External HDTV Receiver Question

[edtyct]

Boy, I hear you. When my daughter watches TV, 95% of the time, it's PBS. On those rare occasions when we let her watch something on a commercial network, the difference is jarring, at least for me. The crass come-ons that kids get from advertisers is beyond tolerance. Since the network stations that are on HD simply duplicate any children's programs that are also on SD, the commercials persist on them. (I don't believe that any of the kids' digital "cable" stations, like Nickoledeon, Noggin, Disney, etc. are in HD yet.) The difference between digital broadcasts and HD broadcasts is the difference between the 480 format and the 1080i/720p format. To remind you of your logical syllogisms, All digital is not HD, even though all HD is digital.

I take it that you object to commercials not just for your kids' sake but your own as well. Otherwise, you could let them watch their accustomed commercial programs as they usually do via the Panasonic, while you suffered through the HD stations with the commercials intact. I personally confess no great love of DirecTV, but if you want to avoid commericals but still watch HD, you do have the option of getting DirecTV's HD DVR receiver, along with the appropriate dish, which does in fact allow you to record HD via an embedded hard drive and thus skip through commecials. You could also move to cable and rent an HD DVR from them.

The industry treatment, or non-treatment, of SACD/DVD-A, is deplorable. But I like them regardless of their lack of recording opportunities and their analog cabling. What I don't like is their status as afterthoughts within the recording industry and all that it implies. In any event, HD video does permit recording. My library of Deadwood recordings testifies to it. Honestly, even if I couldn't record HD, I'd still be an adovocate of it, and my daughter would watch primarily stations without commercials (in our case, PBS, HBO, and various On Demand offerings). Good luck in your quest. Sorry that it isn't working for you yet.

Ed

[nightflier]

In any event, HD video does permit recording. My library of Deadwood recordings testifies to it.

Ed,

How are you recording HD? Are you using DirectTV's PVR? So I take it that not being able to find a recorder has nothing to do with some kind of copyright nonsense that Panasonic is doggedly trying to stick to. If that's the case, there should be a market for HD recorders in the near future...

I also don't care for monthly subsription fees, hence the reason I bought the Panasonic, but I'm not married to the brand, so if there's something else out there that you recommend, I'm all ears. I've heard that Mac laptops can do this using the firewire link, but that's a bit expensive just to record HD.

[edtyct]

I record on a hard drive that is embedded in my Motorola cable receiver. The prohibition against HD recording concerns stand-alone components like your Panasonic, which might produce contraband disks of HD broadcasts that would make you millions on the international market. The hard drive ones don't run that risk, since the broadcasters themselves can control what you record and what you can do with it. Any recording that can be done via a hard drive on a computer is about to get much more difficult, as encryption and HDCP are about to be brought to bear more stringently on it. All such digital devices sold on the market are to be HDCP-equipped by July. Barring strategies that are beyond me (and many are), you'll need a reputable STB of some kind to record HD. Mine costs $15.00 a month, along with my programming.

Ed

[nightflier]

Mine costs $15.00 a month, along with my programming.

Seriously, though, what if DirectTV decides they don't want you to skip commercials anymore? Or what if they start selecting which programs they will allow you to record for later viewing? Or ultimately, they decide what you should watch...

Personally, I hope that the broadcasters fall flat on their faces with this big-brother crap and that there will always be ways around it. The airwaves (i.e. all the broadcast channels) aren't there to be owned by miscreants who will charge us for access at every flick of the switch. All such schemes have failed in the past, often violently.

I'm not trying to break the law, here. I am only exercising my right to order a burger w/o the advertising pickle. Just as I don't want to buy a whole album just to enjoy one hit song, or just as I want to be able to buy a hybrid sedan instead of gas hog SUV, I want to enjoy my programming w/o being force-fed constant interruptions from Zocor, Masengil, and that pop-pseudo-news-crap about wacko Jacko. If I'm watching a movie, I should be able to watch it w/o interruptions. If not, I should have the right to buy another one that doesn't have interruptions. I heard that they will start "product-testing" movie theater commercial intermissions and including those on DVD's too. It wasn't too long ago that there were no Ford commercials at the movies....

