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With Bell ExpressVu's 9200 PVR Plus System, you're all set for living the life of a high tech couch potato. Assuming you've spent the rainy-day fund on a spiffy new HDTV, you're not quite done until you pump HD content into it, and ExpressVu has that in spades -- or more than anyone else, at any rate. So while you'll have no rainy-day money left, you'll have lots to see and do on rainy days.
Bell ExpressVu boasts services and features that match of exceed what everyone else seems to be offering. More content, plus personalized control of that content.
Of course, you may not be ready to make the leap. The thing is, high definition is not for everyone. Considering the cost of an HDTV set plus the premium you pay to access the signal that makes said HDTV do its HD thing, you've got to be a certain kind of TV watcher, the kind with champagne expectations and/or rose garden aspirations.
The thing is, despite what the salesman at your local electronics store might convince you to think, and regardless of the professional propaganda thrown in your face at every turn promoting HD as eat-it-too cake, the difference between high definition and standard definition is not so terribly vast. It's a noticeable step up, for sure, but more like the difference between a color print of the Pope in a newspaper to the same photo in a glossy magazine. Both are clearly recognizable as pictures of the Pope, but the glossy will have finer detail, maybe showing the seal on that humongous Fisherman's Ring of his a little more clearly.
But the actual story about the Pope being pictured isn't going to change; merely the clarity of the image associated with the story.
In the realm of television, though obviously a visual medium, high definition is nonetheless just a similar step up, not a giant leap forward. Tom Cruise doesn't cackle any better on Oprah (though ExpressVu's digital audio does make his cackling clearer); Dr. Phil doesn't get any wiser in high definition (for shame) and Rosie O'Donnell should probably think about hiring an HD-schooled make-up artist, because HD actually makes her and many other talking heads look worse. (Philip Swann has an unflinching best/worst list of celebrities suffering under the glare of HD at tvpredicitions.com).
Likewise, the high-def News at Six doesn't impart and more info than the otherwise-identical standard-def broadcast; but again, the anchorman and reporters invariably look a little worse for wear, which verges on distraction.
Therefore, for TV pertaining to character studies, conversational yammering and one-off news and gossip, high def does little to justify its superfluous cost.
Conversely, for shows where visuals are key, where the imagery is the story, then high def is categorically, unequivocally, the best thing to happen to TV since, well, TV.
The Discovery Channel HD, for example, is reason enough alone to make the move to high def. Every single program and documentary thereon (some of them not even seen on the standard-def Discovery Channel) is not only worth drooling over, but invariably more revealing in that God-is-in-the-details sort of way.
In fact, the same can be said for all such "specialty channels" in HD -- and ExpressVu boasts the most, with the likes of Rush HD, all about extreme sports; Oasis HD, which makes "ripple in a pond" tranquility something to get excited about; Equator HD, with outside-your-personal-bubble shows on life around the globe; and a batch of others.
Plus there's the 24/7 HD movie channels and pay-per-view movies in HD, which makes the current Blu-ray Vs. HD-DVD format war we're currently endure completely redundant (in other words, if you trying to decide between a Blu-ray player and an HD-DVD player, both are doomed in the face of HD movies on-demand via satellite and broadband both).
Then there's your regular prime time TV in HD, where you stop worrying about favorite characters in LOST because you now see that they're each living in a freakin' Hawaiin Vacation brochure, so they've nothing to complain about. Shows like "House" and "CSI," meanwhile, are all the more illuminative, especially in those CG reenactments of infested internal organs and bullets though the aorta.
The clincher, of course, the very best reason to embrace HD as the only way to boob-tube, is high definition sports. Seriously, you can get so engrossed in the indigenous flora of Southern California that the sudden appearance of Tiger Woods working his A-game will startle you into remembering that you're actually watching his Target World Challenge on TSNHD.
For all those times you see an apparent "professional" hockey player blow a tire and fall down in the middle of nowhere in an NHL game, you can now actually see the slim rut in the ice that caused it to happen.
There really is a difference between Astroturf and real sod on the gridiron, mainly in the fact that real grass really does get chewed up real good in the NFL.
And that's not to mention the exactitude of video reviews, which can get so up-close-and-personal that you'll be second guessing the goal judge every time they "go upstairs."
Of course, with Bell's 9200 HD PVR Plus System, you can go one better: pausing each play, rewinding for a personal instant-replay, and flat-out recording the entire show to play again later. How cool is that?
Back to: 9200 HD PVR Plus System: The Hardware >>>
Reviewed: Dec. 14, 2006
Type: Hardware, LeisureTech
From: Bell ExpresVu
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