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AnalogRocks
Forum Moderator
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 26706
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
TV/Projector: Sony 1252Q, AMPRO 4000G
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 5:59 am Post subject: Cable coverter boxes, the bain of me. |
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I HATE TV converter boxes! There I said it!
Why does the cable industry insist on pushing these when all the new TV's have QAM tuners bult in? Why can't they just send digital cable along like they do with analog cable?
I can plug an analog cable into ANY of my TV's manufactuered since 1986 and surf the channels. NO converter box necessary!
Now if I wanted digital cable* I would have to get a freakin stupid POS converter box! ALL the boxes I have seen here suffer from the same thing, they are the cheapest POS out there and all of them lock up.
Why can't we just run a cable into our TV's and be up and running in no time using the TV's origional remote? It that too much to ask?
* I don't want digital cable especialy because of the converter box issue.
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WanMan
Joined: 19 Mar 2006
Posts: 10270
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 11:33 am Post subject: |
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People cannot do without their boob-tube television. Its an addiction. And addictions control what cowsumers do. Just moo and get mooving.
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AnalogRocks
Forum Moderator
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 26706
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
TV/Projector: Sony 1252Q, AMPRO 4000G
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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| WanMan wrote: | | People cannot do without their boob-tube television. Its an addiction. And addictions control what cowsumers do. Just moo and get mooving. |
DRINK!
It can be an adiction. I can take it or leave it but I can not stand having to use an external box when I have a perfectly good internal tuner. I liek being able to run around all the channels in less than a minute to see what's on.
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ralpharch
Joined: 02 Nov 2007
Posts: 211
Location: Derwood
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 1:18 am Post subject: Re: Cable coverter boxes, the bain of me. |
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| AnalogRocks wrote: |
Why can't we just run a cable into our TV's and be up and running in no time using the TV's origional remote? It that too much to ask?
* I don't want digital cable especialy because of the converter box issue. |
I can do thar on two of my TV's with cable cards - which mycable company doesn't chage monthly for but did require a $25 service call to set up
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AnalogRocks
Forum Moderator
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 26706
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
TV/Projector: Sony 1252Q, AMPRO 4000G
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 4:43 pm Post subject: Re: Cable coverter boxes, the bain of me. |
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| ralpharch wrote: | | AnalogRocks wrote: |
Why can't we just run a cable into our TV's and be up and running in no time using the TV's origional remote? It that too much to ask?
* I don't want digital cable especialy because of the converter box issue. |
I can do thar on two of my TV's with cable cards - which mycable company doesn't chage monthly for but did require a $25 service call to set up |
You must be in the US. There's no cable card here in Canada.
I've been reasearching this a little more. Honestly why must cable companies make things so difficult?
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ralpharch
Joined: 02 Nov 2007
Posts: 211
Location: Derwood
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 5:03 pm Post subject: Re: Cable coverter boxes, the bain of me. |
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| AnalogRocks wrote: |
You must be in the US. There's no cable card here in Canada.
I've been reasearching this a little more. Honestly why must cable companies make things so difficult? |
I believe its by design - and so did US Congress (or was it FTC regulations) when they passed requirements to get the cable companies and similar monopolies out of the STB business.
So that was supposed to be the solution (have cable companies provide the signal but get them out of the specific hardware such as a cable box or card. But it didn't work well as they made crippled cable cards - which don't get the guide information, are only one-way, and only were capable of being installed on a limited number of typically higher-end displays that provided cable card capability. And it appears that cable companies spare no effort in trying to get this to fail. I think they like the security blanket of the STB and the control it gives them. More reason for those of us in US to make sure that this area is wrested from the control of the monopoly.
The new cable cards should be better with two-way capability; but then again so would STBs if there was legitimate competiion or however else (you mentioned QAM tuners but DRM is needed also to satisfy protection of content.
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ecrabb
Forum Moderator
Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 5:19 pm Post subject: |
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The hardware is probably the main reason I've never been interested in cable... Every cableco STB I've ever seen was just pure, unadulterated crap.
I never thought the DISH hardware was much better... They always had the "sign up for two years, get the hardware free/cheap deals", and always seemed like the satellite version of the cable company.
That's why I've been with DirecTV as long as I have. Until the last 3-4 years, DirecTV always had pretty nice Sony or Tivo hardware... Now, they've gone the way of the others and the hardware is about the same commodity junk hardware everybody else uses. It's a little better than that, I guess... But, the UI on my brand-new whiz-bang DirecTV HD hardware isn't as good as the Sony box from the mid-90's. In fact, it looks about that vintage, and the responsiveness is much SLOWER to boot. Yep... You read that right... The 2009 hardware has a shittier design and is slower and less responsive than hardware that was popular 10-15 years ago. I'm not kidding.
