[tburton]

Sorry Sony. Too many bad things said about your product forced me to go with your competitor, Hughes E86. This box seems to be too good to be true. No fan, turbo speed menus, no drop outs, cheaper than Sony. My question is this - Am I missing something? Does this box have flaws that I am not aware of yet. The PQ and HD is stunning on the XBR400. Anybody with Hughes experience out there that can share their comments good/bad or indifferent? Thanks

 

[T-Bone]

One drawback of this box (I think most STBs do the same thing) is that non-HD 480i that comes off the HD outputs are upconverted to 1080i.


I my case, I have an 53" xbr300 that locks into 16:9 mode when is sees 1080i, so I get black bars on top/bottom, and gray bars on left/right of my image when an upconverted 480i signal enters the TV.


Okay, I can manually switch outputs of the STB (i.e. use s-video for SD, and HD outputs for HDTV), but that's cumbersome. Watching SD/HDTV shouls be seamless.


I believe that the Sony STB will pass 480i out of the HD output as plain 480i, with no upconversion... and that's a big advantage. Of course, you are already aware of the Sony's disadvantages!!

 

[Tony Chick]

I have both the Sony and Mits (Hughes) STBs. I'm currently using the Sony solely because of PQ and the 480i/1080i variable mode. On every other point, the Hughes box wins hands down. On my Mits, the picture is very dark requiring me to crank the brightness to maximum to compensate. That may have been fixed in later boxes.


The user interface and operation of the guide are so superior that it makes the Sony almost painful to use after it. Even when Sony fixes the worst of the bugs, I still find the "philosophy" of the guide operation to be backwards. On the Mits, during a commercial break I could surf the guide to see whats coming on next without leaving the channel I'm on so I know when the break is over. You can't do that on the Sony, in full guide mode it changes channels as you scroll through and in Index (surf) mode which doesn't change channels it only shows what else is on now. Backwards if you ask me.


Tony

 

[puresource]

Can someone please comment on where you bought the Hughes box. I am stuck with only a Sony retailer near me and not only do I not want that box to pull down HDTV due to the problems I have read about, but he will only seel it with a Direct TV dish and subscription. It is really annoying! All I want is the HDTV signal, and the Hughes seems to be the best for the money. Is there somewhere I can order one, online or brick and mortar? Thanks.

p.s. How much did you pay for the Hughes?

 

[hognutz]

I can toggle between 16x9 and 4x3 on my component input. I have a kp-53hs10. how would this affect me??? would I still be cropped on all 4 sides of the picture? I have an hd-100 on the way. I got a good deal so I did not review it much. I am worried I might not like it now and am evaluate other recievers.

 

[btmoore]

Quote:

Originally posted by puresource: Can someone please comment on where you bought the Hughes box. I am stuck with only a Sony retailer near me and not only do I not want that box to pull down HDTV due to the problems I have read about, but he will only seel it with a Direct TV dish and subscription. It is really annoying! All I want is the HDTV signal, and the Hughes seems to be the best for the money. Is there somewhere I can order one, online or brick and mortar? Thanks. p.s. How much did you pay for the Hughes?

$650 at goodguys.

 

[btmoore]

Quote:

Originally posted by hognutz: I can toggle between 16x9 and 4x3 on my component input. I have a kp-53hs10. how would this affect me??? would I still be cropped on all 4 sides of the picture? I have an hd-100 on the way. I got a good deal so I did not review it much. I am worried I might not like it now and am evaluate other recievers.

One of the nice features of the hd-100 is the variable mode. If you have the box set this way it will look at how the signal is being transmitted and output it in that format rather than upconvert or downconvert everything. This worked well with my 36xbr400 but not with my 10ht. On the 36xbr400 this meant when say cbs was just broadcasting dtv, the box would auto sence it and I would have native digital 480i with no l/r black bars. Then when a native 1080i program start it would it would frequency switch and I would have wide screen with top and bottom black bars. There are a few annoying things with this. First, some stations switch between 1080i and 480i when they go to a commercial and back again. This can look ugly while your tv resyncs and it might be hard on your set, I don't know, but it didn't look like my set enjoyed the process. Secondly, some stations just upconvert everything to 1080i so you are stuck with black bars on all four sides no matter what and the hd-100 has no stretch mode to compensate.


I do not know if the e84 has a variable mode or not. It does not matter to me as I will be attaching it to my 10ht and it works best when everything is upconverted to 1080i.


Regards,


Brian

 

[hognutz]

yeah until everything is 16x9 it is going to suck. that is why I went with a 4:3 set because that is what I watch the most of. yeah I will see. when my hd-100 roles in maybe I will go to goodguys and get an huges or mits to demo against it.

 

[taron1]

 www.**************.com 547.00

 

[tburton]

Personally I don't think I would like the autosense feature of the HD100. I would rather control screen resolutions since 99% of all broadcasts are DTV, 4:3. The XBR doesn't seem to handle upconversion to well. I tried leaving it in 16:9 HD mode while viewing various 4:3 material. IMO, the stretch and resolution isn't worth it. 4:3 480i looks much better and more realistic. If I choose to watch 16:9 HD, it's not that difficult to switch it. In fact, I will be creating a macro soon to simplify it to a one button operation. As others have said, when 16:9 becomes standard, this will be a moot point. Until then, I think the Hughes box rocks!

 

[rudolpht]

Quote:

Originally posted by 6wpw: One of the biggest complaints on the Hughes E86 / Mitsu / Toshiba variants is the channel creep when one employs the favorite channel (profile) feature

This really is a DirecTV Advanced Programming Guide problem in how they effectively create new channels for special events (MLB package games, etc.) that go away and newly added channels (e.g., some barker channels) that have to be unchecked. The fix is being worked. It is a nusance but a check of favorites every couple of weeks and scrolling by unpicked stations is pretty easy.


Tim