[mythtv-users] Is HD worth it?

[William Munson]

Rod Roark wrote:
> When my wife and I watch TV, the problem isn't so much getting the
> clearest possible picture, but rather finding something to watch that
> doesn't suck and that we haven't already seen several times.
>
> How much quality HD programming is out there?  BTW we very seldom
> watch sports.
>
> And to make this more relevant to MythTV: am I correct in inferring
> that DirecTV with HD is not workable with Myth?
>
>   
Fist off, directv and myth do not get along well. IE, no way to capture 
HD from directv. Even their datastream is non-standard so you cannot 
bypass their STB with a DVB card. This means that your only source of HD 
is OTA which is not all bad news. All the networks are running HD 
streams now and most stations include several other program streams at 
the same time. However this means that if you do not currently watch 
much tv that you will still not watch much tv so it really breaks down 
to do you have a real need to see a much clearer picture and sound from 
your rerun of Cheers and CSI. There are several other cost factors that 
need to be thought about such as the new higher powered 
motherboard/processor/ram you will need and the increased storage you 
will want. (HD is usually ~7GB/hour so 300GB is about the minimum hard 
drive partition.) I have 1TB of storage and still run out at times.