superfreakws6

I have time warner cable here in san antonio now and they are charging me 90 bucks a month for some bullcrap stations. In houston it was not even 70 bucks a month, so I am wondering about sattelite tv. Is it as clear as time warner???? If so would you rather have direct tv or dish network, I am not familiar with those and hd so I need help.

Mr Yak

iTrader: (4)

There is guy on this site that sells DishNet but as far as cutting you a deal, he couldn't do anybetter than the Hindus that I delt with. The dish isn't as bad as alot of people make it out to be, it has alot more channels than cable, the only thing that sux is that the dish is an eyesore.

Brandon Boomhauer

iTrader: (10)

Try setting up a set of bunny ears, I pull like 20 something HD stations here in denton, typical nbc/cbs/WB/fox stuff

If you have a house you can get a really nice (under 200 bucks) antenna you mount on the roof.
avsforum.com for info, its a huge forum with tons of a/v info.

hawgs

iTrader: (3)

That would work depending on his TV has an HDTV tuner built in, if it is just HDTV ready it would need an HDTV box to decode the signal.

BP

As long as it's a 720p or 1080i signal the picture will be exactly the same as cable. It's a purely digital signal so it's either the best possible quality or nothing at all. The regular channels look better on satellite than on cable generally and stay that way. Cable can have signal loss on the non digital systems and look like crap if the infrastructure is out dated. The only real advantage to cable is the on demand features, satellite can't do it.

Dish has way more HD channels now that they offer the Voom service. Not to mention their PVR has a 250gig hard drive. Dish also uses the Sirius feed for their music channels and Direct uses XM.

I have Charter HD and their highest speed internet with two HD tuners and one with PVR. They keep molesting me with the rates but right now it's $109 a month. It was $140 and would be going up to $152 next month if I didn't call and bitch last week.

Brandon Boomhauer

iTrader: (10)

charter is a bitch.
I signed up with internet for a year for like 29 bucks
and they want 55 now... sucks, im callign tomorrow.

and fwiw 1080i looks better than 720
and for sure looks better than typical coax cable, at least here.
regular cable here looks like chit, and this LCD is supposed to be one of the best for typical cable viewing...
I've got to find a better indoor antenna though

BP

You have to call them every couple of months to get their promotional rates. They are doing the $29 internet still but you have to call and ask for it.

EVENTUALLY SBC will roll out their FIOS service and TXU will have their internet here. When that happens it's hello dish network! Unless of course IPtv comes on really strong by then.

MrBill97396

iTrader: (10)

Go with either satellite provider I have had both and when I was living in Houston me and my roomates had Time Warner. Cable is such a ripoff it is so unreal and they where just approved to another rate hike where as satellite is staying the same price. I know have all the Direct t.v. plus package where I get all the non-movie channels and I have HBO,Starz,and Showtime all for 120 a month. As far as the HDTV I am myself looking into those but still often ask myself "Whats so great about that?" The picture looks a little better than the normal flat screen t.v. although I am going to be getting a HDTV with DLP soon (tax man) so I think it is like everything else asked on this site it is all in your budget and what you like.

Brandon Boomhauer

iTrader: (10)

I'd love to have FIOS, that would be the ****.
I get free basic cable at the apartment here, so moving to Dish is an expense I don't really need.

Neolloyo

iTrader: (3)

I am over in Rockwall and just have regular cable ...... but I use a powered antenna, you can buy one at and electronics store for less than a $100, and I get about 15 hd channels. Most of the HD channels are foreign language channels or religious channels, the channels I do watch in Hd are Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS and then some other channel I do not know at the moment. They really look sweet but you got to have a tv with an hd tuner built in or get an hd tuner, which are not too cheap.

You can go to antennaweb.org and then type in you zip code and they will show you the channels in hd you can possibly get with different antennas. also it tells you the direction it is going to need to be pointed towards.

If you got any questions throw me a pm.

02ss98C5

iTrader: (1)

I had charter in Denton....Sucks big time, just swithced to Directtv and it is so much better. Charter is the only cable you can get because apaprently denton has a deal with them that will only allow charter

02Z28LS1

iTrader: (2)

not necessarily...that depends heavily on the situation (forgive me if you already know this, but at least it's here for everyone's benefit)......

you have to take into account factors such as screen size, viewing distance, and (if applicable) the screen's native resolution.

if you have a large/very large screen (like 50"+), and you sit pretty close to the screen (say, 7 - 8 feet), then obviously 1080i is going to look better than a 720p picture of the same size.

however, if you have a small-ish to mid-size screen (anything up to around 42"), and/or you sit farther away (like around 10 feet or more), the noticeable difference is reduced a LOT.

also, if your display's native resolution only supports up to 720p (such as an LCD TV that has a native resolution of 1280x720), and it down-converts 1080i signals to 720p, that 1080i content can look worse on the exact same TV than it would if it had been broadcast in 720p to begin with, and displayed with no conversion. anytime an image is processed before viewing, you lose some image quality...how much depends on the quality of the conversion circuitry.

and then of course, the TYPE of content can make a difference in how good it looks.....in certain situations, 1080i can be worse than 720p, due to the fact that it is interlaced.

TV's in North America display 30 frames per second to create the "effect" of motion (well, technically 29.976 FPS, but i digress....).

for those that don't know, an interlaced image only displays half of the total number of lines of resolution at any one time. so out of the 1080 lines, only 540 are shown at any one point in time. every 1/60th of a second, it alternates between the odd- and even-numbered lines of resolution. first, it shows lines 1,3,5,7, etc, then in the next 1/60th of a second, it shows lines 2,4,6,8, etc. the problem is that when you have content that has lots of quick movement on the screen (football, action movies, etc.), you tend to get "jaggies", because there is a 1/60th of a second pause in between the odd- and even-numbered lines.

720p, on the other hand, is a progressive image, meaning that every 1/30th of a second, it displays ALL 720 lines of resolution, eliminating the "jaggies".

hope that helps explain a few things for some people......there's lots more i could add, but....well.....i gotta get back to work!

Brandon Boomhauer

iTrader: (10)

damn the info.
thanks, i'm sure ill think of some questions for you in the morning.

I should have phrased that as 1080i looks better than 720 OTA, in this location, as the station thats pumping 720 just doesnt look right...

fwiw
im on a Sony KDF-E42A10

joeformula

iTrader: (11)

Is that english? What the heck is 720p or 1080i?

CySevans

720p = 1280x720 Progressive Scan, i.e. lines on the screen are drawn sequentially from top to bottom of the screen
1080i = 1920x1080 Interlaced, meaning first the odd lines are drawn, then the even lines are drawn.

His explanation was pretty clear to me.

The ultimate solution would be 1080p, though you probably won't see much of that content until the HD-DVD/Blue-Ray era.

I'm on Time Warner. My biggest gripe right now is that they don't carry WB in HD (yet). I can't live without my Roadrunner, so I just stick to cable (not a fan of DSL). I'm running their DVR through a 65" Mitsubishi HDTV.

Oh, and 02Z28LS1, you forgot to mention the different types of comb filters and deinterlacing techniques (e.g. motion adaptive) that help to minimize those artifacts when you're running an interlaced mode.

fred96ws6

BTW, FIOS is Verizon and SBC/AT&T is Lightspeed. Also FIOS is not true IPTV like Lightspeed it's a hybrid system of fiber optic and cable. On top of that they use the same crappy Motorola set-top box that Comcast uses.