Any "out-of-the-box" PVRs or "digital VCRs"?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Nov 21, 2006 at 05:32:33AM -0500, Walter Dnes wrote:
>   Stay away from low-end plasmas then.  You'll see EDTV resolution
> (852x480) and so-called HDTV resolutions of 1024x768, 1024x1024, and
> even 1024x1080.  Plasmas have enough other problems; these low-end
> displays are killing their reputation.  I haven't seen ads for an LCD
> below 1366x768 for a long time, and 1920x1080 are starting to show up in
> the 42 inch and higher sizes.

Plasma also suffers from burn-in issues, and have a shorter expected
life than an LCD.  Plasma also uses more power than an LCD, although
less than a CRT I believe.  They are not on my list of future TV
purchases.  I think the only advantage of plasma now is that they come
in bigger sizes than LCD, although that is slowly changing.  LG recently
showed of a 100" LCD, which is almost as big as the largest plasmas ever
showed (103").

>   Anything with lots of movement is better in "p" than in "i".  This is
> mostly sports, but can include "action movies".  The reason is...
> 
>   - anything "p" (e.g. 720p) means "progrssive scan", i.e. the entire
>     picture is blasted out at once.  The picture looks great.
> 
>   - 30 fps interlaced is actually 2 half-pictures 1/60th of a second
>     apart.  24 fps interlaced is actually 2 half-pictures 1/48th of a
>     second apart.  If you have lots of fast movement, the half-pictures
>     a fraction of a second apart won't line up.  The more-expensive TV
>     sets have motion-compensation algorithms just for this, but you can
>     only do so much.

It is certainly better to avoid the picture tears to begin with rather
than try to fix them after they have already occoured.

>   See http://www.remotecentral.com/hdtv/ for an idea what things are
> like in the GTA.  Looks like mostly 1080i, with some 720p.
> 
>   During the mailing-list outage, I did some looking.  The AutumnWave
> OnAir HDTV GT USB unit has been drawing rave reviews, but I couldn't
> find any outfit in the US that would ship to Canada.  I finally found a
> Canadian reference at http://www.expansys.ca/p.aspx?i=140064 and was
> able to place an order at a 416-area-code phone number.  It took a
> minute to figure out that when they asked for the "code number" they
> meant the stock code, i.e. the "140064"
> 
>   It requires Windows (yeah, I know); XP Home is sufficient.  The
> AutumnWave actually loses some functionality under Windows MCE.  I plan
> to get a basic Dell with XP Home and a 320 gig drive.  It'll be
> dedicated as a PVR, and no internet use, so I'm not worried about
> "Windows Security" (or lack thereof).

I certainly won't buy anything that doesn't work with linux.  I might
still have XP installed on my machine, but I know I haven't booted
anything but linux on it for at least 2 years, so I doubt I ever will.
There are plenty of linux compatible HDTV receivers, and at least then
you know you won't be stuck with a piece of hardware that won't work
with a supported version of windows some time in the future.  After all
microsoft doesn't support them forever.

--
Len Sorensen
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