Ed Bott – Windows (and Office) Expertise: MCE 2005 and HDTV Ed Bott has gone through the recent experiment of attempting the OTA HDTV thing with MCE 2005. So far with his indoor antenna it is not working so well. He’s planning on experimenting with an outdoor HDTV antenna and this may work better.
I don’t think that this would ever be a suitable path for me. Why?
1. I like the fact that with satellite I can get high def feeds of all of the major networks on both the East and West Coast. It’s nice when you go to bed early and get up early for instance to watch “Desperate Housewives” three hours earlier on East Coast time.
2. I’m addicted to much of the original HBO content and this is not OTA.
3. I like the movies on both HBO and Showtime in high def.
4. I like knowing that there will be much more programming in high def on my satellite receiver with DirecTV in the very short term.
Yes I know the high def TiVo box cost me $1,000 and that is a lot more than a HDTV video card and an outside HDTV antenna. And yes it’s unfortunate that I can’t get the high def programming off the TiVo box. But do you know what, in my case it’s worth every penny along with the inconvenience.
So until MCE supports HDTV via cable or satellite I’m afraid the OTA thing just is not for me.
In terms of the rumors that Ed mentions regarding cable HDTV support in MCE 2005 upgrade these are primarily from the leaked info on the beta posted here as well as the article that Ed pointed us to earlier from Digital Media Thoughts.