Turbo HD only and standard TV

[glm1]

I'm interested in the Turbo HD Gold package (HD only) and have two HD TVs and two standard TVs. According to the Dish web site and the CSRs, that is not a problem. I can feed the standard TVs from the receivers for the HD TVs.

However, according to a local vendor, a Turbo only package is only for HD TVs and will not work with standard TVs. Therefore he is not willing to place my order. According to the tech specs for the receivers such as the ViP 722, there is no problem feeding a standard TV. The vendor did call the Dish technical people and found someone who said that you can feed standard TVs, but that is not something you should do. She said she was told there would be a black frame around the picture on the standard TVs - though she had not actually seen this setup.

So, does anyone have only a Turbo HD package and feed standard TVs from the receivers? If so, what is the quality of the picture on the standard TVs? Is there a black frame around the picture? Is this something that just shouldn't be done, even though it seems to be promoted by Dish?

 

[primetimeguy]

I'm interested in the Turbo HD Gold package (HD only) and have two HD TVs and two standard TVs. According to the Dish web site and the CSRs, that is not a problem. I can feed the standard TVs from the receivers for the HD TVs.

However, according to a local vendor, a Turbo only package is only for HD TVs and will not work with standard TVs. Therefore he is not willing to place my order. According to the tech specs for the receivers such as the ViP 722, there is no problem feeding a standard TV. The vendor did call the Dish technical people and found someone who said that you can feed standard TVs, but that is not something you should do. She said she was told there would be a black frame around the picture on the standard TVs - though she had not actually seen this setup.

So, does anyone have only a Turbo HD package and feed standard TVs from the receivers? If so, what is the quality of the picture on the standard TVs? Is there a black frame around the picture? Is this something that just shouldn't be done, even though it seems to be promoted by Dish?

It will work just fine. Since the HD channels are 16x9 vs your SD at 4x3 you would have black bars on top and bottom if you want to see the whole width of the program. But you can press the aspect button on the remote to toggle to zoom which shows no bars and works just fine. Since the TV2 output on the boxes is SD only, everyone who uses TV2 is doing exactly what you want to do.

 

[j25a]

This is not a problem at all. I have TurboHD Silver with 1 HDTV and 3 SDTV's being served by 1-722 and 2-211's. You can use either composite cables or the standard RF cable to connect to the SDTV's. You have several different formating options as to how to handle different aspect ratios on the receivers. This setup works very well.

 

[Dish VIP]

to the fourm!

Your vendor is misinformed. You can feed a SD TV with a HD dual-tuner receiver. Additionally, HD-only paks have SD versions of most of the HD channels and your SD locals.

HD channels on the TV2 output will have letterbox or zoom options. SD channels will fill the screen @ 4x3. TV2 output is RF (coax-cable) and looks ok but not fantastic. There is composite connections for TV2 also. If you have long enough cables, this connection looks better, but still not fantastic, imho.

 

[alcheez]

Yeah, the CSR fed me the same load of crap, but it works just fine (and I knew that it would because I had a friend with the same setup)

Actually, since it's just me, I keep my receiver in single mode so I have the same thing on both TVs, and with that setup it seems to handle the aspect ratio automatically.

 

[glm1]

Thanks!

Thanks for the quick responses! I'll be ordering Turbo HD soon...