Chapter 5: Broadcast TV: Over-the-Air, Cable, and Satellite

There are eight ways to get programs transmitted to your HT system, some very old and some very new:

 ·      Over-the-air SDTV (“standard TV”)

·      Analog cable SDTV

·      Digital cable SDTV

·      Analog satellite SDTV (big dish)

·      Digital Satellite Service, or DSS SDTV (small dish)

·      Over-the-air HDTV

·      Cable HDTV

·      DSS HDTV

The first four offer poor video and poor sound relative to the last four, which are the ones I’ll discuss in this chapter. Although it sounds like digital cable would provide high quality, it doesn’t because its increased capacity over analog cable is used for more channels, not higher quality.

I’ll start this chapter with a discussion of HDTV, then DSS (standard and HDTV), over-the-air HDTV, and cable HDTV. Then I’ll compare the three HDTV choices. Finally, there’s a little about transmitted digital audio.

Everything in this chapter applies mainly to the United States.

HDTV

HDTV was introduced in Chap. 2. It offers much better resolution than standard TV, or any other commonly-available source for that matter, including DVD. Most HDTV programs are 1080iV (1080 lines of vertical resolution, interlaced—go back to Chap. 2 if it’s not clear what that is), but some are 720pV.

To get HDTV you need all of the following:

·      An HDTV transmission, via cable, digital satellite, or over-the-air.

·      For cable and digital satellite, the appropriate receiver (also called a “set-top box”). For over-the-air, an antenna.

·      An HDTV tuner, separate or built into the TV.

·      An HDTV (with an HDTV tuner) or an HD-ready TV (minus the HDTV tuner). All digital TVs qualify.

You can also buy equipment to feed an HDTV signal to a conventional NTSC TV, but the results won’t be of HDTV quality.

Most HDTV-capable TVs lack HDTV tuners, because right now (Spring 2002) people buy them for improved pictures from DVDs and non-HDTV digital satellite transmissions—they don’t want to pay extra for a tuner they’re not going to use. Anyway, it’s more convenient to get the HDTV tuner in the same box as the digital-satellite receiver, which I’m going to talk about shortly. The video connection between that box and the TV or a/v receiver is then component video (3 phono jacks), and the audio connection is Dolby Digital, which goes into the optical or coaxial digital audio input on the a/v receiver. The connection is identical to that of a DVD player.

In some cases a given digital TV and HDTV tuner combination are incompatible, even when the connection is component video, so it’s best to get the HDTV tuner from the same place you got your TV, and to get both from a store that knows what they’re doing.

There are three things happening with HDTV now:

·      Premium channels such as HBO and Showtime are available in HDTV via digital satellite.

·      Very slowly, commercial stations are complying with a US government mandate to broadcast at least partially in HDTV by 2002 and entirely by 2006.

·      Even more slowly, HDTV is becoming available via cable.

Eventually, everything will be available in HDTV, although probably not by 2006. The expense is enormous for broadcasters and for consumers. There will surely be waivers, extensions, and loopholes along the way.

If you want HDTV right now, you can get it from a digital satellite service almost anywhere, and in some areas you can mount an antenna on your roof and get it over-the-air. In very few places can you get it from cable. We’ll discuss the first possibility in the next section, and the second and third at the end of this chapter. At the very end I’ll compare the three HDTV sources.

¤ www.htexplained.com/more/hdtv.htm

Digital Satellite Service (DSS)

You’re probably already familiar with DSS, since there are millions of systems in use. There’s a small (18” or so) dish mounted usually on the roof and an electronics box, called a satellite or DSS receiver, located near the TV along with the other HT equipment. And, of course, there’s yet another remote to control the system.

DSS Choices

Before you buy your DSS equipment you have to choose between one of the two major services, DirectTV and EchoStar/Dish Network. (As of Spring 2002 the latter was trying to acquire the former, but it wasn’t known whether the merger would meet with regulatory approval.) Then you buy the equipment for that service. Most HT owners seem to prefer DirectTV, probably because there are multiple suppliers of the electronics, which means more and better choices.

Getting Local TV Stations

Historically, one big difference between cable and satellite is that with cable you got local TV stations. But under a Federal law passed in 1999, DSS providers now have the right to offer local stations. Whether you can get them depends on where you live and what service you get, so you need to check to make sure. If you can’t get them, you’ll need to keep your cable service, use an antenna, or do without.

DSS Audio and Video Technology

DSS uses basically the same encoding technologies as DVD. The video is MPEG-2, if it matters to you, and the audio is Dolby Digital or Dolby Surround/Pro Logic.

However, the horizontal resolution is only 400H or so, whereas DVD is about 500H.

DSS Receivers

All DSS receivers can get you a picture with sound, but some do it much better than others.

To get the benefits of Dolby Digital audio from DSS you have to pay a little more ($100, say) to get a receiver that can handle it, which allows you to connect the DSS receiver’s audio to your a/v receiver digitally, just as you would for a DVD player. Otherwise, the connection will be analog, and all you’ll get is Dolby Surround/Pro Logic.

You can also get DSS receivers with several other features built in:

·      A digital video recorder (DVR), as discussed in Chap. 6.

·      MSN TV (formerly WebTV), which provides web and email access.

·      Ultimate TV, which combines the previous two along with some interactive features.

·      An HDTV tuner, which you’ll need for HDTV if your TV doesn’t have one, which it probably doesn’t. You might see this combination referred to as a “high-definition receiver” or “HD receiver.”

If the DVR is built-in, it records the compressed DSS program without uncompressing it, converting it to analog, and then recompressing it, resulting in much better quality. A separate DVR can’t do this.

Note that current DVRs won’t record at HDTV resolutions, so you’re unlikely to find one combined with an HD receiver in the same unit. DVRs that can record in HD are coming, though.

An important feature to look for is component video output from the DSS receiver. You’ll definitely find it if it’s an HD receiver, and the better non-HD DSS receivers have it as well. Otherwise, the best you get is S-video.

As I noted earlier, some TV-tuner combinations are incompatible, so be careful.

DSS HDTV

If you want DSS HDTV, you need to get the right kind of dish, the right kind of DSS receiver, and the right kind of subscription. This is in addition, of course, to the HD-ready TV and the HD tuner (internal to the TV, combined with the DSS receiver, or separate).

We’ll use DirectTV as our example. but EchoStar/Dish Network, the only other choice, is very similar:

·      The dish has to be the oval multi-satellite dish, not the ordinary round dish, because DirectTV uses a different satellite for HDTV.

·      The DSS receiver also has to be of the multi-satellite variety.

If you already have a HD-ready TV (without a HDTV tuner) and you don’t already have DSS with multi-satellite capability, the easiest thing to do is to get a kit that includes the dish and the HD receiver. They sell for around $500 to $900.

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Over-The-Air HDTV

Cable HDTV

Which HDTV Source Should You Choose?

Broadcast Digital Audio

©2001, 2002 Marc J. Rochkind. All rights reserved. Send comments about this site to site@htexplained.com.