The cable/satellite industry needs a disruptive technology player so badly. Not gonna happen, unfortunately.
SC
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AnalogRocks
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Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 26706
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
TV/Projector: Sony 1252Q, AMPRO 4000G
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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Why do they need DRM? We never had it with analog cable. I can hook up 20 VCR's and record 20 channels at the same time. WTF cares? <ranting today? 
I hate converter boxes because I can't do this. You have to have a G/D converter box for every PVR/VCR. It's nothing but a PITA.
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ralpharch
Joined: 02 Nov 2007
Posts: 211
Location: Derwood
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 9:04 pm Post subject: |
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| AnalogRocks wrote: | Why do they need DRM? We never had it with analog cable. I can hook up 20 VCR's and record 20 channels at the same time. WTF cares? <ranting today?
I hate converter boxes because I can't do this. You have to have a G/D converter box for every PVR/VCR. It's nothing but a PITA. |
Well that's the only way I can record my premium content in HD onto my firewire enabled tape deck; because I have that cable card that lets me make a copy once version of the show.
There's no getting around it in the near term; DRM is in place and you have to do the best you can with it. At least I can sneaker the HD-VHS machine to different locations in the house to view it once recorded. there's no way to take the tape between locations though as that would be second generation and verboten.
So for me the cable card provides more archival storage capability compared with the Cable company PVR; but the interface sucks by design using a cable card.
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ecrabb
Forum Moderator
Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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In most cases, DRM has been imposed on us by the content owners. The cable company doesn't care one way or 'tother.
This situation is very similar to Jobs and Co. Everybody used to get pissed at Apple for including DRM. Jobs didn't give a sh*t about DRM - it was the record labels that imposed the DRM. Then, after Apple became the 600-pound gorilla in the marketplace, to break their strong-hold, the labels started making special concessions to other resellers like Walmart and Amazon so only THEY could sell without DRM. At the same time, the record labels were pushing Apple hard to get variable pricing, but Apple wouldn't budge. They wanted to make simple for the masses. Every track is .99. Period. Finally, Apple gave the labels variable pricing so they could get DRM-free (iTunes Plus) in return.
Now Apple is happy - they got what they wanted - DRM-free. The labels? Gross revenue is actually DOWN since they instituted variable pricing (meaning that they raised the price to $1.29 for "popular" tracks.)  IMHO, they got what they deserved.
You can thank the broadcasters and movie studios for almost all forms of DRM: HDCP, the broadcast flag, CSS before that, and Macrovision before that.
DRM is no reason to get pissed at the cable companies - there are plenty of other reasons, though.
SC
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AnalogRocks
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Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 26706
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
TV/Projector: Sony 1252Q, AMPRO 4000G
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 10:54 pm Post subject: |
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We had a great local cable co here back in the day. It got swallowed whole then the one that swallowed it got swallowed by a bigh whale ( Shaw ) that's when things really started to suck.
Back when it was the local guys you could call them and have them come out same day to fix a cable problem. I had the guy come out once and he replaced every piece of co-ax in my signal chain ( of course maybe he didn't want a come back ) I asked him for one more for the 2nd VCR and he gave me one. All my channels were great.
Then the 2nd cable co came in, service was "within a week"
Then Shaw came in and the would show up eventually
Now Rogers has it. SOme of the channels are terible and their digital cable boxes are a joke.
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Mr. Green
Joined: 23 Feb 2007
Posts: 1394
Location: Calgary
TV/Projector: Marquee 9501LC / NEC 9PG+
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| Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 11:23 pm Post subject: |
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| AnalogRocks wrote: | We had a great local cable co here back in the day. It got swallowed whole then the one that swallowed it got swallowed by a bigh whale ( Shaw ) that's when things really started to suck.
Back when it was the local guys you could call them and have them come out same day to fix a cable problem. I had the guy come out once and he replaced every piece of co-ax in my signal chain ( of course maybe he didn't want a come back ) I asked him for one more for the 2nd VCR and he gave me one. All my channels were great.
Then the 2nd cable co came in, service was "within a week"
Then Shaw came in and the would show up eventually
Now Rogers has it. SOme of the channels are terible and their digital cable boxes are a joke. |
\
I don't think I could live without my Shaw (motorola) HD PVR. Love the ability to pause live TV, dual tuner so you can record one channel while watching another (useful when two good shows in same time slot). Had it 2 years, no problems. Too bad Shaw sucks out there. I've always had great service in under 48 hrs (excluding weekends). True you need a box for every TV and the PVR boxes are really pricey, but once you have it, there's no turning back.  Too bad about Rogers, they are terrible.
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