:cool:

I have played with many video sources over the years, but I had never felt the achievement of Nirvana as I have this past week.

Everyone knows that the mpeg 4 HD transmissions on 12 movie channels are quite good. The problem has always been the recording limitations of the DVR's.

I obtained a one terabyte new DTV HR21 and all I can say from a picture quality and sheer recording capability is WOW. WOW,WOW,WOW!

I highly recommend it for every high end theater (anywhere ;)). The finish is glossy piano black, actually very nicely executed.

Forget your Kaleidascapes and media centers this IS where it's at.

http://cineramax.com/images/hr-21-extended-vesrion-fnt.jpg

I did compare over HDMI and component the hr21 dvr to the current DTV HD sat receiver and the image was way cleaner (as good as the hd dvd player ) in the HR21 while not quite perfect withy the receiver only. There is a small responsiveness advantage to the satellite receiver unit, but once you live with this much hd storage it's hard to understand how one could have gone through life without it for so long.
http://cineramax.com/images/hr-21-extended-vesrion.jpg

In one week I have recorded 50 movies and 6 one hour shows taking up only 46% of the space available. After 6 months the device will be probably filled up to the hilt.

That is when you add the SATA extension with another 2 terabytes for over 500 movies.

http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/images/product_images/tenbox.jpg

Looks great but up till now the compression in transmission has been the bottle neck with blocking artifacts. Has the MPEG 4 usage eliminated this ?

Art

How's the user interface and remote? It took me years to get my Wife comfortable with the HD250 Tivo interface, so I'm dreading a switch.

Everything is SOURCE dependant of course, but I feel that the MPEG 4 is sweet, certainly not as much of a bottleneck as MPeg2. I have not done a comparison between both HBO's (Mpeg 2/4) but comparing Night At the Museum with BR it was damned close PQwise, and certainly more convenient to play.

How's the user interface and remote? It took me years to get my Wife comfortable with the HD250 Tivo interface, so I'm dreading a switch.

It is quite intuitive compared to the DISH VIP620. You can use the remote 98% in the dark by feel mostly.

The only thing I dislike is you must feed it 2 coaxial feeds, which is not always practical.

2 coaxial feeds ... is this any different than the Hughes HD250?

I've got two coax feeds coming off the DirecTV antenna, and a third for my OTA antenna ... does this require more than that?

Also, does it integrate OTA with DirecTV in a single guide?

No more off air antennas. You get locals from the satellite, it requires a 5 lnb dish.

You sure use up those two coaxial feeds easily with so much content to record simultaneously!

3 terabytes is a lot of HD. If I was one of our videophile friends overseas in Europe, or the Far East/Australia I would definetely find someone in America that could setup these hddvr's for them and then mail them. Of course I am no lawyer but to keep the semblance of legimitacy I would think they would have to pay for the monthly service fee in order to own the right to view the content (elsewhere as it may).

Just a thought.

Does it have multi room viewing?

I believe that the boxes are networkable, that is you can share one room with another thorugh ethernet but you would need multiple dvr's. At least this has been shown at the shows, although it may not be activated yet.

The above photos seems to indicate that the HR21 dvr is about the same size as the HR20 DirecTV Plus DVR. Please comment on this.

Are you seeing any differences in picture quality of the HR21 vs the HR20 on the MPEG 4 channels. Aside from the additional storage, does the HR21 have better MPEG 4 picture
than the HR20, and does this apply whether you use component or HDMI? Or were you simply commenting that MPEG4 looks better than MPEG2?

Hey Steve,

This is the modified HR21 (not to be confused with the soon to be released HR21 pro).

According to the installer (who handles all the Titanium accounts in Miami) the HR21 has improved pq. cicuitry.

With good ontent Mpeg 4 channels look as good as Dish Network or Voom did when they deployed the harmonic encoders. To me DTV was total crapola, this looks good now.

It is great on hdmi and component both, but now I am itching to try some good silver wires here for compnent , which I KNOW will open up the sharpness due to the higher BW. I am using Mogami Component cables now.

I compared it to the plain directv hd setop box, and yes the picture is easily 15% cleaner/sharper. I believe these HR21 use a late generation integrated Broadcom chip.

Hey Steve,

This is the modified HR21 (not to be confused with the soon to be released HR21 pro).

According to the installer (who handles all the Titanium accounts in Miami) the HR21 has improved pq. cicuitry.

