getting digital cable

[sohdahere]

free one month trial,
anyone have it? is it better? worse?

 

[fatbaby]

quality is sometimes better, but there is a 2 second delay when switching channels and you may get decompression issues

 

[Rkonster]

Originally posted by: fatbaby
quality is sometimes better, but there is a 2 second delay when switching channels and you may get decompression issues

Yeah, the delay is quite annoying. I would get DirecTV if available.

 

[anxi80]

the delay is horrible. just destroys the whole concept of channel surfing. sometimes it has trouble finding channels also and will display a message similiar to 'please wait while we locate the feed/channel' or something like that. and that'll take a few more seconds.

 

[sohdahere]

the delay is horrible. just destroys the whole concept of channel surfing.

this sounds like is its gonna suck,
wut about the channels themselves?

 

[Rkonster]

Originally posted by: sohdahere

the delay is horrible. just destroys the whole concept of channel surfing.

this sounds like is its gonna suck,
wut about the channels themselves?

The channels themselves are fine. The quality is fine. Just the delay is annoying. And it seems to be much more expensive than DirecTV.

 

[anxi80]

Originally posted by: sohdahere

the delay is horrible. just destroys the whole concept of channel surfing.

this sounds like is its gonna suck,
wut about the channels themselves?

they look a little better. if direct tv is an available option, i highly recommend it. lots o' channels, and excellent response time. just may be a tad bit pricer. i guess it all depends on your television watching habits

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: fatbaby
quality is sometimes better, but there is a 2 second delay when switching channels and you may get decompression issues

ugh the delay ticks me off. Though i do like the menu where you can see whats on.

oh and with digital cable i get like 100 more channels then without it. but i dont watch any of them. heh

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: fatbaby
quality is sometimes better, but there is a 2 second delay when switching channels and you may get decompression issues

I had that problem before I went with the HDTV box upgrade from Comcast. It now takes about the same time to switch as the old analog decoder. BTW, the improved box is 2 bucks a month more, so even if you do not have HDTV, it might be worth it if you find the slow channel change objectionable.

 

[wfbberzerker]

road runner digital cable is pretty awesome. aside from having a lot more channels, they also have something called iControl. the movie thing is like pay-per-view, except you can choose any movie you want, and you can pause/ff/rew it. they also have the iControl for some of the regular channels, and you dont have to pay if its for a regular channel. so, pretty sweet.

 

[sohdahere]

cool rewind and fwd on regular channels?!
never heard of that except on Tivo

 

[bozo1]

Originally posted by: sohdahere
cool rewind and fwd on regular channels?!
never heard of that except on Tivo

Time Warner in some areas has a box that acts similar to Tivo. It was only $5/mo. in my area. The menus are no where as nice as Tivo (same on screen guide as your regular digital cable box) and you don't get all of the nice features like Wishlists and stuff but it's cheap.

 

[Ryan]

I've had digital for almost 2 years now and I don't even notice the delay any more 😉

 

[HannibalX]

its "ok"

If you have an HDTV its nice, quality is good but on a regular TV there is no difference I can see. Higher channels take up to 5 seconds to load. I have Time Warner.

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: Trinitron
its "ok"

If you have an HDTV its nice, quality is good but on a regular TV there is no difference I can see. Higher channels take up to 5 seconds to load. I have Time Warner.

well you shouldnt really see a difference. digital is NOT HDTV. it just compresses the signal so you can get more channels.

 

[skriefal]

I've heard that Time Warner's digital services are decent, but when I had AT&T (now Comcast) digital cable last year I was most definitely not impressed. Video quality was visibly worse than analog -- soft picture, few details, very frequent compression artifacts. Audio was also lifeless and sounded like a low-bitrate MP3 (in other words, "yuck").

I hope they've improved since then. There certainly was plenty of room for improvement, and little or no room for them to be any worse than they already were.

And yes, the delay when channel switching was intolerable. Not to mention the glacially slow program guide, which also happened to waste half of the screen with advertising...

 

[HannibalX]

Originally posted by: waggy

Originally posted by: Trinitron
its "ok"

If you have an HDTV its nice, quality is good but on a regular TV there is no difference I can see. Higher channels take up to 5 seconds to load. I have Time Warner.

well you shouldnt really see a difference. digital is NOT HDTV. it just compresses the signal so you can get more channels.

HDTVs look nice than a regular TV in everything whether its an HDTV signal or not... to my eyes