DVR – Good for Consumer & Possibly Cable Guys – Bad for Networks and Advertisers!

Again – not specific to the K12 Tech community, but for sure it will affect you moving forword.

I am sure my family and I are very similar to anyone else that currently has a DVR!  These things are great, who has time to watch shows when they are on the networks….  Not sure about you but we are busy and not that I watch too many shows, but without the DVR I would not be able to watch most!

Something else that I am sure we all do is fast forward through the commercials just like we did with the VCR – though a little slower.  Well when you think about – the commercials are paying for those shows and anyone with a DVR are not watching them and it’s a lot of us.  Both the networks and advertisers know this and want to change this behaviour if they can.

I have heard from a few people including my daughter that a GLEE episode was scheduled to record, but ended up not being recorded – which made no sense till I heard it from a few other people??  Makes you wonder if they have that control over the DVR?

Ultimately the Networks want to push you to ON-Demand and take fast forward control away from you so you cannot skip the commercials and I am sure over time that is what will happen.

 FULL ARTICLE – TV networks want to get rid of the DVR

Related Articles

• No more skipping ads? Networks will look to video-on-demand to replace DVRs (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Networks Seek To Remove Commercial Skipping Ability From TV Viewers (tvbythenumbers.com)

Cutting your CABLE or Not!

Most people have issues with Cable and Cell phone providers for one reason or another.  If there was a true alternative I would cut my Cable and use the internet for my TV.  There are lots of products and services out there and more coming all the time.  They have been in the news a lot lately because of Apple’s TV announcement and the talk about Google TV as well.

Since this has received a lot of press the last little while I have been doing some homework and currently the technology is just not there yet to replace the Cable guy.  If you watch current running TV shows – no one service will give you what you want.  If you watch a lot of sports – that is just not available at a acceptable level yet.  I wonder who has this content tied up, is it the networks, cable companies protecting their revenue stream – Someone has to be holding the keys because if companies like Amazon, Apple, Google can’t open the doors, who can or is it just more time needed?

Don’t get me wrong companies like Netflix and Hulu have a huge growing market, but not yet really in the main stream of customers.

Apple TV has only 3 of the top 25 TV shows

CONNECTIONS – Confusing or what – VGA – DVI-D HDMI

Personally I have not had a lot of experience when it comes to the cabling and connectors for Video…  I found this article that was talking about using a LCD TV for your computer monitor and he described the connections very well, so I thought I would post it.  If you wan to read the entire article – Can You Use A TV As Your Computer Monitor?

VGA, DVI-D and HDMI in a nutshell

The differences between these three are a source of a confusion for many, so I’ll do my best here to explain each.

VGA

15-pin VGA port

In the product description for an LCD TV, this port is labeled as D-Sub. On the actual television it’s labeled as “PC” or “VGA”. It is a three-row, 15-pin trapezoid-shaped blue port.

The way VGA works is simple enough to understand. The video card sends a digital video signal, it travels across the wire as analog and is converted back to digital at the monitor. For all intents and purposes this does mean VGA is an analog video signal, even though it started digital and ended digital.

DVI-D

DVI port

There are three major types of DVI. DVI-A, DVI-I and DVI-D. A is analog, I is integrated (analog or digital, single or dual-link) and D (single or dual-link) is digital. The only one you need be concerned with is D.

A DVI-D port on most video cards is white, although sometimes it’s blue. It looks distinctively different from VGA in the respect it’s longer, wider and has crate-like grid for input.

The difference between VGA and DVI-D is that DVI-D addresses the pixels (sometimes known as elements) more precisely on a display; that is why DVI-D looks better than VGA does and has truer color representation.

HDMI

HDMI “Type A” port

Concerning televisions and monitors, the only thing you have to know here is that a DVI-D to HDMI works exactly as it should, as there is no signal conversion taking place from the two since DVI and HDMI are electrically compatible, meaning no video quality loss by doing so.

DVI-to-HDMI adapter

If you ever wondered why there aren’t any HDMI-specific video cards out there for general consumption, it’s because they simply aren’t required since the converter takes care of the job amicably.

When you convert DVI-D to VGA however, that’s a totally different story. You will see video quality and color quality drop by doing that. Reds won’t be as vibrant and in computer use some fonts may “fuzz” out noticeably at smaller sizes.