Hdtv Listings

Beware of HDTV. You won't know what you're missing till you get a chance to watch it for a while. And when you do see it, you'll be struck by how much better it looks than Standard Definition TV (SDTV), and it will be all over for you. You'll have been to the mountaintop: From now on watching your old TV will seem like going back to a swamp.

Launched with much fanfare last year by a subsidiary of Cablevision, VOOM is the first satellite provider to deliver high-definition content--and lots of it. The result is stunningly beautiful visuals served up through a clumsy interface. But given a choice between that and a wonderful UI serving up crummy content, we'll take the great content any day of the week.

Four of us from the ET crew (Loyd Case, Jason Cross, Jim Louderback, and Dave Salvator) spent quality time with the VOOM setup in our HDTV test lab watching on two newly released HDTV monitors, a 30-inch LCD and a 42-inch plasma panel. We did like much of what we saw, but VOOM doesn't quite get it all right.

If you've invested in an HD-capable television, savoring HD content is the way you make your investment pay off. Read on to see if VOOM should be in your future. Dave Salvator gets us started with his take on VOOM's content, remote control EPG, and OTA (over the air) capability.

Let's begin with what VOOM does right--content. Movies and sporting events look beautiful in HD, and most of VOOM's other content looks very good, as well. But the quality of HD content can vary greatly, sometimes through no fault of the content carrier. A bad transfer from film to digital or less-than-pristine film stock used for the transfer can lead to visually noisy HD movies. But when it's done right, movies look amazing--sometimes even better than a good DVD. When you display 720p content on a 720p-native TV, you get over twice as many pixels as you do with native DVD resolution of 480i. We caught the original Terminator movie on one of VOOM's movie stations, and overall image quality was nearly impeccable.

Sporting events in particular look fantastic in high definition. Yacht racing looks great, and even curling gets a little interesting when broadcast in HD. But the real winners are sports like soccer, baseball, and football. Another upside is that on-screen text is much easier to read. Text on SDTV can look acceptable, but it's markedly easier to read in HD broadcasts. Channel-changing latency is pretty minimal, with most switches requiring about 2-3 seconds before the new station is locked in and playing, which is fairly typical for satellite services.

We have noticed that VOOM content arrives at different rates of compression. Heavily compressed content will show the usual MPEG-2 block-based artifacts and posterization in large areas of the same color, such as the sky. We can't be sure how much a particular MPEG-2 stream is being compressed (or recompressed), and whether the content comes to VOOM in this form, or whether VOOM is recompressing to eat less transmission bandwidth from its satellites. But wherever it's occurring, it's clear that some of VOOM's HD content isn't coming in at anywhere near the rated 25Mbits/sec bit-rate.

VOOM's receiver box can pick up terrestrial, off-the-air (OTA) HD signals so that you can get your local programming available in HD, assuming you can receive the signal. The newest versions of the Motorola-manufactured receiver can auto-scan the OTA HD band, and find all tunable stations, though the unit we tested lacked this feature. Instead, an installer selects a ZIP code, and the box auto-configures to try to receive the known OTA stations in your area, though that doesn't guarantee that you'll receive them.

Our office building has a decent line-of-sight shot to San Francisco's main OTA transmission tower, so we were able to get in most of our local terrestrial HD broadcasts. VOOM's EPG grid doesn't include listings for all local stations, though, and most San Francisco HD stations unfortunately don't include PSIP data. (PSIP--Program and System Information Protocol--is the standard for embedding program information in the digital TV signal.) The result is that you have to find local OTA HD content sort of by Braille.

The VOOM EPG grid does leave quite a bit to be desired, with the main problem being it's simply too small. When you invoke it, it covers the full screen and displays a thumbnail of the currently tuned station's video. But the grid only occupies half the screen, requiring a tremendous amount of scrolling if you want to see what's listed. VOOM does place some program information text in the upper-left corner of the screen, but then the rest of that corner is occupied by the company's logo and marketing mantra. (If I'm looking at this screen, I don't need to be sold on VOOM—I've already bought it.) In addition, the local listings are incomplete. We also found out that whatever EPG data the receiver caches doesn't remain in the receiver if you unplug it. After a hard reset--something we only occasionally had to do--re-acquiring new EPG data takes longer than it should. There doesn't seem to be a button that will manually download new EPG data now.

The remote itself isn't terrible, but it is pretty clumsy. There's a single VOOM button that invokes the EPG, and from there you can sort channels by All, Presented by VOOM, and All HD. You can view content by category (Movies, Sports, etc.), but there's no search function. Given the amount of content VOOM can serve up, an easy search capability needs to be readily accessible.

