Waco / Bryan, TX - HDTV - Page 52

Theyre gonna screw you D* bitches over... get used to it.

Im just stoked I get my Voom DVR (the DVR to and all DVR's) in march (official voom announcement at ces today)

I was suprised not a word from D* today about ESPN2 (but I wasnt around there all day so it might have been later in the day.... i had a ton of stuff to see today).

Still cant wait for my DVR.

Ill get you guys a review once i get back (just getting on to make sure my tuition paymants went through)... and of course feed my need to come on here.

Speaking as someone who now has a free HD receiver, a free HD-Tivo, 6 free months of HD programming and 6 free months of HBO - I doubt there is much they could do to make me feel screwed over.

Honestly, I think all the Voom people are in their offices everyday saying - "Given that we're declaring bankruptcy in March, what kind of fun can we have in the meantime? Hmmm... I'VE GOT IT! Let's promise all our subscribers HD-DVR's!!! That'll really get'em going!"

It was suprisingly pretty far along in its development (something im surpised they kept from people around here)..... Of course they didnt let anybody near the boxes so theres no telling if they were actually complete. But most of the features were shown.

Im not sure I like how voom is going to do the recording but Ill wait till I get it to know for sure. When you schedule a show it shows up as a channel 9xx (there is no recorded programs list.. that voom rep mentioned). They say its to make it more idiot frendly (one guide vs 2) but Id rather have an option for both (again I didnt ask if there was such an option) but overall I was very impressed with voom dvr and much better than cox dvr and the little time i saw hd-tivo... Its suprisingly fast with the networking. Ucentric did a good job with the voom dvr so Id expect them to do the same for D*.... course I dont even want to fathom the cost for you D* people.

Voom also was showing off smaller HD receivers and SD only receivers (all of which will interface with the dvr)

Mwesson, Im pretty sure the average D* user isnt getting that deal and when they have to pay 299 for a receiver now and have to pay again (maybe) at the end of the year Id say thats getting screwed over. And if voom is lying about the receiver they are doing a damn good job hiding it.... i got to play with the voom dvr myself yesterday. There were more people at the voom booth than D* the times I walked by (about 15 times throughout the show, which was suprising to me)

Im sure you D* people are going to call me a voom lover but I was actually kind of dissapointed in D*'s booth.... It was 2x the size of vooms booth but they had almost nothing new there to show... the home network solution was good but that was the only new thing they had.... no mention of espn2hd and really wernt mentioning the 1500 HD upgrade (just had a scroller saying it), they had like 3 HD sets there total (there were tons of SD TV's there showing all their multi-view features but almost nothing new HD wise (sans the whole network solution).

Of couse E* was way worse but they had soem new stuff and the booth was bigger than D* but you could tell E* wasnt even tlaking HD (it really was sad)...

The runco booth was dissapointment this year but the motion chairs kicked ass... Benq still has the best projectors(for the money) but some of the new projectors are very cool (the portable home theater ones).

Still have the AVS party tonight so that should be interesting... maybe well have some voom/D* fights break out like Munky seems to think will happen. I didnt take pictures but Mukny did so maybe he will post them for all you people not lucky enough to get out here.

Harmony released a badass new remote today (color display) so Ill probably be upgrading fairly soon.

If you have any specific questions (i went off the top of my head) just leave em below and ill get to em when i have time.... Im debating not going out tonight after the avs party because im so tired. Walking all over the place for a few days pretty much all day will do that even to a college student. I still have tomorrow to go to ces (got a few more questions for the voom reps about their stuff), so anybody who has a question leave it.

Well, didnt get a chance to see your post.... They had a Mpeg4 stream going but it actually didnt look any better than the same feed on the current configuration. I snapped a few picures of the last day and ill get them up once i get back.

The voom dvr will have a 250 gig drive and it cant be upgraded in the sense you think (atleast that voom would admit to).... to upgrade it you just add a new dvr and it will pool the resources of as many dvr's as you have (Ie 2 would give you 8 tuners and 500 gigs of storage space)... I know they havent announced pricing yet but most expect it to be priced similarly to cable co boxes so 10-15/month.... If thats the pricing I will def get 2 (and make the roomates pay to get on my network )

Theres no folders (that voom was showing), like i said i really didnt get to play with it so I dont know how its going to work... esp for your series how its going to list them (guess well have to wait till march when i get it and actually get a review up unlike our cox bretheren). The current box outputs the same channel HD/SD at the same time so Id assume the dvr will be able to as well. But I didnt get into the meus to see if there were options, guess all we can do it wait for march to play with the unit. Voom also said since it will run over coax/ethernet that it will use your existing network and will have some features implemented on a pc (also D* wholehome solution will do the same), they said the streams will be encrypted but I expect this to be hacked and you will be able to get streams off to your pc so that would negate the reason for firewire (which voom said will not be on the box)

They also were showing small form factor boxes off too.... im still suprised the dvr will look exactly like the current box (just new innards).... but actually thats pretty smart as the voom rep said (saves on production costs).

