By now you’ve settled on an HDTV, flat panel or rear projection, and you’ve sized up your audio ambitions. You’ve selected an A/V receiver to drive your speakers, and you’ve started working on drawing a wiring diagram that specifies where all the cables will connect.

That may be the easy part compared to what comes next. Now you have to decide whether to work exclusively over the air, cable, or satellite. If you’re already a cable or satellite subscriber, you’re wondering whether to stay with them or jump to a new service.

Part of that decision boils down to how you feel about the DVR offerings from those carriers, whether you can maintain your current favorite channels, which channels would be available in HD with the selected service, and whether you want to go with the TiVo solution.

The first thing I did was to sit down, look at my current channel guide based on what I subscribed to, and then I made a list of the favorite channels of everyone in the family. The next step is to go to the Websites of potential carriers and look at their SD and HD channel offerings.

Fussing over some of the finer points of HD signal compression won’t matter if you, for example, jump to a whole new package and end up pissing off your spouse because you can no longer get Oxygen or SciFi. It may be worth staying with your current carrier, upgrading to HD offerings, all just to make that decision easier.

Cable TV

Major cable companies now offer a simple set top box that will receive their HD offerings. Chances are, you’ll be changing, on this new box, from RCA Composite audio (red and white) and video (yellow) to Component video out, digital audio out and/or likely HDMI.

It is useful to go to your carrier’s Website, research their HD box and print a picture of the connections on the back. However, instead of a simple HD set top box, you’ll probably want an integrated HD set top box combined with a DVR.

Now the choice comes down to whether you want to go with the carrier’s DVR or TiVo. In short, the history is that TiVo and ReplayTV started the subscription DVR business about five years ago. If things had gone according to plan, every carrier in the U.S. would have licensed that technology and delivered a solution to their customers. Instead, most elected to reverse engineer the functionality pioneered by TiVo or build hybrid systems to suit their own agendas. The result, in my opinion, has been a certain amount of reinventing the wheel with associated teething pains.

Many customers elect to go with a refined, mature product, namely the TiVo. There are two: The TiVo Series3 and the less expensive TiVo HD DVR. To do that, you will elect to bypass the cable company’s entire set top box and connect your TiVo directly to the coaxial cable coming out of the wall. That’s the cool part. The bad news is that you’ll need to make arrangements with your cable company to have them install what’s called a Cable Card. That’s a credit-card-sized card that authorizes you to receive the package you’ve selected.

Most of the time, the cable company will require a technician to install them (2) in your (two tuner) TiVo. I’ve heard about varying degrees of cooperation from cable companies on this. They don’t like the Cable Card because it deprives them of the nice rental fee on their box. However, they’re required to make them available by law. Installation should be free and the fee will only come to a few dollars per month for two. Once again, go to Tivo.com and print a picture of the back of your selected TiVo box in preparation for a wiring diagram.

In the simplest case, your cable company’s coax will enter the TiVo box. HDMI out of the TiVo will go into your A/V receiver. HDMI or component video will be sent into your HDTV and the audio goes out to the speakers.

If you instead elect to go with the cable company’s DVR, things will be pretty much the same. You may have some additional Pay Per View/Video on Demand options with cable, but you’ll be missing some of the Internet based features of a TiVo. This is why, in the introduction, I mentioned the availability of a gigabit Cat 5 or better Ethernet line from your HDTV location back to your home router. (Some A/V receivers and HD disc players also have Ethernet ports for firmware upgrades or access to Internet radio, etc.)

It will also pay to visit your carrier’s biggest local office where they can do demos and you can operate their remote control. Make sure that the 6 sec instant replay and the 30 second advance works to your satisfaction. (In some cases, for reasons beyond understanding, you’ll need to program the remote to do 30 sec advances. Modern times demand that it not be too easy to skip over those commercials.)

Armed with all this knowledge, get a big sketch pad and draw the connections of every wire you expect to install on every box, audio, video, and Ethernet. Cable boxes don’t use a phone line.

Satellite TV

TiVos don’t work with satellite systems like Dish Network and DIRECTV. If you’ve made the decision to go with satellite systems, TiVo is out and their DVR is in.

There have been sporadic reports of problems with the DIRECTV DVRs, but then there are also sporadic reports of problems with new Macs. Rather than be stressed out by the rants of a few who’ve had some problems and publicly complained, just remember that these large companies have millions of customers. If you get a bad unit, call customer service, and keep calling until you get one that works. After all, set top boxes are computers with an OS and hard disks that have a certain out of the box failure rate.