When I fired up VOOM and started channel-surfing, the first thought in my head was, "Wow, what a lot of hi-def shows!" That pretty much summarizes VOOM in a nutshell. It's standard satellite TV, but with lots of HD stuff. If you have an HDTV and you're starved for HD content, that's great.

As I continued to channel-surf, the weak spots of VOOM's service quickly became apparent. Namely, I was channel-surfing. I never want to do that again. I'll readily admit to being a TiVo devotee, and I really have no desire ever to watch TV without one. A different brand of quality DVR would suffice, but VOOM doesn't offer that, either. I looked through VOOM's awkward and somewhat clunky program guide, glancing at all the cool HD shows I would love to watch, but not at exactly the time they were coming on the air. Sorry VOOM, but I have to say "no TiVo, no sale."

VOOM is hardly alone here. Unless you have DirecTV or Dish Network and want to shell out $1,000 for their HD satellite-box-and-TiVo hybrid, you have little choice. A PC equipped with an HD tuner card can capture and record over-the-air HD programs, but there's usually no program guide, so that's really a pain. VOOM says it will have a DVR offering later this year, but if they follow DirecTV's model and overcharge the early adopters, that's little consolation. Some cable networks are supplying HD DVRs for modest rental fees, but those haven't percolated nationwide yet.

The fact of the matter is this: I don't have HD service at home, and I won't until I can get it with a good DVR. I have an HD-capable TV, but I'd rather watch standard definition TV on it with my TiVo than watch hi-def stuff without. Freeing myself from the shackles of the TV schedule is just that important to me. I don't necessarily need a TiVo brand DVR, though I like their interface better than any other. VOOM simply reminded me that, HD or not, it takes exactly 60 seconds of channel surfing to remind me why I hate watching TV without a DVR.

VOOM needs to improve two things to really hit a home run. The first area is ergonomics. The on-screen guide is really more akin to those scrolling, non-interactive "guides" offered on analog cable TV. When you select a show, then go back to the guide, it starts at the top again. That's ridiculous in this day and age.

Also on the ergonomic side is the issue of local HD broadcasts. The various satellite services have solved the problems of local analog content through the satellite. This needs to happen with local HD content. It's really pretty neat that VOOM will install the terrestrial antenna for you – but what if you're not in a location that receives a good terrestrial signal? (To be fair: this criticism applies to the competing satellite services, too.)

The other big deal is the DVR. VOOM really needs a DVR, with a well-conceived electronic program guide. The company has ambitious plans in place: VOOM has shown prototypes of networked receivers capable of playing recorded shows from a central DVR. But as it stands today, I'd be reluctant to recommend VOOM over, say DirectTV or Dish Network.

I would recommend that people with the willingness to spend the dollars add VOOM to their TV mix in addition to an existing service. The reason? VOOM's nifty additional content. Note that I'm only recommending this if you have an HD display capable of showing off the content. The VOOM-unique content is pretty slick, and pretty compelling.

The bottom line: VOOM has enticing content, but needs improved ergonomics and a DVR. Once those issues are addressed, VOOM will be the HD content carrier to beat.

Remember that old Romantics song "What I Like About You"? As I write down a summary of my experiences with VOOM, it's running through my head—replace "You" with "VOOM" and you get the picture.

Because I do, in fact, really like the VOOM service. I certainly wouldn't adopt it as my only TV service until a PVR is available (preferably for under $300), but it's awesome—and sooo much better than DirecTV's High-Definition service that it's not even funny.

So what do I like specifically? All the frickin' HD content, that's what. Sure, there are a gazillion specific movie channels, devoted to everything from gunslingers to monsters—and that's just in the base service. HD versions of HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, The Movie Channel and Encore are also available for an additional fee. As I write this, I can choose among the horribly campy 1996 movie "Humanoids From the Deep" (which answers the age-old question, what would happen if we crossed Salmon with Jack the Ripper), "The Magnificent Seven Ride", "The Cars That Ate Paris", and Gerard Depardieu's classic "Cyrano De Bergerac." All in HD. Over on the paid channels, Seabiscuit, Mr. Holland's Opus, and a host of others were playing in glorious HD as well.

But it's not just movies. I'm a huge sports fan, and VOOM's been offering the Olympics in HD, including cable-only channels owned by NBC, such as USA and MSNBC. Other sports offerings include ESPN HD, a World sport channel that's showing soccer right now, and an X-games-inspired HD channel called Rush. There's even a live-art channel featuring cool images to saturate your set with when you're not watching.

DirecTV's HD service delivers five or six channels, including two not offered by VOOM –Mark Cuban's HDNet and HDNet Movies. But neither is any great loss, except if you really need to see oodles of NASCAR and Mavericks games.

