Recently in HDTV and Home Theater Category

About two years ago, I bought Arlene an American Standard Champion toilet for Valentine's Day. Not too long after, I added another one in the hall bathroom downstairs. Over time, they both developed odd flushing behavior caused by the design of their flush system. It uses what they call a Flush Tower; it's basically a concentric pair of cylinders where the flush lever lifts the inner cylinder, which in turn lifts the outer cylinder and dumps water through the trapway.

One toilet has decided to just make a loud "clunk" when you flush it. That's caused by the inner cylinder dropping down prematurely instead of engaging and lifting the outer cylinder. The other one flushes, but the outer cylinder drops too soon, so it only releases about half as much water as it should.

I called American Standard's customer service department and spoke to a very pleasant lady who agreed that the toilets were still under warranty (with a 10-year warranty I should hope so!) She told me that the Flush Tower had been redesigned and that they'd be happy to send me two new ones via FedEx. That's the kind of customer service I like (though I'm not looking forward to pulling the tanks from both toilets to replace the towers).

In other, and completely unrelated, news, about six weeks ago. the living room Xbox 360 died with a RROD. I used the Xbox web site to get a repair case opened and sent it off; it came back about two weeks later. In the meantime, I moved the basement 360 to the living room, then we started remodeling the basement, then we went out of town... and so on. Bottom line: I plugged the newly repaired 360 in last night and it immediately failed again. Now I have to send it back, wait for them to fix it, and reinstall it. If only there were a cross-ship option. Or, if only the frigging things wouldn't fail so often in the first place. There, I said it. Now I feel better.

Verily, this man did seek to obtain an HDTV. His quest was mighty, for he sought to buy an HDTV at the City of Circuit and many other diverse places, and he did relate all that he did upon the Internet, like unto the plates which our fathers hath made.

So, I've had U-Verse for all of five days so far. Herewith a few first impressions after having used it a bit.

First, my installer gets an A+++++. He did a great job of setting everything up, putting wires where I wanted them, and cleaning up after himself. I am very well pleased with how the install went; I don't know if he's typical of AT&T's field installer force but if he is that bodes well for them.

Second, Internet speed has generally been excellent, with speeds far closer to the rated limit. As an example, I got a measured 9.3Mbps the other day, which is pretty darn good. Jitter has overall been low, but I am still having occasional burps on my Mitel phone (haven't tested the Tanjay yet). I had some difficulties getting all 3 of my wireless access points to work together; I ended up turning off two of them, because AT&T's box integrates 802.11g and has enough range to cover the entire first floor. Problem solved.

TV: channel selection is OK. We don't get the Toledo CW affiliate, or any other, nor do we get the digital subchannels for local broadcasters, both of which I miss. I'm glad to get BYU-TV again, and there are a few HD channels like Smithsonian that Buckeye doesn't have. U-Verse HD picture quality is fair-to-good; I'd say it's on a par with DirecTV but not as good (at least for the local channels) as Buckeye. I like getting STARZ and the other low-end movie channels as part of the bundle, but they only have about five different movies between them.

DVR: this is kind of a sore point with me right now. U-Verse touts its "Total Home DVR", which puts a single disk-based DVR in one room and satellite units that can stream video from the "real" DVR in others. Great idea, and perfect for our house. There are some drawbacks, though. The satellite units cannot pause live TV, nor can they schedule recordings. That's one strike. The second strike is that, for some reason, the unit in our bedroom keeps telling us that there are no DVRs on the network, so we can't watch anything. (An AT&T tech is on his way over right now to see if he can fix it, though.) So, I'll call that a foul ball… strike two. This morning, after rebooting both DVR units to try to fix that problem, all of the recorded programs were gone. That's definitely a strike. (Arlene told me that the programs actually disappeared sometime yesterday, because they were already gone at 1630 when she and the boys tried to watch something.)

As long as I'm talking about the DVR functionality: I miss wishlists and suggestions, neither of which the U-Verse boxes implement. Search-by-name works well, and seems quite a bit faster than the TiVo. Series recording works well, as evidenced by the episodes of stuff I recorded before they got wiped out.

Interactive features: AT&T touts their U-Bar interface, which puts your TV picture in a frame that displays weather, sports, or other information. Unfortunately, all we get for weather is the name of our city, the forecast high/low for the next 24 hours, and a little weather icon-- that's it. This is pretty useless, especially compared to getting "weather on the 8s" with the local Weather Channel broadcast on Buckeye. Local weather is an oft-requested feature on the U-Verse support forums so maybe we'll get it some day.

Miscellaneous grace notes: the TiVo allows you to see what happened to each show that was recorded or removed, which would have come in very handy in tracing where all my programs went.

My installer just left after verifying that the interior cable run is OK. We'll see if things improve, but for now it's back to the Alabama-Georgia game.

So, I've had U-Verse for all of five days so far. Herewith a few first impressions after having used it a bit.

First, my installer gets an A+++++. He did a great job of setting everything up, putting wires where I wanted them, and cleaning up after himself. I am very well pleased with how the install went; I don't know if he's typical of AT&T's field installer force but if he is that bodes well for them.

Second, Internet speed has generally been excellent, with speeds far closer to the rated limit. As an example, I got a measured 9.3Mbps the other day, which is pretty darn good. Jitter has overall been low, but I am still having occasional burps on my Mitel phone (haven't tested the Tanjay yet). I had some difficulties getting all 3 of my wireless access points to work together; I ended up turning off two of them, because AT&T's box integrates 802.11g and has enough range to cover the entire first floor. Problem solved.

TV: channel selection is OK. We don't get the Toledo CW affiliate, or any other, nor do we get the digital subchannels for local broadcasters, both of which I miss. I'm glad to get BYU-TV again, and there are a few HD channels like Smithsonian that Buckeye doesn't have. U-Verse HD picture quality is fair-to-good; I'd say it's on a par with DirecTV but not as good (at least for the local channels) as Buckeye. I like getting STARZ and the other low-end movie channels as part of the bundle, but they only have about five different movies between them.

DVR: this is kind of a sore point with me right now. U-Verse touts its "Total Home DVR", which puts a single disk-based DVR in one room and satellite units that can stream video from the "real" DVR in others. Great idea, and perfect for our house. There are some drawbacks, though. The satellite units cannot pause live TV, nor can they schedule recordings. That's one strike. The second strike is that, for some reason, the unit in our bedroom keeps telling us that there are no DVRs on the network, so we can't watch anything. (An AT&T tech is on his way over right now to see if he can fix it, though.) So, I'll call that a foul ball… strike two. This morning, after rebooting both DVR units to try to fix that problem, all of the recorded programs were gone. That's definitely a strike. (Arlene told me that the programs actually disappeared sometime yesterday, because they were already gone at 1630 when she and the boys tried to watch something.)

As long as I'm talking about the DVR functionality: I miss wishlists and suggestions, neither of which the U-Verse boxes implement. Search-by-name works well, and seems quite a bit faster than the TiVo. Series recording works well, as evidenced by the episodes of stuff I recorded before they got wiped out.

Interactive features: AT&T touts their U-Bar interface, which puts your TV picture in a frame that displays weather, sports, or other information. Unfortunately, all we get for weather is the name of our city, the forecast high/low for the next 24 hours, and a little weather icon-- that's it. This is pretty useless, especially compared to getting "weather on the 8s" with the local Weather Channel broadcast on Buckeye. Local weather is an oft-requested feature on the U-Verse support forums so maybe we'll get it some day.

Miscellaneous grace notes: the TiVo allows you to see what happened to each show that was recorded or removed, which would have come in very handy in tracing where all my programs went.

