It may be the industry’s best-kept secret, but it’s possible to get both high-speed Internet (via DIRECWAY) and DIRECTV’s HDTV service from a single installed dish. The dual dish comes with three connecting cables:

-  A cable to the HDTV satellite receiver.

-  Input and output cables for Internet service. The input and output cables connect into a high-speed modem, which then connects into the computer. You can share DIRECWAY Internet service with more than one computer in your home by either connecting computers to your DIRECWAY service through a home network or purchasing a DIRECWAY modem that can connect more than one computer. DIRECWAY is a godsend for anyone living on an island or remote mountaintop, where you’d never get any other Internet access (ask Danny he knows). Compared to other Internet services, DIRECWAY has a couple of drawbacks:

-  DIRECWAY is a fast Internet service, but it adds a delay in all your Internet activities. Its signals must travel 23,000 miles up to satellites and then the same distance back down. That adds a half-second to every round trip. The delay isn’t significant for e-mail, text messaging, and Web-surfing, but you’d notice it if you play games or use voice over the Internet.

-  DIRECTV and DIRECWAY haven’t been offered together as a special deal. (Cable and telephone companies often give you a discount if they sell you TV and Internet service together.) But that can change. If you’re considering both DIRECTV and DIRECWAY, look for combination deals that may have been created since this article was published. If you intend to install DIRECWAY, ask for the dual dish at a DIRECTV retailer. DIRECTV channels DIRECTV offers eight channels of HDTV broadcasts of popular networks (including HBO, Showtime, TNT, Discovery, ESPN, and Spice use your parental blocking if you need it!), plus a payper- view offering. DIRECTV sells its HDTV for about $11 a month. The company sells its equipment through major retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City and directs customers to the nearest reseller from its Web site.

Movie Machines Have you noticed everything in HDTV boils down to acronyms? Well, in this part, we keep up that tradition, talking about DVDs, DVRs, and VCRs, and we do so ASAP PDQ! DVDs are responsible for the boom in digital video content, just as CDs sparked the boom in digital audio in years past. The low cost, ubiquitous availability, and sheer massive storage space of DVDs revolutionize everything from blockbuster to direct-to-DVD movies it’s even spawned a new business of getting DVDs in the mail, NetFlix. So we spend some time looking at DVDs and DVD players in this part, mainly to bring you up to speed on all this great content you can use to drive your HDTV experience. We also talk about the future great new DVD technology that will bring true HDTV programs to the DVD format. We’ll also talk about the latest and greatest thing to hit consumer electronics, the DVR (digital video recorder). Called TiVo by a lot of people, this product category has transformed how people interact with their TV set. The DVR lets users watch what they want, when they want, even if they missed it. Got that? You will. Combine this with the availability of full season’s worth of popular shows on DVD, and you’ve totally transformed the way TV is watched. Finally, the VCR is still alive and kicking. If you are like us, you’ve got shelves of VHS movies and older VCRs spread across the house. With new HD camcorders and HDTV content over the airwaves, you might want to upgrade to a new digital VHS VCR. We tell you the pros and cons of D-VHS options, and what’s available on the market.

DVDs DVDs probably will be your main source of non-broadcast video content for HDTV viewing. DVDs have gone from zero to 1,000 miles per hour in no time. More than 70 percent of American households have adopted the technology in less than seven years. The biggest questions about DVD don’t have anything to do with today’s DVDs and DVD players.

You can buy a serviceable DVD player for $30 if you don’t mind getting trampled at Discount City or a high-quality unit for $200. The confusion is about the next generations of DVDs the profusion of recordable DVD formats, and the competing high-definition DVD formats. With a few expensive and rare exceptions, you can’t buy HDTV DVDs now, but some standard DVD players are better for HDTV. In this article, we start with the basics of standard DVDs and DVD players, and guide you through the confusing territory of DVD recorders. We follow with all of the form factors (packages) that contain DVD players DVD players are in all sorts of electronics gear. We finish by putting on our Crystal Ball Spectacles to see high-definition DVD formats that may be available soon. Learning about the DVD disc Digital Video Discs (sometimes they’re called Digital Versatile Discs this usage has pretty much disappeared) are simply optical (laser-readable) storage media like a CD (compact disc). Like the CD, the DVD is 12 cm in diameter, and consists of layers the top layers protect the DVD, and the inner layers contain tiny pits that can be detected and “read” by a laser beam. Today’s DVDs can hold at least 4.7 gigabytes of data on one side (compared to about 800 megabytes on a CD). That’s enough for about two hours of standard definition (NTSC) video. Currently, there are two ways to put more video on a DVD:

-  Add a layer: DVDs can be designed with a second layer of data basically another layer of pits at a different depth within the DVD. The laser in a DVD player can focus on this layer and ignore the other layer entirely.

