Comcost who recently bought out Insight in my area jacked up the prices on every aspect of their service after promising not to. They also said we’d be getting a lot of new HD channels. Guess what? We have FIVE HD channels that come with the standard service and no HD on demand. There are 11 other HD channels available only with subscription. I don’t think pretty public access and the price is right constitute $140 a month.

Oh sure, when a channel actually broadcasts something in 1080i it looks fantastic because I made sure to get a brand new tv with the right native resolution. But the fact is most of the time watching the “HD” channels are torture; full of 720p shows which are hideous stretched and upscaled commercials of 480i converted analog broadcasts!

I probably would be ok with that since its such a new technology if
a.) it didn’t cost as much as it did
b.) the non-HD channels were watchable

Whether its the home shopping network or my local nightly news it looks like I’m picking up the signal from a cave in Afghanistan. I have less ghosting artifacts with rabbit ears. And the final blow that DTV can deal goes to things it should have nothing to do with, games and movies. The only game consoles playable without lag and blurring on a digital tv are the ps3 and the xbox 360. The only movies watchable without a degrading conversion must be HD or Bluray. You know what? You can have your five channels back. I have a lifetime invested in analog technology and entertainment and I also have the ability to convert and view any modern content I choose to get off the internet for only the price of my internet connection and writeable media. Lets face it, that is what this is really all about. And sooner or later they know as wireless spreads among the uneducated masses so will open routers and hubs and free internet.

My HR20-700 has been performing very well over the past six months. My HR10-250 HD DirecTivo always had difficulty maintaining a lock on OTA HD and the HR20 hasn’t had the same type of issues. The fact that the HR20 can access the MPEG-4 feeds for the local stations helps with disk space usage and the HD channels that they have added have been enjoyable to watch.

The prioritizer is better than on the HR10-250, where it asks you which of the two conflicting shows you would like to skip in order to record the new one. We are now able to schedule recordings via the DirecTV web site as well, which has come in handy a few times.

The media extender features of the HR20 are still very much beta material, but the VOD downloads have worked pretty well, even if there aren’t any HD downloads yet.

Until channels like HGTV, the Food Network, SciFi HD, and DiscoveryHD Theater are available through some other means, I’ll be keeping my DirecTV service (even if they just sent out their yearly price hike notice).

It works really great. It sits on your network and connects via ethernet. It costs about $170. I used a cheap splitter to connect an HDTV antennae (about $35) into the two tuner jacks on the unit and can use it with my Vista Media Center PC to capture fantastic quality HDTV over the air.

Installing the hardware is super easy.

With Media Center I can skip all of the commercials and can with a dual tuner I can watch live TV while I’m recording something else or record two shows that are on at the same time.

I didn’t think that the directions on how to set up the software were as user friendly as they could have been but I was able to find the documentation to turn the software on on the internet in a forum and had it all in good working order in less than an hour.

I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking to record HDTV over the air.

Tell me more about it. Cost. Ease of use

I did the same thing last January for the same reason. Well almost, I bought a Series3 and went the CableCARD route and I have to say it worked out well, but then again FiOS is available in my area.

I wrote about it here.
http://bjdraw.com/2007/01/23/bye-bye-for-now-directv/