[BC] An HD Tuner for $110

[Robert Meuser]

Robert Orban wrote:

>
> I think HDTV is the greatest advance in home entertainment since NTSC 
> color. I find myself watching shows I wouldn't have otherwise watched 
> because of the near feature film production values that are visible in 
> the HDTV broadcasts in the best network series (like the CSI's). I 
> only see artifacts very occasionally and find them far less annoying 
> than the ghosting I get from off-air NTSC or the video noise from the 
> analog NTSC on my cable service.
>
> As far as I can see, the only dark cloud on the horizon is that 
> Hollywood plans to screw early adopters by not making analog high 
> definition outputs available on the upcoming high definition DVD 
> players (and possibly down-rezing the analog outputs of existing HD 
> cable boxes). In Hollywood's brave new world, you need HDMI or you 
> don't get high def, period.
>
> The consumer magazines are WAY behind the curve on this issue; 
> Consumer Reports recently did an issue devoted almost entirely to 
> big-screen TV without mentioning copy protection issues and HDMI even 
> once. I can understand advertiser-supported magazines not making an 
> issue out of this because the fact is that right now, any multichannel 
> receiver you buy is obsolete before you get it out of the box. Smart 
> consumers will wait until a new generation of receivers with a full 
> complement of HDMI inputs and outputs becomes available. And no one 
> should buy a big screen TV that doesn't have at least one HDMI input.
>

I agree and would add build your own PVR on a PC while the parts are 
still available. You can feed HDMI to DVI for an input and then into the 
PVR which can have both digital and analog outputs.  I only have one 
HDMI input, so a high def DVR will be problimatic down the road.

R