I watched NYPD Blue (carried by my cable company) on my office system last night (Sony STRDB 1070, Merak horn center, 4 x M22 like speakers and a Dahlquist 15" sub). Is anyone else just blown away at how great even TV shows sound with Axiom speakers? I was. Even the bumper music on Fox News sounds spectacular.

What a great world!

I was really surprised at how much better football announcers sounded when I got my Axioms.

There are some commercials which sound so good that you actually want to see them. So here's a tip to rectify the decreasing viewership of broadcast advertising: take advantage of the amazing technology that viewers have in their homes and give us 30 seconds of audio wow. You'll have people using their remotes to watch your commercial again.

I haven't noticed that much of an improvement. It is worthwhile to use the Axioms when watching TV but I cannot say it is much better. It could be because I have regular cable, not digital cable.

I also prefer to listen in 5 channel stereo. In DPL2, I barely notice any speaker but the center being used.

Actually, I think the digital cable provided by Cox in Phoenix sounds absolutely horrid. It's not an issue of the Axioms as it sounded worse previously, but the signal is ass. Very rarely are the non-digital cable channels even stereo, it seems. The digital channels at least play in stereo and do sound good if pumped through the digital out (horrific through standard RCA), however, only a couple movies have ever been broadcast by them in DD5.1. Makes me want to strangle the guy on the commercials.

Wow, I never knew digital was that bad. My father purchased digital here in Canada and it was clearly better than standard cable, both with sound and video.

I hope a lot of people complain to get a better signal!

I personally have DirecTV satellite hooked up digitally and it sounds fantastic! My dad had digital cable hooked up (with analog cables) to a Sony prologic receiver and cheap big speakers. He then switched to DirecTV as well and there was quite a noticeable increase in sound quality...even with the cheap audio setup. I was surpirsed. So for sound quality, I by far prefer satellite. I would never go back to cable unless I had to.

Anyway, just my opinion!
Mary

I have two HD TVs and have never seen a HD signal on either of them. I think it'll be many years, if ever, before digital cable carries any HD signals. The sound quality of my digital cable service is very good. I understand that dish services deliver CD quality signals. I would expect dish music is better quality. Nevertheless, even the degraded and downsampled signal we get on non premium stations sounds pretty darn good sometimes. NYPD Blue is one of the shows that has great sound, and as someone pointed out, some of the commercials deliver great sound.

Enjoy your dish service delivering good sound to your great speakers.

I have both Sat and Digital cable, I much prefer the Sat over digital cable in all aspects; sound, picture, clarity. Now I am just waiting for them to launch the HDTV signal on the cable network in the next month or two. They are going neighborhood by neighborhood here, 5 minutes from where I live they have 8 HDTV channels on cable. Oh well I guess I will just have to wait to see how good it is when they do fianlly get into my area. I just recently came back from Australia and they are miles ahead on HDTV then we are. By the end of this year they will have all channels broadcast in HDTV, and from watching it during my stay the picture and sound was amazing.

There are a few channels available in HDTV on digital cable here in central Ohio. I don't have an HDTV or digital cable, but it's available.

Consider yourself lucky when you have the option of choosing either digital cable or dish.

I will admit that the dish SOUNDS much better even just coming thru a TV. My only problems (all 2 of them) are:
Reliability - my father used a mini-dish for a long time. Every time a big cloud blew by he was searching for a signal. I realize than many don't have this problem, but its my only experience with dish. I can count on 2 hands the number of times my cable has gone out in the last 4 years(at least while I was trying to watch something).
Price - not on dish mind you. I use broadband internet access and if I subscribe to cable then the price on cable internet access is down right reasonable.

FWIW, I was told by a friend who works for Time Warner Cable here in town (Houston), that they now carry digital HBO and local stations. I have no idea if it makes a difference though.