The cable companies & Dish providers have banded together against the consumer... In order to get digital (HD or SD) programing, you need a digital box. Your new digital TV comes with a tuner that is usualy far superior to the tuner in the set-top box, but you cannot use that tuner; the cable/dish company scrambles their signals. This forces everyone with a digital TV to get a digital box that they should not need. Meanwhile, those without digital TVs must get a box to recieve digital channels. Worse, these boxes are not de-scramblers..they are converters. Neither bright house or directv offer ANY HD box with digital co-axial video output; so most DVR units will either not work, or will require a card to function. The cards look like credit cards, are not available for purchase, and must be rented...at a price higher than renting the DVR. If you do want a DVR, you must either pay to rent a TERRIBLE DVR unit, or you must buy a super-expensive unit that supports cable card, and then rent a piece of plastic to make it work! ...So even if you have a top-of-the line TV, you still need a box. Even if you own a top-of-the-line DVR, you still need to pay a rental fee. I just ordered a good UHF/VHF antenna from newegg & canceled my Directv service (canceled cable a week ago for the same reason, but directv LIED to me and said that their box has digital co-ax video output, it does not so I canceled it too). It is bad enough paying for TV...but when they go to such extreme lengths to force people to rent boxes, and then refuse to provide quality boxes...I just couldn't take it anymore. I am currently using some old (made around 1980) rabit-ears, and already have better quality picture on both FOX & NBC than I got from either Dish or cable. With Hulu, NetFlix, and OTA-ATSC I don't miss TV. Hopefully the digital switch will open more eyes...Directv lost over $1300 a year because of this; bright house lost about $1200 a year. If some more people stand up to this, maybe they will stop such practices.
Good grief, KillerBug! Reading this post, and your other thread, I think that you really need to quit toking up.
i don't even know where to start. i can't disagree with you that you think your analog picture from rabbit ears is better looking than a signal coming from a digital format such as satelite simply because i can't seem them to just, so i will simply say that i find that very hard to beleive. i don't quite understand how directv lost $1300 a year over the digital switch. first, $1300 a year is a ridiculously low number, so i don't think $1300 a year is going to hurt directv too much. second, um, how exactly is the digital switch (which is happening in what, june now or something?) affecting directv? since they launched in 1996 their channels have always been digital. anyone with digital cable, dish network, or directv are in no way affected by the digital switch. neither are the companies! so i don't really understand any of your logic you have to base your statements.
the switch to digital are for those using antennas & rabbit ears to receive over the air analog signals. it has nothing to do with cable or satellite as they are digital already. i'm not even an american & i know this!!
The old rabit ears pickup digital signals, but the cable company scrambles all digital signals...so all I could get from cable was analog signals. Directv lost my business because they scramble their signals and provide no way of descrambling these signals for my HTPC. They lost $1300 a year from me, and I am sure I am not the only one. This is the same cause for the cable company loosing $1200 a year. My increase in quality is due to the fact that directv and cable will only output in analog at SD resolution, while OTA-ATSC fox & nbc are 720P in my area. Here in the US (and I assume elsewhere as well) the cable companys have both digital and analog signals on the same wire...but the digital signals are scrambled so that you can only use them with the boxes from the cable company. Cablecard would fix this, but cablecard is not available to anyone other than the OEMs.
what a lot of people don't understand about satalite or cable vs over the air tv antennas you get a better picture with the antenna. the reason is they have to compress the signal in the satalite, but not with the antennas, you won't get all of the chanels offered with cable or satalite, but you will get a better quailty picture