I for one, will fight this with my pocket book for as long as I can. I also believe that I'm not alone in my dismay about this. Sooner or later this overcommercialization will reach a boiling point and something is going to snap. The corporate fat cats should realize that worker productivity is way down, not because of pay (everyone is making more than ever before), but because there is no entertainment outside of work that offers a true respite. Everything that was once fun has become laborious. If I didn't have children who remind me of the more important things in life, I would be one miserable employee just a few lattes shy of going postal.

Philosophers through the ages have warned us that societies have to provide some mechanism of meaningful escape for the workers. When it doesn't, something usually snaps.

[edtyct]

Nightflier,

Sounds like you're turning into a good candidate for Marxism (no, not communism, as we've known it, which is just capitalism by the state instead of the bourgeoisie). I agree totally about the utter tastelessness and decadence of commercialism and about the government favoring corporate America over traditional citizenship (but that's what our government does nowadays). It is a disgrace, but the whole notion of what constitutes "rights" is immensely tricky. You only have a "right" to buy one song rather than an album if that song is made available by itself (or if you have another way, legal or illegal, of procuring it). You do have the right to buy a hybrid car rather than an SUV, because both are offered. But you don't have the innate "right" to watch a TV show without its sponsor intruding on it, unless that opportunity is presented to you somehow, because that TV show exists only because of the sponsors' money. HBO and other noncommercial outlets exist as an alternative because people are willing to pay for them.

Every coroporate entity has a categorical imperative to increase its revenue in this culture. Corporations by their very nature, like sharks, are amoral. It's up to us, and our government, to make sure that no business or other parochial interest swallows up everything in its path. I happen to believe that our government is failing us in that regard, largely because it is more allied with corporate concerns than the good of society as a whole.

If we're going to watch shows and movies, somehow they have to be delivered to us. The current system is wearing out its welcome, but it isn't going to change any time soon. Commercials aren't going to stop. To me, rather than looking for a better escape from reality, we ought to be making reality something that doesn't require escape. If pulling your purse strings tighter helps to maintain your integrity and improve your life, more power to you. It probably wouldn't hurt us to watch less TV and buy fewer films and records. But the people that you end up penalizing might not be the ones that you intended (why should record company executives make more money than artists? why should Exxon have profits of over $20 billion at a time when most of us are feeling the crunch of a so-called gas crisis?). Besides, one man's commercial-ridden horror story is another man's escape for the evening. To me, not enjoying what we create is like cutting off our noses to spite our faces. Our quarrel isn't with the creative people who entertain us, and sometimes even enlighten us; it's with the means of production, to borrow a phrase. It's better to find a way to keep the good things that we have without constantly having to associate them with less decorous ones. In some ways, culture is subject to inertia; it won't be completely overhauled. It's not always going to go your way or mine. But in other ways, it is subject to improvement that would meet with most people's approval. Political, social, and economic environments aren't totally etched in stone. I'd certainly hate to think, as Pangloss said, to his own folly in Candide, that this is the best of all possible worlds. If the best we can do is think of ways to escape from it, it might as well be.

Okay, I'm off the soapbox and into the showers.

Ed

[Groundbeef]

I have Direct TV and the HD package. I did NOT however purchase the HD receiver and TiVO combo as it was $999 when I bought. They can now be purchased for about $699. Anyway I digress. I did however purchase a stand a lone Tivo Unit. It has input for S video and S video output. It does a pretty good job of recording HD programming. Now, I understand S video is not as good as component, but I stress the pretty good job. I does record the Direct TV HD signal, as the channels were manually added to my TiVO lineup. As far as over the air I have to "cheat" a bit. I simply change the channel on my DirectTV HD reciever to the over the air HD signal say "local HD channel 15". It is VERY IMPORTANT to only change it with the Direct TV receiver. Tivo still thinks its on what ever channel it was on before, but the signal from the box is the HD signal from the over the air channel.
The clarity is very good for what I am doing, and I am pleased with the result. Just another way to skin a cat. I still can then do the commercial skip and all that. The only down side is you have to change the channel manually to record instead of TiVO doing it.

[nightflier]

Wow, I certainly didn't mean to echo Engels in my wishes. I actually think my argument was rooted more in a Republican or even Libertarian ideal. Although it is interesting to find that in their extremes, political philosophies usually wind up sounding an awful lot like their polar opposites...