These set top DVRs generally require a phone line because they need to report back with movies you’ve selected (for billing) and even (gasp) report your viewing habits, and they can’t do that back through the one-way satellite signal. (As far as I know, no personally identifying information is included in that feedback.)

The DIRECTV HR20/21Pro and Dish Network VIP 722 series both have instant replay and 30 second advances. Both have two primary ATSC tuners. In the case of the HR20/21PRO, there is a wrinkle. The HR20 also has a coax input for an over-the-air antenna connected to a third ATSC tuner, while the HR21PRO does not. It saves DIRECTV a few bucks to omit it. I don’t know of any significant difference between the HR20-100 and HR20-700.

Here’s another wrinkle. I believe the Dish Network system is set up to utilize a single 75-ohm coaxial cable from the dish to the receiver. However, the DIRECTV HD boxes require two cables. If you only have a single cable line left over from your SD days, you have two options:

1. Have the installer run a new, second cable from the five LNB dish to the receiver. This could be a hassle and/or be not so cosmetically appealing.

2. DIRECTV has just introduced a box called a Single Wire Multichannel (SWM) box. That will allow the operation of two tuners with only a single line. It’s not considered a splitter, and I’m told there is no signal degradation.

DIRECTV will install a new HD dish, the "five LNB" version for free. Depending on whether you’ve been a long time customer with DIRECTV, there will be a varying charge for the HD DVR. It could be as much as $300, and that drives a lot of people to cable. First time Dish Network customers can get their HD DVR free. Some research here on total costs, equipment and monthly rates for the channels you need from the different carriers will take some time, but it’ll pay off.

Over The Air

Going to the trouble to set up just an OTA antenna seems a bit problematic. Local stations are broadcast in HD in the largest cities, but, of course, cable channels are not available. Signal strength and antenna placement always seem to be a problem. Considering that you can likely receive local stations via basic cable in HD if your HDTV has a QAM tuner, it just doesn’t seem like an attractive solution for the HD era.

In my case, I have basic cable with Comcast in order to keep a high speed Internet connection. (The highest speed Internet and a basic TV package are bundled.) The coaxial line from Comcast goes straight into my HDTV and the QAM tuner. That way, if my DIRECTV DVR is tied up recording, I can always switch to "TV" mode and watch local channels in HD. That’s the one occassion when I get some use out of the small built-in speakers on the edge of my TV.

Most, but not all, HDTVs with an ATSC tuner also have a QAM tuner.

The Bottom Line

There is healthy competition between satellite and cable providers. Cable has been at a disadvantage lately because they have a finite bandwidth through which to push all their programming, and it has to be allocated for all the SD and HD channels. To solve that problem, major cable companies are planning for something called Switched Digital Video (SDV) that allows them to push only the channels people are watching. It’ll likely be out in 2008. It’ll require a new set top box, but the good news is that TiVo announced this week their two HD TiVos will be compatible.

So each technology leapfrogs the other in time, and your choice will likely depend on other factors, such as your longevity with the current service (which can be made to count for something), your feelings about the superiority of the HD TiVos, and what channels are available on each service. For example, the NFL Network is not carried by cable. Don’t get tripped up here.

In the end, other factors may play a bigger role than marketing claims. Dishes can’t be banned by HOA covenants, but you’ll need an unobstructed view to the south. The Dish Network VIP series set top DVR is considered superior, but watch out for channels you may not be able to get in HD and (still) SD if you switch services, have a new dish installed, etc. Long term subscribership can often be turned into benefits if you call your current provider and explain that you want to cancel and move to a new provider. Chances are, they’ll negotiate.

I know people who use all these different systems and are happily watching their HDTV with a DVR. It’s likely that practical considerations that I’ve described here will play a larger role in your decision than boasts about video quality. If one company were consistently inferior in that area, they’d be out of business. That said, video quality from the networks you do elect to watch is important.

Next up is putting it all together: Installation.

Here are the links to all six articles in the series.

Nov 7th:The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Introduction

Nov 13th: The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Display Selection

Nov 16th: The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Audio Selection

Nov 29th: The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Source Selection

Dec 6th: The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Installation

Dec 14th: The Fireside Guide: Moving to High Definition, Sample Systems