Why are ATSC tuners so rare

On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:18:16 -0500, R Sweeney wrote:


"Wes Newell" wrote in message
it's a shame some exec didn't see the potential for a small tube type ATSC
set for this Christmas. They could have dominated sales, not to mention
give them a leadin to the customers for later upgrades to larger ATSC
sets. It's still not to late to reap benefits from being the first, but it
will be soon.

I heard the president of Best Buy speak on small HD tv's at a CEMA HDTV
meeting in 1998.

He said he had no interest in getting back to the days where he lost money
selling TV's and that $800-1000 should be the stable selling point for tv's.
Meaning that features and quality should be added as time goes by to keep
the sets in the price range for profitability.

That's standard retail marketing. The more expensive something is the more
money they make on it. They'd rather sell you a $1000 piece of crap than a
superior $500 product anytime. Why do you think cheap products are given
such a bad rap. it's not because they are inferior products. It's because
the dealer can't make as much money on them.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
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On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:20:09 -0500, R Sweeney wrote:

what I meant by this is that it is apparent that I am no longer able to
accurately judge small (less than huge) set size.

I swear the 25" inch ones look like 19" to me.

That's because an SD picture on a 25" widescreen isn't much bigger than a
19" 4:3 set (actually about 20").:-)

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm

"Wes Newell" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:18:16 -0500, R Sweeney wrote:


"Wes Newell" wrote in message
it's a shame some exec didn't see the potential for a small tube type
ATSC
set for this Christmas. They could have dominated sales, not to mention
give them a leadin to the customers for later upgrades to larger ATSC
sets. It's still not to late to reap benefits from being the first, but
it
will be soon.

I heard the president of Best Buy speak on small HD tv's at a CEMA HDTV
meeting in 1998.

He said he had no interest in getting back to the days where he lost
money
selling TV's and that $800-1000 should be the stable selling point for
tv's.
Meaning that features and quality should be added as time goes by to keep
the sets in the price range for profitability.

That's standard retail marketing. The more expensive something is the more
money they make on it. They'd rather sell you a $1000 piece of crap than a
superior $500 product anytime. Why do you think cheap products are given
such a bad rap. it's not because they are inferior products. It's because
the dealer can't make as much money on them.

$500 is ABOVE the mean price for stuff at BB... so it wasn't the selling
price
the problem was/is that the profit in the TV segment had evaporated to zero
so that the $500 TV was generating less profit than the $50 video game.

"Wes Newell" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:20:09 -0500, R Sweeney wrote:

what I meant by this is that it is apparent that I am no longer able to
accurately judge small (less than huge) set size.

I swear the 25" inch ones look like 19" to me.

That's because an SD picture on a 25" widescreen isn't much bigger than a
19" 4:3 set (actually about 20").:-)

could be

Bert Hyman wrote:

(Bruce Tomlin) wrote in
:

My mother was complaining about bad low-VHF reception on
cable, so I set up an ATSC tuner with a rabbit ears set.

This suggests you bought a stand-alone ATSC tuner. Who makes it?
Where'd you find it?

Trying to search on "ATSC tuner" in Google produces results that
aren't particularly useful, as you might imagine.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...8ea& t=179095

In case the link is split by your newsreader, go to www.avsforum.com,
click on HDTV then HDTV Reception Hardware then The Official AVS HDTV
STB Synopsis. Currently folks are raving about the new Samsung
DTB-H260F. About 180 bucks, fantastic reception, great improvement
over their previous model the SIR-t451. Unfortunately a design
oversight keeps it from being suitable for most legacy tv's. None of
the menus are available on the composite or s-video outputs. This
makes setup tricky. A workaround is to use one of the component
outputs to a composite input for a black and white picture during
setup, but DAMN that was stupid.



joemooreaterolsdotcom

I am a novice trying to find a simple cheap solution to a situation that
this group may be able to help me with. I have an early HDTV without an OTA
tuner. No problem since I have cable, But the local ABC and FOX affiliates
are both owned by a company that wants to charge the cable company extra for
their digital signal. Cable company refuses, so I have two stations'
antennas within 6 miles but can't get their digital signals. I think a
tuner is what I need, but as soon as I spend $150+ on a tuner, they may
patch up their differences and the tuner is excess. Any cheap solutions
come to mind from those of you who know? It is frustrating to have HDTV and
watch ABC and Fox in regular old mode. Thanks for any suggestions,
Sid


Sweeney" wrote in message
news

"Wes Newell" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:18:16 -0500, R Sweeney wrote:


"Wes Newell" wrote in message
it's a shame some exec didn't see the potential for a small tube type
ATSC
set for this Christmas. They could have dominated sales, not to mention
give them a leadin to the customers for later upgrades to larger ATSC
sets. It's still not to late to reap benefits from being the first, but
it
will be soon.

I heard the president of Best Buy speak on small HD tv's at a CEMA HDTV
meeting in 1998.

