stewlevine
join:2002-05-28
Dallas, TX
| reply to kcharg
Re: [COMCAST] HDTV in Dallas MetroPlex
A couple of questions...
1. Can non-employees sign up yet?
2. Does the box being used let us integrate our over the air antennas like the DirecTV boxes do?
3. Can we use HD in room where we only have one (the 'A') wire run into the room?
4. Do we need to provide our own component video cables?
5. Where's ESPN HD? |
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imrf
Premium
join:2002-06-06
Utica, MI
 ·Comcast
·WOW Internet and C..
| 1. Don't know.
2. No. The box only decodes QAM signals, 8VSB is not inserted into any Comcast plant, nor do any on their boxes decode 8VSB signals.
3. Some one else can answer this one.
4. Should not have to, Comcast charges roughly $30 for the installation of the HD boxes, which includes 1 component video cable, a new drop to the house and the replacement of the cable line that feeds the HD box.
5. Many markets already have ESPNHD, its on here in MI. |
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kcharg
Kcharg
Premium,VIP
join:2000-10-28
Forney, TX
| reply to stewlevine
1. Only employees can get it now, hence the word "Soft Launch." They are (For Once) doing a beta test before they release it mainstream.
2. The Motorola boxes will not perform this function. »broadband.motorola.com/hdtv/dct5100.html
3. As far as I know if you only have your A-side running to that room then know you'll need a B-side. Our Digital Signals run over the B-side and I am pretty sure that they will be putting HD over the B-side.
4. NO
5. ESPN HD is being worked on, one of the Big Wigs I spoke with yesterday said that they were working hard to get ESPN HD soon.
Anymore questions?
kcharg |
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stm555
join:2002-02-04
Plano, TX
| Ok, question #6, will they also be providing digital audio?
Coax or optical connections would be superb. I had digital audio in Lubbock (west Texas) and I'm completely baffled why they don't offer it in the metroplex. Band of Brother's was great in DTS. |
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imrf
Premium
join:2002-06-06
Utica, MI
·Comcast
·WOW Internet and C..
| said by stm555  :
Band of Brother's was great in DTS.
Of course DTS on DVD will be better than anything cable can throw out, since cable can not do DTS audio. But it still should have been Dolby Digital on HBO. And yes all the HD Motorola boxes have both Toslink(Fiber) and Digital COAX. |
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stm555
join:2002-02-04
Plano, TX
| reply to stm555
Of course DTS on DVD will be better than anything cable can throw out, since cable can not do DTS audio. But it still should have been Dolby Digital on HBO. And yes all the HD Motorola boxes have both Toslink(Fiber) and Digital COAX. Are you sure cable can't do DTS? It was a while back (obviously when Band of Brothers was on HBO), but I coulda sworn my receiver lit up the blue light and said 'DTS' on it. That's great that it will provide the digital audio, especially the resampling over PCM. I hated having to switch audio sources all the time just because I changed channels/shows.
I just saw an announcement that came with a friend's bill. It said that they'll also be offering a PVR service. Anyone know if that includes the HD channels?
And speaking of PVR, do the 5100 boxes have the direct serial IR hookup for the Tivo? The IR blaster things are pretty annoying. |
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imrf
Premium
join:2002-06-06
Utica, MI
·Comcast
·WOW Internet and C..
| said by stm555 :
Are you sure cable can't do DTS? It was a while back (obviously when Band of Brothers was on HBO), but I coulda sworn my receiver lit up the blue light and said 'DTS' on it.
Positive. DTS audio is uncompressed, and in its native format will far exceed the limitations of the cable stream all together. Your receiver probably did light up but displayed Dolby Digital 3/2.1(5.1 depending on the receiver). Also, none of the converters on the market even have the DTS decoder chips in them so that would be another technicality issue. The DD feed of BoB was pretty good, but the DTS track on the DVDs was much better. |
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kcharg
Kcharg
Premium,VIP
join:2000-10-28
Forney, TX
| ESPN is now working!!!
Just had some of my inside people look at my account further and they were able to get my ESPN HD working. Now that the launch is tomorrow for the Dallas MetroPlex everything should be coming through fine:
650-Showtime
651-HBO
653-NBC HD
655-FOX
668-ESPN HD
kcharg
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kcharghttp://home.attbi.com/~kcharg/ |
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rossr5
join:2003-11-15
Garland, TX
| re: hdtv and vod
Kcharg,
Do you know when we will get vod here in Dallas? I thought we would be getting vod with hdtv. I had called to get info this weekend and they said they were just offering hdtv. They also said they had a short supply of them and I would have to make an appointment for install,$30 dollar charge.