My installer just left after verifying that the interior cable run is OK. We'll see if things improve, but for now it's back to the Alabama-Georgia game.

I've been having frustrating problems with my Buckeye Express Internet service. Overall, Buckeye has done a good job. Their service has been pretty reliable (except that outages often kill phone and Internet service at the same time), and I like buying from a locally-owned company. Unfortunately, the Internet connection's quality has been pretty variable. I'm supposed to get 12Mbps down and 1 Mbps down; in practice, I rarely see more than 7Mbps down and about 900Kbps up. The bigger problem is illustrated here:

Notice that one peak around the 5000ms mark-- that's where something is inserting arbitrary TCP pauses. These pauses don't follow any pattern that I can tell, but they wreak havoc both on my Mitel 5340/Teleworker and my Communicator Phone Experience devices. Every time one of these pauses hits, I get a noise on my phone like someone dropping 5lbs of lead shot into a galvanized trash can; it happens often enough to render that connection unusable.

The upstream jitter graph shows a similarly sad tale. It's bad enough that I have 142ms of jitter, but it's worse that it's so variable. Most VoIP systems can compensate for jitter, but only if it remains predictable.

I called Buckeye to come out and fix it, but I don't think the problem is something that can be resolved with a truck roll (although my local pedestal is out of spec, so they're fixing it.) When AT&T announced that they were coming to Toledo, I eagerly hit their web site to find out if they offer service in Perrysburg… and they do. Their offering doesn't yet include voice, but they have 10Mbps down/1.5Mbps up Internet service and a really slick-looking DVR setup that provides centralized DVR service for the whole house. I got in touch with Amanda Harris, the general manager for U-Verse in Ohio, and asked her some questions about the service; I'll blog more about her answers later.

Perhaps more importantly, they offer free installation and a money-back service guarantee, so I scheduled them for an install. The installer came by this morning, did a quick walkthrough of the house to see what connections need to go where, and is now hooking our signal up at the VDSL pedestal. By day's end, I should be in a position to do a back-to-back shootout of U-Verse vs Buckeye on the Internet front.

On the TV front, things are a little more complicated. The living room TiVo HD won't work with U-Verse, so we'll have to mothball it for the time being. However, the bedroom doesn't have a DVR at all, so it will gain one. U-Verse in Ohio supports two simultaneous HD streams, so you can record two HD programs and watch up to 5 different HD or SD programs on 5 different TVs (not that we'll ever have that many). We'll also get some channels, like BYU-TV, that we don't now get-- at the cost of the familiar and easy-to-use TiVo interface. We'll have to see how that plays off.

I'd write more, but the AT&T truck just pulled up again...

Amazon has a bunch of $14.99 HD-DVDs (including all 3 Mission:Impossible movies). It's orderin' time!

From today's TVPredictions, this story about Belo Corporation, a broadcasting company that's telling cable companies in its markets that they'll have to pay to carry Belo's broadcast HDTV signals:

But Jim Rothschild, director of operations for the Belo-owned KMOV in St. Louis, said Charter should pay because the high-def channel helps the cable operator sign -- and keep -- customers.

"We are simply asking Charter to share some of the value that it gets from our HD investment. They pay national channels for HDTV services, so they should also pay local channels," he told the newspaper.

If I were Rothschild, I wouldn't go there. Local affiliates have long complained that they need protection from "distant locals" on satellite or cable, and Congress and the FCC have gone along with them because the "local locals" have been freely available OTA and on local cable. If broadcasters now want to start charging for carriage of their signals, that's just going to increase the likelihood that, say, Buckeye Cable will be able to buy HD affiliate signals from (say) Detroit and insert ads, just as they do for some national HD signals. That's not good for local affiliates or the holding companies, like Belo and Raycom, that own them.

It's not really a 360 achievement; it's because of the Wii.

Well, this is a nice surprise: according to Multichannel News, DirecTV will be adding local-into-local HD service for Toledo (and several other similarly-sized markets) by years' end. I don't have any of the MPEG-4 equipment that would be required to get LIL, and I have a perfectly good HD antenna anyway. Even if I had the equipment, I'd still stick with over-the-air because then I can record it easily, using either Windows Media Center or the El Gato eyeTV HD gadget I just got in the mail. Look for a full review soon... well, OK; "soon" really means "after baseball season is over, or the Tigers are eliminated, whichever comes first".

At the Tokyo Game Show, Microsoft made a couple of huge announcements about the Xbox 360. First, they announced some new games for the Japanese market, where the Xbox family has traditionally been pretty weak. They announced some excellent new Xbox Live Arcade titles, too, including Gyruss, Rally-X, and Track & Field. Konami and NAMCO BANDAI have really jumped on the potential of XBLA; Konami alone had three or four titles released just within the last couple of months.

I don't know how I missed this news. Jim McBee always bugs me about watching Firefly; he swears that I'd like it. I've held off, mostly out of laziness. Now comes word that it'll be shown on UHD, in high definition, starting in a couple of weeks. To the TiVo! Season Pass time.

Another cool MacWorld product: Griffin's new TuneCenter, an iPod dock that lets you play videos or music, or show pictures, from your iPod on a regular TV. I wonder how well this actually works? I love the idea, especially since it's much simpler than the current lashup I have now. One key difference is that pictures displayed through the Xbox360 UI should use a much higher resolution than the iPod will support, but then that requires my Xbox360-MCE connection to work properly.

So, last week I wrote about trying to get my iTunes music onto my Xbox 360. I noted that using Windows Media Connect on Virtual PC seemed to work OK, but I noticed something odd: only about 1/3 of my song library showed up on the device. It turns out that the 360 can't stream AAC files (protected or unprotected), and-- wouldn't you know it-- that's the default format I've been using. This is odd, and frustrating, given that the 360 can play AAC files just fine from an iPod, so clearly it's got an AAC codec installed.

I discovered this while trying to set up a Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) computer to stream videos to the 360. After an evening of fiddling, I still can't make the MCE and 360 work together; each reports that it sees the other, but I can't stream any content. However, I learned that if you install the 3ivx filter pack, then Windows Media Player (and, by extension, Windows Media Connect) can see and play unprotected AAC files. At least that much is now working.

Update: no, this still isn't working. WMC won't show AAC files, so neither the Xbox 360 nor the LRM-519 I have in the bedroom will see two-thirds of my accumulated music connection. Frustrating.

All my music is on my Mac. All Arlene's music is on her Mac. I wanted to be able to stream both computers' iTunes libraries to the Xbox 360, but-- wouldn't you know it? the 360 doesn't support Apple's iTunes protocol, and iTunes doesn't support the Windows Media Connect (WMC) protocol.

My first thought was to use Virtual PC with an XP Professional image; install WMC, use Virtual PC's "shared folder" feature, and point WMC at it. However, as I learned from wmcplayer.com, WMC requires that the Network Service pseudo-account have access to the shared folder. Apparently, Virtual PC applies some other ACL to the shared folder, so WMC wouldn't share music from the shared folder.

Attempt #2 was more successful: I moved my iTunes music library to superman, my Windows Server 2003 file server, and pointed an alias in my Music folder to it. Then I told WMC to share \\superman\music, and boom! I was in business. I'm not sure how well this will work long-term, because I bet iTunes will dislike living on an SMB volume. For now, though, it's great to be able to listen to my (non-DRM'd) music on the Xbox.

