HD Dual Tuner Cable Boxes-- options??

[NetViper]

So I have to change cable companies because where I am moving doesn't have comcast and I am losing the Golf Channel in HD now.. so I am furious.

Anyway, They want $19.95 per Dual Tuner HD DVR, which I think it outrageous. They want $14 for a Single Tuner. The basic box is 6 bucks a month, but it doesn't get HD Channels, so they are forcing me to pay $14 minimum if I want to watch HD channels on my HD TV.

I have several HD TV's so it could easily cost me over $100/month just to rent these DVRs from these guys.

What options do I have? Can I buy my own DVR? Will it work with the cable company? What do you guys with multiple HD TV's do?

What should I do?

Thanks.

 

[ilya]

Do you have the option of going satellite? It's a little more money up front because you can buy your own boxes ($150 for an HD-DVR I believe), but once they are yours I think you just pay $10 or so a month for the HD package and you may quickly make it up without having the high monthly rental fees. I know for new customers, they also include 1 HDDVR for free, so 1 is covered.
I have never heard of the ability to buy boxes yourself for cable, don't think you can do it.

The downside is you will possibly have the most horrible installation experience known to man if you let their techs do it. In the last few years they went from #1 customer service to really bad. If the guy can speak english when he shows up, you can already consider yourself lucky.
We do all the sat installs for our clients and just have them ship us the boxes. We don't let their contracted hacks anywhere near our clients.
On our last install, their customer service tried to convince us that we needed 2 dishes to have more than 8 boxes. It's pretty pathetic.

The upside is once your install is done, you will likely have better programming and image quality than any of your local cable providers. You won't have on demand, no such thing for satellite. I also just heard from Tivo at CEDIA this year, the rumor confirmed, that DirecTV will be repartnering with them and bringing the Tivo interface back to their boxes.

Anyway, just an option. I heard Fios image quality is supposed to be up there too, but have no personal experience.

 

[Miner]

Dish Network. Their 722 (or even older 622) are Dual Tuner (3 w/ OTA) HD DVRs. The only upcharge for them are the $7 monthly DVR fee. They also have single tuner boxes (211) that can act as a DVR using an external Hard Disk Drive for a $40 one time fee.

I haven't checked in a while, but the better (or best) offers are usually nothing down, free activation and the HD package including DVR with a 1 (or possibly 2) year contract.

Miner

 

[flaminio]

What options do I have? Can I buy my own DVR? Will it work with the cable company? What do you guys with multiple HD TV's do?

TiVo HD + Lifetime + Cable cards = Happy HDTV DVR user.

It's a bit more expensive up front, but if you do the math you save big over the long term.

Plus, the TiVo blows away the cable company provided DVRs. It's not even close.

 

[Juice]

After having gone through the hassle of splitting with TiVo, I will never allow that company back into my household. EVER! And with what can be done with standalone computers these days, I simply don't understand the fascination with their horrible service and content. TiVo is simply for clients who rather pay money than take time to research alternative solutions.

Ilya, since you are probably the most knowledgeable individual on this topic, which providers are offering the best HD content. You mention satellite, but last I heard there was a war of words on if it was actually True HD that they (or anyone else) were offering. I'd hate to fork over the Bens only to find out I'm still getting compressed 720p in the name of HD.

 

[ilya]

In the consumer world, HD is considered 720P, 1080i, or 1080P and up. There is no True HD resolution. Any one of those formats would be considered HD.
If it were just a matter of resolution, there are already displays at 4K resolution that dwarf 1080P. There will always be a next big thing. Like 3D. It's coming. Bluray probably next year. So who will have it first for TV.

If you are looking for 1080P, not many providers will give you what you're looking for yet. DirecTV is either 720P or 1080i, with some new feature I just noticed on their service offering movie purchases at 1080P resolution.

We are not talking Bluray here, so when you are dealing with highly compressed sources like cable and satellite, resolution is not THE most important factor when considering image quality. It's the amount and quality of compression applied to all their sources, HD and standard. Before it even gets to the providers, networks already modify and compress their sources, before yet another level of compression hits them.

I've seen 480P sources look better than HD 1080i before. It's all about the source, not just the resolution. A DirecTV channel, even in 1080P, still doesn't compare to a good Bluray, but it sure looks a lot better than most, if not all Cable providers. That's not a blanket statement, as cable varies by location, but it is probably an accurate generalization. It doesn't matter if the Cable provider is broadcasting in 4K resolution. If it is compressed beyond all recognition, it will still look like ass. DirecTV should look the same everywhere and generally is preferable for watching TV on large projection screens. I had Timewarner cable at my old rental and Universal HD looked like they wiped their butt a couple times before sending it my way. And that was just on my old 61" projection.

