Locals over antenna - how to see program info?

I set manual timers all the time. It's easy. And by using my own OTA antenna, not only do I save on the monthly fee, I get ALL the local channels, and ALL the local subchannels. And in higher quality than I'd get from Dish. I do sometimes need to reaim my antenna, though. No big deal to hold down a button for a few seconds and watch the signal strength.
 
I set manual timers all the time. It's easy. And by using my own OTA antenna, not only do I save on the monthly fee, I get ALL the local channels, and ALL the local subchannels. And in higher quality than I'd get from Dish. I do sometimes need to reaim my antenna, though. No big deal to hold down a button for a few seconds and watch the signal strength.
Oh, I agree that it is "easy." But it is also amazingly inconvenient when I want to record everything that has "gymnastics" in the title, for example. Since my VCR days, I'm done with the manual recording process!

I do love how much better the video quality is over the air. However... once that signal passes through the Dish receiver/recorder, isn't it dumbed down (let's call it "compressed" to be politically correct) like the rest of it? Or does the OTA stuff still come out better than the Sat stuff? I haven't yet fooled with it enough to know if there is any difference (I set it up - set it to record the Olympics, and then headed out of town!). I know for SURE that it is better if the antenna goes directly to my TV.

After my two years of commitment, I'm going to be seriously looking at a good stand-alone HD DVR. My OTA channels are all that I need, I realize now. A stand-alone box will pay for itself in pretty short time! Right now it looks like TiVO is the main game in town on that front.
 
Oh, I agree that it is "easy." But it is also amazingly inconvenient when I want to record everything that has "gymnastics" in the title, for example. Since my VCR days, I'm done with the manual recording process!

I do love how much better the video quality is over the air. However... once that signal passes through the Dish receiver/recorder, isn't it dumbed down (let's call it "compressed" to be politically correct) like the rest of it? Or does the OTA stuff still come out better than the Sat stuff? I haven't yet fooled with it enough to know if there is any difference (I set it up - set it to record the Olympics, and then headed out of town!). I know for SURE that it is better if the antenna goes directly to my TV.

After my two years of commitment, I'm going to be seriously looking at a good stand-alone HD DVR. My OTA channels are all that I need, I realize now. A stand-alone box will pay for itself in pretty short time! Right now it looks like TiVO is the main game in town on that front.

Too bad Tivo doesn't support satellite HD
 
I do love how much better the video quality is over the air. However... once that signal passes through the Dish receiver/recorder, isn't it dumbed down (let's call it "compressed" to be politically correct) like the rest of it? Or does the OTA stuff still come out better than the Sat stuff? I haven't yet fooled with it enough to know if there is any difference (I set it up - set it to record the Olympics, and then headed out of town!). I know for SURE that it is better if the antenna goes directly to my TV.

After my two years of commitment, I'm going to be seriously looking at a good stand-alone HD DVR. My OTA channels are all that I need, I realize now. A stand-alone box will pay for itself in pretty short time! Right now it looks like TiVO is the main game in town on that front.

No added compression. Certainly looks better than what sat provides for locals. Now, the tuner in your sat receiver may or may not be as good as the tuner in other equipment. So your TV might have a better OTA picture with a direct connection than thru the sat receiver. Or, depending upon the TV, a lesser picture.

For the OTA HD DVR, you might want to look at the TR-50, which is expected to be out next month. No monthly fee. And since you're considering dropping sat, it doesn't matter that neither the TR-50 nor the Tivo include sat reception.

I expect during 2009 there will be more OTA HD DVRs coming to market.
 
Too bad Tivo doesn't support satellite HD
Well, I can imagine why! If you're gonna pay for sat, you'll likely use the company's receiver/DVR. The whole reason I'd want a stand-alone DVR is because all I need is my OTA stuff. I really have no need for sat. Yeah, some extra channels, but I really don't need them. I get 20 HD OTA stations here at 80% or better. I apparently live in a great place for this... and all of this from a $25 exterior antenna!
 
For the OTA HD DVR, you might want to look at the TR-50, which is expected to be out next month. No monthly fee. And since you're considering dropping sat, it doesn't matter that neither the TR-50 nor the Tivo include sat reception.

I for one am waiting impatiently to see what the TR-50 will do for us!
 
No added compression. Certainly looks better than what sat provides for locals.
Ah, if this is true, then I'm confused. Anything that I watch through my 722 receiver/DVR is first recorded, and then what I'm viewing is from that recording (this is how it can be paused, rewound, etc). So doesn't it stand to reason that everything I view through the 722 is compressed with mpg4? What am I missing?