With good ontent Mpeg 4 channels look as good as Dish Network or Voom did when they deployed the harmonic encoders. To me DTV was total crapola, this looks good now.

It is great on hdmi and component both, but now I am itching to try some good silver wires here for compnent , which I KNOW will open up the sharpness due to the higher BW. I am using Mogami Component cables now.

I compared it to the plain directv hd setop box, and yes the picture is easily 15% cleaner/sharper. I believe these HR21 use a late generation integrated Broadcom chip.

Where do we get a modded HR21 and how much street price vs retail?

Re component cables, you should try the Granite Audio ones that I use.
Mike Parker the CRT guru was quite impressed. If interested, PM me with your e-mail and I'll e-mail you some info and how to contact.

Where do we get a modded HR21 and how much street price vs retail?

Re component cables, you should try the Granite Audio ones that I use.
Mike Parker the CRT guru was quite impressed. If interested, PM me with your e-mail and I'll e-mail you some info and how to contact.

Try http://www.weaknees.com/directv-hd-dvr.php

You can save 100 bucks if you know a custom installer.

Regrading the silver cables will keep under advise. Thanks

Anyway to edit the content after youve recorded it. When I record to my server is use a third party app to shave off the garbage before and after the movie so I am left with just the movie. Any editing capabilities.

I have a 3 terabyte server and I filled it up with HD pretty fast. You will be surprised how addicting recording HD can become.

Hi Alan,
How do you record HD Satellite to your server? I have dish 622 and have 2 terrabytes archived on individual external hard drives. How are you storing and transferring?
Adriano

Well get an icydock usb enclosure, stick in an sata (therefor hot-swappable) drive, record of the box, slide out the drive, stick it in your pc's icydock and use it as a regular hot-swap drive. Not sure if the usb box is also available in a tray-less version though, the icy dock for use in the pc is. I know of people using 500 gig 'floppy' disks, like this to play their HD material. Should just hold 10 movies on one diskette.

Shipping(!) HD's across the Atlantic, LOL!

Cineramax- thanks for the post- this thing looks amazing. So- if multiroom viewing is enabled through a network, I can imagine an ideal scenario- all scheduling is done through any dvr in any room, and each dvr is "network aware," so if the two tuners on one fo the dvrs are already spoken for, one of the tuners one another dvr takes over the duties of recording a third concurrently scheduled show- and the UI is transparent to what dvr each show is located on regardless of the room. How close will this new dvr get to that scenario?

Hi Alan,
How do you record HD Satellite to your server? I have dish 622 and have 2 terrabytes archived on individual external hard drives. How are you storing and transferring?
Adriano

My Dish receiver has the R5000HD mod. USB to the PC using their software.
Im also using mpeg2toHDTV to edit.

[QUOTE=Alan Gouger;12238738]Anyway to edit the content after youve recorded it. When I record to my server is use a third party app to shave off the garbage before and after the movie so I am left with just the movie. QUOTE]

As it is most of the big name hd movie channels are just adding 20 seconds or less of network id in the beginning. Yesterday MGM HD started airing 3-4 minutes earlier. The HR21 accomodates for that situation quite nicely.

Of course you hgave to be nerdy enough to want to program a second recording, this second time around you may start the recording from1 to 5 minutes prematurely in one minute increments.

My Dish receiver has the R5000HD mod. USB to the PC using their software.
Im also using mpeg2toHDTV to edit.

Alan this new Broadcom integrated circuit is better than an htpc, me thinks.

Time to sack dish network.

And here is the link for the last two terabytes:

http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/tenbox.cfm

Cineramax- thanks for the post- this thing looks amazing. So- if multiroom viewing is enabled through a network, I can imagine an ideal scenario- all scheduling is done through any dvr in any room, and each dvr is "network aware," so if the two tuners on one fo the dvrs are already spoken for, one of the tuners one another dvr takes over the duties of recording a third concurrently scheduled show- and the UI is transparent to what dvr each show is located on regardless of the room. How close will this new dvr get to that scenario?

I don't know, at the shows they have been promising just that. It may be coming.

Hey Steve,

This is the modified HR21 (not to be confused with the soon to be released HR21 pro).

According to the installer (who handles all the Titanium accounts in Miami) the HR21 has improved pq. cicuitry.

With good ontent Mpeg 4 channels look as good as Dish Network or Voom did when they deployed the harmonic encoders. To me DTV was total crapola, this looks good now.

