Explain to me this "high definition television"

[Nekofrog]

Well, not really.

But why, everytime I'm about shopping somewhere, when I see HD TVs do I see them ALWAYS show a grainy picture with lots of pixelation and digital signal degradation (fast movement = BLOCKY ARTIFACTS)?

Is it from splitting the signal to like 20 different TVs?

[Bahamut]

Well, not really.

But why, everytime I'm about shopping somewhere, when I see HD TVs do I see them ALWAYS show a grainy picture with lots of pixelation and digital signal degradation (fast movement = BLOCKY ARTIFACTS)?

Is it from splitting the signal to like 20 different TVs?

It could be the broadcast signal - the programming has to be designed for HD, and even then sometimes the networks (or in this case whoever designed the programming for the TV advertising) suck ass with it. I agree that oftentimes in store it looks kinda shitty or it's impossibly hard to tell the difference, but at home it's a completely different beast (assuming you picked a good TV).

[The Pezman]

I'm just going with an HD projector. Seems to be more portable and possibly less expensive, and you've got mini-movies all the time.

[Strike911]

Yeah, its most likely crappy input coming in, that is, whatever the media is playing on the TVs.

[Effef]

They usually put a SD signal in and then split it between 500 different TVs. Sorta defeats the point of a HD set.

[djpretzel]

Well, not really.

But why, everytime I'm about shopping somewhere, when I see HD TVs do I see them ALWAYS show a grainy picture with lots of pixelation and digital signal degradation (fast movement = BLOCKY ARTIFACTS)?

Is it from splitting the signal to like 20 different TVs?

blocky artifacts sounds like a laggy/bad broadcast stream, agreed with previous poster. Grainy could actually be in the source material - I've got Planet Earth BBC blu-ray, and certain shots are grainy simply because the definition is high enough to expose problems with the original footage. Double-edged sword. I don't know about signal splitting w/ HD... assuming they're splitting either DVI or HDMI, it should be a digital signal and not particularly compromised by splitting. I walk into Circuit Shitty and Best Buy, I see a lot of nice TV s with a great picture, personally. Maybe that varies from area to area?

Bottom line... HD is here to stay, I personally find it a significant, meaningful upgrade, and if you can't tell the difference, you need a larger television or better glasses.

[Blake]

The only store near where I live that actually knows how to put HD broadcast onto HD tv's seems to be Costco, of all places. Which is awesome. When you walk into Costco to get some awesome hotdogs and gigantic bins of pretzels, the first thing you see is 20 tv's all showing a live sports event in HD.

The Best Buy and Circuit City where I live show an absolutely shitty broadcast that looks like youtube quality.

[Bleck]

I personally find it a significant, meaningful upgrade, and if you can't tell the difference, you need a larger television or better glasses.

the difference = $$$

[Abu]

Things are looking shitty to you because the TVs are just getting crappy signals, or the signal isn't HD in the first place. As said in a couple posts, HDTVs don't improve the quality of the signals they get, they're just capable of receiving better ones. If they get grainy signals, you'll see graininess.

I found a couple pictures that show you what the difference would be if the TVs were working properly/getting the right signal.

http://www.erenumerique.fr/images/60/20060710/btv_hd_sd_comparison_big.jpg
(Bottom right is standard picture quality, upper left is what a proper HD channel looks like)

http://freeviewnz.tv/images/hd_vs_sd_diagram.jpg
(This is smaller, and harder to see, but you can still see the definition. Especially in the shadows)

[Overflow]

Here's something weird: I was in a futureshop a while back and I noticed they were playing Transformers on blu-ray on a huge HD TV, so I did a test. I whipped out my 30G Ipod and compared my iPod version of Transformers to theirs, same scenes, and the only difference I could see was the the HD version had brighter colors. No groundbreaking detail, no next generation, just brighter colors (Which is nice, BTW.)

I don't know. I've never bought into the HD thing, and until I see something that changes my mind the only reason I want an HD tv is for the widescreen.

And those pictures: My tube tv looks better than the SD versions in those pics.

[halc]

I walk into Circuit Shitty and Best Buy, I see a lot of nice TV s with a great picture, personally. Maybe that varies from area to area?

I walk into my local best buy and see a lot of nice hdtv's but the picture always always ALWAYS looks like ass.

[Antipode]

A couple years ago I was in a Fry's with my dad and we were looking at HDTVs - a rep came up to us and asked if there were any questions, and my dad asked why some artifacts occurred at exactly the same time on several brands at once. The rep said that they weren't playing a BluRay or any kind of HD footage (though logos onscreen said so several times) - it was just coming from compressed video on a harddrive in the back, making comparing screens pointless.

So the general sentiment you guys are posting is probably right.

[Blake]

Here's something weird: I was in a futureshop a while back and I noticed they were playing Transformers on blu-ray on a huge HD TV, so I did a test. I whipped out my 30G Ipod and compared my iPod version of Transformers to theirs, same scenes, and the only difference I could see was the the HD version had brighter colors. No groundbreaking detail, no next generation, just brighter colors (Which is nice, BTW.)

I don't know. I've never bought into the HD thing, and until I see something that changes my mind the only reason I want an HD tv is for the widescreen.

And those pictures: My tube tv looks better than the SD versions in those pics.