We made a Thanksgiving-night run to Meijer for milk and bread; while we were there, I saw that they had a Thanksgiving-only special on the Syntax Olevia LT27HVX, a 27" flat-panel LCD television with good specs (1280 x 720, with 480p, 720p, and 1080i support). For $499, I jumped on it-- that ended up being my anniversary present from Arlene. On Friday, BestBuy had a sale on their DirecTV HD receivers: $199 with a $199 mail-in rebate. Matthew, Thomas, and I headed out to BestBuy about 0830 and it was jam-packed-- talk about crowd-fighting! It was worth it, though, as we eventually emerged with a shiny new H10. Its OTA tuner isn't as sensitive as the one in the living room HR10-250, so I ended up having to put an inline 10dB amplifier on its cable run, but now it works really well. It's a treat to be able to watch HD under an electric blanket :)

1 800 263 0028. Let me write that again: 1 800 263 0028. That's the number to call if you're a DirecTV subscriber with HDTV service. It turns out that you can get, at no extra cost, the east or west coast feeds of any network if the network owns the local affiliate station. That's called an O&O station, for "owned and operated". In Toledo, WTVG is owned by ABC, so we qualify to get the ABC national feed. I'm still trying to figure out if the Fox station is an O&O or not; I've seen conflicting reports.

I wish I'd thought of this: a smart guy came up with the idea of creating a TiVo wishlist with "2004" as the search term to catch all movies released in 2004. That's not the cool part-- now I can create a wishlist for a video type of "HDTV" and have instant access to the list of what's on in HD. W00t.

Discovery HD is showing the documentary "Trinity and Beyond" on Saturday. Now I won't have to buy it.

The entertainment industry is still trying: I got an "action alert" email from EFF asking people to call Senators on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that owns technical issues. Apparently the forces of darkness are trying to sneak a broadcast flag amendment into an appropriations vote. This comes after the the DC circuit Court of Appeals struck down the original broadcast flag rules. If you value your ability to use devices like iPods and TiVos, call or email your Senator right now. It only takes a minute to do.

I lost the ER-4ps that I got for Christmas, so I bought some ER-6is to see how they sounded. They sound almost as good and they were hella cheap(er). Now Amazon has the ER-6i on sale for $89, which is a terrific deal. If you've been wanting a set of these but have balked at the price, well, balk no longer.

This just in: the US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit just struck down the FCC's broadcast flag requirement. w00t.

TiVo is running an interesting promotion: buy a $155 12-month subscription and get a free 140-hour TiVo unit. This post at the TiVo Community has the details. Even if you're an existing customer, this is a pretty good deal, since the $155 subscription turns into about 22 months at the $6.95/month rate. Heck, if you buy a lifetime sub you still come out about $200 ahead, since that's normally what the 140-hr boxes cost. Want one? Email me, but do it before 4/30, when this expires.

TiVo is running a promotion for people who have referred customers to them: I can get up to 5 140-hour TiVos for free with the purchase of a 12-month subscription ($155) or a lifetime subscription ($299). This is quite a deal, since the TiVo box itself normally goes for $199. I don't need one, but if you're in the market for a new or replacement TiVo, drop me a line before 4/30 and we'll talk.

Bob was talking about how broadcasting is doomed, and then I found this: A Broadcaster's Christmas Carol.

I've spent a short while playing with the DCT-6412 since I got it. Here are a few random observations; I can't really say this is a review, because it isn't (and isn't meant to be) comprehensive.

• It does what it claims: provide DVR/PVR functionality for HDTV cable signals. On that grounds alone, I'm happy to pay the extra $5/month (which means that, after 200 months, I'd come out ahead buying an HDTiVo).
• The iGuide interface is reasonably functional for watching live TV. It's much faster, and better-looking, than the interface on the older DCT-6100 series boxes. As a bonus, you can choose a color scheme from a list of eight or so predefined sets.
• In general, the TiVo interface makes it much easier to perform common tasks with fewer button presses.
• There's a popup "quick menu" that lets you quickly select from the most common functions; this appears as a thin strip at the bottom of the display superimposed over whatever you're watching. Combine this with the "favorite channel" list and you have an easy way to jump between HDTV programs.
• The program status bar (or what Moto calls the flip bar; it shows recording status, time remaining, whether the program is paused, etc) is remarkably ugly.
• You can toggle the front-panel display between a channel display and a clock. This is a great feature, since the clock is bright and easy to read. However, when the unit is recording, or when you pause live or recorded TV, the display changes to "rEC" or "PAU" respectively.
• Speaking of pause: if you pause a program, the 6412 will happily sit there paused forever. It still seems to record OK while paused, but it doesn't jump back to live TV after a preset interval like the TiVo does.
• The interface for choosing programs to record is fairly terrible. It's easy to record a show you're watching (just press the remote Record button) or one you see in the guide (press Select when it's highlighted, then Select twice more to schedule and confirm the recording). However, the "search by name" function is buried, and it has a bizarre multiple-choice selection metaphor that I've had trouble getting used to.
• There doesn't seem to be an easy way to schedule a recording for a particular time and channel (e.g. Sunday, 8-9pm, channel 650). This is such an obvious feature that I just must not have found it yet.
• No Season Pass feature, nor anything like unto it. However, there is a nice listing of HDTV programs.
• The 6412 has a 14-day guide, but at least in some cases it's missing programs. Example: yesterday (10 November) I wanted to record a program that airs on 22 November. It wasn't in the guide yet. I haven't reproduced this so I don't know what's causing it yet.

I'll post more details and impressions once I've had a chance to use the unit more. So far, I haven't spent a lot of time watching recorded programs because of Halo 2 work.

If you need me, I'll be in front of the TV. The Buckeye installer just dropped off a shiny new DCT-6412 HD DVR. It doesn't have a full set of program guide data yet, so I can't set up all the scheduled recordings I want. However, I did set up a few test recordings, so we'll see how well it works. The iGuide interface is a huge improvement over the crappy TV Guide guide for the DCT-6100, although it's not quite as sharp as TiVo's interface. More on the unit after I've had a few days to wring it out and read the manual.

I just got mail from Judy Carter at Buckeye Cable: they're launching the Motorola DCT-6412 HD PVR/cable box on 11/7. By "launching", I mean that starting on the 7th you can call them to schedule an install appointment, or you can swing y their Southwick office to pick one up. They're charging another $5/month for PVR functionality, which I can live with if it means I can finally PVR all of the network shows I want to watch in HD.

Update: trabblc asked two good questions: will the new units have the "iGuide" guide rev, and will both tuners be activated? Buckeye's answer: yes to both. Good thing, too, because without dual tuners this would be mostly worthless to me.

FINALLY! After several postponements and delays, DirecTV launches local-into-local service to Toledo today. Thanks to the fine folks over at DBSForums, I was able to call and make an install appointment. The channel lineup includes all of the local broadcast stations, even WLMB. Now, time to check with Buckeye to see if they've got an ETA for the Motorola DCT-6412 yet...

Congress is considering legislation called the INDUCE Act. It would, not to put too fine a point on it, outlaw many of the common devices found in your house. This might seem drastic, but the basic point is pretty clear. From SaveBetamax.com:

The Betamax VCR died more than 15 years ago, but the Supreme Court decision that made the Betamax and all other VCRs legal lived on. In Sony vs. Universal (known as the Betamax decision) the Court ruled that because VCRs have legitimate uses, the technology is legal—even if some people use it to copy movies. Of course, the movie industry was lucky it lost the case against VCRs, because home video soon became Hollywood's largest source of revenue. And the freedom to use and develop new technology that was protected by the Betamax decision set the stage for the incredible growth in computer technology we've seen in the last few decades.