It is great on hdmi and component both, but now I am itching to try some good silver wires here for compnent , which I KNOW will open up the sharpness due to the higher BW. I am using Mogami Component cables now.

I compared it to the plain directv hd setop box, and yes the picture is easily 15% cleaner/sharper. I believe these HR21 use a late generation integrated Broadcom chip.


I noted on the forum that some folks were saying the Hr-20 had better picture quality than the HD TIVO. But I've got one of each in my CRT system and the picture is identical but of course I can't compare MPEG 4 channels which aren't on the HD TIVO.

So when an installer says its a better picture sort of makes me wonder.
I mean, MPEG 4 decoding is MPEG 4 decoding, right? What objectively does either a chip or some other part do in the HR21 vs HR21 so the latter has better picture quality. Now Max, if you've had both in your system, and you subjectively think the HR21 picture is somewhat better picturewise I can accept that.

I assume both the HR20 and HR21 can be modded by weakness.com - just that right now they're getting in new HR21's, but certainly we can send our HR20s to be modded to.

Sort of makes me curious re the HR21 Pro model coming out shortly and if that might benefit us high end consumers.

I'm waiting to see what the HR21-Pro is all about, the Tenbox works fine on a stock HR-20

The only thing I've heard that the 21 does better then the 20 is that it runs cooler and quieter.

I havn't heard that the PQ is any better or worse, be great if it's actually better!

Also, the HR-21 is too new, alot of reports about lock-ups and other problems. If you have a 20 that doesn't give you problems,
it might be a good idea to sit on that one for awhile. Not really too much extra storage in the mod if you already have a TENBOX. JMHO

This has probably been asked a million times so please don't be upset, but how does DirectTV's Hi Def picture and sound quality compare to Cable HD? What interests my family about switching is the number of channels recently added and to be added to DirectTV, but will I also notice a dramatic diff in picture quality, sound quality, etc. Right now with HD Cable I get about 40 HD channels only. Thank you in advance.

CINERAMAX,

Please comment on the audio quality available through your DTV setup. While HD video can be pleasing, I find that the audio quality lags so far behind standard dvd that I go the dvd route to watch most movies.

Is there any advantage to the optical HDMI on the 21 pro? Says it will send 1080p, but broadcast is only 1080i, and not likely to change, so I would think it would be way better to do the deinterlacing in your VP.

So when an installer says its a better picture sort of makes me wonder.

I mean, MPEG 4 decoding is MPEG 4 decoding, right? What objectively does either a chip or some other part do in the HR21 vs HR21 so the latter has better picture quality. Now Max, if you've had both in your system, and you subjectively think the HR21 picture is somewhat better picturewise I can accept that.

I assume both the HR20 and HR21 can be modded by weakness.com - just that right now they're getting in new HR21's, but certainly we can send our HR20s to be modded to.

Sort of makes me curious re the HR21 Pro model coming out shortly and if that might benefit us high end consumers.

Not any installer, this is the white gloves installer that exclusively services all of the titanium accounts in Miami (the $7,500 a year all you can see package). There are easily 2 dozen of those clients down here. These are people in the biz that can write off the $37,500 5 year investment. Shaquile,Shakira, etc.

[One Venezuelan Media Mogul was freaking out that there were 23 receivers in his account, the service is a flat fee, but there were only 10 actual stb's in his Gables home - he wanted an account of where these boxes were; only in Miami, apparently every time a different tech went to service these accounts they found out that a replacement receiver was needed - what no one knew is that the old receivers were never taken off the account so there were 13 directv fully open hd boxes out there last year, just from that one account, that is why DTV only uyses 1 hot shot installer to do this white glove service].

There seems to be incremental value picture quality wise in chip integration, I cannot comment about the hr20 I can only say that compared to the plain vanilla receiver the image is substantially better 15% easily.

Yeah if you have a hr20 have it modded, or do wait for the HR21 pro, i believe that the rs-232 and some planned additional gui horsepower plus the rack mount are definite plusses. This one of course has the Urushi black laquer look, the hr21 did not at the show.

My endorsment of the product is based on the functionality, PQ quality on Mpeg4, it's looks and the terabyte storage.

Regarding the HR 21 pro the optical hdmi is a great thing for medium runs, the 1080p is probably added to simplify some all-1080p installations.

