S2 vs. S2 DT Video Quality

shaped the electrons to say:
No point my ass. There's a big point. First it's free HDTV. And second

Ooh, free HDTV - big ****ing deal. So what? And if you have to buy
an expensive antenna to get acceptable reception, how free is it
anyway?

it's usually of a much higher quality than you'll get over cable or sat

I have a 61" 1080p screen and I can't see any artifacts on the
channels, which are carried in 1080i by my cable. (Except Fox I
think, they're all 720p.) So the quality is just fine.

And if you wanted to only address Rusty, you should've used email and
not a broadcast medium like USEnet.

-MZ
--
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"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-852-2171
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shaped the electrons to say:
it. I've read of many prople using it with cable/sat. It can record all
clear qam, and encrypted channels from a STB firewire output. Since I make

Only if the cable company, for some reason, is not applying 5C to the
encrypted channels on the FireWire. If the channel is protected, you
can't record it over the FireWire.

-MZ
--
URL:mailto:megazoneatmegazone.org Gweep, Discordian, Author, Engineer, me.
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-852-2171
URL:http://www.megazone.org/ URL:http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ Eris

Chris F Clark shaped the electrons to say:
Hmmm, neither of my STB have firewire output. What can it get from
composite video? That's what I want to record. All of my boxes, the

You should be able to request a box with FireWire from your cable MSO
if you want it. The box should output all channels over composite,
but they'll be SD, not HD.

Calling us TivoNero's because we like our convenience and are willing
to pay for it is irritating and insulting.

Well, that is his intent - to irritate and insult. :-)

-MZ
--
URL:mailto:megazoneatmegazone.org Gweep, Discordian, Author, Engineer, me.
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-852-2171
URL:http://www.megazone.org/ URL:http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ Eris

On Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:55:35 -0500, Chris F Clark
wrote:

[snip]

So, out of 4 places I know personally about. 50% of them had
acceptible OTA reception. That isn't factoring in the fact that some
channels, e.g. HBO or the Sci-Fi channel, are not available OTA
anywhere that I'm aware of.


HBO was once in Fort Worth Texas (it was still encrypted and required
a set top box), but probably hasn't been in 20 years (about how long
there's been cable there).

[snip]
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent
force for atheism ever conceived." -- Isaac Asimov

Let me preface this by saying that even I, the owner of what is almost
certainly the world's largest MythTV system in terms of storage
capacity [1], find Wes Newell's rhetoric annoying. I've said as much
before.

However, his facts generally tend to be correct. The trick is to look
beyond the blather, which I admit he makes difficult.

Now, let's tackle some of the questions raised by Wes' opponents in
this thread:

Rusty wrote:
I have no idea what we could get OTA out here on the eastern edge of the
Dallas suburbs -- sub-suburbs -- in the far northeastern corner of Dallas
County.

Back from '92 until about '95 or '96 we used bunny ears before cable was
here.

If you could receive any kind of usable picture back then with bunny
ears, the chances are pretty good--no, make that extremely good--that
high-definition over-the-air will work in your location. AntennaWeb's
reception forecasts are intentionally conservative (as the site itself
states) in order to not raise too many false hopes.

I should know. I live in a downtown San Francisco apartment, just a
few miles from the broadcast antenna of most of the area's network
affilaites, and the combination of nearness and high-rise buildings
ought to result in massive ghosting. AntennaWeb says a lot of channels
are available to me but isn't very optimistic about my being able to
pull any in without considerable help. Nevertheless, I can pull in all
the network affiliates I want with no trouble and just using an
inexpensive unamplified indoor antenna. It took a few minutes'
fiddling with proper positioning (and a long-enough coax cable to
permit such positioning, a mistake of omission I made for a long, long
time).

My recollection of that era is that there were not very many
choices, so we didn't watch a lot of TV. I might be willing to try
an HD OTA reception device if it was either inexpensive or I could
return it for a refund if I didn't like it.

Since your Series 3 TiVo comes with a built-in HD tuner (and, even if
you didn't have one, the odds are your HDTV probaby has one too), all
you need is a UHF antenna, and an inexpensive, unamplified indoor one
may do. Two good ones are the fabled Zenith Silver Sensor and the
Radio Shack "circle in triangle" models. Each is about $20. If not,
any kind of rootfop television antenna will do an even better
job. Winegard and Radio Shack offer a wide variety. (And, before you
say "I'm not allowed to put up an outdoor antenna!", read
URL:http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/info.aspx?page=FAQ#_Ref28770286.)

But even if the reception is good, could I get any programming OTA that I
cannot get on cable or FiOS? I dunno.