The INDUCE Act would overturn the precedent set in Sony v Universal, creating huge financial liabilities for any company that makes technology that might be used to copy copyrighted material. Goodbye, TiVo. Goodbye, iPod. Goodbye, home DVD burner. Etc. The SaveBetamax folks are asking people to sign up to call their Congressional reps at a preset time; by scheduling calls, they hope to produce a steady flow of calls during the day. I signed up, and (IMNSHO) you should too. Don't take my word for it, though; even Mr. Rogers (God rest his soul) agreed with the Betamax decision.

Philip Swann, a well-known TV pundit, has just launched a new site: OnHD.TV. It purports to be an all-in-one, consumer-focused guide to HDTV, including what shows are in HD, which ones are worth watching from a production-values standpoint, and how to choose suitable HD hardware. Stop by and check it out.

Good news: DirecTV got the Feds' approval to move DIRECTV5 to 72.5°W, which means that Toledo locals are just around the corner. This follows their previous announcement by about six weeks-- not too bad! Now all I have to do is figure out how to get DirecTV to come install the additional dish I'll need to get the locals.

Great news! Despite objections from the MPAA and the NFL, the FCC today approved TiVo's TiVo-To-Go gadget for recording shows on a TiVo and playing them back on a PC or DVD player.

Busy few days here at the ranch. I got a DCT6100 from Buckeye for their HD service, had them come out and install a cable modem (3.5Mb/s down, 384Kb/s up, at half the cost of my 1.1Mb/s up/down SDSL from Speakeasy), and just got done flattening and rebuilding my firewall box with ISA Server 2004. The most remarkable aspect of these changes is that so far, they've all gone flawlessly (except for a bad cable box, which was easy enough to fix). The boys and I are looking forward to watching Robbie Knievel's big jump in HD on Saturday.

Update: this morning, no Internet when I awoke. Turns out that, contrary to the installer's advice, the NIC connected to the cable modem must not be set to DHCP. Oops.

Welcome /. readers! I added a section on customization because I somehow forgot to mention that in the original article.

Summary: "It's pretty good except for a few bugs, right, Dad?" -- David, my 9-year-old son

Connected Home asked me to write an article on Microsoft's Windows Media Center Edition (MCE). Through the generous help of the MCE PR team (thanks, Tom!) I recently spent a month with a Gateway 610XL, a nifty all-in-one PC with a 17" widescreen LCD display, 802.11g, and a DVD burner. This unit took the place of my bedroom TiVo, the trusty Sony SVR-2000 I've had for about four years now. It's been hackedenhanced with a larger drive, TiVoWeb, and TyTools. I'd been reading a lot about MCE, and wanted to see how it stacked up for casual consumer use. Unfortunately, Connected Home is cutting back their publication schedule, so they don't want my article. Instead, this is a more informal version of my thoughts after using MCE for a month. I've had a TiVo since 2000 (and that's after writing an early review of the units right after they shipped), so I can't help viewing MCE in comparison with TiVo.

First, a note on the hardware: MCE is sold only with computers from selected OEMs. This is to provide an Apple-like experience: the hardware and software should Just Work™ without any descents into driver or DLL hell. Gateway did a great job stuffing lots of functionality into the 610XL, and I was generally pleased with it. Except as noted, all of my comments would pertain equally to MCE machines from any other vendor.

Setup
Setup was very painless. I'm accustomed to the lengthy TiVo process of running their Guided Setup utility; this requires a long phone call and an even longer (nay, interminable) pause while the TiVo digests the initial set of program guide data. With MCE, the process was trivial: set it up on my wireless LAN, then click the button to download program guide data. I did hit a snag with setting up the 610XL to control my Philips DSX-5000 satellite box, but it was easy to work around (and, as it turns out, the MCE remote did the trick just fine). It was easy to make the Media Center machine see pictures and music from my home network, although the MCE machine can't be joined to an Active Directory domain [ed: I got this wrong. MCE 2003 couldn't domain join; MCE 2004 and later can]

Interface
Microsoft refers to the MCE interface as their "10'" interface, because it was designed to be usable from that distance. The interface is clean and well-designed. It doesn't have as much background motion as TiVo's interface, which I consider to be a plus. One of the coolest interface features is that every element can be operated via keyboard, mouse, or remote, so you can do things like remove redeye from digital photos using only the remote (more on that in a minute). In addition, third-party programs like Sonic Primetime and Napster can use the same interface. Other developers have created add-ons, too, including the elusive "MyWeather" that provides local weather data with the cool 10' look. Since the first thing my wife usually asks me in the morning is what the forecast is, this would be a valuable thing to have.

The MCE remote worked well enough; it features separate buttons for live and recorded TV, stored photos, and music. It lacks the brilliant industrial design of the TiVo "peanut" remote, though (but who cares; so does my Sony unit.) The Gateway's remote sensor had a pretty narrow receive angle, which was a little frustrating but not MCE's fault.

Plumbing
The TiVo can record from two sources: cable/antenna and S-Video. This means I can use one unit to record cable and satellite channels. Unfortunately, MCE can't yet do this. The 610XL has digital audio inputs and outputs, but I didn't test them; my satellite receiver doesn't decode Dolby Digital, so I also didn't test MCE's surround sound functionality. As with TiVo units, the inputs and outputs you get may vary according to what kind of MCE hardware you buy.

Live TV and guide
We didn't watch much live TV on this unit, for two reasons: a) it was in the bedroom and b) we have a TiVo so we don't have to watch live TV. However, the MCE unit handled this quite well. I prefer the MCE program guide format to TiVo's; it's much easier to read from across the room. As with the TiVo, the MCE box would occasionally misfire when changing channels on the satellite box. This is an unfortunate consequence of the IR dongle used to send channel-change commands, but it can be minimized with careful positioning of the IR blaster "eyelet".

Recorded TV
It's easy to find programs to record by title, time, or category, and it's easy to set up recurring recordings to get all episodes of, say, "I Spy". When I set up conflicting recordings, MCE let me know and asked me how I wanted to handle the conflict. Oddly, all recordings defaulted to starting five minutes before the scheduled time. I was able to adjust this easily.

I did experience two problems with recorded TV. One was a consistent bug: hitting the fast-forward button while replaying live TV would cause the image to freeze. Audio worked fine, but the only way to unstick the image was to go back to the recorded TV list and hit play. Fortunately, the MCE remote has a "skip" button that skips ahead 30sec. This is just the thing for skipping commercials. You can activate a similar feature on the TiVo, but I don't usually bother because TiVo's "overshoot" correction is so good. The other was inconsistent: sometimes recorded programs would end earlier than I expected. This only happened twice, but both times it was during a movie I'd recorded to watch with my wife... not so good for the WAF.

Scheduling, season pass, and suggestion functionality
TiVo put a lot of effort into the three "S"s: scheduling recordings, their Season Pass feature, and recording suggestions. The MCE did a competent job of scheduling, including notifying me of conflicts. It's more difficult to skip individual recordings in a series than it is with TiVo, and there aren't as many options for choosing which episodes to record, which ones to keep, and how long to keep them for. In addition, there's nothing like the TiVo Season Pass Manager for reprioritizing conflicting recordings. MCE also doesn't record suggestions based on your input. Some people dismiss this as useless, but it's found a lot of interesting stuff for us in the past. I'd have to say that overall this is MCE's weakest area compared to TiVo.