This has probably been asked a million times so please don't be upset, but how does DirectTV's Hi Def picture and sound quality compare to Cable HD? What interests my family about switching is the number of channels recently added and to be added to DirectTV, but will I also notice a dramatic diff in picture quality, sound quality, etc. Right now with HD Cable I get about 40 HD channels only. Thank you in advance.

In Miami COMCAST HD is totally unaccepatble compared to MPEG4 satellite systems. Furthermore when the ground gets soaked the cable system in general screeches to sh_t.

I have stayed away from the crap that DTV has passed as high definition avoiding it first with Voom, and then with Dish VIP22, I then went to comacast and HATED IT, this is as good as I have seen. Certainlyt worth archiving for feeding very high end displays.

Peter can you go beyond 3 terabytes. I have that now andits not enough. It did not take me long to fill that up and I am now at a point I am deleting stuff to make room for new. This looks interesting I just do not want to spend money on something that has limitations from the get go. 3 terabytes for HD is not as much as it sounds, it goes by fast.

CINERAMAX,

Please comment on the audio quality available through your DTV setup. While HD video can be pleasing, I find that the audio quality lags so far behind standard dvd that I go the dvd route to watch most movies.

Because of the space constarints in the lab here, I don't have a surround sound system, so I will not be able to report until I hear it on the Tact/mark levinson /confidence 4 rig at Helene.

I do have a test 2.1 rig with very high quality nearfield dynaudio pro active monitors, the sound via hdmi is very very clean and dynamic as compared to the analog outs.

The source dependent audio signal however is all over the place, of course you cannot compare dolby digital to True HD and what have you.

One thing that I accidentally found out when routing hdmi audio through the plasma and using it as the pre-pro (DON'T Laugh I had a 1/2 hour conversation with Boz trying to understand how this could be, and HE SAID THAT WITH THE QUALITY OF TODAYS HDMI COMPONENTS IT IS VERY EASY to make anything sound audiophile gRade these days), so when i HOOKED UP THE 2.1 DYNAUDIO bm speakerS to the plasma I ventured into the audio menu for the first time, it's a f_cking tv for god's sake, this was sacrilegous, yet since I am a new MGM HD channel junkie, I played with the SRS (sacrilege) settings and the BBE and the trubass settings (double and triple sacrilege:D), lo and behold I found dramatic improvements adding combinations of these various processes. Movies like Midway, Flash Gordon etc.etc. roared with vitality and dynamics as opposed to sounding "27" tv" flat and thin. The momentr a decent signal came on on HBO or Starz, I have to change the settings back to unprocessed, or it's a torture chamber.

So IMO there should be "presets" in future surround processors to (with SRS ,BBE,TRUBASS or whatever the manufacturer comes up) spice up these older tracks from DVR's, just for that, period.

Peter can you go beyond 3 terabytes. I have that now andits not enough. It did not take me long to fill that up and I am now at a point I am deleting stuff to make room for new. This looks interesting I just do not want to spend money on something that has limitations from the get go. 3 terabytes for HD is not as much as it sounds, it goes by fast.


I guess we could ask this in the PC Nerds forum, what the maximum e-sata limitation is. Somehow I have a feeling that there is not such limit.

Agreed wholeheartedly. In a week and a half I already have filled 67% (670,000,000) bytes.

No more off air antennas. You get locals from the satellite, it requires a 5 lnb dish.


The majority of locals are in HD but not all. PBS-HD and one local independent channel are not carried in my area. I still use an off-air antenna for those. Also for extremely heavy thunderstorms about once or twice a year, I lose signal and fall back on my off-air antenna.

I guess we could ask this in the PC Nerds forum, what the maximum e-sata limitation is. Somehow I have a feeling that there is not such limit.

I've been looking into this myself for awhile and found the guys over at
DBS Talk have been working on and debating this since
Oct. 10 and have pretty much now come to the conclusion, in the last week or so that, "the limit is unquestionably 2TB".

In a thread called "esata larger than 2 TB"

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=104169

I've been looking into this myself for awhile and found the guys over at
DBS Talk have been working on and debating this since
Oct. 10 and have pretty much now come to the conclusion, in the last week or so that, "the limit is unquestionably 2TB".

In a thread called "esata larger than 2 TB"

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=104169

Good info. Then let's pipe in 4,6,or 8 coax and have three or four hr21 3-T rigs.

I posted this on the Video Processor forum a while ago:

While searching for a VP I read that I should choose a satellite receiver that allows me to switch between 480i, 720p, and 1080i so that the VP will do the scaling.

