Comments on: We’re thinking about nuking cable and Netflix

By: Make You Go Hmm: » Update on (maybe) ditching cable for satellite

Make You Go Hmm: » Update on (maybe) ditching cable for satellite — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 16:49:12 +0000

[…] It’s been a few weeks and I’ve been meaning to update my post on whether or not we are ditching cable for satellite. Why the delay? For one, the obvious holiday reasons, but the main reason is we wanted to take some time to decide after seeing what we actually received whether or not we wanted to go down to one TV and one generic DirecTV receiver. […]

By: Eric Gunnerson

Eric Gunnerson — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 02:30:05 +0000

If you have DirecTV, you need to get an integrated PVR. You will get much better quality, more capacity, and dual tuner support. The Tivo-based ones are great, though the long-term story isn’t clear. I have a HDTivo, which has two tuners for DTV HD, and two for off-the-air HD. A great (if pricey) box, but only makes sense if you can get an HD signal off the air, as the DTV HD content is fairly minimal. But it’s not clear what will happen when DTV switches to MPEG4 compression.

Take a look at http://www.antennaweb.org, which can give you some idea whether you can get HD off the air. Also note that DTV is going to phase in their local support for HD by regions, and may not bring all of it in at the same time.

Finally, on the subject of DTV satellites, the bulk of the SD content is on the satellite at 101 degrees inclination. The satellite at 119 degrees carries locals for some areas and some miscellaneous content. Similarly, the satellite at 110 degrees carries some locals and some miscellaneous content.

HD lives - as far as I can tell - on both the 110 and 119 sats. If you get 119 now, you are pretty sure to get the HD signals at 110 if you add the third satellite kit (assuming you have the oval dish already). But if you aren’t geting 119 (either due to obstructions or poor pointing), you may have trouble with HD. My guess is that that’s what happened to Sterling (all sats are at geosync, so they are all in the same orbit).

Take a look at see if you get the NASA channel - it’s on the 119 bird.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 00:03:57 +0000

Even if you were to get an HD receiver, the HD satellite rides a little lower on the horizon than the other sattelite, so depending on your surrounding trees and hills (I know you’re up here in the great Northwest with us) you might not be able to get HD even with a receiver. That’s what happened to us after we moved to property with 100-200 ft. Hemlocks and Cedars around us. Regular channels come in fine. That said, eventually DirecTV will have to move all of their channels to HD, so I would imagine they’ll reuse their higher-flying satellites and we’ll be back in business seeing everybody’s skin pores on the screen.

By: FranciscoIV

FranciscoIV — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 15:02:37 +0000

TDavid, DirecTV has their own PVR (non TiVo) now so you could also go that route…

By: TDavid

TDavid — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 10:19:39 +0000

Adam - we won’t be paying a dime for TV for 6 months if we nix cable. As for Netflix, at $9.95 (1 DVD), well, if we aren’t watching 3 or 2, then we wouldn’t be any better at 1.

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 09:22:12 +0000

Two ideas:
1) Try going completely TV-less for 6 months
2) OR… if you like NetFlix, but don’t want to pay $15, you could always get the $9.95 plan

By: Lockergnome's Hardware Help

Lockergnome's Hardware Help — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 07:11:40 +0000

We�re thinking about nuking cable and Netflix

Gone are the days of just setting up the rabbit ears to watch TV. These days, there are hardware considerations. Personally, I believe this to be especially true with PVRs and the like….