The Sad State of Digital TV (or why I love Analog)

[DarrellP]

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I've had my Panny E85H hard drive recorder/DVD burner for about 4 months now and must say, I love it. BUT! And there's a BIG BUTT here. I record downrezzed HD & SD digital to the E85 for timeshifting. I've never liked OTA or Dish fed SD channels, the resolution sucks and looks like crap on my big screen.

Now along comes my E85H with an Analog tuner in it, so I decide to try it for The Apprentice, since the name-based guide will record it whenever it comes on, regardless of the timeslot (are you listening Dish?). Lo & behold, the Analog picture looks fantastic on my projector, much better than a standard SD feed from Dish, Voom or OTA digital.

I must say, I will be sad to see Analog go the way of the DoDo bird, the picture is so much more color saturated and detailed than a SD digital image. To set the record straight, recording downrezzed HD is no comparison, it wins hands down, but I love the picture I am getting from my Panny's Analog tuner. For SD, this is now my preferred recording method. My $.02.

[waltinvt]

Originally Posted by DarrellP

I've had my Panny E85H hard drive recorder/DVD burner for about 4 months now and must say, I love it. BUT! And there's a BIG BUTT here. I record downrezzed HD & SD digital to the E85 for timeshifting. I've never liked OTA or Dish fed SD channels, the resolution sucks and looks like crap on my big screen.

Now along comes my E85H with an Analog tuner in it, so I decide to try it for The Apprentice, since the name-based guide will record it whenever it comes on, regardless of the timeslot (are you listening Dish?). Lo & behold, the Analog picture looks fantastic on my projector, much better than a standard SD feed from Dish, Voom or OTA digital.

I must say, I will be sad to see Analog go the way of the DoDo bird, the picture is so much more color saturated and detailed than a SD digital image. To set the record straight, recording downrezzed HD is no comparison, it wins hands down, but I love the picture I am getting from my Panny's Analog tuner. For SD, this is now my preferred recording method. My $.02.

I'm trying to figure out what dvd recorder to get, so I'm interrested in what you're saying about the E85H.

Sorry if I'm kind of thick here. Could you be more specific about how you're recording. What's the source of the analog signal to the E85H - OTA via antenna or cable ? Whichever source, you're saying that the playback of the recorded dvd from that source looks better than if the same program was recorded from a Dish SD signal ? What make HDTV do you have and how is the E85H connected to it ?

What connections are you using for downrezzed HD to the recorder ? I assume your HD receiver is the Dish 811 ? How are you dealing with the aspect ratio thing with the dvds - in otherwords, if you record a downrezzed hd program, which would still be in 16:9, does it play back properly in 16:9 (I'm assuming you have a widescreen HDTV) or do you have to stretch / zoom it ?

Thanks,
WaltinVt

[DarrellP]

I record 3 types of signal:

1) Downrezzed HD from Dish and Voom.
2) SD Analog signals received OTA.
3) SD signals received from Voom.

The order above is also the recording quality order, though some Voom channels can look better than OTA Analog depending on the channel, the content and whether or not the local OTA Analog channel has good reception, which most of mine due. The only channel I have an issue with ocassionally is channel 2, I will get some wavy lines through it.

I do have a 16:9 screen, it's a front projection system with a 110" diagonal screen. The aspect ratio of whatever I record is recorded into the E85H in this manner. The 16:9 recordings from Dish are NOT vertically stretched so I get a letterboxed image and normally play it back using Normal mode on my pj, which will give me black bars all the way around the picture. If I wish to fill the screen, I have to Zoom and this degrades the PQ. I still have a 72" screen using Normal.

The E85H has 3 line inputs and I use S-Video directly from my Dish 6000 and Voom stb and select the appropriate input for recording. It also has a Gemstar TV Guide built in and does name based recording.

I do have the ability to set the Voom stb so it will output a vertically stretched image so the resultant playback will be anamorphic and it will fill the screen, however, since the image is SD to begin with, I don't like the quality of the picture when it fills the whole screen, so I leave it letterboxed and playback on Normal. With a regular RPTV, Plasma, LCD or other TV, the images would probably look great with Zoom.

Regarding Dish SD, they compress the crap out of their signals and look really bad on my pj, that's why I dropped their SD programming long ago. Voom's SD looks much better than Dish, though they do have a few channels that really stink.

If you want to investigate DVD burners more thoroughly, hang out here, there are many posts about the different players here along with their pros and cons.

I hope this answered your question.