Intellian D4 HD TV system, first impressions
One way to know that you’re really getting high definition TV is to stumble on to a close up of Muammar Gadhafi’s face. Holy crap, what has this guy been doing to himself? But aside from that jolt, setting up and using Intellian’s D4 HD sat tv system went smooth and easy. Mounted the dome on Gizmo’s boat deck, ran one coax cable to the ACU (the small box top left) and one to the DirecTV receiver; ran a USB cable from ACU to receiver, and an HDMI cable from receiver to HD TV; and finally powered the former with 12v DC and the latter two with 120v AC. After a few minutes of automatic antenna searching, holy crap I had access to some 587 channels! (Or so the receiver claims; a lot are pay-to-view, and who’s going to count anyway?) The amazing thing is that when I switch channels — especially between Standard and High Def — the D4 often has to switch satellites and frequencies, but it’s hardly noticeable. The pause is about 3-5 seconds in my experience, and that’s quite a technological achievement…