-  Use both sides: DVD data can be on both sides of the disc. DVDs seldom use both sides of a disc to show different parts of a movie. Double-sided DVDs usually are seen when

• A 16:9 widescreen version of a movie is on one side.

• A 4:3 pan-and-scan version is on the other side. DVDs can be both double-layered and double-sided holding up to 18 gigabytes of data. There are a couple of other ways to fit more data onto a DVD. We cover both of these at the end of the article:

-  A new blue laser that can use smaller pits

-  New data-compression systems Dealing with today’s DVDs Today, DVDs usually are the best source for playing prerecorded movies on an HDTV. Here’s why:

-  Distortion-free digital image: It isn’t HDTV, but DVDs offer a clear, colorful and sharp picture at higher resolution than either VHS or PVRs currently offer (with the exception of D-VHS VCRs, which are almost impossible to find).

-  Progressive scan: With a progressive-scan DVD player, your progressive-scan HDTV can be fed a non-interlaced picture (often providing better quality than if your HDTV had to “deinterlace” the picture itself).

-  True widescreen: With discs labeled anamorphic or formatted for widescreen, you can get a full widescreen 16 x 9 picture for your HDTV without techniques that reduce the resolution of the video, such as letterboxing. There’s a wide range of prices for good DVD players from well under $100 up to the thousands for “high-end” models. Essential features We insist on all of these features in a DVD player for any HDTV system. You should be able to find an affordable DVD player with

-  Progressive scan (described in Article 21)

-  3:2 pulldown (described in Article 21) If your monitor has a good 3:2-pulldown system, you can get by without it in the DVD player, but you aren’t likely to find a good DVD player without built-in 3:2 pulldown.

-  Component video outputs (described in Article 3) Useful features Depending on how you use your DVD player, these features can make your HDTV system more useful and convenient:

-  Built-in surround-sound decoder: If your old surround-sound system doesn’t have a built-in decoder for current formats, this can add Dolby Digital and DTS (which we cover in Article 18).

-  Extra audio formats: All DVD players also play audio CDs, but some go beyond the call of duty with these audio formats: • SACD • DVD-Audio • MP3 audio files on homemade CDs

-  Multidisc changer: A multidisc changer is handy if you watch lots of movies (or use it as a CD player for a party). Single disc players are often more reliable than multi-disc changers.

-  DVI-D output: If your HDTV has an otherwise unused DVI-D input, you may consider this feature. Some DVD players with DVI-D outputs feature an internal scaler (described in Article 6) to better match the DVD output to the HDTV. DVI-D is described in Article 3. Deciphering DVD Recorders If you could travel through time back to (say) 1986, you could really blow the minds of anyone you met by saying that less than 20 years later, you could make your own CDs at home. It’s like saying you can make your own jet airliner in the garage. But you can’t even buy a PC these days without a CD burner built-in. In less than seven years on the market, the DVD has also become something you can make yourself:

-  Most DVD burners are in personal computers. Extra capacity makes the DVD format really useful in general with PCs. As quickly as computer hard drives have grown, an 800-megabyte CD now seems puny.

-  You can buy a standalone DVD recorder. It’s an A/V component that can also be your DVD player. Recordable DVDs labeled with an “R” can be written (recorded) once. “RW” discs can be rewritten (changed) thousands of times. A DVD recorder can’t copy most commercial DVDs, which are copy protected. Your DVD recorder can detect signals in the video stream and prevent copying. You can record TV programs, most VHS tapes, and homemade content (such as camcorder tapes). The biggest decision to make when considering a DVD recorder is the format. The consumer electronics industry (and PC industry) doesn’t agree on a standard format for recordable DVDs. There are three competing DVD recording formats (which aren’t always compatible with each other):

-  DVD-R/RW (“DVD dash”) discs are the most compatible with other DVD players, so a DVD-R or DVD-RW disc is most likely to play on your mom’s old DVD player.

-  DVD+R/RW (“DVD plus”) discs are essentially as compatible as DVD- discs (some DVD+ vendors claim more compatibility we think it’s about a draw). DVD+ can record dual-layer discs with double capacity.