Video extraction/DVD burning
One area where MCE really shines is in taking programming to watch on other machines. I want to be able to watch recorded programs while I'm on the treadmill, on my Tablet PC while stuffed into an airplane, or in a hotel room in Redmond. MCE makes that much easier than TiVo. As a bonus, my test unit came with Sonic Primetime, an extremely easy-to-use program that burns recorded MCE shows to DVD. This worked about 80% of the time in my tests-- way better than TyTools or TyStudio on my TiVo. Being able to quickly burn educational shows to DVD for use in the minivan was a huge WAF bonus. (To add insult to injury, when TiVo does eventually ship this feature, which they're calling TiVo To Go, it won't work on either of the TiVos I actually own!) The MCE can also spit out video that can be synced to Portable Media Center devices or even to Windows smartphones. I don't currently use either of these, but I'd certainly consider buying a PMC to provide easier access to recorded content when I'm on the road.

Music
One really cool feature of MCE was its ability to play music. If you had an MCE as part of your home theater, this would be a nice addition, provided your music was ripped at a reasonable quality. The 610XL has decent built-in speakers (plus a subwoofer). One thing I particularly liked was that Windows Media Player was smart enough to go out and fetch album art for songs I had in my library that didn't already have it. TiVo offers some roughly similar functionality as part of its Home Media Option (HMO), but I can't use HMO on my bedroom TiVo (it's a Series 1) or the one in the living room (it's a DirecTiVo). Advantage: MCE.

Photos
MCE's ability to capture, display, and edit digital photos was a surprise bonus. I know people who use MCE to provide background photo/music shows at parties; since our unit was in the bedroom that wasn't something I tested, but all three of my kids loved watching slideshows of family photos. The slideshow component includes a cool Ken Burns-like pan/zoom effect that adds motion to the pictures. You can easily resize, flip, and de-redeye pictures; with a compatible printer, you could also print instant snapshots. We've done this before using Arlene's camera and its printer dock, but MCE offers a way to let more people see the pictures in the process. Advantage here: MCE.

Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF)
As almost any home theater enthusiast will tell you, the WAF is a critical part of building a usable home theater. (I'm sure there are female home theater nuts too; I've just never actually met any. My mom, aunt, and sister are all TiVo fans, so maybe that counts.) The MCE was more stable in everyday operation than my hacked-up TiVo (which is in the basement, driven by an X10 Powermid that sometimes flakes out), and it offered a great deal of extra functionality that my wife liked. However, the fast-forward problem cost some WAF points. Would an MCE device make it in the living room? At my house, probably, especially since I have an MX500 remote that can use macros to automate most complex tasks.

Customization and expandability
MCE wins big-time here. There are a wide variety of commercial and free add-ons that do things like make MCE act as a DVD jukebox (rip your DVDs once and play them any time), alarm clock, streaming audio server, and so forth. Because you can run any Windows program, the MCE is hugely flexible. With different hardware (e.g. the kind with slots and a case) you can do all kinds of cool things-- for example, Omar has a custom front-panel display. You could fairly easily write your own plugins for the main MCE screen to display important email, stock quotes, etc. In fact, the fine folks at NewsGator have a Media Center version of their RSS aggregator-- it's very slick. Of course, as you start adding stuff to an MCE or TiVo box, you run the risk of reducing its stability.

Other stuff
The MCE box is a general-purpose WIndows XP machine, so you can use it as a web browser, email terminal, and game machine. However, I got a better experience from sitting with my Tablet PC instead of trying to read the 17" from across the room. Don't discount this feature if you're using MCE with a larger screen, though. Of course, the downside of this is that you have to keep your MCE up to date on patches and fixes-- something that might be an unwanted hassle for people who don't live patch management every day.

Futures
TiVo has clearly placed their bets on consumer electronics companies. It's unclear what the future of their relationship with DirecTV will be, and it's uncertain how their recent pricing model changes will affect the availability of future services. On the other hand, they have a good track record of shipping stable products (including their recent HD-capable unit), and they have an extremely active and dedicated evangelist community. In the other corner, MS is backing MCE big-time, and they have a long history of improving functionality over time. They have some heavy OEMs backing their platform, but it's actually the smaller guys that are doing the coolest stuff. The MCE future that I'm most excited about is the concept of a set-top (or Xbox) that can remotely stream MCE content: the Media Center Extender. This looks like it would give me what I want: a centralized store for all digital content that can be streamed or played on any TV anywhere in the house.

The bottom line
Microsoft positions MCE as a home entertainment hub that can deliver all kinds of digital content to your TV, stereo, projector, or whatever. In that role, it did a solid job for our family; admittedly, I didn't test it with a fancy plasma screen or high-end stereo equipment, and I didn't use it extensively as a hub. The extra functionality comes at a cost, though: MCE machines are much more expensive than TiVo units. The ultimate test is whether I'd buy one with my own money. The answer, for now, is no, but it's also true that I'm not buying the HDTiVo I've been lusting after until I see how Microsoft plans to support HDTV-- that's because the MCE platform displays a great deal of expandability and potential that I think will make it more interesting as time goes on.

A lot of people have been talking about this Business Week article, "Blogging With the Boss' Blessing"; it discusses the idea that businesses gain mindshare by revealing more details of their internal operations, or becoming more "transparent". As Doc Searls points out, Mark Cuban is setting the bar for business transparency with his blog. It's no surprise that folks like Scoble are noticing and commenting on the fact that Cuban is completely transparent, but there's one interesting aspect of Cuban's blog that I haven't seen widely mentioned: where are his posts about HDNet? HD programming is a nascent market segment, and HDNet is doing some big deals (including rebroadcasting NBC's Summer Olympics coverage). Could it be that his good business sense prevents him from airing his dirty laundry in an area that's still highly competitive? Maybe he's more interested in the Mavs (always a possibility!), or maybe he thinks no one's interested in HDNet except for a few geeks. I don't know, so I asked him.

Update: Wow, that was fast: an almost-instant response from Mark. Short and to the point: "Not much new or interesting to say about HDNet... we get the best programming we can, we play it..." Fair enough. Thanks, Mark.

Finally, we're getting locals! Dish turned on their Toledo locals last week sometime, and DirecTV has announced that they'll deliver them as soon as they get FCC approval to move the DIRECTV5 satellite to 72.5°. Of course, this might take a while, especially since DirecTV is already in trouble with the FCC for moving DIRECTV3 without permission. Still, I'm hopeful that this will happen before the fall TV season starts, since most of the shows I want to TiVo are local broadcasts.

TiVo gets lots of press attention because of their broad patent portfolio, even though they haven't been overly aggressive about using it for leverage. However, they're not the only ones with interesting PVR-related patents. Time-Warner has a patent that covers inter-scene tagging and playback. Scenes within a broadcast program can be tagged with codes that indicate their content; through an unspecified interface, the user can selectively play back or omit certain types of scenes. For example, I guess you could use this to implement a V-chip-like device that would do on-the-fly editing of the program stream at the PVR, skipping over the naughty bits during playback. The patent also mentions that it could filter content from live TV broadcasts (paging Ms. Jackson!) Interestingly, it was filed in January 2000 and approved in February 2002, but I can only find one later patent that references it.

Bob Thompson asks what's going to happen with digital TV in 2007. Here's the situation as I understand it. Bear in mind that DTV ≠ HDTV: local stations are free to broadcast digital signals with standard-definition programming, and many of them do. (See this FCC page).

