The Key to High Definition Domination

High definition has been struggling to gain a solid foothold for a few years now. Most large TVs that are sold are HD but, in my experience as a retail TV salesman, the average consumer does not have them hooked up to high-def just yet. A person could blame this on a few things like lack of programming or just plain ignorance. However, I think that it boils down to the universal language of money.

Cable has done a good job, at least in my area, of making HD a nominal upgrade, but only from the already expensive digital tiers. For $5 bucks more a month, a person can get a few HD stations. Satellite has also been dropping their costs to provide HD to the masses. DirecTV lowered the price of their current HD box; perhaps just to get rid of the old MPEG2's before the MPEG4's hit the street. Dish Network will give you the box if you are a new subscriber. But you still have to spend $12 or $13 a month to get the signal from ether provider. Over-the-air (OTA) signals have been a long time favorite for early adopters of HD but the equipment has always been somewhat expensive.  $249 for the ATSC box and a good $50 or $60 for HDMI/DVI cable is not cheap.

Radio Shack is trying to change that though. 19% of Americans still receive a TV signal at no charge to them via an antenna. But let's say you bought that HDTV last year before built in ATSC turners where standard. Radio Shack is selling an ATSC tuner box with HDMI out for $90! Plug this puppy into that old antennia you have laying around, or hanging on the house, and enjoy HD cheap. The boys over at AVS Forum seem to like it, so I am sure that you will too. This sure does beat buy those old VOOM! boxes of eBay.

[via AVS Forum]

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 3rd 2005 9:43PM]

Dude, that's HUGE! $90 bucks for HDTV?!?! Well, ASTC anyway.

With all the small, cheap LCD HDTV monitors out there, this is the perfect compliment. Why isn't Radio Shack advertising this thing all over NFL football?

Seriously, for those that just don't know, just hooking this bad boy up to the S video input of your normal, analog, non-HDTV tv will improve your reception 500%. If you have crappy cable, you will not beleive how much better a digital ASTC signal is.

I've got the Zenith 32V37 HDTV with the built in tuner, and an antenna, but if I didn't I would seriously get this thing and use it with a regular TV.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 19th 2005 4:38PM]

You would not believe how many people have their sets hooked up via coax or even composite, even sets that have svideo and component jacks. Seriously, there's a huge gap between the capabilities of today's sets and the ability of Joe Sixpack to hook it up correctly.

Also, $50 for a "good" HDMI cable is too high. $250 for a Monster brand uranium coated HDMI cable is totally a scam. HDMI is a digital signal, like the optical or coax digital audio output on your DVD player. A google search will turn up 2m HDMI cables starting around $15. These cheap cables transmit the identical signal as the $250 unobtanium-clad ripoffs. Not almost the same, EXACTLY the same, thanks to the power of 1s and 0s. Look at it like this -- you don't get more (or less) typos and misspellings in my post if you have a more expensive computer. Thanks to digital transmission you get it just like I typed it, exactly, on the cheapest computer which is capable of accessing it that is not defective in some way. Same deal.

Ironically, this ATSC tuner may be cheaper than any of the HDMI cables Radio Shack sells.