VOOM includes almost all the regular cable channels you'd want, too, including Starz, the Family Channel, and more. In fact, if they'd just release the darn DVR, I'd really consider tossing DirecTV on its ear—except for one thing: It doesn't have the custom sports channels yet that show out-of-market football and baseball games. As a transplanted East Coaster, if I don't get my Mets and Patriots fix, I'm lost.

But I also have the Cure song "How Beautiful You Are" running through my head. Despite all the great content, it's the lyric "and this is why I hate you" that I can't shake. And that applies to VOOM too.

I hate that now that we have VOOM installed here in ExtremeTech central, productivity has gone down by at least 25%. Maybe it's just the Olympics, but I always seem to catch someone in the HD lab doing "research."

I also really detest the remote, and the on-screen navigation. The remote first. It's big and bulky, which is OK, but terribly unresponsive and lacks any feedback. Unlike TiVo—which beeps each time you click something, the mushy VOOM remote doesn't let you clearly know when you've selected something. And the buttons themselves repeat when you hold them down, but the delay is too short. I often found myself trying to select one item, and mistakenly selecting the item below it because of the overly short repeat-delay.

The on-screen guides are also poorly laid out, and the electronic programming guide is terrible. It's impossible to see a more than a half-hour's listings for any single channel, and only five channels can be displayed at a time. What happened to the old-fashioned grid? Where were the interface designers, or even the regular TV-watching testers?

There's woefully little program information about each show. Only a few lines of text—about 75 characters—of a program's description get downloaded from the satellite. That left many descriptions cut off in the middle, even when I used the "info" key for more information. (Dish Network has this problem, too.)

Downloading EPG information can take forever. We frequently had to unplug the receiver to get it to re-sync with the satellite, and every time we did this, all the EPG data was gone. It would often take 15 minutes or more for some data to be transmitted, and a full load took even longer. Where's the local cache?

Despite all these problems, VOOM delivers a great service for HDTV users. I wouldn't rely on it for everything, but it's a great add-on for the HD fan who's outgrown over-the-air signals. And if they could just get the NFL and MBL sports packages, a PVR, and a decent EPG and remote I'd consider chucking DirecTV for it, except for one thing:

It's really expensive.

Not the service itself, which at about $50/month for around 100 channels of mixed HD and SD content, or $90 a month for Showtime, HBO and more. No, it's the equipment and installation that's so pricey. The receiver itself is $500, or $199 installed with a $10/month to rent. Additional receivers will cost you another $300 each plus another $5/month fee. Compare that to less than $100 for a standard DirecTV receiver, or around $300 for an HD version. Note, though, that VOOM does run periodic promotions, offering reduced pricing for the initial hardware and setup.

Until the prices drop and the interface improves, VOOM remains a niche system. It's good for adding on to a traditional cable or SAT environment, but probably not ideal for a multi-TV solution by itself.

All told, VOOM's content is solid, and well-produced HD content delivered via VOOM is top-shelf.

Our main gripes with it have more to do with the EPG grid interface, and the remote control. Some of these issues are software-addressable, and VOOM will likely make improvements to its software over time.

Unfortunately, VOOM doesn't yet offer a DVR receiver box that lets you record HD content, though one is supposedly slated for release later this year. If Dish's woes in getting an HD DVR to market are any indicator, building one of these isn't a trivial task. And given the needed hardware to tend to processing and storage chores, neither will the price-tag.

For now, VOOM offers up stellar HDTV content, though the price of admission is pretty steep if you order direct from VOOM's Web site or 800 number. Like the other satellite TV providers, VOOM also sells through local distributors. We've seen some better deals through that channel, so it may be worth checking out if you're thinking about adding VOOM to your entertainment mix. If it's HD you crave, then VOOM's got it.

Product: VOOM HDTV Satellite Service Summary: VOOM delivers terrific HD content that will make your HDTV come alive. But to get at it, you’ll have to wrestle with a clumsy remote, and a clumsier EPG interface. The defects are tolerable, but we’d like to see the up-front costs come down a bit. And VOOM really needs to ship its DVR, because we’re all hopeless DVR addicts. PRO: Lots of rich and lush HD content, served up right to your HDTV. CON: Remote control is bulky and clumsy; EPG needs a redesign that puts more data on the screen at once; no DVR yet; no search capability. Price: Direct: $199 installed, $9.50/month equipment fee, or $499 installed (no monthly equipment fee); $50/month basic subscription, $90/month for the premium subscription that adds HBO, Cinemax, SHOWTIME UNLIMITED, and STARZ! PlusPacks (called “Va Va VOOM”) (But check local distributor pricing). Rating: Company: www.voom.com

Disclosure: VOOM has provided ExtremeTech/PC Magazine with a receiver box, satellite dish, and a Va Va VOOM subscription package that we use to review HDTVs for both ExtremeTech and PC Magazine.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.

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