So, I guess we will get vod with the pvr dct-6200 box or another. I've seen it on our website for vod nothing for pvr though. I hope with vod and pvr we don't have to pay for install and we can just swap them out. |
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kcharg
Kcharg
Premium,VIP
join:2000-10-28
Forney, TX
| My understanding from meetings that I have been in, is that we are not going to be offering VOD until we can get the NRB's (Non Responding Boxes) down to an acceptable level. The Dallas Metroplex as a whole has too many, because of Contractor's going out doing Digital Installs without phone lines. Well now we are almost fully upgraded to a RF Return system. In about 2 months I think we'll be ready for VOD. That's about when all the upgrades will be long gone and we'll have had enough time to hit those NRB's that are such a big pain in the A$$. So it would be safe to say that sometime in early January we should see the release of all these new products: (HDTV being already release, DVR's which I think should be coming about a month from now and of course VOD).
kcharg
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kcharghttp://home.attbi.com/~kcharg/ |
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rossr5
join:2003-11-15
Garland, TX
| Kcharg,
Will we be getting the new tv guide with the pvr boxes or is that coming with vod? Do you know if when they come out with those boxes in a month if we can just swap out our old dct-2000 boxes for the new boxes. They had said that they had a short supply of the 5100's now. Do you know if there going to use the new dct-6200 for pvr or are they getting more of the 5100's? |
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aasdfasfd
@attbi.com
| reply to imrf
Re: [COMCAST] HDTV in Dallas MetroPlex
Uh wrong. DTS is compressed. There are several DTS bitrates, one of which at least is comparable to Dolby Digital (and is the most commonly used on those DVD discs which have both DD and DTS). There is no technical reason whatsoever they could not put DTS over cable. |
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imrf
Premium
join:2002-06-06
Utica, MI
·Comcast
·WOW Internet and C..
| DTS do use minor compression, but there is NO comparison between DTS and DD. DD sucks compared to DTS. If you can not hear the difference between a DD and DTS track on the same DVD such as Terminator 2 then you shouldn't be wasting your time with a home theater. And yes there are technical reasons why they can't do DTS right now. The broadcasting studios would have to apply for the SDK from DTS corp then get all the encoders and decorders for convert their 5.1 tracks to DTS(the local news will never be DTS, its not multi-channel). Then all the box manufacturers would then also have to lease the technology and intellectual property to have DTS boxes. They are not going to go through all this just for the small hand-full of people who really would care about it. |
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aasdfasfd
@attbi.com | Exactly - there is no *technical* reason. I didn't say anything about marketing or licensing issues.
Both Dolby Digital and DTS use lossy compression. |
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imrf
Premium
join:2002-06-06
Utica, MI
·Comcast
·WOW Internet and C..
| Wrong. DD uses lossy compression, DTS does NOT. it uses a minor amount, and the amount that it does increases its audio quality and bandwidth. Go to »www.dtsonline.com and read their technical information and you will find out the information that you still are missing. And yes there are technical reasons, DTS audio uses too much bandwidth to fit in the the same stream with video and stereo or dolby digital for the rest of the people. It will NEVER happen. |
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aasdfasfd
@attbi.com | DTS is lossy the same as Dolby and all other digital audio compression formats (MP3, etc..) |
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imrf
Premium
join:2002-06-06
Utica, MI | Ok, stay in your dream world and believe what you will. You don't have your facts straight but since you posting anonymously I will just ignore what you think is correct. |
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asdfasdfas
@attbi.com
| Right.... I'd love to see how you are going to take over 700kb/sec of raw audio data (per-channel, so 5 channels would be over 3500kb/sec) and compress it to 754k/sec without losing anything. Magic?
Just because I choose not to give my email over to yet another potential source of spam and/or remember yet another username and password for yet another internet forume (I probably read/post regularly on 20-30 forums) doesn't mean my opinion is any less valid than yours. Get over yourself LOL. Anyway I think we've derailed this thread enough so I won't go on any further with you who obviously think you know everything. |
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sonofjay
Mission Accomplished - Bush May 1, 2003
Premium,MVM
join:2001-05-14
North Attleboro, MA
 ·Vonage
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| It's my understanding that DTS strips out the audio that cannot be heard by the human ear and then compress what remains using non-lossy encoding. DD does not strip out any audio and because of this it has to use a "lossy" compression in order to achieve the same compression level as DTS. So "technically" they are both lossy but the loss experienced using DTS is not discernable to the human ear. I myself think that DD has a more natural, fuller sound and that DTS sounds too "artificial" for lack of a better term, but everyone has their own opinion on the matter.
imrf, although I agree with you that some DVDs sound better with DTS, I disagree that DTS is the better sounding encoding option. I think T2 (and other such movies) have more to do with the sound engineers and producers than the actual technology used to encode them.
Finally, I agree with "anonymous" that there is no technical reason that DTS couldn't be used. The real reason is that DD is the choice of the majority of film studios and is the standard of SD as well as HDTV.
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The war is over?? |
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rkrocha
join:2000-09-23
Garland, TX | reply to rossr5
Re: re: hdtv and vod
vod will be limited EO 1/04, more by 3/04...enjoy. |
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