Received my Sony DHG-HDD250 DVR

[dlhoppe]

So far I like it.  Setup was a snap.  Seems very quiet. The menu system is very intuitive. Didn't need to read any step by step instructions at all. It's just very apparent how to use the menus.  

It  has a nice array of screen (aspect ratio/stretch/crop) and signal format (480,720, 1080, etc.) settings. It also gives you the ability to define and store custom user-defined settings for what I believe is custom cropping and stretching. I haven't played with them yet, but I will. I believe you can save up to four of them. Cool.

One thing I noticed when changing channels. When the box is set to "auto" format and you switch from say a 1080i channel to a 480p channel, it pauses for an extra second to switch modes. That may very well be the TV doing it's mode switching routine. When I switch the modes on the TV directly, it behaves about the same, so I'm not ready to attribute that to the Sony. When within the same mode, channel changing is pretty quick. Certainly as quick as any of my other boxes.

No guide data yet, so I'm going to leave it off for a few hours to let it load some. I'm very anxious to see and interact with the guide.

I won't been able to tell how good the picture quality is until I get more HD to view. Although the SD looks as good as my Voom and Sammy boxes, which I think are excellent.  I did look at 36.1 out of Milw and 38.1 out of GB.  Looked pretty good, but I've seen better. Both channels were showing History Detectives. I love that show, but I believe it's an upconvert and it's never looked as good as most other programs on those channels. Hopefully I can catch an episode of Tracks Ahead soon. A good test will be prime time tonight. (By the way, my monitor is a RP Hitachi 51s500)

The recorder seems very simple to use. Pause, forward skip, backward skip, etc. Smooth and pretty quick response. You can manually schedule recordings or use the guide to choose what to record. I haven't done any scheduling yet, but I did browse around the menus. Seems pretty straight-forward.

Stay tuned, more to come....

[StarvingForHDTV]

I'm interested to see what happens with your programming guide.  Will it be accurate and complete?  I'm guessing at least 55-1 will be wacky, judging by the fact they can't learn how to set their clock.  Unless TV Guide does that for them.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with this unit.

[borghe]

so does it really support cablecard, and if so does it really not support HD over cable?

[dlhoppe]

The guide looks good for 4.1, 6.1, 12.1, 10.1, 36.1 and 58.1.  There's no data for 10.2 thru 10.7, 18.1, 24.1 and 55.1.   Haven't had a chance to look at Green Bay yet. There's a lot of Chicago data and other surrounding areas, but I don't really tune into those.

Still haven't had much time to play with it extensively yet. What little I have seen, I like a lot. It's easy to use and the PQ looks very good with prime time HD. About the only negative I've seen so far is that it's a tad sluggish when bringing up the guide and selecting a channel to watch.  Entering a channel directly changes quickly though, so long as my TV doesn't have to switch formats. I tend to leave the Sony on 1080i to alleviate that. It still knows what the original format of any upconverts are and applies the appropriate screen setting that I've configured. That's pretty cool.

As for the cable card, I never planned on using it. In fact, I don't even know if Charter has cable cards that will work on this unit. If I do decide to give it a try, I'll probably wait until the fall.  I think I remember someone talking about getting HD via cable in the AVS forum.  There's a thread there regarding these new Sonys. However, as with most threads on that site, a lot of the posts are bitching and whining sessions.

Here's the link:  

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=537711

[StarvingForHDTV]

It sounds as though the TV Guide programming guide is completely independant of the OTA programming guide.  18.1 and 24.1 have been doing an excellent job with their OTA guides for quite some time.  The only minor thing I noticed was a spelling error for Frasier in the OTA guide for 24.1

I'm surprised you can't access the OTA programming guides as a backup or alternative.

I hope the unit continues to meet your expectations.  Thanks for sharing your experiences with us.

[cjucoder]

Since 18-1 and 24-1 are simulcasts of the analog stations, I simply remapped 18 to 18-1 and 24 to 24-1 in the channel setup menu of the guide.  That way you can still use the guide for scheduling and it works just fine.  I don't have this Sony but my LG box uses the same guide system, so I would assume the same capability exists on the Sony.

I have noticed that it is not too uncommon for the program listed for 36-1 to be wrong but most of the time is okay.   Another thing to be aware of is that when shows like Lost that have been going a few minutes long or ER starting a few minutes early those aren't reflected in the guide, so if you schedule those via the guide you might want to tweak the start or end time so you don't lose any of the show.  

I'll echo Starving, Thanks for sharing and I'm glad it's working for you!

[dlhoppe]

Starving,

When you refer to "OTA programming guides", I assume you mean the PSIP data. I have not found a way to display that on this unit. It looks like it's strictly based on the TV Guide programming.


Cjucoder,

I did just what you're saying with 18 and 24. I modified the guide to change from the analog station to the digital one.  Seems to work ok.


One thing that did happen, and I'm not quite sure why yet, is that I seem to have lost all the descriptive info for all the channels in the guide.  I did mess around with it yesterday and "hid" all the analog channels. I have a feeling that I need to leave 24 (analog) active in order to get the guide data. I turned it back on today, so we'll see if that solves it. I'm hoping it was my doing and not buggy software.  I let you know.

[dlhoppe]

Still no program info in the guide. I still have all the channels, but they all state "No Listing" in each half hour slot for all channels. Everything was working fine until I did a bunch of guide editing. I called Sony support and they're telling me to try unplugging the unit to see if everything comes back.  If that fails, I'm going to find out how to completely reset this thing so I can start off with "virgin" settings again.

Other than the guide problem, which is a big one for me, it definately works pretty nice. Last night we recorded a show while watching another previously recorded show. Works very slick. After watching it for a few days now and comparing to my other boxes, I've determined the PQ is as good or better in both live TV and recordings. I can't tell any difference between live and recordings, so there must not be any extra compression applied to the recorded data.

As soon as I figure out what I did to the guide, I'll be sure to post it.

By the way, does anyone know which stations transmit the guide data?  I know 24 does, but I'm wondering if any of the other stations also send it out in Milw.