If you have used it910s, the first thing you will notice about it912s is, Same form factor! yes but it actually uses less parts and has more functions. I have tested it 24hrs/7days a week, it is surprisingly cool, i can still remember some of the it910s unit are hotter than normal, and some user had invented a way to cool it by installing a PC cooling fan (smart move!). It even feels cooler than some of the DVB receivers. I am sure this is the direct result from less crowded space inside and more chips being consolidated.
The front looks the same, in fact, some of the front panel tricks still exist from it910s HWv1.0 era until now, (Current HDTV head engineer told me he has not cracked the front panel microcode yet!) This is like Easter eggs planted by original engineer in 1999? I will release more later when all user are registered, but first and very important, for you to do A/B test in the show room. Pushing "select"+"menu" once simultaneously will toggle the YPbPr and RGB mode (RGB mode includes all analog RGB RGBHV and digital DVI). The advantage is that you don't have to access the menu screen and go down several layers to do the video format toggle between YPbPr and RGB color format. Sure you can set that sub menu at your "FETCH" button, but that's another story.
I also tried the old it910s trick to "soft-reset" the machine, it works fine, but do it only when video really stuck, ok? And remember all Easter Eggs talked about here is to be executed from front panel only, no remote.
If you seen some features here i talked about you never heard before, don't worry, these are all new improvement over it910 and it815ST, if you are new user, do appreciate the changes. Some of these will appear on the official manual, but some of these are very new, so be sure to read the whole article. The first button on remote I used a lot is call "FETCH", you have 6 slots that you can insert your most used sub menu page here, so for example. If you want to scan satellite, with regular method, you need to go down 3 layers sub menu (it works just like an HTML page on the wold wide web, hit "select" like "enter on your PC", and "Previous" works like your backspace key on PC for going back to the last page viewed) before you see the scan satellite page, when you see the Scan Satellite page, just hit "FETCH" key, you now stored this page in the first slot in favorite menu, next time just hit "fetch" and you can select the Scan Satellite menu easily and quickly.
You can set your favorite channel in Preference menu, and use Arrow up/down to watch just the favorite channel you want, channel surfing OTA and QPSK channels without a glitch, if you want every channel, you can use channel up/down. For example i have my favorite channel as T2-1 FOX, T7-1 ABC, T7-3 metro aerial cam, T20-0 WB, T62-1 CBS, S12 THAI Global, S20 NTD, it wrap around back to T2-1, also if you have analog cable, C2-0 c-4-0, etc will be in between. Note the 0 after the dash means analog channels. when you are surfing, it switches between MPEG2 audio (most sat) and AC-3 (8vsb) smoothly.
PSIP information displays program guide in that table, like the Fox channel engineer has input the most accurate program guide, so hit .guide. twice you can know exactly which program will be on at what time(your local time), amazing is that not only you can see today.s you can see many days ahead. But some stations has not been up to speed with the program guide, if they did not enter that in stream, you won.t see the guide.
Most OTA stations transmit accurate local time, certainly you can manually enter time into the manual clock.
Now we also added APID/VPID/PCR in the Terrestrial channels, so you know what pid's your local station is using. You can back propagating to know what frequency they are transmitting in the air. Now you can hit "select" and see a table of all channels in short form, OTA channels first, cables, then satellite, always in that order, and it automatically sorts the Sat Radio stations after the satellite with (R) stands for radio only. Going down to the last sat channel, and hit one more down it will rap back to first Terrestrial channel, not like before you will be stuck at the bottom. Always use "Chan+-" to page up/down in many menus, and arrow up/down to move one by one up/down.
As the production i asked to use 480p on the output, if you have 720p display, you can load the 720p version, and your back switch will act like 480i/720p/1080i/1080p, this is because most people have 480p display and i found 480p still looks very good. I tested the DVI output using regular DVI cable and Mitsubishi Diamond 15" LCD screen, it is stunning, and shows the true color, you can A/B test between VGA and DVI, because on this LCD, you ca hit a button to select input1=VGA or input2=DVI. Since DVI is digital, you have no way to change settings on the LCD, it will display the true-to-original color, no exaggerations.
One very important feature is the aspect ratio enforcer, use Arrow left/right to achieve this while viewing a program. Selections of .Automatically. .Pan and Scan., .LetterBox., .Fully., in conjunction with the output button that sets .3x4. or .16x9.,now you have a full array of possibilities. Sme broadcast station will add gray bars along the actual video to make up the signal, for example if you view it on 15. 3x4 screen, it will look small, with surrounding area black or gray, you can use pan-n-scan to make actual 3x4 movide fill the 3x4 screen, keeping the orignal aspect ratio, the result is crystal clear, sharp and full picture. You can also view true HDTV 16x9 movie on 3x4 monitor, it will certainly add top and bottom gray bar for you to prevent screen burn-in, but you can also expand to watch full picture on screen with some clipped off left and right movie, but the result is amazing with a small screen (without changing the original aspect ratio). You can certainly do the old trick to stretch 3x4 movie on a 16x9 TV side-to-side to prevent from burn in, all the above achieved with only the remote, does not need to change settings on your TV or monitor.
