This was a big TBD when we shipped the plasma TV from US. It is a Panasonic plasma 42'' and if we had sold, we would have gotten $200-$250 or so. Given we had paid $2600 or so when we bought it in 2005, didn't feel we had retrieved our cost. It still gives pretty good picture and has HD. So, even if we use it as a kids Wii station, it would have be ok since the shipping cost would be an increment of $100 or so. To be on the safer side, purchased the Atlona PAL to NTSC converter as well, which added $100 more to the cost. Based on the discussions on the R2I club etc, it seemed like the dish providers in India would be able to provide an HDMI port, which can be directly used with the TV.
After 4 months, family pressure to get TV was mounting. Things are getting to be routine and that makes some TV time available. Thought of setting up the TV with cable first since apartment already had a cable provider. They go by Hathway cable. Called them and they said they would send the person to setup in 30 minutes or so. Since nothing happens in 30 mins here, assumed they would turn up that day. No sign of the person that day.
After two more calls and bit of shouting about "either tell us you can make it or say that you won't be able to come over', they again promised to show up the same day but as they did last time, didn't show up. Decided that it is time to drop them - if they are not showing up for a new connection, you can imagine the level of service they will privide to resolve an issue with cable!
Next option was Tata Sky - had heard good things about these folks and give them a call. Should say that went pretty smoothly. Person was able to provide the 'Diwali' offer of full package for two months free and went with the DVR capable SkyPlus+ option (http://www.tataskyplus.com/why-get-tata-sky-plus-hd.html), which cost Rs. 3999. The box belongs to the subscriber and dish comes along with that. Box and Dish needs to get moved when you move to a new location and Tata Sky has relocation service for Rs 125 or so but I can see that it is not difficult to unmount the dish. You would need their help for mounting since the direction of dish mount is important to get signals.
However, apartment complexes don't allow wires to be drawn outside the building in a visible way and have interior pathway for all of these cables. Again the quality of service people is quite questionable and first thing they did was to drill a hole on the door bottom to get the cable in. I am pretty sure they would be installing cables all over the place in Bangalore but they want to get their job done quickly - thye were planning to get the cable from the dish drawn on the outside and get it over with. Got the electrician of the building involved and he showed the centalized box for the floor from where each unit was suppossed to be connected. But, as it turns out, the actual cable was never laid out to our unit - there was just the place holder metal wire, that was rusted and cut off in few places. So, had to pay Rs 500 to the installers so that they can remove the rusted wires and draw the atual cable from the centralized box to the unit - took good 2 hours for them to complete.
Once the cable was drwan, next step was as simple as conecting it to the DVR and then to TV. DVR had HDMI port and installers said it may or may not work - depends on the brand and how newer the TV is. This TV is from 2005 and definitely not a new one. Connected the HDMI output of DVR to TV and tried - no signal. Switched ports etc but no luck - this TV was not able to handle the direct PAL HDMI input. Time to try out the converter box. The one I had was Atlona CDM 660 (http://www.atlona.com/ATLONA-MULTI-SYSTEM-PAL-NTSC-VIDEO-CONVERTER.html)
Connected the Video-Out of DVR to Video-In of TV and changed to Video-1. Voila - there was the setup screen. Quite noisy and lines were showing up but after a bit of resolution changes, video quality was quite good. Not much setup was required but conversion lag was showing up in some channels. When there is a fast movement on the screen, you can see the image movement zig-zagging or freezing a bit. Overall, quality is not too bad but HD quality is quite questionable - even the service people weren't too happy with the HD quality we were getting.
Service technician mentioned that quality was very good with the direct HDMI converters. That is the next TODO item - get a Atlona AT-HD560 Pal HDMI to NTSC HDMI Converter (http://www.amazon.com/Atlona-AT-HD560-HDMI-NTSC-Converter/dp/B0011MOVN8), which costs $160 on Amazon and now needs to get brought to India (yes, it is no more 'click on Amazon and get it delivered to door step :-( ). I had thought of buying this model but wasn't sure the cable/dish guys here would be able to provide an HDMI output. Seems like that is fairly common and buying a direct HDMI converted is pretty safe.
Update 05/02/2011:
Finally received the long-awaited Atlona CE AT-HD560 Video Scaler thru' a friend who was coming back from US. Connected the HDMI Out of Tata Sky DVR thru' Atlona to HDMI Input of TV and it worked perfectly!!! Hoorrayy!
Setup was simple - connected and pressed the 'Factory defaults' and that's it - I had very clear HD signal on the TV. I couldn't read the Channel Guide screen text clearly with the old converter but this was a charm. Many HD channels and perfect quality and no conversion lag. Quite happy with this converter and it is definitely worth the money ($160 + Shipping)
Appreciate your feedback and comments, please leave a comment if you found this post useful (or not!) ...
