Still waiting for Dish’s software update so that I can get my HDMI input working again. In the meantime, the component is working pretty good and it does make the switching easier on the amplifier. Now I only need one remote to go from Dish to DVD. (That’s because when I bought the amplifier I didn’t feel like paying an extra $400 to get the Denon that had HDMI switching.) So now the Dish and the Playstation (which doubles as my DVD player) all route through the Denon. Used to be that the Dish ran straight into the LCD’s HDMI input. I still say the HDMI’s cleaner, but I’d bet I couldn’t tell if the two weren’t side-by-side. Maybe I’ll spend that saved $400 on a new center speaker…
The Dish is cool in that it can decode over the air HDTV signals and integrate the stations into the normal schedules, etc. It’s just like they’re regular satellite channels, although they show up as a different color in the guide. When I record something I generally like to record off of the local signal. I figure it’s free, it’s probably less compressed, and it’s a couple seconds earlier (since it doesn’t have to go up and down hundreds of miles before it gets to me). That last part is a little silly, I admit, but it just seems more pure to go with the over the air signal. The problem is that my reception isn’t always so great. I have an old-school seven or so foot antenna wedged into the attic, but still (according to the Dish receiver) my signal strength only rates about a 66 out of 100 for most over the air channels. Anything below 60 or so won’t even tune in via the Dish (there’s an error message instead).
So when a station’s reception isn’t great it’ll show up in the picture. I’ll see lots of lazy pixels or smeared images. Sometimes it’s no big deal, but sometimes it makes the show unwatchable. It’s unpredictable. I’d just record the locals via the Dish’s retransmission because it’s cleaner, but I’m not sure how to set that up (the automatic recording seems to prefer the over the air signal) and it just feels — wrong. Luckily, a second-hand Radio-Shack signal amplifier inserted before the antenna splits off into each room of the house solved the problem. A low-tech solution to a high-tech problem.