The new thing that I do a lot now is to watch DVD through Integra, because this now acts as a central Video/audio processing unit of my DVB, DVD, Terrestrial, HDTV signals. I have the output connected to 15. LCD and 34. HDTV set, the S/pdif optical out connected to Dolby Amplifier, analog audio connected to a pair of small speakers (analog audio outputs all the time regardless of what channel and what video format). The DVD player.s Svideo output goes to the SVHS input, and use .input. button to select Svideo 3x4 input or Svideo 16x9 input, and you can view DVD movie in any format you like 480p or 1080i/1080p. You can quickly surf DVD, QPSK, OTA and cable, now that is an .entertainment center.. My HDTV can accept analog YpbPr and Svideo and automatically switch it.
Recording HDTV to video tape or DVD (if you have consumer DVD recorder) is so easy, and you.d think watching HDTV on a video tape is wasting your eyes or wasting your money, not true. I recorded myself the PBS Newport Jazz JVC festival to a VCR myself, and I almost fell out of the chair (no a sofa)! I can clearly see the fingering of Stanley Clarke on his bass, also the hairs on the hand .. And the sound, oh ! it is wonderful even just Left/right stereo image. Really worth the time and effort, if you have local HDTV program you like (like Alias), or satellite HDTV program, tape it cheap to a VCR. (Note Svideo out and composite video out only happens when you select 480i back switch position),
On the satellite scan main page where you select a dish (memory of Dish 1 to dish48) to relate to a satellite and set L.O. freq, polarity, 0/22khz, diseqc1-16, we added the instant signal quality meter, it is .WHAT You SEE IS WHAT you GET., that means if you change any of the satellite settings on the main screen, be it 0/22khz or DiSEqC1.16, LO freq, without hitting .select. it will instantaneous give you the signal bar reading telling you if you are getting no signal, or Locked at what percent, medium filled bar means quality 60% or so. Now some of you will ask, there are so many xpdr in a satellite how does it know I locked which satellite? Good Observation, the main Scan Satellite page actually uses first xpdr listed on the next page (Scan sat Sub menu) for the Quality meter to use. So put your favorite 24hrs xpdr on the first in the xpdr list.
On the Scan Sat Sub menu this is actually a list of xpdrs, you can set xpdr name, xpdr parameter, polarity( if you select polarity 13V/18V Auto from the main sat menu), then you can scan current xpdr, or scan the whole satellite, if it says .scan complete!. it already found the channels for you and appended to the channel list. You can also click .AVPID. to enforce manual PID (remember to select MPEG audio for most DVB channels). One thing very interesting and I just learnt myself is that: When .Scan complete satellite. it runs very fast and only scan the first couple of xpdrs on the list, so if you have junk xpdr on the first 1 or 2 slots, it will return and tell you scan failed.
I have asked integra to make AVPID enforcer to only scan in the single channel I want, not the complete channel along with the whole xpdr. Hope this is what you guys want too. To summarize, use PID if you just want one channel, for example, enter PID400/4012/400 will get you only the MACTV channel from the bouquet 11860/H/28124 on AMC4 stored in the memory.
Wake up now! Unplugging AC will probably erase the satellitechannels, but by simply performing a "FACTORY DEFAULT" will bring back all USA major C and Ku satellite data, Ku are programmed as 22kHz, and C band as 0Hz side, assuming you already have a Auto 0/22kHz switch. This sure is an improvement over it910s, which will erase all data if AC unplugged (hope power interruption is a rare case in USA, as at least that's what the manufacturer thinks).
The remote control will be a little bit different from the one used for it910s, but only a little bit layout difference, your hand will adapt itself to it, I am sure.
Regarding the Terrestrial tuner, I really think it is amazing, I only used a indoor round antenna with amplification, and picks up all signals in the region, It sure beats the Panasonic, Kaon, DISH50008VSB and Zenith model we tested before. And the Satellite tuner is SHARP, need I say more, we always use marginal dish to test thing so I can be sure that you get the weak satellite signal you want.
Overall, this is the best HDTV receiver I have seen so far, and for the over a month period it.s been running, not much glitch, and best of all, it is really cool!