The big widescreen TV in the livingroom gets digital/HD stations, which are nice except the reception is terrible. That TV gets bad reception on the analog channels too, though, even after we upgraded to an outdoor antenna (the old TV it replaced (which died) got better reception with rabbit ears and a loop... Hech, this ancient B&W Sony portable I have gets better reception usually, and its metal telescoping antenna (like a radio) has the end broken off!)
Figures. Big fancy expensive TV, and the tuner in it sucks.
Someday I should get a TV/DTV/HDTV tuner card for my computer, that would seriously rock. Then I could hook my VCR to the computer and watch it on my monitor instead of needing a TV also...
Ugh! How frustrating - especially with regard to HD broadcasts. I've only recently started taking notice of such, as I don't follow many shows, and most torrents remain SD-based. Thankfully, Torchwood is appearing as HD-based torrents (960x528, downsampled from the 1080i broadcast, as compared to 640x352 from the 576i original), and the difference is pretty clear to see. Nice frame size, too, as much larger than that, and I'd run into problems playing the file smoothly.
'Course, one "benefit" of a TV is the amazing job they do of filtering out compression artefacts. =:)
I've got an old satellite dish outside from the previous tenant's Sky subscription. So with a satcard in my computer, I've been able to 'watch' BBC-HD.
For values of watch that mean 'The computer is just too slow to decode it at the proper frame rate', due to Aunty deciding that 1080i with MBAFF is best. But the picture quality is very nice, and having six channel sound is good too.
Of course, someone does need to explain to them that 1080i is perceptually worse looking than 720p.
Hmm! That might be an interesting option, assuming I could find a card compatible with the open source driver I'm thinking of, given the only Windows system in the house would be hard pressed to decode SD well. There is a Sky dish on the house, but no decoder.
Of course, 1080i or 720p are both attractive options compared to 576i, let alone the wonderful noise factor unless you're living next to the mast. But then, I suppose purely digital torrents on LCD have spoiled me somewhat in that regard. I definitely would like to put a multichannel audio setup on the Christmas list, if there were the money - still, the headphones work well enough in the meantime. Given the noise level often prevalent in the house (ah, the joys of children), some in-channel noise isolating ones might work quite well, though they tend to be fairly expensive. I admit I'm a little disturbed about poking things quite that far into my ears, too, even though they may be in routine use by thousands of people
( ... )
Although, honestly, I don't watch TV. Just anime. And since I don't get anything other than internet here (no cable, no landline... well, technically we have a landline now that we're on slower DSL (stupid companies made it look like it'd be cheaper. But it's not. And there's a 200 KB/s download limit that I keep hitting, which annoys me. Although 50 KB/s upload is better than 30~ but I digress), but said landline isn't plugged into anything).
Besides, not going to pay extra for cable/Satellite tv that I would never watch. And there's no TV in the apartment anyways...
*giggle* Yep, a bit of a brain fart there. ^_^; As people probably guessed, thankfully (given it's not possible to edit a poll), I meant terrestrial analog[ue] & digital for the first two options.
Ah, but what happens when you run out of space - do you archive off to DVD-R, or just add another drive? (When I can, I'd love to set up a couple RAID cases for mirroring - after all, a pair of 750GB drives would be just about sufficient for one copy of everything here, so four drives.. not all that expensive, really. But I think I'd want to go for an island on SL first =:)
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Figures. Big fancy expensive TV, and the tuner in it sucks.
Someday I should get a TV/DTV/HDTV tuner card for my computer, that would seriously rock. Then I could hook my VCR to the computer and watch it on my monitor instead of needing a TV also...
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'Course, one "benefit" of a TV is the amazing job they do of filtering out compression artefacts. =:)
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For values of watch that mean 'The computer is just too slow to decode it at the proper frame rate', due to Aunty deciding that 1080i with MBAFF is best. But the picture quality is very nice, and having six channel sound is good too.
Of course, someone does need to explain to them that 1080i is perceptually worse looking than 720p.
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Of course, 1080i or 720p are both attractive options compared to 576i, let alone the wonderful noise factor unless you're living next to the mast. But then, I suppose purely digital torrents on LCD have spoiled me somewhat in that regard. I definitely would like to put a multichannel audio setup on the Christmas list, if there were the money - still, the headphones work well enough in the meantime. Given the noise level often prevalent in the house (ah, the joys of children), some in-channel noise isolating ones might work quite well, though they tend to be fairly expensive. I admit I'm a little disturbed about poking things quite that far into my ears, too, even though they may be in routine use by thousands of people ( ... )
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Besides, not going to pay extra for cable/Satellite tv that I would never watch. And there's no TV in the apartment anyways...
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Ah, but what happens when you run out of space - do you archive off to DVD-R, or just add another drive? (When I can, I'd love to set up a couple RAID cases for mirroring - after all, a pair of 750GB drives would be just about sufficient for one copy of everything here, so four drives.. not all that expensive, really. But I think I'd want to go for an island on SL first =:)
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But yes, the BBC's a wonderful institution. Far from perfect, but still, the amount of original programming they produce is fairly amazing.
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