HDTV OTA (over the air) & Dish Network
I’m planning to purchase an HDTV pretty soon here and I wanted to bring myself up to date on how it works and what is involved in doing so. Were planning on purchasing a Samsung DLP HDTV which is what they call a “micro rear projection” micro being that its not some massive box to make the projector work. Total depth is no greater than 10 inches on most of these, so defiantly isn’t a massive box.
Heres my dilemma, we have Dish Network and we have 2 boxes with them 1 being a standard def box with 2 tuners (322) being shared by Chris and Caitlin’s bedrooms. The other is a standard def DVR (522) which is in our Living room where the HDTV will be living. All of this works fine, but now comes the HD part of the equation. We are leasing our boxes from Dish Network, meaning, we pay per month for the box and the service for it. I called up the installer that we used for these boxes and started asking questions about HD feeds, and what were my options. Granted Whittier has 3 classes of living, Uber rich, just making it, and not making so were slangin drugs on the side. I’m in the just making it category so I’m not rollin in the dough, and I told the lady on the phone this. She agreed she too was in the same boat. Now that we have that out of the way, what are my options to go HD? Her response “wait for it, in 2009 EVERYTHING is going to be HD“. Not wanting to “wait for it” I pressed on. She said there are 3 options, the 411 box which can do HD ($449), the VIP622 which does HD and records in HD ($749). Or to stick with what I have the 522 and use OTA for my local feeds. She asked “Do you watch movies on your TV?” “Sure we do, but we don’t have any of the premium channels” “Oh, so DVD then?” “Yes, mainly DVD and the occasional movie that is on the channels we pay for”. She explained that Dish Network is just barely getting into this and isn’t isn’t cheap (yeah, im not paying $749 bucks to record tv in hd, no thanks) but you can go about it by using an OTA antenna to pull in the local channels that do HD and watch move DVD movies sinec those will look good until HD DVD comes around. I agreed that i’d wait it out a bit and see what I can come up with.
Enter the Over The Air antenna. So I did some google searches and found a few sites that can help me with forfilling my HD fix. HD Beat did a great article on how to pull in HD feeds over the air and all you need is an antenna (or 2 or 3 depending on where you live and how spread apart the stations are) and an HDTV to watch it on (you can use a TV as well, but I’m not worried about that just yet). So now I know how to pull in HD, but where do I pull it from? AntennaWeb.com has a webpage that will give you a list of HD stations and what direction to point your antenna(s) in. Ok, so we have that figured out. Now I want to know what shows play in HD based on the stations im pullin’ in via OTA antenna. TitanTV does an excelent job of this. You give them all the feeds you pull in and what sources they are coming from, and it shows you a list of all the TV shows. If you click the HD check box it will display what shows are on those channels you have access to.
Mind you, I don’t own an HDTV yet, nor do I know what the quality of reception will be like using OTA antenna, but I can tell you I feel better knowing what I’m getting into now. I guess I’ll wait for HDTV to mature a bit more and wait for Dish Network to start leasing HD boxes instead of making their customers pay for them up front.
As a side note, there are other options to all this. You can use multiple capture cards on a HTPC to record the shows from each tuner on the 411 Dish box, but until HD DVD comes out and they figure out this “The Great HDCP Fiasco” I’m not going to do much in regards to HTPC.
I welcome any comments that you may have about this. I’d LOVE to hear what you have cooked up to make your setup work. Give me your thoughts and ideas, thats what this internet thing is all about.