OTA HD Tuner Questions

[dfitz43]

Ok, it seems like I've dealt with many similar considerations as the OP, and just thought I'd share.

1) HD tuners. Haven't actually used any of the USB tuners, but as far as PCI tuners go, I'd vote for the Vbox. Started with the fusion series myself (5 lite and gold), didn't like the fact that 5-6 drivers were needed. Tried the Aver180, works pretty decently, but not as sensitive, in my experience. Currently have 3 Vbox (=Cat's Eye) and 1 Aver A180 in my Sageserver. All I do is OTA HD; this setup has been very solid for me for 4 months or so.

2) Antennas. I'm about 30 miles from most of my transmitters, with trees/buildings/obstructions in line-of-sight. I tried various indoor (passive and amplified) antennas, pretty flaky, particularly if there was any weather issues (storms, high winds). Then went with attic mounted old-school VHF/UHF antenna (can't remember how many elements, but pretty big bastard), which was an improvement, but still not completely stable (dropouts maybe q minute, which made me (and the wife) very unhappy). Finally, went with the identical solution as Jesse (CM 4228 and CM7777 preamp).

Night and day. Let me tell you, this combination is a _total_ winner. I don't have 100% on every station, b/c I'm still a decent distance, but the signal stability is rock-solid. Even in the worst thunderstorms, I have no issues. I won't say that I don't get the ocassional dropout (maybe 0.5-1s per hour), but that's been my experience no matter what and is very tolerable. Btw, this is streaming over 1 Gb/s wired LAN to client.

For anyone have HD signal issues, I can't recommend the CM 4228/7777 combo enough.

Oh, mine is attic-mounted for aesthetic (and ease of installation) reasons. Could likely get increased signal strength with the roof-mount, but major PITA and it looks a bit archaic outside, though I recognize the right to do this is protected.

3) DLP/LCD/Plasma. My main TV is a 50" Samsung DLP (2nd gen, HLN series). I've been very happy with it, but it does have limitations. Bulb issue is definitely real: I got about 3500 hrs out of my first lamp before it needed replacing (not completely out, but picture was getting real dim).

I run DVI from my HTPC into the Samsung, and it's great as an enormous monitor. HD via SageClient is beautiful (though only 1280x720p), SD is tolerable.

DLP is reasonably bright, but I have probs with seeing a nice image with afternoon sun (even filtered through blinds). Great at night.

I'm just about to get the 42" Westy 1080p monitor for my bedroom client. I, too, hear people moaning about LCD black levels, and I know that it's not perfect, but the value of the Westy is tremendous right now and getting 1080p at that price point is phenomenal, IMO.

1080p plasmas are coming very soon (like 3 months from now), but it's only going to be 65" and 50" from what I understand. Holding out for a 42" 1080p plasma at < 2500 bucks is going to be a while, I think.

cheers,
Dave

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by DFranch

I can't wait until Best Buy gets the 42" Westy tv in the store so I can have a look at it. Supposedly they have them in the warehouse, but I'm not spending $2500 without taking a look at it first.

I bought mine sight unseen from Crutchfield. I was sweating about it a little but everything turned out great for me. I read and researched for quite a while, and decided on the Westinghouse because similar units from other manufacturers were either more expensive or had some questionable consumer reviews. I never had a good opinion about Crutchfields prices but when you consider free shipping and no tax it made sence. Other companies wanted to charge a couple hundred for shipping.

I did have to wait about 7 days for home delivery. The delivery had to be during business hours though, my wife stayed home expecting it in the morning. At 4:30 pm they called and said that they were running about a half hour late and would there asap. The wife was a little irked because she felt she had wasted a whole day at home for nothing, but after I set up the set she quieted down right quick.

Given the choice now between the 37" and the 42" I might still choose the 37" an extra grand is a lot to pay for 5 inches.

[dfitz43]

Not to get totally side-tracked on this thread, but I just thought I'd note that Westinghouse has now released the LVM37w3, which has the same bezel as the 42".

If anybody's debating b/t the 37 and 42, previously the bezel wasn't nearly as nice on the 37. Now, they're identical, so that's a moot issue.

I'm not aware of any other changes to the new 37 apart from the bezel.

Yeah, 1000 bucks is a lot for 5 inches, I'm on the fence myself right now.

cheers,
Dave

[mike_15]

Plasma: basically millions of florescent tubes. eventually one will fail and it will become painful to watch. and burnin is a serious issue, big no no for gamers.

LCD: a good consideration, the thing that concerns me is dead pixels. I have seen so many laptops with a dead pixel and I couldn't take that on my tv.

DLP: my personal fav, There are moving parts but I don't think that will be as big of a problem, motors last a rather long time before failing. the bulb is somewhat expensive to replace, but many are replaceable by the owner, and when you do repace it the picture will be as good as the day you bought it. I have read that with bulb replacement a DLP it would end up being the last tv you would need to buy.

Anybody have a couple of grand for me to buy one??

I read the DVICO USB has a software decoder. Did I read that right?
does the cats eye 3560 have hardware or software decoding?

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by mike_15

I read the DVICO USB has a software decoder. Did I read that right?
does the cats eye 3560 have hardware or software decoding?

There are very few actual hardware decoders, I have a pvr350 which has a hardware decoder chip for mpeg2, however these devices have there limits. HDTV being one of them. I don't know about the cats eye 3560 but my guess from the pictures is that it does not have hardware decoding. Typically a hardware decoder card has the outputs for your tv right on it.

If your display is hooked up to your computers graphics card it is highly unlikely that there is a true hardware decoder runing on it. It may be hardware accelerated but probably not fully decoded by a dedicated chip.

When I was using the pvr350's tv output I would use almost no CPU time while playing NTSC video which was nice. The problem is that you would basically need a dedicated chip for each media type if you wanted the hardware to do 100% of the decodeing.

Media types have been changing too fast to make that practical. I.e. my PVR350 could not play DVD's or Divx or WMV files etc. Just mpegs. A good quality graphics card on the other hand, should be able to help with the load of what ever the software is trying to decode. They are designed from the begining to do all sorts of different rendering.

You can write new software to do new tricks with existing hardware, but you cant change the wireing inside your hardware. I put up with the PVR350's limitations for a long time but of course it could never do high definition. I moved on to a graphics card that also supports hardware acceleration and deinterlacing.

The DVICO software comes with a set of codecs for decoding video inside the DVICO software application, but I don't think they are selectable in SageTV. You would have to configure them with some other software to be your default decoders if you wanted to use them specifically.

[jbanera]

I just received my first VBOX Cat's Eye USB-A-3560 box for OTA HD, but noticed that no remote control came with the unit. I would like to control the channel changes via my USB-UIRT (the third front eye), but there is no way that I can program the digits 0-9. Does anyone have the IR file so I can make it work with Sage/USB-UIRT?

Thanks!

[jbanera]

Does anyone have the IR file for the VBox USB HD tuner???

[jptaz]

I believe you are confused as to how the VBOX USB Tuner works.

It is a BDA OTA HD Tuner and all the tuning is performed by SageTV. Yo basically set it up with in SageTV as TV Tuner and select your local broadcast channel line up and SageTV does the rest.

John