The Direct TV HD DVR does allow manual switching to the native rate. Any out there with automatic switching to native rate?

Then I read this in the HD forum:


Quote:
There are two HD signal types: 720p and 1080i. DirecTV [and Dish] broadcasts the full 1280x720p signal sent by 720p networks (like Nat'l Geographic Channel HD, ESPNHD, etc.), while they downresolve the 1920x1080i signals from 1080i networks (such as HDNet and CBS HD) to 1280x1080i or 1440x1080i, depending on the situation. On most TVs, the 1440x1080i signals can look just as good as the 1920x1080i sources.

This is apparentlly called "HD lite." It seems there is no 1920x1080 from a satellite.

No wonder OTA HD looks better.



If DTV is indeed downresolved it is a bit discouraging to record material unless it is not available on BR/HD.

I would like to find a sat receiver that can be modified to output HD-SDI. This would allow for a more robust cable connection and avoid HDCP. Anyone know of one?

Much of the better content is not out on HD discs. For example Aliens on HDcinemax was breathtakingly good.

Hdsdi... Only on C-band.

This is personal of course but thats what I do not like about these things. The manufacture thinks in a box. If I am going to spend this kind of money to archive and they have put a limit of storage I prefer to be able to dump to hard drive for unlimited space of my choice.

A cheaper work around that works flawless, give the Direct receiver the R5000HD mod, their front end recording software is free and you can record more then one receiver at a time if you have multiple receivers.Works withZapTV. You can edit with a free program mentioned above and no need for PC for playback. Get one of these.
http://digitalconnection.com/Products/Video/tvixm4110sh.asp
This box has a simple front end GUI it also plays back Mpeg4 without any trouble. HDMI with HDCP output. A new model is due any week with more features. It is a hardware solution not software so the quality is great.
Everything I mentioned works flawless and is very simple to use. This way you can have endless storage of your choice.
http://gallery.avsforum.com/data/509/screenshot_032.jpg
http://gallery.avsforum.com/data/509/screenshot_0112.jpg

If you convert from e-sata to SAS, you should be able to go way beyond 2TB. Also 1.5/6 TB drives are on their way.

I also found 4 and 5 disk e-sata enclosures.

the ethernet connection provides for VOD:

D* just launched a beta version of Video On Demand [only for some HR20... versions]: some content is free: it loads the content to the HD : In the VOD menu is a selection for HD but no content yet

note there is a glitch with these boxes: they will hang when rebooting if the ethernet cable is connected (reconnect it after it finishes booting)


I find the new MPEG 4 channels are excellent: I still think HD DVD and Blu-ray provide better PQ but the new D* MPEG 4 channels are a close second

I left Direct for Dish a few years ago. Looks like it is time to return.

All the new DTV receivers I ahve seen at any retailer say they are strictly leased boxes now. Even though they require significany up front cash. Are you modifying purchased boxes or leased? Can you still buy DTV boxes outright?

You can purchase from the link above, however I had to lease a HD basic receiver for 2 years to get the service.

Looks great but up till now the compression in transmission has been the bottle neck with blocking artifacts. Has the MPEG 4 usage eliminated this ?

Art

Nope. Blocking is still there. Not as bad as Mpeg-2.

the problem with modifying the box is if anything goes wrong with it, DirecTV will only replace it and they may send you any replacement model they have:

I got 3 HR20-100's DVR's as part of an upgrade deal and two went bad: D* sent me 2 refurbished, banged up HR20-700's (700's do not have coax digital audio: just toslink) instead: both refurbs were dead: I called and complained I wanted -100's which they agreed to send: got 2 more refurb banged up -700's

many folks who had HR20... issues are getting HR21 replacement models which have no OTA tuner: D* just ships whatever is on the shelf

I add external Sata drives which work great

D* is so overwhelmed with new subscribers and upgrade issues that their customer service has gone to sh...yet there is no other delivery service that has PQ this good [IMO]

D* is so overwhelmed with new subscribers and upgrade issues that their customer service has gone to sh...yet there is no other delivery service that has PQ this good [IMO]

Fear not, there is one, it's called FIOS. ;)

Now this is a first class high-def extravaganza.

http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/castle/

http://cineramax.com/images/Howes-Moving-Castle-1.jpg

http://cineramax.com/images/Howes-Moving-Castle-2.jpg

Another true believer ;)) HR21 with ext. 1TB drive hooked up via esata in a small vented box. HItachi hd could be a bit quiter is my only complaint.

