Is Clarity too much to ask for?
Is Clarity too much to ask for?
There was an article that went through the Japan style of Techno-fetish not too long ago. One guy who sticks in my mind insisted that he needed a larger Memory Stick; when pressed to explain why, he really couldn't answer the why.
I kind of feel like that guy right now.
Backgrounder: Mark's wanted to upgrade the TV for a while. Something bigger, something of higher quality, something with more features. "Better picture, something that will last for a while, and something that will fit into the built in entertainment center" has been our driving criteria. He thinks he's found one.
Granted, we've realized that the horses before this cart are our components. I.e., our DVD player, our TiVo, our Cable subscription, etc. (I can only imagine what Ted and Leslie and all those other people who Don't have a TV are thinking about us). (Yes, Sangita, Ted and Leslie don't have a TV. They read. They go out with friends. They even spend time working out, walking their dog, and being in the sun. Talk about atavistic! Don't worry, they're not luddites. They'll pop DVDs into their computers and watch them there.)
anyways ...
So we have Digital Cable through www.comcast.net. This digital cable box has a Coax ... co-ax ... output. There is a space on the back plate for an S-Video out, but it's not punched out. I.e., there's a space for a higher quality digital signal out, but they didn't put that plug in this box. Phone person number 1 that I talked to this morning said that there were some digital cable boxes that did have an S-Video out connection. I just called again. Phone person number 2 said that that's only on the HDTV boxes though it might be on the comcast PVRs that are coming up this quarter. Number 2 was very sure that number 1 was wrong because number 2 has to answer that question often. I'm not sure who is right.
Oh, and also, if we added an HDTV box, we'd need to have an HDTV ready TV. It will not work with OLD TVs. Also, our current cable plan is a nice moderately (for cable) priced plan that was a promotional offered through Time Warner Cable before it was assimilated by Comcast ... wait, was it AT&T broadband cable... who can keep up these days. Adding the $5/month for the HDTV box would force a change of plan, and we would see a jump in our cable bill to the $80 or $90 dollar range for something equivalent.
What I am sure of is that our current and lovingly hacked TiVo has an S-Video input, and an S-Video output.
Also, our DVD player has such outputs as well. While it is nicely hackable and can play any region DVD, it predates Progressive scan DVD players. I.e., it can put out a nice S-Video signal, but apparently it doesn't have the newest technology to put out an even Crisper DVD picture. Considering that that's part of the reason that we're looking at a new TV, that almost mandates a new DVD player.
Did I mention that Mark's been looking at a new DVD player too?
Did I mention that it makes no sense to me to have a digital cable box that outputs the video via co-ax cable?
Oh well.
