f1_viewer
03-23-04, 03:13 PM
After benefiting from reading all your contributions, I figure it's
time for me to contribute.
Had Voom installed last Thursday, installation was smooth, took
2.5 hours to install the dish, OTA antenna, and drop a new coax
into the house (holding onto my Dish setup for comparison).
Installer seemed very professional, looked like he had done
quite a few of these installs already. He mentioned that he is run
off his feet, Voom installations have quadrupled for his company
since the introduction of Voom's "0 down" offer.
Picture quality:
Satellite HD channels look fantastic! Dolby D sound is good, though
volume does vary from channel to channel, not a big problem.
Satellite SD channels overall don't look too good - quite a bit of pixelisation,
reverted back to my ancient Dish 301 to watch the Malaysian GP on Speed
(s-video connection). I mentioned this to Voom later, and they suggested
switching the video output from the Voom box to see which worked
better - seemed to improve a bit when I switched to 480i and let my TV
do the deinterlacing/scaling itself.
To switch between 1080i/720p/480p/480i/auto-select,
press the red button behind the flap marked "Motorola".
1080i is indicated by the top-most bar on face of the box
lighting up in orange, 720p is the next bar down, and so on.
When all bars are lit the box is in auto-select mode - this did
very weird things when I tried to view the HD channels, looked
like it zoomed into the top left quarter of the picture.
BTW, I could not find any information about the "red" button
in my Voom documentation, looks like they're really trying to
simplify things for the user, but being a techie I like to know
what all the buttons do!
OTA HD channels, haven't watched much, but the little I saw
looked great to me.
OTA SD channels looked good, better than the satellite SD channels, but
obviously varied depending on whether programming was older or newer,
the newer ones looking better. I get almost all local channels where I am,
except for NBC. Voom are having my installer come out and do whatever
is necessary to get all the channels, apparently the cost will be covered
within certain limits - I'll know when the installer comes back out on
03/25.
Last Saturday night all signals were lost, but that was set right after
Voom customer service instructed me to do a reboot of the box.
Overall I'm quite pleased with my Voom experience so far. Voom
customer service have been friendly and helpful, the HD looks
great, and I'm please with the OTA picture quality.
I was expecting the satellite SD to be much better, but since I
don't have a comparable Dish SD setup, it's hard to compare.
I'm guessing from reading these boards that the SD channels are
severely compressed. I would also like to see more channels like
BBC America & USA, I'm hoping they will eventually include these.
time for me to contribute.
Had Voom installed last Thursday, installation was smooth, took
2.5 hours to install the dish, OTA antenna, and drop a new coax
into the house (holding onto my Dish setup for comparison).
Installer seemed very professional, looked like he had done
quite a few of these installs already. He mentioned that he is run
off his feet, Voom installations have quadrupled for his company
since the introduction of Voom's "0 down" offer.
Picture quality:
Satellite HD channels look fantastic! Dolby D sound is good, though
volume does vary from channel to channel, not a big problem.
Satellite SD channels overall don't look too good - quite a bit of pixelisation,
reverted back to my ancient Dish 301 to watch the Malaysian GP on Speed
(s-video connection). I mentioned this to Voom later, and they suggested
switching the video output from the Voom box to see which worked
better - seemed to improve a bit when I switched to 480i and let my TV
do the deinterlacing/scaling itself.
To switch between 1080i/720p/480p/480i/auto-select,
press the red button behind the flap marked "Motorola".
1080i is indicated by the top-most bar on face of the box
lighting up in orange, 720p is the next bar down, and so on.
When all bars are lit the box is in auto-select mode - this did
very weird things when I tried to view the HD channels, looked
like it zoomed into the top left quarter of the picture.
BTW, I could not find any information about the "red" button
in my Voom documentation, looks like they're really trying to
simplify things for the user, but being a techie I like to know
what all the buttons do!
OTA HD channels, haven't watched much, but the little I saw
looked great to me.
OTA SD channels looked good, better than the satellite SD channels, but
obviously varied depending on whether programming was older or newer,
the newer ones looking better. I get almost all local channels where I am,
except for NBC. Voom are having my installer come out and do whatever
is necessary to get all the channels, apparently the cost will be covered
within certain limits - I'll know when the installer comes back out on
03/25.
Last Saturday night all signals were lost, but that was set right after
Voom customer service instructed me to do a reboot of the box.
Overall I'm quite pleased with my Voom experience so far. Voom
customer service have been friendly and helpful, the HD looks
great, and I'm please with the OTA picture quality.
I was expecting the satellite SD to be much better, but since I
don't have a comparable Dish SD setup, it's hard to compare.
I'm guessing from reading these boards that the SD channels are
severely compressed. I would also like to see more channels like
BBC America & USA, I'm hoping they will eventually include these.