Possibly. In my case, there are indeed two network affiliates (of The
CW and My Network TV) whose HD versions I can only get over the air,
not via cable. And as Wes has noted, there's of course no compression
whatsoever over the air.

Me, I can't live without the HD premium movie channels, not to mention
HDNet, HDNet Movies, and Discover HD, so I have two cable
boxes. [2] However, my antenna and accompanying HD capture card are a
welcome supplement to the boxes, often freeing up one of the boxes so
my MythTV setup can use it to record from a non-OTA channel.

Wes, thanks for the
information and suggestions. Try to relax a little, please.

Indeed.

[1] Let's just say that my signature is very outdated.

[2] Yes, I'm one of those lucky enough to have full, untrammeled
access to all my subscribed cable channels over FireWire. I just
bought a TiVo Series 3. As I've stated here before, I intend to
transfer the lifetime subscription from an old Series 1 box to it. I
may resell it, or keep it as a last-ditch substitute should I lose
said untrammeled access; there's some hope that the Series 3 will
eventually serve as a CableCARD tuner for MythTV.

--
URL:http://www.pobox.com/~ylee/ PERTH ---- *

Homemade 2.8TB RAID 5 storage array:
URL:http://groups.google.ca/groups?selm=slrnd1g04a.5mt.ylee%40pobox.com

Yeechang Lee wrote:
If you could receive any kind of usable picture back then with bunny
ears, the chances are pretty good--no, make that extremely good--that
high-definition over-the-air will work in your location.

I meant to explicitly state what is implied by my words: Digital
signals are much easier to receive properly, all else being equal,
than their analog counterparts. See
URL:http://ultimateavmag.com/howto/405hdtv/ for an example of this.

--
URL:http://www.pobox.com/~ylee/ PERTH ---- *

Homemade 2.8TB RAID 5 storage array:
URL:http://groups.google.ca/groups?selm=slrnd1g04a.5mt.ylee%40pobox.com

Yeechang Lee wrote:
If you could receive any kind of usable picture back then with bunny
ears, the chances are pretty good--no, make that extremely good--that
high-definition over-the-air will work in your location. AntennaWeb's
reception forecasts are intentionally conservative (as the site itself
states) in order to not raise too many false hopes.

Be careful with the channels you can get though. I can get most channels
OK, except for one broadcast channel (my local Fox affiliate) in HDTV
due to the relative broadcast locations.

Probably doesn't matter for most people, but I got my hopes up for OTA
broadcast before I realized this. I can get the SD version of all the
channels OK.

Possibly. In my case, there are indeed two network affiliates (of The
CW and My Network TV) whose HD versions I can only get over the air,
not via cable. And as Wes has noted, there's of course no compression
whatsoever over the air.

I'm jumping in late, so this might be obvious, but there is compression
in OTA HDTV. Generally it's pretty good, and better than the cable
counterparts, but as one of my HDTV stations that insists on
broadcasting three HDTV sub-channels shows, it can be pretty bad.

--
--------- Scott Seligman scott at firstname and michelle dot net ---------
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
society. -- Mark Twain

Once upon a time, Yeechang Lee said:
I meant to explicitly state what is implied by my words: Digital
signals are much easier to receive properly, all else being equal,
than their analog counterparts.

Not necessarily. While reflections will cause ghosting in an analog
signal, leaving a lower quality but still quite viewable picture, they
can cause multipath problems with a digital signal, keeping you from
getting anything at all.

The difference is that a degraded analog signal can still be watched,
but digital is pretty much all or nothing.

--
Chris Adams
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

On Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:55:35 -0500, Chris F Clark wrote:

I can see that you and Rusty live close enough by that your
suggestions are quite probably pertinent to him.

And cable and sat is a waste me for me. That said, MythTV does work with
it. I've read of many prople using it with cable/sat. It can record all
clear qam, and encrypted channels from a STB firewire output.

Hmmm, neither of my STB have firewire output.

Some cable boxes send encrypted siganl out RF. That works too. there are
many many options, and each individual case could be different. My
daughter has cable and her ebox provides output on Rf, so I could hook up
a MythTV box at her house get the encrypted channels too.

What can it get from composite video?

Many cards support composite inputs I think. Although I think most have
gone to S-video input for better signal quality. To be honest, I've never
looked for a card with composite since I do all digital. maybe someone
around here still doing SD can tell you what card you'd need for that.

That's what I want to record. All of my boxes, the
TiVos, the non-TiVo DVRs, the DVD players, the VCRs, the camcorders, the
close caption box, the TV sets--they all talk composite video, some talk
additional protocols HDMI, S-video, PCR(?) some of which I use, but they
all talk that.

