St. Louis, MO - HDTV - Page 417

This technology is very exciting. Of course, Dish has a notorious reputation for failing to deliver on these promises in a timely fashion, so I'm taking it with a big ol' grain of salt until it actually gets here. If it does arrive in February, I'll be in line to get it ASAP.

Same here Joe, I have the 922 and love it,but since the extender that was in development has been dropped I think it's time to change receivers.

My Samsung flat screen TV is NTSC, and as far as I know my DVD player is NTSC only. I received a disk from a friend in Europe that is labeled "2 PAL." It plays perfectly!

He sent another disk and in the same logo that says "2 PAL" on the first disk, this one says "ALL." Is there new technology to encode DVDs so they play on both standards?

Can someone give me brief summary of what to expect, and not expect, re: NTSC/PAL/DVD? Thank you!

[EDIT: The forum software changed my title from "PAL DVD" to "Pal dvd." A confusing move.........]

ALL should be an unlocked disk, no region lock. As for you being able to play a Region 2 disk, I'm forced to assume that your DVD player isn't actually region locked. Region lock has been a DVD "feature" since the very beginning, but some units aren't region locked. From a technical perspective, however, I don't think there's actually a significant difference from an "NTSC" or "PAL" DVD (TV is a different story, though), but I'm not sure. I do know that software, like VLC, will handle DVDs from multiple regions, and that the 50Hz 60Hz difference doesn't affect computer video display.

Edit: Wikipedia has a good article on DVD region locking that even explains using PAL discs on NTSC TVs. After reading the article, I admit I'm a little curious about your TV and DVD player. Clearly, at the very least, your DVD player is something special. As for Region ALL, it's probably actually just an NTSC disc with all 8 region flags set, since most multi-region PAL players apparently also support NTSC.

Chances are your Samsung TV has a PAL decoder built-in to simplify manufacturing. I know my previous Samsung DLP did (not positive about my current one).

If you play that PAL DVD on another TV, it may or may not work.

Thank you, KC9HZN and RaceTripper. You nailed it.

Either I got lucky or did some informed shopping when I bought this Philips DVP3982 player because it does indeed specify playing both NTSC and PAL disks.

I don't know why it played a Region 2 disk unless I used up up one of my allotment of 5 region changes. In any case, Google led me to the magic numbers for setting Region 0 so I should be fine in the future.

I don't know if the DVD player sends the right scan rate to my Samsung HLS5086WX/XAA receiver, or if the receiver just accepts it internally. I suspect the latter because it also accepts a number of different computer display rates at its VGA input.

One anomaly is that the HDMI output of the player and the HDMI input of the receiver are not compatible, so I use component cables. This is only a 720-line receiver so the video quality is still just fine.

Some day when I'm rich I guess I'll upgrade everything, but for now this combination provides enjoyable viewing. After 52 years in electronics I know the technical quality could be improved, but if what I am watching is actually worth watching I soon get lost in the content and don't mind 5-years-back quality any more.

Thanks again! Dan (WØNDA)

Anyone else noticing more breakups than usual on Fox with Dish?

Joe, I finally got around to viewing Friday's Fringe last night. There were many short breakups encountered, similar to what I used to see at peak "24" events. I just so happened to record the event via OTA rather than from the E* bird. So it must have been a Fox network-feed issue because channel 2 via OTA is usually rock-solid.

Almost seems like sabotage. This only seems to occur when it's something on Fox I REALLY want to watch.

Yes, the OTA signal was much better. I recorded it to the computer, and noticed significantly fewer breakups. I'm going to have to watch the OTA version, because the Dish sat signal was so bad that I missed several key words here and there.

I have ATT&T DSL and am thinking of switching to U-VERSE. Does any one have any experience with U-VERSE? I would appreciate any comments, good or bad, that would help me make up my mind. Thanks

No personal experience, but have helped several family/friends with setups involving Uverse. It is like any other service just allows faster throughput than traditional dsl. You are limited to a couple hd channels at one time if you will use it for tv. I find the DVR pretty slick, inline with Dish and Directs units. If your phone line is in good shape things work great, it's when the intermittent problems pop up is when issues can take some time to resolve. They have a good team of online customer service reps over at dslreports if you have issues that you can't get resolved.

