Hello list,
I followed the recent messages about the future of VDR with great interest . I would like to share my recent experiences about HDTV. As I consider myself to be open for "new technologies" like HDTV is now, I recently bought an HDTV receiver. It doesn't matter who produced it, I think my hardware is an average HDTV setup for 2007: a DVB-S2, MPEG4, H264 compatible receiver with a 1368x768 LCD display. My first impressions are: yes, it looks better, than SDTV. Some say the difference is comparable with the B/W - color one, well, I don't think so. I don't see any reason to watch a news or a serial in HDTV. I think HDTV would be fine for a couple of premium channels/package, for ex. a movie and a sport channel, and the rest should remain in SD. Considering the huge technical investment (20Mbit/sec/channel, high speed dedicated MPEG4 decoders, which consumes a lot of energy, HDready displays, etc), I'm not sure it worths to watch a wheater report in HD. Compared to a well encoded 16:9 SDTV channel (for ex. ZDF), an HDTV picture does not take my breath away. And one more thing, as I tested this brand new receiver: things that for us, VDR users, are usual for several years, are selled as brand new innovative features for a 2007 model set-top-box, and a lot of common VDR features are unknown for these receivers. Shortly: VDR is the best satellite receiver in 2007 :) What I want to say with this long story: I'm not sure if we (meaning the users) should push Klaus to the HD, or just wait him to finalize current tasks, and when time comes (and when there will be suitable HW), I'm sure we will have HD-VDR. Remember: HDTV is not a new era, as manufacturers try to sell us. It just looks a LITTLE better.
István