I'm waiting to get the HR20 installed in the next week or so, but I'm pretty intrigued....I wonder how hard would it be to upgrade the Hardrive one's self.... :eek:

I'm waiting to get the HR20 installed in the next week or so, but I'm pretty intrigued....I wonder how hard would it be to upgrade the Hardrive one's self.... :eek:


It's not hard but, do it yourself voids the warranty.

Weaknees is authorized to upgrade existing units and sell new upgraded units.

Since you have not installed anything as yet, perhaps the better idea
is to just buy a larger unit to begin with and have D* characterize
the unit as being owned from the get-go.

If your buying this HR20/21, with an upgrade it works out to about the
same $$ anyway and it's under warranty.


http://www.weaknees.com/directv-hd-dvr.php

I wanted to bump this and find out if there has been any news on the multi room viewing / transparently recording more than two shows at once front. Cineramax- anything?

Fear not, there is one, it's called FIOS. ;)

Hmm, I'm waiting on FIOS, but I have heard rumors of difficulties with any audio output except via HDMI. I don't have a preprocessor that takes HDMI, so I would be screwed if this is the case...

Also, I heard you can't hook up external HDs and that the storage space they give you is meager...

I wanted to bump this and find out if there has been any news on the multi room viewing / transparently recording more than two shows at once front. Cineramax- anything?

It is possible now to record 3 and possibly 4 shows at once, on a single machine. I've only tried 3 myself.
Although, you still can only record 2 live programs. The other 1 or 2 programs have to be downloaded via an internet connection with D* VOD.
The downloads aren't half bad at all, and if they've been broadcast in 5.1 that's the way the programs I've download are, BUT there is precious little to download in HD and of course those are all PPV at the moment.

I still havn't found anyway to do multi-room viewing/recording, other then the suggested multi-cable runs that Cinermax mentioned.

Another BUT... for recording, if you're on the internet with a computer, you can access any machine (HR20/21) connected to your network, from anywhere and schedule them to record. So in that case you can get more then 2 live shows to record from where you are but you can't watch them all from that spot!

I'm also not that certain the HR21 has all of these features yet but if it doesn't, it's not far behind the HR20

You know, i am just not interested in VOD- it does not appeal to me. i am only talking about recording live programs. I thought that was some clustering going on with these new dvrs where the top ethernet port could connect to the network and they could be daisy chained, or something.

the HR21 Pro will be available later this month: it is not quite what Peter has described, but has an optical HDMI output and rack ears: I preordered one: you can add an external SATA drive

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=989829

http://www.*********************/images/pdf/HR21%20pro_SpecSheet.pdf

I wanted to bump this and find out if there has been any news on the multi room viewing / transparently recording more than two shows at once front. Cineramax- anything?

I'm not quite sure what the excitement is all about with the HR21. First, you can't get 3TB with this, the external SATA drive replaces (is not an addition to) the internal drive, so 2TB is the max on this.

Second, it is only a 1 box, 1 room, 1 TV solution for now. Sure you could get multiple boxes, but they would all have a completely separate interface and outputs, there is absolutely no interconnectivity between these boxes.

However, the Directv tuner for the PC is something to get excited about as this will allow for essentially unlimited archiving and distribution of up to 6 different HD streams (1 to the PC, 5 to extenders). The only perceived limitation for now is just 2 tuners, but hopefully Directv and Microsoft will figure out a way to let 4 or 6 tuners be connected.

More info on it is here: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=115136

thread cleanup

So does anyone know about how the FIOS setup compares to this one? I assumed FIOS was going to be MPEG4, but someone told me it is MPEG2. Is MPEG2 necessarily worse than MPEG4 is you have enough bandwidth to compensate for the size differences?

Thanks.

So does anyone know about how the FIOS setup compares to this one? I assumed FIOS was going to be MPEG4, but someone told me it is MPEG2. Is MPEG2 necessarily worse than MPEG4 is you have enough bandwidth to compensate for the size differences?

Thanks.
FiOS is by far the best feed right now, bar none. I don't know if it changes from market to market, but the southeast region has the h.264 hub, at 20Mbps. The feeds are so much cleaner than anything Directv's MPEG4 can distribute it's really not even comparable.