I think most that support composite also support S-video. There's tons of
cards with S-video inputs. And there's 47 cards listed at Newegg that
support composite inputs. yeah, I took the time to look. I guess I should
have know that, but since I don't use it...So composite/S-video isn't a
problem at all. the only problem arises with HD, although there are boxes
that put out HD remodulated over RF, you probably won't find the cable
companies using them, but I don't know what they use and I think most have
different equipment avaialble if you ask? Don't ask, you get what they
want you to get,:-)

I know that roughly 90% of the population can get it. Now some may
have to go to extremes to do it, but if you're within 80 miles of a
large city, the chances are that you can get it perfectly with a $40
outside antenna.

I think those figures are inflated, not by you, but by the networks.

Those figures are mine based on the state in which I live. And they are
accurate within reason say +- 5%. And it was a long and envoled task. I'm
not going to do it again.

I live within about 40 miles of Boston, and on the same side of Boston
as most of the TV towers (i.e. west, as east of Boston is mostly ocean).
I've lived even closer, say within 25 miles, and had the same problem.
So, maybe there's something about Boston and pine trees, that makes OTA
reception really bad.

My parents live in Cheyenne, WY--the 3rd largest city in that state. No
acceptable non-cable, non-satelite TV for them either.

Previous to living in Boston, I lived in Denver, CO, within the city
limits. Fine OTA reception there.

Previous to that, I lived in Eldorado, KS. Acceptible (although not
great) OTA reception there.

So, out of 4 places I know personally about. 50% of them had acceptible
OTA reception. That isn't factoring in the fact that some channels,
e.g. HBO or the Sci-Fi channel, are not available OTA anywhere that I'm
aware of.

Your personal experiences mean nothing for a negative. You'll get 90% of
the people in my town that'll tell you they can't get good OTA recpetion
either. They're all full of crap and don't know wtf they are doing. 90% of
the people in the world are stupid. You can quote me that. 90% of the
above average people are also stupid.

Since I make nothing from from it, I couldn't care less if you are
interested or not. But you aren't the only person in this group.:-)

No, but I'm also not the only person who get itrritated for your
constant TiVo bashing (in a TiVo newsgroup).

Then they need to do something right for a change. They haven't done that
in years.

But, your constant suggestion that OTA reception and MythTV is a
suitable replacement for a TiVo and a cable or satelite box, with the
implication that it would work for everyone, is simply annoying. It
simply isn't true.

I don't know where you are coming up with this. For Directv, I've always
recommended there box. For cable, I've always recommended there box. I
usually only recommend MythTV for OTA HD, even though in some other cases
it's still the best solution. Check my sigline, note the OTA.

I'd love to not have to pay the cable company
$100/month. (I'm on lifetime service, so I don't pay TiVo anything.)
However, I'd rather pay the cable company $100/month and get the
channels I get than not get those channels.

Then great for you. Personally I wouldn't pay $100 for all the TV stations
in the world along with every new movie release. Thre's just so much video
one can watch, and there's more free HDTV than I can watch now.

Likewise, I might be willing to try a MythTV box.

I know there's lots of people that use them for SD tv, but unless you want
to go digital (SD and HD) or want to able able to watch every recording
anyplace you want or some of the other features, you should probably stay
with what you have. if you do decide to get one, and get it working right,
you'll probably do what I did and dump all your other recorders.:-)

Calling us TivoNero's because we like our convenience and are willing to
pay for it is irritating and insulting.

You don't qualify as a TvioNero with this post.

I also like my NetFlix service where the DVDs come in the mail also and
pay them $30/month so that I have 5 DVDs at home all the time, so I can
pick which one I feel like watching at that moment. Does that make me a
NetFlixFool? Maybe, but it is my choice, and you have no right to
criticize me for it. I'm not telling you to rent your movies from
NetFlix. I wouldn't even tell a loyal BlockBuster customer to do so.

I know very little about netflix other than it's supported in MythTV with
a menu of sorts that I don't ever recall even looking at or know what
it's for. I think you can order from it but don't take my word for this.
I've only got 2 movies on DVD. One was a gift. the other my wife picked up
for a buck on close out and I bitched at her about that.:-)

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
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HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm

On Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:55:35 -0500, Chris F Clark wrote:

If you want to offer your MythTV suggestions to people who come to
this group asking, "Should I get a TiVo?", that's quite reasonable.
However, many of your suggestions about OTA and MythTV and anti-TiVo
comments seem to come in unsolicited. That isn't welcome. I would
prefer if you didn't become the 7th person in my killfile after 30
years of reading netnews.

I just realized that it was you that brought up the MythTV subject in this
thread. I was just offering an HD OTA solution to rusty who has a Tivo S3.
I guess I should asy if you don't want me to talk about MythTV, don't ask
me about it.;-)

--
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