HDTV Ready Or Not
Dear Gary: Love your magazine and religiously read it. I have a question regarding buying a HDTV-equipped set versus one that is “ready,” requiring an outboard decoder. If you got a set, such as the Princeton or others that can receive and decode channels, must you also get a decoder anyway to receive DSS or DISH-based HD material? I know that several brands, such as RCA/ProScan will have their own DSS tuner built in. But do the other sets have such capacity? It seems that if one needs to buy a DSS/ DISH decoder anyway, it would be silly to buy the redundant tuner in the set. Except, of course, for the outside chance that someday the terrestrial market will blossom. None of us are holding our breaths anymore. I believe, with Joe Kane and others, that since the broadcast industry seems uncommitted, and the satellite industry is willing to sell off (sell-out) bandwidth, our most likely delivery system will be the DVD. Back to the original question, will the included tuner systems have to have outside receivers to get satellite HD content?
David Isgett
Video Technical Editor Greg Rogers Comments:
Very few HDTVs with built-in terrestrial tuners also have built-in satellite receivers. I prefer the separate HD satellite receivers for either DirecTV or DISH Network that are available with terrestrial HD tuners. It will be less expensive to replace these units in the future if products with new features or improved performance appear. Some possibilities include better 8-VSB terrestrial tuners, disk drive storage, cable HD decoders, and copy-protected digital interfaces. It is also possible, but I would bet against it, that COFDM could be adopted as an alternative standard for over-the-air HD broadcasts. As for HD-DVD, I suspect it is at least five years or more in the future. I don’t see much economic incentive for content providers to introduce a new DVD format that would create uncertainty and confuse consumers while standard-definition DVDs are still in an explosive growth period. The content providers also want to be assured that robust copy-protection systems and millions of compatible HDTV displays are in place before launching an HD disc format.
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