But without getting too philosophical, here, I am asking for choice. I do have the right to request a song from an artist directly, if the means are there. No one should have the right to charge me a toll while I legally access the file over the airwaves or the internet. This is what I am addressing: that there are mediums such as the internet and the airwaves that are universally owned. The idea that by controlling the manufacturing of my access tools (my computer or cable box) Bill Gates can now charge me for my use of something that he does not own, infuriates me.

I'm not trying to access HBO illegally, I'm trying to reach CBS, NBC, PBS, etc., which previously I could access with rabbit ears, record at my leisure, and fast-forward through the parts I didn't care for. I could choose to watch just the commercials I wanted to see and no one had a problem with that. The cost of the programming was borne by the collective commercials that all of us recorders selected to watch and not skip. That was then. Now, because I need a different antenna to access the exact same information, I somehow need to pay extra for it. That's crap!

And not that I have anything against suffering philosophers, but I must say that this is not the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps you don't mind paying a small toll for everything, but if you agree to increasingly crippling terms, then what will you do when they come asking for your half of an arse? Personally, I'd like to continue sitting up straight.

So I have a very simple question: is anyone developping a standalone recorder that will record HDTV, either via component video, Firewire, HDMI, or DVI?

Or will I have to bring one over from Europe, hack it to change the country code, and break the law in doing so just to be able to enjoy what more liberal and egalitarian countries enjoy? If everyone else in the world objects to the US's copyright laws, certainly the possibility is there that we are not doing what's best for our citizens. Even the staunchest Republican-Corporatist must entertain the possibility.

[edtyct]

NF,

Oy, my late night rambling was not meant to be an endorsement of any policy, simply a description of how things stand. I agree with you about the airwaves and internet. I believe that government, in its alliance with the content providers, is indeed overextending its powers by forcing the broadcast flags on us. Nothing in the original mandate of the FCC gives it that kind of reach. Maybe you read my report on the board about the unsuccessful attempt of a few independent parties to bring the matter to court. Not many people did.

Sometimes I don't mind paying a small toll for things, so long as the reasons seem to warrant it. Not everyone will agree with what everyone else thinks on such matters. Nor am I against taxation. To me, the idea that all markets can take care of themselves is naive--if not plain self-serving for those with money and privilege, and delusional for those without them. In fact, I resent the implication these days that matters of social concern, justice, economic well-being, etc. should be treated like classic markets, anyway. Moral laissez-faire always favors those in power, never those with intelligent disagreement. The rhetoric of "it's my money, my time, and my business, and I'll do with them what I like" is a dangerous recipe; contrary to what many people would like to think, it is a prescription for more government in the wrong places and far less common good. The point is that if enough people think that certain laws are unjust, then eventually these laws may change. But they won't change automatically if we don't make a good case for it. Just saying that we have a right to something won't cut it. The language of rights is a language of custom, law, power, and economic interest. Certain people are going to feel entitled to some of what you might want to take away from them. You'd better make a strong case for your position, not just that you want something that they won't give to you.

A person is always free to obtain programming illegally. The negative side is the practical risk involved, not the fires of hell and eternal moral judgment. My question was about how we show disagreement, which involves making clear what we think we are entitled to have that we don't have. Otherwise, things stay as they are. In the relatively trivial (in the scheme of things) matter of copy protection, I think that we're dealing with a kind of greed that gets support in the upper levels of American politics, because the people involved are major players; they can get what they want. Personally, I think that it's symptomatic of far more serious problems in this country. Frankly, I disagree that "the staunchest Republican corporatist must entertain the possibility that we're not doing what's best for our citizens" and that this country's values are askew--at least not the ones that he holds and currently rule the roost. And that's my point in a nutshell. So what do you do?

I have no doubt that some company has already developed a stand-alone HD recorder to sell when the powers that be deem that copy protection makes it safe to market. What company could afford to pass up this possible golden opportunity? If I could give you an alternative now, I would. If one ever arrives in the mainstream, however, you can bet that it won't have analog HD-capable component outputs. If you're willing to go outside the country, you might explore Chinese electronics manufacturers, which have already developed their own HD DVD system and may well have their own HD-capable DVRs. Some people have speculated that the Chinese may well benefit from any format war or other delay involving fair use of HD in this country.

Ed