Now, the tuner in your sat receiver may or may not be as good as the tuner in other equipment. So your TV might have a better OTA picture with a direct connection than thru the sat receiver. Or, depending upon the TV, a lesser picture.
There is no question that the picture with the antenna lead directly into the TV is superior. It is *frighteningly* good. As good or better than any BluRay disk I've seen.

For the OTA HD DVR, you might want to look at the TR-50, which is expected to be out next month. No monthly fee. And since you're considering dropping sat, it doesn't matter that neither the TR-50 nor the Tivo include sat reception.

I expect during 2009 there will be more OTA HD DVRs coming to market.
Great, thanks. Hadn't heard of TR-50, nor do I know what brand! I'll go Google it up. No fee? There's got to be a catch!
 
Ah, E*. Sounds killer! "Next month" eh? Many of the articles from earlier in the year were saying that it would be released in July. Oops. How are they gonna do it with no fee? I guess it'll be priced appropriately. Sure would be nice if they'd just go ahead and put a TB drive in there to being with. Last one I bought was $200, and they've dropped since then. But they've got to get ride of those 250 Gig drives somehow, I guess.

The TR-50 really does sound like it would be ideal for my situation. But I'll stick out my two years with Dish. No reason to pay even MORE money for nothing. :)
 
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A secondary advantage of recording locals by Dish is they take up less disk because of the MPEG-4 stream.
SD Dish (8xxx MPEG-2): HD Dish (6xxx MPEG-4): HD OTA (xxx.x MPEG-2) ~ 1: 2.5: 5.
Sorry, no analog OTA MPEG-2 recordings.
-Ken
 
I for one am waiting impatiently to see what the TR-50 will do for us!

We are part of a large, and growing, club. Echostar will have a good run with this product before they have competition, AFAIK. Gee, I wonder if that will affect the price?

I'll buy and test one, then likely buy 1 or 2 more.
 
Ah, if this is true, then I'm confused. Anything that I watch through my 722 receiver/DVR is first recorded, and then what I'm viewing is from that recording (this is how it can be paused, rewound, etc). So doesn't it stand to reason that everything I view through the 722 is compressed with mpg4? What am I missing?

OK- the nature of a digital signal is that EVERYTHING is compressed in that signal. Just a matter of degree. OTA uses MPEG-2, never MPEG-4, as it's not part of the spec which was drawn up for ATSC (done before there was MPEG-4). Satcos and even cablecos can move faster than the government and hence, MPEG-4 is coming into use. MPEG-4 allows greater compression (less bandwidth) for equivalent PQ. Or higher PQ for the same bandwidth taken up by an MPEG-2 signal. Your DVR records the signal exactly as sent. There is no MPEG-4 (or other) encoder built into it. The exact satellite stream is recorded, the exact OTA signal is recorded. No further compression. If your direct connection to your TV looks better than when you run the signal thru the DVR, then your TV has a better tuner (decoder) than your DVR. Or you have connections issues.


There is no question that the picture with the antenna lead directly into the TV is superior. It is *frighteningly* good. As good or better than any BluRay disk I've seen.

See the last two sentences in my reply above. It seems to be almost a secret, but properly done OTA is the highest quality PQ you are likely to see. Blu-ray could match it, with very high bit rates, etc, but satellite and cable are unlikely to, Dish's current 1080p claims notwithstanding. Heck, I keep reading here where some people think getting a free TV signal over the air must be illegal!


Great, thanks. Hadn't heard of TR-50, nor do I know what brand! I'll go Google it up. No fee? There's got to be a catch!

Well, I do expect they will have some "coin of the realm" requirement before they hand it over to you. They can provide an EPG in at least two ways. One, is to build it from the PSIP stream that each digital station transmits, like the DTVPal does. The drawback to this is that many stations transmit little or no information, or even wrong or improperly formatted information. This will eventually be self correcting, but may take years. But for many programs, the title is about the most you can hope for, with little or no information about the episode. We're spoiled.

The second way is to provide something like TVGOS. TV Guide On Screen. Many recording devices have provided this info, this full EPG info, for years. They paid TVG a fee for each device using the info. The TVGOS info was sent out mostly by local analog PBS stations. As analog goes away (soon, really soon), TVGOS needs to be transmitted digitally. This is mostly done over local CBS affiliates. The digital version of TVGOS is not formatted the same as the analog version. Whole new system, and it hasn't rolled out completely yet. Nor, dare I say, have they worked out all the bugs yet.