There are (I think) 18 different DTV formats , all of which fall under the rubric of the ATSC (advanced television systems committee)-- a sort of grandchild of the NTSC. These formats range from ordinary standard definition (SD) TV to the "enhanced" 480p format to full-blown 720p or 1080i, 16:9 signals. The big push behind the use of digital signals is bandwidth: the spectrum allocated for one NTSC TV channel can host several DTV channels. For example, my local PBS station is using its channel allocation to simulcast four different PBS feeds (including PBS Kids), plus the national PBS HDTV feed. The local CBS affiliate simulcasts sports-- the other night, when I complained that the Duke game took over from the GT-Kansas game, it turns out that the Tech game was simulcast on the other digital channel. Of course, what's likely to happen (at least in some markets) is that affiliates will continue broadcasting their existing SDTV signal, then simulcast shopping channels, which they can be paid to carry. This is exactly parallel to the claims by DirecTV and Dish that they carry 160+ channels, when 8-10 of them are shopping channels that no one wants to actually watch.

Anyway, broadcasters currently have to be all-digital by 31 December 2006. The FCC has wiggle room to push this date back until 85% of the people in a given market area have the ability to receive digital signals, either because they have cable or satellite or because local penetration of DTV tuners has increased. By July 2007, TV manufacturers will have to include digital tuners in all of their TVs; 36" and bigger sets will have to include a digital tuner by July 2005.

Note that this says nothing about HD tuners, just digital tuners. All of the cost estimates I've seen are wildly speculative; for example, this WaPo article says that a digital TV will cost $800 in 2007. It's hard to understand how adding a digital tuner to an existing $250 27" set is going to triple its price, especially once the low-end, high-volume manufacturers get into the act.

As far as Ron's original question about how this affects PCI tuner cards, it's hard to say. There's already an effort to make all TV sets plug-and-play compatible with QAM-based digital cable systems; it seems likely that ATI, or someone, will make a compatible tuner card that will offer the same functionality. (Right now, the FCC says that cable systems cannot encrypt retransmitted signals from local stations, so even without buying premium channels you should be able to get your local broadcast signals this way). It's certainly possible to do DTV tuning with a little combined hardware and software; for example, the VBox DTA-111 works quite well with Microsoft's Media Center for tuning and decoding HDTV channels, and it's not that expensive (about $200). Economies of scale will drive these prices down.

A parenthetical note: what's currently not clear is what will happen with satellite retransmission of local channels once they go all-digital. Right now, neither major satellite service retransmits HD network signals, with the exception of the CBS national HD feed. It's pretty clear that they don't have enough bandwidth to carry all of the locals, so that opens the question of what happens with SHVIA's upcoming revision.

Tough choice for a Sunday night: do my taxes, or watch The Ten Commandments in HD. Hmmm.

Update: it's not in HD. Drat.

I'm almost ready to forgive WTOL; their broadcast of the Georgia Tech-Kansas game today was flawless (especially the 5.1 surround!), and so was the outcome. What a great second half. I vividly remember the last time Tech went to the Final Four, since I was just finishing my degree. Now they're back in. Sweetness. (Personal to all Duke fansr: I was rooting for Xavier to beat Duke, and now I'm rooting for Duke to lose. I'm just sayin'.)

Yesterday, I spent about two hours giving Dish the boot. I pulled down the two-LNB Dish 500 dish and replaced it with a so-called "phase III" DirecTV dish. That was easy; it actually took me about 15 minutes to hang and align the dish to receive good signals from all three satellites. Then I spent the next 45 minutes (no kidding) on the phone with DirecTV, activating my two receivers. There's a Philips DSX40 TiVo in the living room and a generic Philips DSX5500 down in the basement. Why the basement? Well, since it's connected to the old TiVo, the new receiver can feed a signal to the bedroom TV or to my flat-panel, which faces the treadmill. Voila! Instant treadmill entertainment. What do I like and dislike so far?

At last night's party, a few folks were asking about HDTV in this area. They were a mix of satellite and cable subscribers, some with TiVos and some without. I thought I'd write up a summary to cover the bases, since I didn't want to bore them all with the details during the party.

So, if you want HDTV in Toledo, here are your choices.

• Get it with an antenna. The local ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox stations (along with WBGU-PBS) all broadcast HD programming at least part of the time. With a tuner like the Samsung SIR-T151 (or the newer SIR-T351, which adds DVI output) and an appropriate antenna, you can get this programming for free. Total cost: $200-400 for the tuner, $50-300 for the antenna. With this approach, as long as you get an adequate signal, picture and sound quality are excellent. You don't get any premium channels like ESPN or HBO. This is what I currently do, and I'm putting up a better antenna this week-- my little indoor unit doesn't cut it.
  
• Get it on cable. Buckeye Cable has HD service. For $10/month, you can rent the box (I think they're still using the Motorola DCT-5100); $4/month gets you the two local networks they carry-- CBS and Fox. Another $11/month nets you Discovery HD, Mark Cuban's two HDNet channels, and ESPN-HD. I had their service and liked it, but the lack of ABC was a deal-breaker. However, Buckeye does throw in HBO-HD and Showtime-HD if you subscribe to them already.
  
• Go orbital. Dish and DirecTV both offer satellite HD feeds. They have almost identical channel lineups: Discovery HD, ESPN-HD, HDNet and HDNet Movies, and InHD. Both services offer CBS-HD, but we can't get it in this area because WTOL isn't owned by the network. Prices vary; for existing Dish customers, you can get an 811 HD receiver for around $150, then you pay another $10/month for the HD content. However, the 811 has tons of bugs in it. Some of them are minor annoyances; others, like the notorious dark picture bug, are more serious. I'd avoid them until they get the bugs fixed. DirecTV has a $99 deal for existing subscribers, and their receivers work fine. Not all of them have DVI out, so if you want to use a projector or TV via DVI, make sure you pay attention to what you're getting.
  
• VOOM. There's a new HD provider: VOOM Stupid name, cool idea. They offer an integrated satellite and over-the-air tuner that picks up locals and their HD channels. Besides ESPN, Discovery, et al, they also have about 15 original channels (a cartoon channel, a couple of movie channels, and so on) that are all HD. Plus, they throw in some standard-definition channels like CNN. Two problems: they're expensive (MSRP of $749, although there are various rebates that push the price closer to $400), and they don't carry the same range of channels that Buckeye, Dish, or DirecTV do. Most particularly for us, they don't carry BYU-TV, which guarantees that I won't replace my existing satellite service. (Augment, maybe, but not replace).
  

For TiVo lovers, the picture is complicated by the fact that existing TiVos don't record HD, and that the only TiVo that will is a) also a DirecTV receiver and b) not actually shipping yet. Dish has an HD PVR, the 921, and VOOM has promised one for later in the year, but I want the genuine article. I don't watch that much HDTV because I'm no longer willing to set my schedule around when programs are on TV; it's really hard to go back once you've used a TiVo for a while. So, Garrett, if you want HD and TiVo, you need a new unit. You can always add a second box with HMO and copy shows from box to box, though; that way Tiffany can have her "reality TiVo" and you can have your own.

As for me, I think I'm going to take DirecTV up on their $99 offer for one DirecTiVo and two regular receivers. I'll put a receiver in my office, one TiVo in the bedroom, and one in the living room, and keep my OTA receiver. Iif I can wire it right, I might be able to put our existing TiVo in the basement and feed its signal to a couple of places; that way, we can distribute programs between boxes without a lot of hassle. When the HD-TiVo ships, I may or may not buy one, depending on how stable it is at first release. These guys can experiment, and I'll wait to see what they find out; when I do get one, I'll sell my OTA box since the HD-TiVo has a dual ATSC tuner in it too.

According to this press release, TiVo will be offering an extension to their Home Media Option (HMO) service that allows you to stream XM Radio from an XM PCR, through your Tivo, over the network. This is cool, except that I probably won't have HMO when this feature releases: it doesn't run on my old faithful series-1 TiVo, and there's no HMO available for the DirecTiVo boxes (including the HD-TiVo, now only a month from release). Drat.