Other notables at ces... harmony announced a kickass new remote (HArmony 880)... color lcd etc. I beleive it is now posted on their website (they had the website loaded on the harmony booth), but im on dialup until i get back so i dont want to look for sure. But its also got rechargable base station which is someting ive always wanted for harmony to do.

D-box was very cool but very expensive (5k for one chair) but motion cinema really is the wave of the future and really gives you the "your there" feel to movies and it should drop over time as competition comes along and I will definately be looking forward to that.

Going into CES I was firmly in the blueray camp as far as the upcoming blueray/hd-dvd fight but after it its very clear blueray doesnt have any clue as to what theyre doing.... only a few manufacturers even had prototypes there but hd-dvd had their stuff together... they had a booth and were demoing all kinds of stuff (some really cool features, for instance on commentaries they can have it show 2 video streams so the commentator was there and you could watch him and the movie... he was in a small overlay at the bottom(i have a picture.. hopefully it comes out good)). And now beleive hd-dvd will inw out simply because they will probably be first to the market (unless blueray just wasnt shwoing their stuff)...and will most liely be cheaper.

Thanks for the update, sounds like you have been busy and having fun at the same time! Hope you can make up all those classes you're missing.

OT, looks like Beltran, and/or his agent, is greedier than we thought, and my prediction was (unfortunatly) correct.

well the stros were going to suck regardless this year.... and I havent missed any classes yet

That's nothing compared the monstrosity that is the 3020 in an attic.

lol

I thought that looked familiar. Manually rotating it from Waco to Houston was definitely not fun. Let me know how far you get with the Televes.

For some reason I'm envisioning the Jimmy situation in Pulp Fiction.

Better get it done or she'll freak. No sh*t she'll freak!

BTW if anybody cares, scott over at satguys got a video up of the voOm DVR.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/2005ces/

And damn esp, you got a ton of stuff there (I thought I was bad) but i simplified my system alot to 4 devices and will get to drop the replay come march.

Yeah theres alot of stuff that can screw up but I think part of the reason it was so late to the game is because they have been developing the software. The tell tell will be march when/if this thing launches and hopefully it wont be more than 10/month so I can have 2.

BTW I havent read much about the current MPEG4/HD-tivo stuff but are they really going to make all those Hd-tivos into paperweights? and what about old STB's (like my mits for example if voOm doesnt make it ). I hope they have announced some kind of trade in program to make it free to switch out.

On teh subject of D* network dvr I noticed they didnt actually have the boxes out and working (what they had out were the actual boxes but not hooked up) and they wouldnt let anybody see the boxes which lead me to beleive they are just running the software on a computer like voOm had done in the past (so this is why it will probably take until the end of the year to get them out) but still I was suprised at how far along the software was (you could tell they didnt just start working on it)..... It should be interesting to see if they will be stackable like voOm's (not that any of you D* people would be able to buy more than one ).

BTW one last bit about CES from me.... HD-DVD will win the format wars if CES was any indication of the two sides. HD-DVD had a big booth and had 5 or 6 prototype players all playing different movies and blueray had one or two manufacturers that had prototypes and didnt have a big booth like HD-DVD did.I hope blueray pulls their sh!t together because they do have the better storage device (and more storage = better movie bit rate) but right now I see no way blueray is going to win in the DVD market atleast.

Did the "dog" get it done yesterday?

Can't you change that info online? I'd be scared to call them too. Heck, I'm worried how will work out getting Houston LiLs when they go MPEG-4. That should be fun.

I would love to move to Houston when those HD LiLs go up. How to pull that off, however, is becoming a growing concern. Those of you currently in Houston receiving the national feeds - I can't help but believe that those national feeds will go away once the HD LIL's are up.

"Yes D*, that is correct, I want you to come change out all my Houston receivers, but I want you to do that in College Station."

Hah.... I think you should all just move back to CS and get what you can distant now before they start screwing with that too.

Bare minimum your going to get screwed over on MPEG4 if you live in Htown, esp for those 1k tivos.

I think voOm will have a good chance to steal alot of D* subs if they dont come up with a very good tradein program for MPEG4..... all my boxes are ready (and have been ready since the beginning) for MPEG4.

Do NOT move back. As I posted earlier (a couple of pages back) - You cannot get anything now if you move back to CS. The same is true if you move to Houston. There are no distant feeds being allowed in either city (including O&O stations in Houston) if you were not grandfathered in prior to 12/17.

Really? That sucks for me I guess if voOm goes under... Guess if they do cox will now be my only option. I thought they were still doing distants for CS people. I guess Ill have to wait and see when they do the "HD white area" and see what happens because we sure cant get decent signals here.

That is correct. If VOOM goes under, you are screwed. Besides the fact that we will berate you to no end when that occurs... Your only options for non-OTA networks will be Cox. (Or possibly the Houston LIL's, if we can figure a way to work around the system.)