-  DVD-RAM discs are mainly for computer data storage, and can be rewritten (like DVD-RW and DVD+RW discs). DVD-RAM is the least compatible format with other players. Finding DVDs in Unusual Places The most common way to buy a DVD player is to get your hands on a standalone DVD but that isn’t the only way to get DVD into your home. DVD players have been slotted into all sorts of different home entertainment gear usually in an effort to save space and money by creating “all-in-one” devices that can feed different signals into an HDTV. Xbox and PlayStation 2 game consoles can be DVD players, too! Home theater in a box The most common “all-in-one” DVD sources are the Home Theater in a Box (or HTIB) systems from just about every major A/V gear manufacturer. These systems usually include

-  An A/V receiver (see Article 18) with a built-in DVD player

-  A complete set of surround-sound speakers (including a subwoofer) for Dolby Digital sound from DVDs and HDTV.

DVD/VCR Some manufacturers squeeze a DVD player and a VHS VCR deck into a single chassis. These devices use one remote control and one power supply, but usually two sets of video outputs that connect to your HDTV:

-  Component video for DVDs (plus S-video and composite) Avoid DVD/VCR units that don’t have component video for the DVD player. You really want be able to use component video to connect the DVD player to your HDTV!

-  Composite video for VHS (or S-Video if the VCR portion supports that system) You can’t record commercial DVDs onto the VCR in these units, because of a copy protection system in DVDs. DVD/PVR The neatest development we’ve seen recently is the integration of DVD players (and particularly DVD recorders) and PVR (personal video recorders Article 12 covers these devices). It’s the latest and greatest for recording TV shows and watching movies the two replacements for the VCR in one chassis! With a DVD recorder and a PVR in the same box, it’s really easy to make archived recordings of TV shows that you’ve recorded on the PVR. You don’t have to worry about permanently deleting programs if you can just move them to a recordable DVD. Peering into the high-def future Today’s DVDs can’t store or play HDTV movies and video, because they were designed when standard definition was “good enough.” Three changes are required for HDTV from a DVD:

-  DVD discs need more storage space. HDTV programming can have up to eight times as much data as the same show in standard definition.

-  DVD players must read these new DVD discs.

-  DVD players must output HDTV signals. Fortunately for HDTV addicts, the major players in the DVD industry are working furiously to develop high-def systems. Unfortunately, these companies have taken separate (and incompatible) paths to DVD HDTV nirvana. With these competing systems, we expect another VHS versus Betamax battle in the market. One format probably will end up “winning” if you pick the wrong system, you’ll have obsolete equipment much sooner than you expected. Don’t be the first on your block to buy one of these machines (unless you’re loaded and don’t mind losing the investment). Give the market some time to sort out. We hope that eventually universal players will play both types of discs. The battle will be over both technologies and standards. You need a new DVD player for the following HDTV formats. However, the promoters of these standards promise their new DVD players also will be compatible with your old DVDs. Blue-laser systems One way to increase DVD capacity is to switch to blue-laser technology. Blue lasers can read smaller pits in the DVD disc than red lasers (that’s because a blue laser has a shorter wavelength than a red laser). Smaller pits mean more pits (and data) fit on a disc. There are a couple of competing blue-laser standards. Blu-ray The largest group of companies supports a blue-laser system called Blu-ray.

The Blu-ray bandwagon includes Sony, Panasonic, RCA, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, and LG. A single-sided Blu-ray disc can hold up to 25 gigabytes of data on a single layer (50 gigabytes on a dual-layer disc), which is more than enough to handle most movies in HDTV resolution. Blu-ray players aren’t widely available as we write. At least one (very expensive) model is available in Japan. HD-DVD High-Definition DVD (HD-DVD) is a blue-laser system supported by Toshiba, NEC, and the DVD Forum (an industry group that promoted the original DVD format). HD-DVD systems use a blue laser with larger pits in the DVD disc than Blu-ray. Larger pits should make HD-DVD discs easier to manufacture, but they hold less data than Blu-ray discs. To make up for it, the HD-DVD folks use more aggressive video compression technologies (like Microsoft Windows Media) so longer movies fit on a disc. Compression basically shrinks the amount of storage space needed by a video by discarding “unnecessary” bits of the video. This can cause some degradation in picture quality how much you lose is subjective, and it depends on which compression system is used. A good compression system is nearly unnoticeable. As we write, HD-DVD players aren’t available from any manufacturers they’re still in prototype stage. Compressed red-laser systems There are a couple of efforts to use video-compression technology to fit HDTV signals onto regular red-laser DVDs. The discs would look like standard DVDs, but a new DVD player would be required to decode these compression methods. Compressed red-laser systems can make HDTV DVD movies in existing factories, without new equipment. It doesn’t make much difference to you, unless using the same factories lowers what you pay for HDTV DVDs. The benefits are for the big studios making the DVDs themselves:

-  Time Warner supports a red-laser system called HD-DVD9, which uses Microsoft Windows Media compression system.

-  A group of manufacturers in China is proposing the EVD compressed system.