He said he had no interest in getting back to the days where he lost
money
selling TV's and that $800-1000 should be the stable selling point for
tv's.
Meaning that features and quality should be added as time goes by to
keep
the sets in the price range for profitability.

That's standard retail marketing. The more expensive something is the
more
money they make on it. They'd rather sell you a $1000 piece of crap than
a
superior $500 product anytime. Why do you think cheap products are given
such a bad rap. it's not because they are inferior products. It's because
the dealer can't make as much money on them.

$500 is ABOVE the mean price for stuff at BB... so it wasn't the selling
price
the problem was/is that the profit in the TV segment had evaporated to
zero so that the $500 TV was generating less profit than the $50 video
game.

On Fri, 08 Dec 2006 22:37:03 +0000, Sid Druen wrote:

I am a novice trying to find a simple cheap solution to a situation that
this group may be able to help me with. I have an early HDTV without an
OTA tuner. No problem since I have cable, But the local ABC and FOX
affiliates are both owned by a company that wants to charge the cable
company extra for their digital signal. Cable company refuses, so I
have two stations' antennas within 6 miles but can't get their digital
signals.

So the cable co. wants to get it for free and then charge you for it
without giving anything back to the provider. Can't say as I blame the
station owners for wanting to charge the cable co. a fee.

I think a tuner is what I need, but as soon as I spend $150+ on a tuner,
they may patch up their differences and the tuner is excess. Any cheap
solutions come to mind from those of you who know? It is frustrating to
have HDTV and watch ABC and Fox in regular old mode. Thanks for any
suggestions,

You might find some cheap solution on ebay, if you call $$75-$100 cheap.
There are certainly cheap PCI ATSC tuner cards for a PC if you already
have a PC that would work for you. Last HDTV tuner card I bought was
$17.50. I've got 5 ATSC tuner cards in my media servers. Unfortunatley, I
don't know of any cheap STB solutions. Don't even really know of any
resonably priced solutions. In the near future, you'll probably be able to
buy a cheap vcr/dvd recorder with a built in ATSC tuner that will also
serve as a recorder or dvd player. How near that is I couldn't say, but
probably within 6 months.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm

In article ,
"Sid Druen" wrote:

I am a novice trying to find a simple cheap solution to a situation that
this group may be able to help me with. I have an early HDTV without an OTA
tuner. No problem since I have cable, But the local ABC and FOX affiliates
are both owned by a company that wants to charge the cable company extra for
their digital signal. Cable company refuses, so I have two stations'
antennas within 6 miles but can't get their digital signals. I think a
tuner is what I need, but as soon as I spend $150+ on a tuner, they may
patch up their differences and the tuner is excess. Any cheap solutions
come to mind from those of you who know? It is frustrating to have HDTV and
watch ABC and Fox in regular old mode. Thanks for any suggestions,
Sid

Even if they do finally settle their differences, they will surely
re-compress the OTA signal to a lower bit rate, and you will still get a
better HD picture from an OTA STB. And it's a great backup if the cable
TV goes out.

"Sid Druen" wrote (in part):

I am a novice trying to find a simple cheap solution to a situation that
this group may be able to help me with. I have an early HDTV without an OTA
tuner. No problem since I have cable, But the local ABC and FOX affiliates
are both owned by a company that wants to charge the cable company extra for
their digital signal. Cable company refuses, so I have two stations'
antennas within 6 miles but can't get their digital signals. I think a
tuner is what I need, but as soon as I spend $150+ on a tuner, they may
patch up their differences and the tuner is excess. Any cheap solutions
come to mind from those of you who know? It is frustrating to have HDTV and
watch ABC and Fox in regular old mode. Thanks for any suggestions,
Sid

I recommend getting something that can record and play HD and that
receives both OTA and clear QAM (cable). That way it's still useful
after all of the broadcast stations are also on cable. Although there
have been a few STBs that do that, the most practical way is a tuner
that works with a computer: either a PCI card or a USB connection.
Wes Newell, who also responded to you, seems to have a pretty capable
Linux/MythTV/networked system. But he's not interested in cable. He
can advise you more if you want to go that route.

I have two types of PC-based tuners: MyHD MDP-130 PCI card for my HTPC
and AutumnWave OnAir GT USB tuner for my laptop. The MyHD card is
older technology but has the BIG advantage that it does MPEG2 decoding
in hardware and has its own output, so the computer doesn't have to be
especially fast (800 MHz is fine) and the video card isn't used for
the HD output. The GT does need a fast computer and a good video
card, preferably with DXVA support. My 1.7 GHz laptop is just barely
fast enough, as long as I don't try to do anything else at the same
time.

Don't expect to get more digital cable channels than the local
broadcasts they carry. These tuners can't show encrypted channels,
and most are. You might get a few others, but that's up to your cable
company.

Del Mibbler

Still no 20" TV's in the store with ATSC tunsers in them.