PSIP is free. TVGOS costs the device provider (Echostar for the TR-50) an up front fee. Both are free to the user, except, of course, the TVGOS equipped version will be more expensive, to cover that up front fee. I hope for the TR-50 to use TVGOS, even if it is still imperfect. As a DVR device, I suspect they will go that route, if they have confidence in it's working properly, more or less, and being fairly widely available.

Please see replies embedded above in green.
 
Ah, E*. Sounds killer! "Next month" eh? Many of the articles from earlier in the year were saying that it would be released in July. Oops.

Yep, the EDD changed. Might change again. Some doubt the product will ever see the light of day. But I suspect it will. Heck, it might even have a built in feature for Dish to sell you VOD over the internet, but I doubt that.


How are they gonna do it with no fee? I guess it'll be priced appropriately.

No monthly fee. See my post just above.
 
Navychop -

Thanks for all the great replies. I haven't been ignoring you... just been out of town (lots of recorded Olympics to catch up on now... to the tune of many tens of hours!)

OK, so when you say this:
Your DVR records the signal exactly as sent. There is no MPEG-4 (or other) encoder built into it. The exact satellite stream is recorded, the exact OTA signal is recorded. No further compression.
You are, of course, implying that Dish is not being completely truthful about their big claim of having the only DVR that uses MPEG-4 compression. Why do they keep saying that? (rhetorical!) Seriously, I thought for sure that there was some compression happening whenever the signal hit the disk. Nice to hear otherwise. It isn't as if my PQ is poor when going through the DVR, it is just that little bit better when going directly into the TV. As you say, it is likely a tuner quality issue. If I don't compare them directly side-by-side, I can't tell the difference. But I still can tell the difference between the OTA and the sat feed!

While I have your eyeballs, let me slip another newbie Q or two in here:

1. On the 722 is there any way to skip forward or backward x number of minutes? I can do 10 seconds back or 30 seconds forward, of course. My ReplayTV allowed me to key in "03 skip" and it would take me 3 minutes forward (or back). I see no way of doing that with these DVRs.

2. I'm curious about OTA sound. I see the great picture... what what is offered up in the way of multi-channel sound?
 
When does dish say they have the only mpeg4 dvr? DirecTV and even Tivo support mpeg 4 DVR. If the DVR did not support mpeg2 you could not watch OTA, or any SD dish channels.
 
Navychop -

2. I'm curious about OTA sound. I see the great picture... what what is offered up in the way of multi-channel sound?

HD OTA offers DD 5.1 if the program is broadcast with that. You have to run the audio into an AV receiver as most TVs only have 2 channel. My TV has optical out that I run to my receiver, and I also run the optical out from my 622 to the receiver so I can get 5.1 no matter which tuner I use.
 
The EPG matter is under current FCC consideration/investigation; intentional blockage of PSIP data stream content (program name, program description, station schedule — embedded in the DTV OTA signal)... Hopefully, the matter will be addressed soon.
 
When does dish say they have the only mpeg4 dvr? DirecTV and even Tivo support mpeg 4 DVR. If the DVR did not support mpeg2 you could not watch OTA, or any SD dish channels.
I don't know that I've seen it in print, but I'll tell you what - when I called them for "pre sales" info, I was bombarded with the "fact" they had the only mpeg4 DVR on the planet. "Are you ready to buy?" "Well, are you?" "How about now?"
 
HD OTA offers DD 5.1 if the program is broadcast with that. You have to run the audio into an AV receiver as most TVs only have 2 channel. My TV has optical out that I run to my receiver, and I also run the optical out from my 622 to the receiver so I can get 5.1 no matter which tuner I use.
Great! Just what I wanted to know. Yes, I realize that I'll need a receiver that can "do" the 5.1. No problem there. And I also run an optical out of my 722 to my receiver currently (and have an optical out of my TV).

Now I just need to figure out how to adjust audio sync from the sat broadcast. Everybody seems to start talking before the lips move!
 
Now I just need to figure out how to adjust audio sync from the sat broadcast. Everybody seems to start talking before the lips move!


I had the same problem and found that hdmi from 722 to tv then optical from tv to 5.1 receiver made the difference. With the optical going directly from 722 to receiver, the audio was being processed quicker. When I set it up for audio and video to go to the tv by hdmi then optical to receiver, it doesn't have any real sync issue now.
 

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