U
 

Um, there is a difference between "local channels" and "ABC/CBS/NBC affiliates from LA/NY." Weren't you just bitching about not getting the Superbowl in HD because DTV doesn't carry a national HD feed of FOX?

Other "local channels" will be permanent problems for DTV. Such as PBS, which is important to me (duh). Comcast carries some (not all) of KQED digital subchannels; what are the chances DTV can put up enough birds to give people their local channels in HD?

U
 

BTW, are you quibbling with the advice that anyone paying over $120 for a DVD player is wasting their money? If so, put up or shut up. 480p is 480p is 480p. Unless you're paying for a separate component interlacer, in which case you're fucking recockulous.

Until there's an HD DVD standard, consider all standard def DVD players a fungible commodity, i.e., don't pay extra for the Sony.

U
 

Don't get me started. There's more to a dvd player than just the fucking number of scan lines. Think computer and filters and why in the fuck would anyone even put more money into the technology if there was no fucking difference. You need to step away from the crack pipe.

U
 

Have you priced DVD players recently? I'm siding with Atticus on this one. I spent around $200 for a combo DVD player/VCR for my mom this year (her first DVD player). $200 is basically top of the market. Including DVD burner for her to use for all her old VHS tapes. It has features that will never be used by my mom with her 15 year old tv.

HD isn't there yet. Hell, they're all still arguing over format for that. So until that is available and it is clear who wins that pissing match, spending more than $120 on a DVD player is fucking burning money. If you really have that much to waste, I'll send you my address and you can send me a check.

U
 

Forgive me. My dvd player doubles as an audiophile CD player as well. And way over $120.

U
 

Methinks Atticus has been reading this:

DVD Info

For the record--I recently bought a Cyberhome progressive dvd player for $29.99 from Best Buy. Works great on the plasma tv. No paying 10000 for an upscaler. Porky's still looks just as good.

U
 

Dude, you got ripped. My Desay player was $19.99 from Radio Shack after rebate.

U
 

Fuck.

U
 

Comcast sucks. Part of what is so wonderful about satellite TV is that they are reasonably innovative.* The picture and sound are still much better, and the hardware is much easier to use and has better capability. My parents have fucking adds all over the screens when you try to use the guide.

I'm still happy to pay a bit of a premium for dealing with a satellite provider, too. Cable companies know that you are a captive customer. If you haven't switched by now, you won't. So they treat you accordingly, run a scare commercial about satellite tv ("Gee, Maude, we got satellite tv, and now we can't watch Andy Rooney because it's snowing. I wish we still had cable.") every once in a while, and they keep an uninformed or otherwise unable customer, and that's their business.

Say what you want about satellite tv and their customer services, but, they're the REASON the cable companies have innovated at all and tried to come up with the stuff the satellite companies are doing or actually realized how poor their customer service was. Sure, DirecTV is Rupert, but it's among his least distasteful ventures. I also had Dish Network for a while, and they were impressive, too.

Is Comcast still AT&T? Is SBC buying that, too? Will it even close?

40 SD, 20 HD makes no sense, the multiple of recording space needed for HD is something like 7.

I don't know of anyone who has gone from satellite to cable. Period. Once you make the leap, you never look back.

* Sure, I am annoyed a bunch of the stuff that the HDTivo and others have the hardware to do is disabled, but they're still much better than the cable company.

U
 

I'm on my third HDTiVO, and they're getting better. Forget the Best Buy stuff. For $8/month, you can get the full DirecTV coverage where they deal with all that stuff. I knew it was going to be worth it, and I was right. It is cheaper, and I think that they take better care of you, than the Best Buy plan. Make sure to check on the terms, though. It seemed to me to be too good a deal with the number of problems I have been hearing about, so they may be taking a loss on it for customer goodwill.

There are significant technical reasons that so had to use an antenna for a long time. It generally required new satellites and all sorts of technical work that I can't begin to understand. It was also related to disagreements they've had with the networks. My HDTiVO does the display and recording seamlessly.

The cable card stuff is cool, but I will have always have components (amp, receiver, music source, etc.), so I don't really care if I have one extra one. The only reason it would be worth it to go back to cable would be to get old-school, cable-tuner-in-tv-style switching. The drawback on the digital signal is that it has to train and that you hae to wait a second when you switch channels. Makes old school flipping worthless, and I miss that sometimes.

U
 

I agree that comcast sucks, but I have to say that their HD DVR product works very well. Would I like to go to HDTiVo and DirecTV? Sure. Do I watch enough TV to make $1,000 (for a box that doesn't work well, from the comments here and elsewhere) sound at all tempting? Hell no. I'll take my free Comcast DVR and go put my $1,000 to better use.

Oh and as for the ATT comcast thing, COmcast was never ATT here (Philadelphia, COmcast's home city).

U
 

Fair enough. Despite the problems, I love my HDTiVo. Sure, $1000 is a lot, but being an early adopter is expensive. It's far better (and TiVos are in generally far better) than the similar devices provided by other vendors and cable companies. It was worth it for me, and the recording time is much longer than the other devices and it's easy to upgrade. The greatest benefit is that the digital signal is saved directly to disk without being decoded, which retains all the information and results in, from what I have read and in my opinion, much higher audio and video quality.

Blackberry/Outlook Integration
 

So, I am in love with my Blackberry integration in Outlook, and I have been very diligent about putting all my contacts, calendar appoinments, tasks, etc. in there, and then I always have them with me. I also use the phone function of my Blackberry, and, after a few 7100t hurdles and problems, it's really nice to get caller ID (with name as provided from contacts) for most of my calls.

However, I want to move all my personal calendar appointments, contacts and tasks to a personal version of Outlook on a home machine, which is synced up to a personal e-mail account. So, a few questions:

Is there any way I can have my BB sync with two different sets of data in Outlook and keep them totally separate?

How have others resolved this problem? I may just keep everything in my work Outlook, but I don't like the idea of all that information being accesible to my firm's IT personal, e.g. Task --> Rock dtb's world next time I am in NYC.

Any suggestions?

U
 

Frankly, I have no idea how the Comcast DVR stores the HD signals, but, to my eyes (and I will admit I'm not an extreme videophile) the HD produced by the DVR is pretty much indistinguishable from HD broadcasts in real time (720p). Is it perfect? No.I just can't justify the $1000 price difference given how little I use it.

Blackberry/Outlook Integration
 

Interesting problem. I've never tried keeping separate outlook files, but I would imagine you could simply create a new outlook tasks/contacts/whatever file, select not to share them on the network at work (i.e. keep them in Personal Folders, as opposed to your main mailbox) then select how you want to sync with Outlook at home.

I sync my BB at home with my Mac and have a similar setup, syncing my BB at work with my work-related outlook folders, and at home with my home stuff.