After 4 months, family pressure to get TV was mounting. Things are getting to be routine and that makes some TV time available. Thought of setting up the TV with cable first since apartment already had a cable provider. They go by Hathway cable. Called them and they said they would send the person to setup in 30 minutes or so. Since nothing happens in 30 mins here, assumed they would turn up that day. No sign of the person that day.
After two more calls and bit of shouting about "either tell us you can make it or say that you won't be able to come over', they again promised to show up the same day but as they did last time, didn't show up. Decided that it is time to drop them - if they are not showing up for a new connection, you can imagine the level of service they will privide to resolve an issue with cable!
Next option was Tata Sky - had heard good things about these folks and give them a call. Should say that went pretty smoothly. Person was able to provide the 'Diwali' offer of full package for two months free and went with the DVR capable SkyPlus+ option (http://www.tataskyplus.com/why-get-tata-sky-plus-hd.html), which cost Rs. 3999. The box belongs to the subscriber and dish comes along with that. Box and Dish needs to get moved when you move to a new location and Tata Sky has relocation service for Rs 125 or so but I can see that it is not difficult to unmount the dish. You would need their help for mounting since the direction of dish mount is important to get signals.
However, apartment complexes don't allow wires to be drawn outside the building in a visible way and have interior pathway for all of these cables. Again the quality of service people is quite questionable and first thing they did was to drill a hole on the door bottom to get the cable in. I am pretty sure they would be installing cables all over the place in Bangalore but they want to get their job done quickly - thye were planning to get the cable from the dish drawn on the outside and get it over with. Got the electrician of the building involved and he showed the centalized box for the floor from where each unit was suppossed to be connected. But, as it turns out, the actual cable was never laid out to our unit - there was just the place holder metal wire, that was rusted and cut off in few places. So, had to pay Rs 500 to the installers so that they can remove the rusted wires and draw the atual cable from the centralized box to the unit - took good 2 hours for them to complete.
Once the cable was drwan, next step was as simple as conecting it to the DVR and then to TV. DVR had HDMI port and installers said it may or may not work - depends on the brand and how newer the TV is. This TV is from 2005 and definitely not a new one. Connected the HDMI output of DVR to TV and tried - no signal. Switched ports etc but no luck - this TV was not able to handle the direct PAL HDMI input. Time to try out the converter box. The one I had was Atlona CDM 660 (http://www.atlona.com/ATLONA-MULTI-SYSTEM-PAL-NTSC-VIDEO-CONVERTER.html)
Connected the Video-Out of DVR to Video-In of TV and changed to Video-1. Voila - there was the setup screen. Quite noisy and lines were showing up but after a bit of resolution changes, video quality was quite good. Not much setup was required but conversion lag was showing up in some channels. When there is a fast movement on the screen, you can see the image movement zig-zagging or freezing a bit. Overall, quality is not too bad but HD quality is quite questionable - even the service people weren't too happy with the HD quality we were getting.
Service technician mentioned that quality was very good with the direct HDMI converters. That is the next TODO item - get a Atlona AT-HD560 Pal HDMI to NTSC HDMI Converter (http://www.amazon.com/Atlona-AT-HD560-HDMI-NTSC-Converter/dp/B0011MOVN8), which costs $160 on Amazon and now needs to get brought to India (yes, it is no more 'click on Amazon and get it delivered to door step :-( ). I had thought of buying this model but wasn't sure the cable/dish guys here would be able to provide an HDMI output. Seems like that is fairly common and buying a direct HDMI converted is pretty safe.
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| Atlona CDM 660 Back view |
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| Atlona CDM 660 Front view |
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| TataSkyPlus DVR Box Front View |
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| TataSkyPlus DVR Box Back View |
Update 05/02/2011:
Finally received the long-awaited Atlona CE AT-HD560 Video Scaler thru' a friend who was coming back from US. Connected the HDMI Out of Tata Sky DVR thru' Atlona to HDMI Input of TV and it worked perfectly!!! Hoorrayy!
Setup was simple - connected and pressed the 'Factory defaults' and that's it - I had very clear HD signal on the TV. I couldn't read the Channel Guide screen text clearly with the old converter but this was a charm. Many HD channels and perfect quality and no conversion lag. Quite happy with this converter and it is definitely worth the money ($160 + Shipping)
Appreciate your feedback and comments, please leave a comment if you found this post useful (or not!) ...
thanks for the posting, found it very useful ...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post. The pics helped to get an idea on how the DVR looks.
ReplyDeletePls post when you are getting full HDMI.
Kris.