Yow! TiVo got two stories on the front page of the Marketplace section in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Neither of them were exactly favorable, although they did spell "TiVo" correctly :)

The first, by Nick Wingfield and Jennifer Saranow, points out that (gasp) TiVo gathers viewing data. There's a quote from Richard Smith (summary: TiVo is saying "you have to trust us", duh), and a counterbalancing quote from TiVo's chief privacy officer. The article points out that the satellite- and cable-based PVRs are capable of gathering this data, even though none of them currently do, and the closing paragraph summarizes my feelings exactly:

Some users, such as Jayne Spiegelman, 48 years old, say they're willing to put up with some monitoring because of the benefits they get out of the technology. "If it starts invading my privacy," the Atherton, Calif., technology executive says, "yeah I'll have a problem with it. But right now, I'm so infatuated with the TiVo service itself."

The other column is by Lee Gomes. Most longtime Mac users well remember his numerous (and wrong) "Apple is dying" columns from the early-to-late 90s, and this is pretty much in the same vein; he dismisses the filing as "somewhat cheeky" and doesn't present any real technical detail on the merits of TiVo's claim-- understandably, I guess, since the suit is still in its early stages. The patents are interesting reading, though.

My friend Bob Thompson asks a reasonable question about TiVo:

Why would I buy a product that allows the manufacturer to keep track not just of what programs I watch, but the details about how I watch them?

My answer: why wouldn't you? Every system other than OTA broadcasting has the ability to track individual viewer usage. If you actually read TiVo's privacy policy, you'll see that TiVo can't pull any identifiable data on shows that you have watched, recorded, or rated unless you opt in. They can pull some anonymous data. Their policy says that

"This information allows TiVo to know that a TiVo service user from a particular ZIP code watched certain programming but we are unable to associate those viewing choices with you. If you use the TiVo Plus service, you may request that TiVo block the collection of Anonymous Viewing Information from your TiVo DVR."

I'm OK with that; in part, that anonymous data allows them to develop inferences about program relationships (e.g. if I record 24, I might also like MI-5 or Alias.) Since there's a way to opt out of having identifiable data sent to TiVo (and since that's off by default, IIRC), I am willing to allow the anonymous information to be collected. Hands down, the $600 ($340 for the unit, $250 for the lifetime service) we paid for our TiVo four years ago has been our best technology investment ever.

Thanks to a little fiddling, and some wiring, I can now extract video from my TiVo and burn it to DVD. With TyStudio, it's actually pretty easy, and it will sure make my upcoming trip more pleasant since I can watch what I want to instead of whatever's actually on TV.

So far I've tried three antennas for local HDTV reception, none of which has worked very well. My goal is to be able to get Fox and ABC without moving the antenna; if I get CBS or NBC, that would be nice but I rarely watch either of them. The local PBS affiliates aren't broadcasting HD yet. Here's what I've found so far:

• The Zenith Silver Sensor is highly directional but butt-ugly. That wasn't a big problem, because it's also fairly small. The real problem was its inability to get a signal from more than one station at a time. If you look at the Antennaweb map of my location, the locals are clustered between 59°-68° magnetic from me, but this antenna was so directional that I had to move it to get channels whose towers are fairly close to one another. Rejected.
  
• the Jensen TV920, a flat bar-style amplified antenna. It got zero channels with the amplifier off; when I turned it on, I could pick up NBC and CBS. Its shape made it impossible to rotate in the spot I had available for it. Rejected.
  
• The Terk TV42, which clips onto an 18" satellite dish and uses a diplexer to send the OTA signal over the satellite cable. Even though the AVS Forum HD boards are full of "don't buy Terk" advice, I had high hopes for this because it was an outside antenna that would be mounted above the roofline. However, once I got it wired correctly (a small adventure in itself), I found two things: it would only get Fox, and it screwed up my satellite signal, apparently by blocking the current sent to the LNB to switch it between horizontal and vertical polarization. Rejected.
  

I have two more candidates in mind, both from this review. We'll see if they work any better; if not, it's time to put the beam up in the attic.

Update (29 February): I'm finally ditching my Radio Shack indoor unit in favor of an attic antenna, either a small omni or a Yagi with a rotator.

Arlene and Thomas were off to some huge craft store in Monroe, so Thomas, Matthew, and I went out for pizza and ice cream. Both were excellent. We then came home and played on the Xbox; Matthew won every game, oddly enough. In the background, I was struggling to get Panther running on my dual G4 downstairs. The first time I booted, the machine hung at the pale blue screen; after I unplugged my Powermate and my external DVD burner, the boot worked OK. For some reason, though, the stuff on CD #2 (printer drivers, languages, etc.) wouldn't install. I manually installed everything I wanted (French language files, additional voices, and a few printer drivers) and bang! it worked. Several other folks reported getting a Panther Server CD #2 in their Panther packages, so I shouldn't complain. Kasia and Mike have pictures of their installations, and now I do too. (For you non-Mac users, here's a partial list of cool new features.)

After some more Xbox, and flush with my Panther success, I put the kids to bed and popped a Western Digital 120GB drive into the TiVo, using the fastest and most dangerous upgrade method (BlessTiVo, which just requires you to bless the new drive and then bolt it in place). I had good guidance from two separate books: Keegan's Hacking TiVo and Krikorian's TiVo Hacks. Keegan's book includes a ton of material that isn't in the slimmer O'Reilly book; I'll post a more detailed review later. Unfortunately, when I plugged everything back in the TiVo happily booted without paying the slightest attention to the new drive. According to the Hinsdale how-to, this is probably because I forgot to change the jumper on the factory drive to master from cable select... oops. I'll open it up again this morning and fix it.

This is pretty cool: Discovery is holding seminars to explain to their content producers what they're looking for in HD programming. The best news: there are plans for an HD season of the "Extreme Engineering" series.

WBGU is supposedly already broadcasting a digital signal, but I haven't been able to tune it. I wrote to WGTE to ask what their HD plans are and got a nice letter back from the station manager. They plan to go live over the air on 10/31; if they can work things out with Buckeye, they can make a digital feed available to them sooner. Given how the ABC and NBC negotiations with Buckeye have gone, I don't hold out a lot of hope, but it would sure be nice if they could get a signal out there sooner.

The installer from Digital Dish left a short while ago, after having hung a new dish pointed at the 61.5° satellite. This is hopefully temporary, until Dish starts shipping their "superdish" antenna. He also installed the 6000u receiver and we tested it to verify that I get the HD feed properly. It looks great, slightly crisper than the Buckeye DCT-5100.

I bought two antennas (more on that later) so I could find out which one worked best and looked least dorky, but I'll have to wait a few days to hook them up; the installer didn't have any of the 8VSB modules, so I still can't get over-the-air HD. Dish is offering a free 8VSB module to any subscriber who owns a 6000, which is a great deal for those who haven't already bought one yet-- just call them and ask for one, preferably waiting until after mine's shipped so they don't run out. Hopefully mine will arrive in time for Thursday's Threat Matrix, or at least in time for college football on Saturday.

The installer, alas, made one major faux pas: he forgot to reconnect the new receiver's S-Video and audio out, so no one could watch standard TV. That would have caused some consternation, but luckily I caught it before anyone wanted to watch TV.