I've actually done a comparo, side by side (pip) with the Comcast QAM feed, the OTA feed, and FioS feed on a Pioneer Elite PRO-1130 at my cousin's house in Tampa.....FiOS was as good as OTA, slightly better than the Comcast QAM feed, and factors better than the Directv feed. We used CBS-HD broadcast as the sample.

Interesting enough, I don't know why verizon is crippling the bandwidth at the hub center, as their infrastructure is more than capable of handling the 100Mbps feeds, as they do in Japan.:confused:

Interesting enough, I don't know why verizon is crippling the bandwidth at the hub center, as their infrastructure is more than capable of handling the 100Mbps feeds, as they do in Japan.:confused:

People in the Japanese culture generally have a strong sense of honor and pride in their work and for the companies they work for... In their culture a lack of quality of product or service is a direct reflection on everyone who works in the company from the top all the way to the bottom.

Sadly, our culture doesn't... It is almost exactly the opposite here in the USA, which is why in general quality control isn't so great. I guess we have come to expect these kinds of low standards. Even when choosing between competing technologies in our own country (such as ISPs and HDTV providers) the quality of service doesn't get much better, since no one is raising the bar high enough to force any of them to offer better services.

Likewise, in our culture, when someone raises the bar higher, he/she is condemned by his/her fellow workers as a "kiss arse," or "brown noser," and people get upset at that person for making them look bad for not working as hard. At the same time, when someone works hard in our culture they have a better chance of upward mobility because of it, while in the Japanese culture the chances of upward mobility are more limited. Your boss in that culture expects to take credit for your work, because he is the team leader. In their culture there is a strict hierarchy that they expect you to adhere to, otherwise they do not respect you or consider you honorable. Going over someone's head will not gain you workplace momentum, and might even do the opposite, despite how good your ideas happen to be.

A great example of Japanese quality control is Vinyl pressings. Out of around 50 Japanese import albums, I only had one worth returning. They were that pristine... Out of the American pressings the number of returns has been absolutely abysmal (to the point at which I just stopped opening particular labels and returned all of them unopened for money back). I actually studied a little bit about the Japanese use of strict quality control standards such as advanced probability and statistical analysis in the Vinyl industry as well as in their businesses in general. They are very concerned with producing top quality products.

That's my take on it at least, based on studies I did previously in sociology, psychology as well as in statistics and probability...

Or Verizon just wants to charge more over time for more bandwidth.

Or Verizon just wants to charge more over time for more bandwidth.

Which would also align with my thinking...

my personal belief is exactly that: it is ALL ABOUT THE MONEY! :mad:

just a couple of years ago, DSL providers like bellsouth used to charge ridiculous prices to go from 1.5mbps to their "extreme" version of 3 mpbs :rolleyes:......knowning full well they can go up to 10mpbs in their current infrastructure. Heck, even today, they are charging a bundle for 6mpbs ONLY because cable modems are cutting into their marketshare bigtime.

It's all about nickle and diming the consumers to death! The american way! :o

I have Verizon and tried using the Media Box (the one that allows you to share DVR programs). IMO the interface of the box is poor and the remote is not very responsive when sharing programs. I have since dumped those units and gone with Fios + 2 Tivo HD DVRs (each with 2 cablecard tuners). Verizon charges $2.99/tuner/month.

The Fios picture quality is also outstanding here in Portland.

I have the hr21 as well as rcn hd cable and I am not that impressed with the picture from the hr21.

While I normally see a fare amount of D*TV bashers or truthsayers, makes no differance to me. Cable in my county is downright terrible and I went as far as to build a 36' tower into a 6' concrete cube. Got sued by the town for doing so but the law is on my side in the end, so it stands.

Point is, all this for the best possible pic I can get. If Fios ever wanders into this county and down my road, I'd be more then happy to try it and hope they catch-up to the shear amount of HD channels that D*TV has and will grow after the next sat launch in approx. 30 days.
If Fios can do something great this yr. I'll be more then happy to remove the new 36' jungle gym from my property. Cable hasn't got a shot and from speaking with them, they don't care how bad their service works at my house and nobody else complains! AMAZING!! :confused:

I have the hr21 as well as rcn hd cable and I am not that impressed with the picture from the hr21.

I have experienced a significant amount of PQ reduction in the DirecTV satellite service since I first wrote this bit. They must be compressing more to fit all the crappy regional sports channels.

Speaking of HD:

http://www.weshow.com/us/p/33345/deal_no_big_screen_2008