At long last the SAT-HD100 went out in a puff of smoke... Won't miss replacing those $50 cooling fans. I ran down to Best Buy and bought the H20. I figure it's free after the rebate and I've been with DirecTV so long now I wouldn't change anyway. They even gave me the HD package for three months free, even though there's not enough content there for me to keep it. We'll see when NASCAR goes to ESPN. Don't need the new dish yet - all my locals are OTA.
First impressions:
- Picture quality NOT as good on SD channels. The HD100 did a much better job. Not sure I can get used to this.
- OTA extremely impressive. I'm receiving more OTA channels that I really care for. I'm in SF and I was never able to get NBC11 out of San Jose. Kinda makes all the trouble getting all those darn waivers a moot point now.
- Annoying channels showing up in the guide from local markets based on zip code. Like VHF locals. I don't even have a VHF antenna. Easy to get rid of with the favorites.
- Guides are faster than the HD100. I hated when the HD100 would stop in the middle of everything and update the guide. I miss the HD100 guide's preview window with the selected channel in it. That's how I would surf for something to watch. The H20 keeps the "present" or "currently viewing" channel in the preview window.
- You have to play with the settings a lot to get the display to do it's own thing with SD channels. I've got a panny with the "justified" mode that I like a lot and I didn't like the H20 "stretch" mode. Someday this won't be necessary.
- HD is comparable. No complaints.
Quirks:
I have an annoying problem with the guides and filters on the new H20 receiver.
All the channels I like to watch are in "Custom 1" which I have renamed "DTV". By itself this works just fine. It provides all the channels I have selected for this list.
However, when I bring up the guide and APPLY A FILTER such as "sports channels" (press "guide", scroll down to "sports channels" and press "select")
I get a guide which is labled:
Guide: DTV(fav), Sports Channels(filter)
I end up with a very lenghthy list of every freakin' sports channel on DirecTv, WHETHER OR NOT I RECEIVE THEM OR SUBSCRIBE TO THEM. Some of these are even out-of-market programs I could not get even if I wanted them.
I think the design of this guide/filter would be to "filter" the selected guide by the selected filter. In my case I should see "sports channels" which I have in my custom list.
Have I programmed something wrong or can I expect that we'll see a software update to fix this?
First impressions:
- Picture quality NOT as good on SD channels. The HD100 did a much better job. Not sure I can get used to this.
- OTA extremely impressive. I'm receiving more OTA channels that I really care for. I'm in SF and I was never able to get NBC11 out of San Jose. Kinda makes all the trouble getting all those darn waivers a moot point now.
- Annoying channels showing up in the guide from local markets based on zip code. Like VHF locals. I don't even have a VHF antenna. Easy to get rid of with the favorites.
- Guides are faster than the HD100. I hated when the HD100 would stop in the middle of everything and update the guide. I miss the HD100 guide's preview window with the selected channel in it. That's how I would surf for something to watch. The H20 keeps the "present" or "currently viewing" channel in the preview window.
- You have to play with the settings a lot to get the display to do it's own thing with SD channels. I've got a panny with the "justified" mode that I like a lot and I didn't like the H20 "stretch" mode. Someday this won't be necessary.
- HD is comparable. No complaints.
Quirks:
I have an annoying problem with the guides and filters on the new H20 receiver.
All the channels I like to watch are in "Custom 1" which I have renamed "DTV". By itself this works just fine. It provides all the channels I have selected for this list.
However, when I bring up the guide and APPLY A FILTER such as "sports channels" (press "guide", scroll down to "sports channels" and press "select")
I get a guide which is labled:
Guide: DTV(fav), Sports Channels(filter)
I end up with a very lenghthy list of every freakin' sports channel on DirecTv, WHETHER OR NOT I RECEIVE THEM OR SUBSCRIBE TO THEM. Some of these are even out-of-market programs I could not get even if I wanted them.
I think the design of this guide/filter would be to "filter" the selected guide by the selected filter. In my case I should see "sports channels" which I have in my custom list.
Have I programmed something wrong or can I expect that we'll see a software update to fix this?