I'm actually not an authority on providers by any means, as I generally stick with DirecTV for my work, for other reasons besides generally solid image quality. I've seen all the various providers over the years from home to home which helped me develop the opinions I have on them, but things change from year to year so consider my opinion just that. However, the fact that source integrity takes precedence over general resolution should remain constant. All sources being perfect, 1080P is going to be better than 720P. In the world of TV service, there are far too many factors and horrible things they do to the images in the pursuit of more, more, more channels that effect the final image quality far more than the display resolution. It's all about how much bandwith the provider has available, what type of compression they use, and to what extent that needs to happen to get all their channels jammed in there.

 

[Cozmo]

There was an announcement a few days ago that you'll finally be able to buy an HD cable tuner for your PC that uses cablecards (it was locked down to the point of being useless before). You can use Windows 7 Media Center and not need to pay any monthly fees other than what your provider may charge for cablecard rentals.

Of course unless you already have the computers to do this it'd be a lot cheaper to just buy a TivoHD. I have a TivoHD and I wouldn't trade it for any service provider's version of a DVR, or even the media center PC I previously mentioned.

I'm not sure what problem Juice has with Tivo since they didn't really explain, but I really like mine. The TIVO is very useable, ALWAYS WORKS (more than I can say for any of the media center PCs in my house), is rock solid stable, very fast (compared to the crappy comcast box I had before).. The only real downside of course is the monthly fee.

 

[Juice]

Ilya, you answered my question perfectly. Thank you, I knew you would be able to explain it to me.

Another question, what about grabbing over air high def signals. Because they are braoadcasting into air waves, is there any need for compression? The broadcasters are not trying to package content into limited bandwidth or space (or are they?) so the limitations should only be interferrence and broadcast range. In theory, could over air HD transmissions actually yield a better picture than those captured by dish?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm getting ready to take the HD plunge and am weighing my options. I do not watch much broadcast TV and don't care about picture quality for most of it. However, I really want my hockey, football and racing to carry the most detail possible.

 

[flaminio]

Juice, what was your issue with TiVo? Not trying to sell you; just curious.

 

[Miner]

Another question, what about grabbing over air high def signals. Because they are braoadcasting into air waves, is there any need for compression? The broadcasters are not trying to package content into limited bandwidth or space (or are they?) so the limitations should only be interferrence and broadcast range. In theory, could over air HD transmissions actually yield a better picture than those captured by dish?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm getting ready to take the HD plunge and am weighing my options. I do not watch much broadcast TV and don't care about picture quality for most of it. However, I really want my hockey, football and racing to carry the most detail possible.

OTA HD yields the highest quality picture. They also yield the the largest file sizes when talking DVR. All digital TV signals (HD or SD) are compressed, and as Ilya points, there are varying results as to picture quality, but there are less constraints to the bandwidth of OTA than there are for Cable or Satellite. Both DirectV and Dish broadcast their HD using an MPEG-4 compression, and (for Dish I can say), the picture is nearly as crisp as my OTA. The best trade off is the file size is about 1/3 that of OTA.

I will also add that HD looks far better on my old (but high end) Optoma DLP than it does on my newer (mid range 60 Hz) Sharp Aquas LCD. Both, though, paled in comparison to my super old 38" RCA picture tube. That is a different (and now obsolete) discussion.

Miner

 

[ilya]

Ilya, you answered my question perfectly. Thank you, I knew you would be able to explain it to me.

Another question, what about grabbing over air high def signals. Because they are braoadcasting into air waves, is there any need for compression? The broadcasters are not trying to package content into limited bandwidth or space (or are they?) so the limitations should only be interferrence and broadcast range. In theory, could over air HD transmissions actually yield a better picture than those captured by dish?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm getting ready to take the HD plunge and am weighing my options. I do not watch much broadcast TV and don't care about picture quality for most of it. However, I really want my hockey, football and racing to carry the most detail possible.

OTA has a certain bandwith as well, but that signal is definitely considered of a higher quality than most TV providers. Of course, that's just your basic TV, so unless all you need is basic channels, you will still want all your sports and movie channels.

As for Tivo, their new boxes do way more than any of the providers. Not only do they have an easy interface (most people usually like it), their upcoming box will do netflix, amazon, youtube, and other services online, as well as stream videos and photos straight from a home PC. And it combines it all into one interface. You could search for Iron Man, and it will pull down anything related from all the services it talks to. I am personally hoping that all these features make it over to the next DirecTV DVR, but that is just wishful thinking.