Recent content by Bobby H

The same thing just happened with my setup (about 3:45pm CDT). I think it is a Dish Network issue. I have a VIP 722 and 1000.2 dish aimed at the higher "birds" (119, 129, etc.). Everything was working just fine. No clouds in the sky, nothing in the way of the dish. It's hotter than a two dollar...

Of the channels I didn't have with HD Absolute, a lot of the content is SD. Some of it is zoomed or stretched to fill the 16:9 screen or in the case of VH1 it's lettter-boxed and pillar-boxed. Ugh. Letter-boxing and pillar-boxing is a real head scratcher. And it results in an immediate channel...

I went through with my programming change. RIP, Dish HD Absolute. I settled for the AT120 with HBO. Nearly all the channels I watch are in that core group anyway so I figure I won't be missing too much. The rep I spoke with gave me $15 off the AT120 package for 6 months, then $10 off for...

I got the letter this past week informing me HD Absolute was ending. I expected that to happen at some point. But the thing that's really staggering is the HUGE price increase even with the $10 credit for the Platinum package for the next 12 months. My current package is as follows: DishHD...

Sadly, I think my efforts have been too little too late. My ViP722 got as far as reformatting the new 1 terabyte external hard disc and then resetting (which I didn't want it to do after going through all the wait and hassle of getting it to reboot). Usually the ViP722 would get as far as "3...

That's a relief. The Western Digital MyBook hard discs I just checked at Sam's and Wal-Mart were pre-formatted for NTFS. Previously MyBook external hard discs were formatted in FAT32, which helped make them compatible with a variety of other devices (such as a Playstation 3). It kind of stinks...

What is the capacity of the internal HDD in the ViP722? 300GB? 500GB? I don't know. I'm asking because I think the hard drive in my ViP722 is fixing to bite the dust. Sunday evening the receiver froze -basically freezing the video image on the screen, then going black for a minute or two and...

What is the capacity of the internal HDD in the ViP722? 300GB? 500GB? I don't know. I'm asking because I think the hard drive in my ViP722 is fixing to bite the dust. Sunday evening the receiver froze -basically freezing the video image on the screen, then going black for a minute or two and...

I make an effort to see at least a few movies at good quality commercial theaters. I won't spend money at a dumpy theater. But I think it is important to support the theatrical side of the movie industry. Without commercial movie theaters the movie industry as we know it would be a mere shadow...

I think we'll see something along the lines of the current D-cinema standard for home theater in the long run. In addition to the deeper color depths, d-cinema outclasses Blu-ray by not using any sort of inter-frame compression. A JPEG2000 based D-cinema "virtual print" is little more than an...

Sorry in advance for the long post. I think we'll eventually see 4K-based movies in home theater. It isn't going to happen anytime soon however. My guess is a minimum of 7 to 10 years before any 4K movie material arrives in the home video marketplace. Right now not enough Hollywood movies that...

Lawrence of Arabia has never been officially announced for Blu-ray release. I've read comments from Hollywood insiders like Robert Harris which suggest Sony is working hard on a new Blu-ray release and that it might possibly be released sometime in 2010. Rumors why there is a delay point to...

I disagree about it being greed. Movie studios are businesses. They are not charities required to give away anything for free. I'd like to see the financial books for Redbox, particularly in how much they're making above the cost of the DVDs and how much is getting bumped over to movie studios...

"You don't ______ an HD package to get HD!" Obviously there's a verb missing. Vanna, I'd like to buy a vowel.

HD movies via AppleTV stink. It's 720p resolution mercilessly squeezed into a 4GB to 6GB file size, less than what a 480p SD DVD requires. The video quality is hardly any better than SD DVD either. That, combined with the 24 hour viewing window and $7 rental price is a big turnoff. I'd rather...