Thursday, February 13, 2003

Which Channel for My Channels? One side effect of moving is that you are forced -- er, I mean you are given the opportunity -- to change some of the services you use. I'm stuck on the issue of TV service. Our "new" house is served by ATT Broadband, offering digital cable TV service. Digital, schmigital, I say; we've got Charter Communications digital service here, and the picture quality often fails to impress (it certainly doesn't live up to the hype). I'm seriously considering going with satellite TV; the seller of the house has a dish, which first got me thinking about it. Aside from the high startup costs, satellite looks like the way to go fr me, and here's why: We got an awesome Samsung 16:9 HDTV for Xmas (thanks, Mom, for most of it!), which features a still uncommon DVI input. DVI is a digital video interface also found on Macs and iMacs, I believe. Anyway, Samsung also makes an HDTV receiver for DirecTV that has, you guessed it, a DVI output. It also accepts an antenna for reception of local broadcasts, including so-called "off-air" digital/HD broadcasts. Unless somebody has a DirecTV horror story or two, I'll soon be a subscriber. 11:43:28 PM    comment []