I am trying to decide between the Sony 65WS550 or the 65WS510. The biggest differences seem to be the integrated tuner and the inclusion of the i.Link port in the 550. The tuner seems worthless since I will be getting a required box from my cable company for the HDTV decoder, so it really comes down to the i.Link port.
If I understand correctly, it will mainly be used in future devices to record unscrambled signals? If my receiver (Yamaha- RX-Z9 or Elite 59TXi) has an i.Link port is that good enough? In other words can't I hook the recording device up directly to the receiver? So the ultimate question, can anyone sway me to spend the $700 difference for the WS550?
Thanks
Anonymous
Posted on
also has fire wire or "IEE 1394" ports, memory stick inputs. i thought the firewire was for recording HD, since there copyright protecting the DVI
january 1, 2007 the built in tuner will work for your regular cable the exact way your analog tuner works for cable now, probably need a box for premium channels. its like cable tv all over again, remember the cable boxes you had to rent if you didn't have a built in one? kinda the same thing
also if you plan on going through your cable company, most cable company's don't send all (some don't send any) of the locals, so if you want locals you'll need a off-air tuner anyways. i think like mediacom sends NON, charter sends 2, not sure of the others.
cable companies are only good for stuff like espn hd, inhd, inhd 2 discovery hd, hd net, HBO HD, SHOW HD, TMC hd (starting in december) and a coulpe more, of course not every cable company offers all these
Anonymous
Posted on
also, directtv, dish network are the EXACT same, your locals come over the air, not through the dish, but direct tv's box has a antenna input for the over the air stuff, i don't think the cable companies (which use the motorola dct 5100) have a ANT IN for over the air, can anyone confirm this?
Derek
Posted on
Actullay cable, even digital cables, usually send local channels in thier analog form. I have DirecTV and they send local channels (for $5) in thier digital form.
Firewire is not worth the $700 mostly because the manufacturers cripple the jacks. Most are uni-directional meaning data can only be sent in one direction. In theory you should be able to record "from" your TV whatever is on screen, but I don't know of any manufacturers that allows it. Only VCRs and DV-camforders can do it, not any of the sources (DVD, HDTV-tuners, TVs). We wont even get into iPods and harddrives. Firewire on computers is MUCH more versitile but the movie industry has castrated the protocol for consumer electronics. Try connecting 127 devices and see what happens. There is still some incompatability between manufactures AND firewire 400 doesn't have enough bandwidth to actually pass an uncompress HDTV signal. DVI can with ease.
Here is a perfect oppertunity for manufacturers to use a single, small connector to daisy-chain all of your audio-video devices togetther and they wont do it. I wouldn't waste the $700. You can buy a top of the line DirecTV/HDTV tuner for that much.
Since you are going to use cable have a look at some of the new integrated HDTVs from Panasonic. If your cable company uses the same encoding system you wont need a cable of HDTV set top box to receiver HD cable of over the air programming. I'm sure others will follow.