD, plus HBO and Showtime HD if you get the SD versions), you can get the 6000u for $199. That’s less than half of what a new DirecTV receiver would cost– the best price I’ve seen is around $370 from one of the Google ads appearing on this very page 🙂 Best Buy had an open-box Samsung TS160 that was tempting me until I found out that a) it was $460 with no install and b) I’d lose the “superstation” package that Dish has.
So, by Tuesday night I should be all set to watch Alias, 24, et al in glorious HD.

Buckeye is coming to get their cable box tomorrow. Why? Well, the test period’s finally up, so I either have to pay for the box and subscribe or give it back. I’m giving it back, which means I’ll be HD-less for a while. I have a confusing set of options at this point.
Option 1: I could pay Buckeye $385 for the box plus monthly charges of $6.95 (for the local broadcast channels; they still don’t have ABC, NBC, or PBS in HD even though they’re broadcast locally), plus another $10.95 (for DiscoveryHD, ESPN-HD, HDNet, and HDNet Movies). This is on top of my existing cable bill, and I really, really don’t like the idea of having to buy the box. I’m not sure why, since buying a satellite receiver doesn’t seem like a bad idea. I probably dislike it because there are newer, nicer boxes (like this one) that cost the same, but that Buckeye won’t let me use.
Option 2: I could subscribe to Dish Network’s HD package and buy a new receiver. This would require a new dish, too, which Dish will pay for if I commit to a year’s HD programming. However, Dish’s PVRs are widely denounced for being buggy, so I’d probably end up buying the 811 receiver, which doesn’t ship until November at the earliest. On the other hand, Dish is charging $9.99/mo for the same content as Buckeye’s $10.95 package, but their receivers can pick up over-the-air broadcasts, so I’d get local channels for free. Cost-wise this works out to be about the same as Buckeye, with the bonus that I get lots of channels (Speedvision and BYU-TV, anyone?) that Buckeye won’t ever carry.
Option 3: Wait for the HD-Tivo unit from DirecTV and switch to them. It’s not clear when this unit will actually ship, nor how much it’ll cost, so this is a risky alternative. However, it seems clear that this would give me the most of what I want: HD programming that I can TiVo– I just can’t have it now, or even by the end of the year (and possibly not until this time next year).
Option 4: Buy a cheap over-the-air receiver (like Costco’s $215 Samsung SIR-T151) now. That would give me Alias, Monday Night Football, college ball on Saturdays, 24, Smallville, and PBS in HD, covering the majority of my viewing needs. I’d miss Discovery and ESPN in HD, but I’d be able to resell the receiver later and recoup some of my investment. This looks like the best overall deal, so it’s probably what I’ll do.
Update: According to some knowledgeable (-seeming) folks on AVSForum, the FCC says that cable companies must put OTA HD channels in the basic tier, and they may not encrypt them. If true, that solves part of my problem, so I’ve asked Buckeye whether they think it’s true. If I don’t like their answer, then it’s on to the FCC.

Thanks to my pal Rod Montgomery, I now know about the Oasis Home Theater Blog. Now, where did Arlene hide the checkbook….

Everyone should heed High Priestess Julie: get a TiVo. Now, for a pittance, you too can join the TiVolution. (Personal to John: this has your name written all over it.)

John, you’re invited to come watch the race.

The cable guy came today. Remarkably, my appointment time was between noon and 5pm, and he showed up at 12:00 on the nose. Too bad I was at Rotary. After 45 minutes or so of head-scratching, cable-swapping, and complaining about how complicated my setup is, he isolated the problem: the satellite installer used diplexers to save himself from having to run another set of cables. The installer is convinced that the fact that the satellite receiver sends 18V to the LNB is the problem, but I think it’s much more likely that the diplexer sends 2-856MHz to the TV output and 950-2250MHz to the satellite output. The DCT-5100 FAQ says to make sure that you have full 2-1000MHz signal from pedestal to cable box, so I think the diplexer’s bandwidth is at fault. To fix it, I’ll have to run another cable through the basement, then add a port to the wallplate so that I have a clean run from the cable service entrance to the box.
I must say that the Discovery HD picture was stunning, for the few minutes I got to see it while installer-man was doing his thing.

So far, I’ve learned a number of things about HDTV. First, if you watch a crappy movie in HD, it’s still crappy. (Disclaimer: I didn’t watch the whole thing). Second, for some reason the HD signal from the local CBS affiliate isn’t showing up as HD here; when I tune in something that is supposed to be HD, it’s still 4:3. Third, and worst, I’m still not getting a watchable picture on Discovery or HBO. It may be that the splitter is at fault, or it may be a bad box; a Buckeye tech is due out tomorrow to check.
The bigger issue: Buckeye is going to require subscribers to buy a box; they’re not going to rent or lease them. In that case, I almost certainly will buy an over-the-air and satellite tuner combination instead– that way, I can be guaranteed that they can go where I do, and I’ll get more channels.

If you don’t like boring technical details, you may as well stop reading now. Go here instead.
I just bought a Samsung TXM3097WHF TV. It’s a 30″ widescreen, one step up from the low-end 3096WHF that Best Buy sells. This particular model adds 3:2 pulldown and a two-tuner picture-in-picture circuit to the base model, and I lucked into one for $792 at Sears– about $300 off the best normal price. Of course, I got a floor model, and it’s been discontinued by Samsung, but it met my objective of providing an inexpensive widescreen HD set. (The nearest model I could find that didn’t say “Samsung” on the front is an $1800 Toshiba 34″ widescreen, so I’m prepared to put up with a lot for the $1000 savings.)
Problem #1 is that the TV is too wide to fit in the entertainment center– the flare at the back of the case is about 1 1/4″ too wide for the precut opening. A little saw work will fix that right up, as soon as I get some saw blades.
Problem #2: the TV has two component inputs, which is great. It also has two RCA-style inputs. However, you can’t use all four at the same time. Oops. Somehow Samsung forgot to mention this in their marketing literature.
Problem #3: there’s one S-Video input, and it’s on the side panel. I knew about this one ahead of time, but it’s still aggravating, since the TiVo and VCR are both fed to the TV via the receiver’s S-Video out.
Problem #4: the TV uses two separate buttons to cycle between the inputs. Button 1 goes RF->component1->component2; button 2 goes RF->RCA1->RCA2->S-Video. That makes switching (say) from DVD to TiVo a finger-stretching exercise not unlike a concert pianist’s warmup.
However, for $1000 in my pocket, I’m prepared to put up with a lot. (After all, I’m getting off much easier than this guy did.)
The HDTV feed installation went well, since I did all of it. The installer had 15 minutes of training on the DCT-5100 cable box this morning, before his first install. He’d never seen a component video cable or optical SPDIF, and he was leery of disturbing any of my wiring. I ended up doing the work while he struggled with Buckeye’s call center to get my box authorized. After a three-hour wait, I can now receive two of the four HD channels: Showtime-HD (currently showing a 4:3 movie) and WTOL-DT (currently showing Oprah, which is bad enough in standard definition.) No Discovery Channel or HBO yet, which is too bad; it looks like there’s some good stuff on later tonight. More when I have time to dig into the stack of paper the installer left, much less actually watch something in HD. It’s hard to imagine that I’ll want to watch anything on CBS, but hey, maybe I will.

It looks like our local cable company is finally getting on the HD bandwagon. I mailed them to ask when they were going to deploy in Toledo. Here’s the answer I got:

We are waiting to complete a billing system and expect to have the HDTV service ready to offer to the public in late June or early July

That’s perfect, since it gives me until then to finish the basement, then finish the upstairs room that’s going to be my new office, then get some HD equipment up in here.