Intergra 912

[kcroyaljosh]

I'm new to the FTA/MPG2 stuff, is there a lot of hd content to warrant the purchase of the integra 912hd receiver? Or is there another hd mpeg2 receiver I don't know about?

Josh Clevenger

 

[anik]

I'm new to the FTA/MPG2 stuff, is there a lot of hd content to warrant the purchase of the integra 912hd receiver? Or is there another hd mpeg2 receiver I don't know about?
Josh Clevenger

Quali-TV makes a couple of High Definition receivers that are mostly sold in Europe. The only place I know of that sells them in the U.S. is an outfit called Rick's Satellite.

My question is, where are you finding the Integra 912hd for sale? When I was looking around a few months ago, the only places I could find that had them in stock wanted an outrageous amount of money for them.

One of the big mysteries to me is why other manufacturers haven't jumped on this market. Pansat and Fortec, for example, keep coming out with new FTA receivers but none of them are compatible with HD (at least the new Pansats don't lock up when you tune across a HD signal!). It's strange because I've noticed that more and more content, especially the occasional sports feeds, is in HD.

My wish list would be for a receiver that can decode normal FTA, the HD signals, the 8PSK signals used by CTV, and whatever new format is being used by the Alaska stations on AMC-7 (dang I miss those!) Realistically, the first two are apparently doable (not sure about the third), but few manufacturers seem to want to play in that market, even though analog TV is going away in just 3-4 years (and by then I expect there will be a WHOLE lot less standard definition up there).

For example, Pansat recently came out with a dual tuner receiver/PVR but there's no way I'd spend $500 for something that won't receive the HD feeds at this point in time. You may have noticed that the prices of standard definition TV's have dropped like a rock over the past few months, because soon a requirement will take effect that all new TV's (over a certain size) have digital tuners. The country is slowly but surely moving to HD and the FTA satellite makers just aren't keeping up, and I'm not sure why.

I get the impression that most people who mange to receive FTA HD today do so by using a card in their computer and watching the programs on their PC, which may be fine for the hobbyist, but doesn't really work for family viewing. And besides that, I've yet to see a site that gives clear instructions for setting up such a system. As far as I can tell, you buy a card, then hope you can get it working. I tend to be a visual learner, so I really need to see a site that shows the procedure for setting up one of these step-by-step, preferably with pictures or even streaming video!

The big question, though, is how do you get the decoded signals off the computer and onto your regular or high-def TV? May seem like an obvious thing for those that have done it, but not so obvious if you haven't!

 

[kcroyaljosh]

I emailed integra directly and they told that they would sell me the 912 for $899 plus shipping which was $25.

 

[Wayn23]

To get video from the computer is easy, most new video cards work great. The video card in my computer that I am using has DVI,VGA and component outputs that will work for HD and you can use the
s-video out for a SD TV, some people use stand alone players to watch the video like The Roku and use TSReader to stream to it.

One thing nice is that you can re-encode to WMV or Mpeg 4 H.264 and fit stuff on a standard DVD for later playback on a computer.