Arlene offered to buy me a gadget for my birthday (which isn't actually until November). No fool I, I immediately took her up on it. On Tuesday, the Dish installer should arrive with a new Dish 6000u receiver that can receive over-the-air and satellite HDTV broadcasts. Dish has a promo: if you sign up for 12 months of their HD package ($9.99 for ESPN-HD, HDNet, HDNet Movies, and Discovery HD, plus HBO and Showtime HD if you get the SD versions), you can get the 6000u for $199. That's less than half of what a new DirecTV receiver would cost-- the best price I've seen is around $370 from one of the Google ads appearing on this very page :) Best Buy had an open-box Samsung TS160 that was tempting me until I found out that a) it was $460 with no install and b) I'd lose the "superstation" package that Dish has.

So, by Tuesday night I should be all set to watch Alias, 24, et al in glorious HD.

Buckeye is coming to get their cable box tomorrow. Why? Well, the test period's finally up, so I either have to pay for the box and subscribe or give it back. I'm giving it back, which means I'll be HD-less for a while. I have a confusing set of options at this point.

Option 1: I could pay Buckeye $385 for the box plus monthly charges of $6.95 (for the local broadcast channels; they still don't have ABC, NBC, or PBS in HD even though they're broadcast locally), plus another $10.95 (for DiscoveryHD, ESPN-HD, HDNet, and HDNet Movies). This is on top of my existing cable bill, and I really, really don't like the idea of having to buy the box. I'm not sure why, since buying a satellite receiver doesn't seem like a bad idea. I probably dislike it because there are newer, nicer boxes (like this one) that cost the same, but that Buckeye won't let me use.

Option 2: I could subscribe to Dish Network's HD package and buy a new receiver. This would require a new dish, too, which Dish will pay for if I commit to a year's HD programming. However, Dish's PVRs are widely denounced for being buggy, so I'd probably end up buying the 811 receiver, which doesn't ship until November at the earliest. On the other hand, Dish is charging $9.99/mo for the same content as Buckeye's $10.95 package, but their receivers can pick up over-the-air broadcasts, so I'd get local channels for free. Cost-wise this works out to be about the same as Buckeye, with the bonus that I get lots of channels (Speedvision and BYU-TV, anyone?) that Buckeye won't ever carry.

Option 3: Wait for the HD-Tivo unit from DirecTV and switch to them. It's not clear when this unit will actually ship, nor how much it'll cost, so this is a risky alternative. However, it seems clear that this would give me the most of what I want: HD programming that I can TiVo-- I just can't have it now, or even by the end of the year (and possibly not until this time next year).

Option 4: Buy a cheap over-the-air receiver (like Costco's $215 Samsung SIR-T151) now. That would give me Alias, Monday Night Football, college ball on Saturdays, 24, Smallville, and PBS in HD, covering the majority of my viewing needs. I'd miss Discovery and ESPN in HD, but I'd be able to resell the receiver later and recoup some of my investment. This looks like the best overall deal, so it's probably what I'll do.

Update: According to some knowledgeable (-seeming) folks on AVSForum, the FCC says that cable companies must put OTA HD channels in the basic tier, and they may not encrypt them. If true, that solves part of my problem, so I've asked Buckeye whether they think it's true. If I don't like their answer, then it's on to the FCC.

Thanks to my pal Rod Montgomery, I now know about the Oasis Home Theater Blog. Now, where did Arlene hide the checkbook....

Everyone should heed High Priestess Julie: get a TiVo. Now, for a pittance, you too can join the TiVolution. (Personal to John: this has your name written all over it.)

John, you're invited to come watch the race.

The cable guy came today. Remarkably, my appointment time was between noon and 5pm, and he showed up at 12:00 on the nose. Too bad I was at Rotary. After 45 minutes or so of head-scratching, cable-swapping, and complaining about how complicated my setup is, he isolated the problem: the satellite installer used diplexers to save himself from having to run another set of cables. The installer is convinced that the fact that the satellite receiver sends 18V to the LNB is the problem, but I think it's much more likely that the diplexer sends 2-856MHz to the TV output and 950-2250MHz to the satellite output. The DCT-5100 FAQ says to make sure that you have full 2-1000MHz signal from pedestal to cable box, so I think the diplexer's bandwidth is at fault. To fix it, I'll have to run another cable through the basement, then add a port to the wallplate so that I have a clean run from the cable service entrance to the box.

I must say that the Discovery HD picture was stunning, for the few minutes I got to see it while installer-man was doing his thing.

So far, I've learned a number of things about HDTV. First, if you watch a crappy movie in HD, it's still crappy. (Disclaimer: I didn't watch the whole thing). Second, for some reason the HD signal from the local CBS affiliate isn't showing up as HD here; when I tune in something that is supposed to be HD, it's still 4:3. Third, and worst, I'm still not getting a watchable picture on Discovery or HBO. It may be that the splitter is at fault, or it may be a bad box; a Buckeye tech is due out tomorrow to check.

The bigger issue: Buckeye is going to require subscribers to buy a box; they're not going to rent or lease them. In that case, I almost certainly will buy an over-the-air and satellite tuner combination instead-- that way, I can be guaranteed that they can go where I do, and I'll get more channels.

If you don't like boring technical details, you may as well stop reading now. Go here instead.

I just bought a Samsung TXM3097WHF TV. It's a 30" widescreen, one step up from the low-end 3096WHF that Best Buy sells. This particular model adds 3:2 pulldown and a two-tuner picture-in-picture circuit to the base model, and I lucked into one for $792 at Sears-- about $300 off the best normal price. Of course, I got a floor model, and it's been discontinued by Samsung, but it met my objective of providing an inexpensive widescreen HD set. (The nearest model I could find that didn't say "Samsung" on the front is an $1800 Toshiba 34" widescreen, so I'm prepared to put up with a lot for the $1000 savings.)

Problem #1 is that the TV is too wide to fit in the entertainment center-- the flare at the back of the case is about 1 1/4" too wide for the precut opening. A little saw work will fix that right up, as soon as I get some saw blades.

Problem #2: the TV has two component inputs, which is great. It also has two RCA-style inputs. However, you can't use all four at the same time. Oops. Somehow Samsung forgot to mention this in their marketing literature.

Problem #3: there's one S-Video input, and it's on the side panel. I knew about this one ahead of time, but it's still aggravating, since the TiVo and VCR are both fed to the TV via the receiver's S-Video out.

Problem #4: the TV uses two separate buttons to cycle between the inputs. Button 1 goes RF->component1->component2; button 2 goes RF->RCA1->RCA2->S-Video. That makes switching (say) from DVD to TiVo a finger-stretching exercise not unlike a concert pianist's warmup.

However, for $1000 in my pocket, I'm prepared to put up with a lot. (After all, I'm getting off much easier than this guy did.)

The HDTV feed installation went well, since I did all of it. The installer had 15 minutes of training on the DCT-5100 cable box this morning, before his first install. He'd never seen a component video cable or optical SPDIF, and he was leery of disturbing any of my wiring. I ended up doing the work while he struggled with Buckeye's call center to get my box authorized. After a three-hour wait, I can now receive two of the four HD channels: Showtime-HD (currently showing a 4:3 movie) and WTOL-DT (currently showing Oprah, which is bad enough in standard definition.) No Discovery Channel or HBO yet, which is too bad; it looks like there's some good stuff on later tonight. More when I have time to dig into the stack of paper the installer left, much less actually watch something in HD. It's hard to imagine that I'll want to watch anything on CBS, but hey, maybe I will.

It looks like our local cable company is finally getting on the HD bandwagon. I mailed them to ask when they were going to deploy in Toledo. Here's the answer I got:

We are waiting to complete a billing system and expect to have the HDTV service ready to offer to the public in late June or early July

That's perfect, since it gives me until then to finish the basement, then finish the upstairs room that's going to be my new office, then get some HD equipment up in here.