I have Uverse for internet only and I've had no problems at all. I didn't like the DVR so I got rid of the TV service immediately, but I never got rid of my D*...

You can get UVerse internet service without the video service? I thought they were a mandatory bundle & you are limited to DSL Elite otherwise? I have the latter.

Don't think so, my mom just set up Uverse for Phone and internet, no tv. I had tv, phone and net, but cancelled phone and tv after about a month.

I am getting u-verse internet and phone, twice the speed of my dsl and 40% less in price. They are showing u-verse internet only is available without having a phone line and currently at a reduced price. See att.com.

I don't know what it'd take for a new subscriber, but as an AT&T phone and Internet using family, I know we'd have to switch to both Uverse Internet and Phone if we wanted Uverse Internet, but we wouldn't need a Uverse TV package. Uverse Phone and TV are VOIP and IPTV services, and thus require Uverse Internet, which I don't think is compatible with traditional phone service, even though it's a form of DSL.

I had Uverse Internet/TV when it was first available and kept my POTS line. I
then canceled the TV when the free period was up. Eventually I switched to
Uverse phone because it was cheaper.

I've had problems with the Phone service because ATT's DNS servers would go
down causing phone service to go down.

I'm not a fan of their GATEWAY because you can't configure it. The Firewall
software on it is a little cheesy as well.

I tried to put a firewall behind the GATEWAY and boy that caused problems.

Uverse internet is fine. Except when it doesn't work. For example, I had to
call service on Monday because my service went down. I called and talked
to their fantastic support people. After resetting my box and losing all
configurations that were in it they finally decided to send someone out.

The guy got here. Real nice guy. He couldn't sync up the line either. He
tested from inside my house and outside and still had problems. He drive to
where the box is located and found that it had been hit and moved about
2feet breaking my cable. It would have affected other people in my area,
too. But ATT support didn't know of any problems in my area when I called
them that night or in the morning.

So my venting is done. Uverse is fine. Wish I could get the 24Mbps. I'm
dropping the voice service soon. I bought new home phones that allow me
to bluetooth my wireless phones to them, so no more home phone.

OK. It's used to be that you had to get a TV package. Didn't realize that changes. OTOH: it only just came available in my neighborhood. I ordered it this afternoon with the 12Mbs/phone bundle.

I forgot about that. U R right. They made me take the TV. And when I called
to cancel the TV they kept extending my free period. Finally they let me cancel it.

I have ATT DSL and gave up on their DNS a long time ago. I have my router configured to use Google DNS and it has been fine.

Try OPEN DNS if you have kids at home. It includes an excellent filter that requires no maintenance and keeps much of the smut out of sight.

I'm familiar with Open DNS. I used it some time ago, and it was not entirely reliable at the time. I don't have kids so the filtering is a non-issue. Google DNS has been rock solid, so that's what I continue to use.

DNS is one of the things you can not modify with the Uverse Gateway.

I use openDNS on my clients, but the phone, has to use ATT DNS.

But I will be able to attach my Apple router for home networking, right??

I don't have an Apple router, I have others, and they work.

The point really was that you can attach your own, i.e. the UVerse equipment has a standard WAN port you can attach to. I use an Apple Airport Extreme with my ATT DSL service.

Looks like they are coming Tuesday. The order form asked me to pick a day of the week, so I chose the option for Saturday. Apparently they ignore that.

Yep. I have a wireless access point plugged into it and other routers. Any
client that connects to the WAP shows on the Uverse Router as a Wired connection.

I let the Uverse Router serve the DHCP though.

Thanks for confirming.

How come Fox News Sunday on KTVI is a 480i 4x3 letterboxed upconvert??????

The show started a half hour sooner than usual. Could it be they are so cheap that they had to record the east coast feed at 8am but could not come up with an HD DVR for the delay?