|
Audio Visual Systems | ||
With all the changes going on in audio and video technology, there's an amazing amount of technical info to catch up on if you're looking a upgrading your TV or stereo system. Generally, I don't pay much attention to the Hi-fi world until I'm in the market for something, and then I go out and catch up. If you're not a hi-fi maven who constantly keeps up with the latest innovations, you might be surprised at the revolution in audio and video that's been taking place in the past few years - I am. We've all known the big TVs are out there, but if you're like me, you just don't pay attention to that stuff because you know the prices are just absurd.
Its almost time for those of us who can't afford to live on the bleeding edge of HDTV and 5.1 audio technology to come out of the woodwork. The prices have been steadily falling for several years, and there is finally enough HDTV content out there to give you something to watch. We've been hearing that HDTV is "right around the corner" for years now, and I think it is now finally almost here, at a level that's practical for regular folks.
I had HDTV for a while from Voom on a little 20 inch semi-portable TV/VCR combo. HDTV on a standard TV? Yes, and it was cheaper than cable, but then Voom croaked. I just haven't been ready to spring for the big screen, but I do have 5.1 audio set up with a Sony STR-DE995 receiver, some Bose speakers, and a Polk subwoofer. I had the Voom box set up to send digital audio to my stereo, and they seem to be able to communicate very well in various Dolby digital formats. Most TV shows are just stereo, while some movies have 3.1 and some have 5.1 sound. Since Voom croaked, I switched to DishNetwork. It works, but the video and audio quality is noticeably lower than Voom.
I've sprung for the audio system (quite inexpensive now, compared to just a few years ago), but not yet for the video. I created this page to help me keep track of links and info related to selecting high end audio and TV gear.
Some review articles:
I'm still living in the dark ages as far as TV recording goes - no TiVo here. The main reason is that I just don't watch that much regular broadcast TV, and consequently I don't have much use for time-displaced TV watching. The things I record are primarily movies, and I usually want to put them on the shelf, not just postpone watching them a few hours or days. The commercial systems are designed to prevent exactly that approach, however there are some systems out there for the uber-geeky that allow you to make your own digital recordings and save the files in a format that accommodates burning them to disk:
I haven't done anything with this, partially because of the time involved, and partially because I'm just not that interested in TiVo-like functionality. A potential major advantage of such a system is the ability to record HD format programming, however, it seems that this is at the bleeding-edge of capability for these system. Most users report a considerable amount of tweaking with hardware and drivers required to get clean HD recording. Unfortunately, it appears that the industry and FCC are moving toward a variety of controls that will ultimately make it illegal to manufacture the "open" hardware we have now which allows the HD data to be freely recorded. This seems to be done already with satellite and cable-based HDTV, and the OTA broadcast "loophole" will be closed soon. So you may want to take this into account before investing the time to get your system working for HDTV.
The approach I've taken to digital recording is to just pipe what I want to record into iMovie using a Sony TRV240 as an A/V bridge. Once its recorded, I assemble the clips in iMovie and then pass over to iDVD to burn. Using the new dual-layer burner, I can record up to a 4 hour movie in high quality on a single DVD-R. Yes, I know people compress hours of video onto a CD, but VCDs look horrible. If I'm going to the trouble of recording something, I want it to look good. I have accumilated several hundred DVDs this way - slowly phasing out my old collection of movies recorded on VHS tape.
Another approach is D-VHS recording, which records the HD signal in digital format on a tape that is form-factor compatible with old analog VHS tapes. This allows the machine to play and record VHS tapes, as well as recording digital material. This system brings the "record program, put it on the shelf" capability to HD, but unfortunately not without some issues. These devices typically require a firewire input, which may not be available on satellite dish boxes, and may be encrypted on your cable box for everything except OTA signals. With VHS, you can record anything you can see on your TV, but that isn't so with D-VHS (though you can always use your D-VHS recorder to make a traditional lower-quality analog recording). Also, blank digital tapes are fairly expensive compared to VHS tapes ($10), and pre-recorded D-VHS movies are also quite expensive ($40). The financial ramifications of building a D-VHS library could be quite significant.
The ultimate fate of D-VHS depends on what happens with HD-format material on DVD. It may go the way of the Laserdisk, or it might become the kind of pervasive video format that VHS has been for the past thirty or so years. The convenience of optical media is hard to beat, so I expect that format will ultimately prevail, if its full potential is realized.
Last modified on