Macopinion

Marc Goes HD, Part 2

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

I took the chance. I called up DirecTV and was delighted to learn that their DVR just dropped in price down to $200. That's for a unit capable of recording a decent 50 hours of HD and an excellent 200 hours of SD -- and it can record two channels at once.

Now this latter feature was not something that particularly interested me, mostly because I assumed it came with more costs. If you're familiar with satellite and cable pricing, they charge a monthly fee for each additional outlet in your home. It's just a few dollars, but those annoying charges add up. It's frustrating to pay $5/month for satellite box/connection in your bedroom when you hardly use it. I had thought that connecting two lines to the DVR would count as an additional connection and another charge -- but the DirecTV rep assured me that wasn't the case. The charge is for each cable box, not each line. (DirecTV's marketing should explain this better: I might have made the switch much earlier if I'd known.)

That was the final straw: my resistance broke and I ordered a DirecTV DVR with HD service.

A week later the satellite guy was out to install a new, much larger dish -- larger to catch the five satellites it needs for the high-bandwidth HD programming -- and that evening I was enjoying my new DirecTV DVR and HD service.

First Impressions
I was expecting to not like the DVR and so perhaps my standards were low, but I was pleasantly surprised. It not only works, but works quite well. In fact, there are many aspects that are better than Tivo -- something I did not expect at all.

First, on the hardware side, installing and setting up the DirecTV DVR was much simpler. With Tivo (I had a standalone Tivo), I had a separate satellite box which had to be controlled via IR repeater wires from the Tivo. With wires going to and from each box, it made for a lot of mess. My new connection is so much simpler: two satellite wires from the wall to the box, and wires from box to TV. That's it.

Next, picture quality. Unlike Tivo (at least standalone SD Tivo), there are no quality settings. While this bothered me at first since I'm used to adjusting the quality level for different types of shows on Tivo, ultimately I think this is a better way to go. Without the temptation to tweak, I'm forced to enjoy maximum quality for everything. The amount of space available varies dramatically since HD shows take up four times the space of the same show in SD, so it's unpredictable anyway -- depending on how much HD content I record, I may not be able to keep as many shows as on my Tivo. But since this equipment is all new to me, I'll just get to used to it and get comfortable with fitting an appropriate viewing schedule into my life.

And what does the picture look like? Is there an improvement? Well, HD looks fantastic. I knew it was better, but you really can't truly appreciate the difference until you watch multiple shows and channels in high def and then hit a SD channel. Suddenly the SD picture looks gray and weak and undefined. Just watching one show in HD doesn't do that. Your mind needs to get used to the whole HDTV experience and then when you switch back to standard, it's a shock.

What startled me the most, however, is how much better even standard definition looks in high def. What do I mean by that? How can SD show up in HD? Well, it does. The box "upconverts" the lower-quality signal to the higher resolution. This doesn't really add any additional information, but it does keep your TV in high-def mode (1080i) instead of it switching to SD (480i).

This is most noticeable with text. The following are two photographs I took of my TV with my digital camera. The top one is a SD (480i) screen; the bottom is the same video image in HD (1080i). Literally the only difference here is the video mode of my TV -- 480i versus 1080i. The video content is the same.

The standard def signal in 480i mode. Ignore the fuzzy lines -- that's because this is a photo of my actual TV.

The same standard def signal in 1080i mode, upconverted. In particular note how the text is sharper. Look at the zero in the scoreline, for instance.

No, it's not a giant difference. It's not day and night. It's subtle, but it is a difference. Unquestionably the "SD in HD" picture is better. So why not use it?

(That difference is in a still shot, too. With motion compression the difference is greater. I find I much prefer watching soccer, even SD soccer, in HD mode.)

But what about actual HD? Well, I know there are criticisms: the satellite and cables companies sometimes over-compress their HD feeds in order to fit more channels in their lineup (already can I can see differences in how shows are encoded), and I'm certainly no HD expert and my TV is not the greatest, but I am more than content with the result. The picture looks fabulous to me, and being able to pause and rewind such high-resolution content is impressive.

So what about the DVR interface? How does it compare to Tivo? I'll answer this in extensive detail in my next columns.

Next Time: Marc pits Tivo versus his new DVR and uncovers some fascinating differences.

macopinion@designwrite.com