finkelsj wrote:The problem I have is that's around $600 a year. Let's see, that's about 6 Burke's or maybe 20 tweaked Shaw's or 10 Shaw's and 20 Generations. Maybe even 3 Burke's and 30 books, which would occupy me for the year.
I don't think going without TV is for everyone, but based on what folks have told me it still sucks. Oh yeah, I design networks that support cable modems, cable TV and cable telephones for a living and used to work in satellite signal distribution. So it's not like I know anything about it
Actually, I agree with you. I was answering assuming that Dale really wants more than the basic channels, and thinks they're of value to him, but I have to admit: even though I work in the industry, and the cable runs right to our house, we've never bothered to have it hooked up. Rabbit ears at both sets get us the local news - VCR and DVD player give us movies.
It's amazing how many folks I know who work on the engineering end don't bother getting the service themselves. Though I think HDTV is going to be worth it - movies look awesome on a high-resolution 16:9 display.
I see I also should have allowed for satellite TV's weather issues (though that's much more a northern problem - he may get lots of rain, but I doubt if Dale's going to get lots of blizzards or ice storms, which can really affect a dish).
And one other thing I should mention, which often surprises folks new to digital TV: it takes a noticable fraction of a second to change channels, because of the way digital TV encodes the data.
(I could put a mini-lecture on MPEG encoding and I-, B-, and P- frames here - essentially, a complete reference frame is sent only a few times a second - the rest of the time, partial frames with changes from the reference are sent. And you need at least one complete reference frame before you decode the image.)
