yum. TV gadgets
 

I just took delivery of a DirecTV tuner/Tivo combination. If you like your TV you should really consider one of these Tivo gadgets or a competitor. We've had a Dishplayer (sort of version 0.9beta of what's now sold as UltimateTV) for a couple years and, in spite of annoying minor problems with it over the years, being able to record stuff any time at the click of a button and rewind, pause, FF, etc. while watching a live show really do change the way you watch TV. Can't wait to get it installed on Saturday :)

BTW I would stay away from the Dishplayer if you find anybody selling them. The minor problems turned major (which means my unit started behaving the way many of them had for the last year or so already), culminating in me missing almost every single episode of last week's Daria marathon on MTV!! :mad: So I'm making the switch to Tivo and DirecTV.

DirecTiVo!

My dad gets DirecTV, but he prefers the ReplayTV units from Panasonic, simply because the "download programming" feature is free. He also gets a kick out of hacking it. I know you can do that with TiVo too, but he seems to enjoy this more. Silly guy :)

What I want to do is get one and record shows, then dump them to my PowerMac, edit them together in iMovie and burn them to DVDs - have a season of a show for $20 and a little bit of work, archived on DVD's for your viewing whenever. DVD's are down to $5 for the Apple-branded media, which ain't too bad.

Anyway, I think you'll enjoy it - DirecTV is a good service and its prices are very reasonable when compared to cable. We've been really happy with them.

DirecTV = no WB.

Besides, I think the quality of analog cable is better. Digital artifacts suck.

Digital artifacts suck, but in my experience, they don't happen too often. Cable == snot 'cause there's always some noise going on, etc. I guess "to each their own". I personally prefer DirecTV though. So I don't have to ever put up with that WB shit. :)

Well, with local stations, at least those in covered areas can get their WB affiliates subject to all that legal must-carry crap. So I'll be able to get my daily trash TV fix of ElimiDate! ;)

The installer came this morning--my 90-95 signal strength level went to 40 with a dish aimed at directv! :( It's borderline due to a tree in the neighbor's yard, which, based on calculations and eyeballing, I thought we'd avoid. Ultimately I've decided to pay $100 to have it pole-mounted by the patio. We were having so many problems with Dish Network, I don't want to go back to cable, and I only paid $20 shipping for the Tivo receiver in the first place.

We mounted ours on a moveable board on our roof. So that way it's easy to adjust any time we need to. It's also out of the way - you can't look at our house and see we have it. Pretty cool, I guess. I dunno about signal strength, but I think it's pretty good, 'cause the picture is good. Of course, I watch about 10 minutes of TV every month, so it could be going to hell for all I know. :)

Lucky you. :)

I've got Time-Warner Digital Cable in NE OH. Most channels are really clear, noticeably better than analog cable. Some channels though (like BBC America) are barely acceptable. No dropped frames or audio sync problems, but they're heavily artifacted.

Odd as it sounds, the channels I "watch" the most are the audio channels. Much better than listening to Clear Channel's crap.

I hear the audio channels are pretty cool, but with an iPod and some 4,000 MP3's at my disposal, plus probably ~200 CDs I haven't ripped yet, I have music with me whereever I am. So it's all good :)

The music channels are pretty nice when you're up for a change. Every so often I have a handkering to hear something I've never heard of before, and that's the perfect way to do it.