[mythtv-users] DirecTV HTTP Server

[Brian Wood]

On Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:08:44 am Greg Oliver wrote:
> On 11/23/2010 09:43 AM, jmk wrote:
> > On Mon, 2010-11-22 at 12:46 -0600, Greg Oliver wrote:
> >> I have never used getTuned..  Not really a use in it for me..  My
> >> hr21 was tuning yesterday morning, but the script was not
> >> returning success, so I imagine mythtv was not moving on.  I do
> >> not know - did not have time to debug it.
> > 
> > The getTuned function was simply my "is it working" tool. I think I
> > figured out what happened for me. In System
> > Setup->Whole-Home->External Device, the Current Program option was
> > set to Block. Setting this to Allow seems to have fixed the
> > getTuned option. I'm guessing this was initially allowed and the
> > latest DirecTV update set it to blocked. FWIW, I stumbled on the
> > document "DTV-MD-0359-DIRECTV SHEF Public Beta Command
> > Set-V1.0.pdf", which provides a nice detailed description of the
> > service. I'm guessing others have seen it, but if not, it's full
> > of info.
> > 
> > I'm currently using a D11 (via PVR-250), H21-100 (HD-PVR) and OTA
> > (HDHomerun) with Myth. The output from the D11 and H21-100 are
> > decent, but there's really little discernible difference. The H21
> > output simply doesn't compare to the OTA content, which is
> > excellent. Is DirecTV HD really that bad and not much, if any,
> > better than their SD? It seems silly to be paying for HD content,
> > when it's the same quality as what I get from the SD D11. I'm
> > curious if others are seeing different results for DirecTV SD vs
> > DirecTV HD vs OTA HD.
> 
> Yeah, dtv has very few high bitrate HD channels.  A couple ESPns,
> CNN, and a couple discovery channels is it.  All others are crap low
> bitrate upscales..  You're right though - only ESPN and discoveries
> can even come close to atsc..

The term "High Definition" is overused and seldom understood. I've even 
seen it applied to sunglasses.


Apparently DTV thinks "HD" means "anything better than NTSC, no matter 
how slightly". They only assign enough bandwidth to "HD" channels if, in 
their opinion, customers will care, though why people would want talking 
heads (CNN) to be high resolution is beyond me.

Many consumers equate "HD" with "wide aspect", and really don't 
understand what it means, Myth users are a significant exception, but DTV 
does not really care about them, as long as they pay their bills.

Cable systems are just as bad, their "HD" QAM channels are stripped down 
and seldom come near OTA ATSC quality. They want to preserve their 
bandwidth for important things like home shopping channels.


A commercial for my local cable system accused the satellite providers 
of "aggressively processing" their HD channels, but of course that's 
exactly what they themselves are doing.