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The HT Guys HDTV and Home Theater Podcast #302 - A couple of questions for the HDTV Magazine forum
By The HT Guys
Braden Russell and Ara Derderian
Posted on August 14, 2008
Category: General Interest
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Today's Show:
For the week Ara was on vacation and was away from his HDTV. This really made him appreciate what was missing at home. It also gave him time to think about a few things. He even posted a couple of questions to the HDTV Magazine forum. Today we'll bring to you his thoughts and readers responses.

DirecTV and Dish Network Merger a good thing?
With the Dish losing 25,000 subscribers last quarter (A first for the Satellite Industry). Many are saying the time may have come for the two to merge. They tried this a few years ago but the FTC blocked the move. I say bring it on! Competition from Verizon's FIOS and AT&T's U-verse are enough to keep the combined company honest. And besides, it will take more than a year to pull it off so who knows what other technology will surface to compete. Here's how I see it:

Pros:
  • More HDTV!
  • For DirecTV subscribers access to built in Sling Technology 
  • For Dish Network subscribers access to Sunday Ticket
Cons:
  •  I can't think of any

Olympics in HD. How does it look so far?
So I am on vacation in San Diego for the week. I have been watching in SD on an old SONY CRT. I am wondering what you guys think of NBC's HD coverage so far. I really like the World Record line that goes across the screen during the swimming events! Even in SD you can see how smoggy the air is. What does it look like in HD?

Watching via the Slingbox, I have found some cool features DirecTV has added. If you press the Red button on the remote it brings up a special menu for their Olympics coverage. You get a special Olympics only program guide, medal counter, and trivia section. What are other systems doing?

I have watched a few programs via the NBCOlymics web site (http://www.nbcolympics.com/). The quality was OK for streaming. Couldn't get it to go full screen on my Macbook Pro.

Posted by The HT Guys, August 14, 2008 11:22 PM

Reader Commentary

See Forum Topic: VUDU Launches HDX, New Benchmark for Picture Quality in On-Demand Content (4 replies)
Oct 2, 8:51am
Has anyone looked at this to see how it compares to Blu-Ray? I went to Vudu site and could not find any HDX labeled videos.
Oct 2, 10:07am
This has way too much marketing BS language around it. I assume it's an alternative codec to MPEG4. It's not supposed to be better than Blu-Ray - just better than the other "real time" HD sources (does not include downloading). There is no way it's b
Oct 2, 10:37am
my impression also - although I am really looking for a good down load service. Xstream HD is vaporware so far and vudu is a struggling start up. I am hoping that someone will do a face-off with blu-ray on this new offering
Oct 2, 10:47am
I've been testing it out for a few weeks now. It is quite good. I'm not sure if it would hold up to a side by side test, but you would be hard-pressed to find any compression artifacts in the resultant PQ. It's equivalency to Blu-ray refers to the 1080
Showing only excerpts from 4 out of 5, Read More

More from The HT Guys

About The HT Guys

The HT Guys, Ara Derderian and Braden Russell, are Engineers who formerly worked for the Advanced Digital Systems Group (ADSG) of Sony Pictures Entertainment. ADSG was the R&D unit of the sound department producing products for movie theaters and movie studios.

Two of the products they worked on include the DCP-1000 and DADR-5000. The DCP is a digital cinema processor used in movie theaters around the world. The DADR-5000 is a disk-based audio dubber used on Hollywood sound stages.

ADSG was awarded a Technical Academy Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2000 for the development of the DADR-5000. Ara holds three patents for his development work in Digital Cinema and Digital Audio Recording.

Every week they put together a podcast about High Definition TV and Home Theater. Each episode brings news from the A/V world, helpful product reviews and insights and help in demystifying and simplifying HDTV and home theater.