A smaller tube TV or iPod may seem like it looks great because the small resolution is being compressed into a small frame, hiding any artifacts. Unless you converted a 1400 kbps double pass mp4, it's not gonna hold up to an HD broadcast on the same large screen. The thing is, anybody who has actually seen an HDTV broadcast usually has their mind instantly changed, because there IS groundbreaking detail. Especially in a movie like transformers, I'm pretty sure you won't see Megan Fox's cleavage sweat (that's beside the point however) on an iPod.

So either something was wrong with the hookup between the blu ray player and the TV, it wasn't really a blu ray player, the TV had a weird ratio/filter dragging down the quality, you can encode 1900x1000+ movies into 1900x1000 mp4's on your iPod, you have bad eyesight, or just don't mind about things like these. Personally, I have a hard time watching anything that's not HD on a screen bigger than 30 inches just because it feels so harsh on the eyes.

Sorry to sound like an HD fanboy, but when I first saw an HD broadcast in my house I was pretty amazed. I imagine it gets the same response out of most people. However this may not seem to be the case.

[halc]

A couple years ago I was in a Fry's with my dad and we were looking at HDTVs - a rep came up to us and asked if there were any questions, and my dad asked why some artifacts occurred at exactly the same time on several brands at once. The rep said that they weren't playing a BluRay or any kind of HD footage (though logos onscreen said so several times) - it was just coming from compressed video on a harddrive in the back, making comparing screens pointless.

So the general sentiment you guys are posting is probably right.

I've always assumed that was the case, though I have noticed that everytime a pixar movie comes to dvd it gets played on every TV in the store for the entire day.

[Avatar of Justice]

HD's benefit can be negligible for movies (although it DOES look better), but I bought an HDTV last week and have found that all my HD games rock hard. They just look fucking amazing. Too bad the NES has all sorts of weird issues on it (odd flickering), ensuring I will always keep an old TV around.

Yeah, I used to be bothered by stores having shitty streams on their HDTV's. You could probably ask a clerk to hook up a Blu-Ray player to it or something and really see the difference.

[Overflow]

HD's benefit can be negligible for movies (although it DOES look better), but I bought an HDTV last week and have found that all my HD games rock hard. They just look fucking amazing. Too bad the NES has all sorts of weird issues on it (odd flickering), ensuring I will always keep an old TV around..

On this note: what happens when Wii VC games are played on a widescreen tv? I played Super Metroid on a widescreen TV once, and I didn't notice any stretch, but it filled the whole screen. What's the deal? Do they just enlarge the image and cut off the tops and bottoms?

[Thalzon]

If they cut off the top and bottom, wouldn't the HUD for Super Metroid have not been visible?

[OverCoat]

The only store near where I live that actually knows how to put HD broadcast onto HD tv's seems to be Costco, of all places. Which is awesome. When you walk into Costco to get some awesome hotdogs and gigantic bins of pretzels, the first thing you see is 20 tv's all showing a live sports event in HD.

The Best Buy and Circuit City where I live show an absolutely shitty broadcast that looks like youtube quality.

The Costco in Tukwila is like that :3 some of the pictures I see on those TVs are absolutely gorgeous, especially when they do that dvd vs blu-ray example video thing.

I bought my TV at Video Only though :V

[JCvgluvr]

FACT:The only good reason to get an HD tv is to read Capcom's and Rare's in-game text.

There is no good reason to get Blu-ray...No really, there isn't a big difference between it and standard.

[Overflow]

If they cut off the top and bottom, wouldn't the HUD for Super Metroid have not been visible?

Exactly! the hud WAS visible! That's why I'm so confused!

[Bahamut]

FACT:The only good reason to get an HD tv is to read Capcom's and Rare's in-game text.

There is no good reason to get Blu-ray...No really, there isn't a big difference between it and standard.

Newer console games look like ass on SDTVs now with all of the overload of effects they do now. GTA IV was near unplayably bad, and games like Lost Odyssey looked questionable at times on my shitty SDTV before.

[Avatar of Justice]

On this note: what happens when Wii VC games are played on a widescreen tv? I played Super Metroid on a widescreen TV once, and I didn't notice any stretch, but it filled the whole screen. What's the deal? Do they just enlarge the image and cut off the tops and bottoms?

I just set my TV into 4:3 mode when viewing 4:3 content (if the TV or PS3 doesn't do it automatically). Things look oddly stretched otherwise. Most widescreen TV's have a "Zoom" aspect ratio that would cut off the top and bottom like that though.

One thing I can't tell the difference on is 1080i and 1080p. I got a HDMI cable so that I could get my TV to recognize the PS3's 1080p mode and I really can't tell a difference.

Also, DO NOT BUY HDMI CABLES IN THE STORE! At Sears they were like $50 and I got some on the 'Net for $5. Unlike analog cables, cable quality doesn't matter. HDMI is digital so your video will either not work or look stellar. Signal loss and all that shit are just wiped out by the digitalness.

[Thalzon]

Newer console games look like ass on SDTVs now with all of the overload of effects they do now. GTA IV was near unplayably bad, and games like Lost Odyssey looked questionable at times on my shitty SDTV before.

Impossible-to-read text! God, Blue Dragon was especially bad for this. I really want an HDTV, but I'm on a very fixed income.

[Avatar of Justice]

Impossible-to-read text! God, Blue Dragon was especially bad for this. I really want an HDTV, but I'm on a very fixed income.

If you've got some extra cash to spare you could get an HDTV on the cheap with all the crazy Christmas sales going on with the shitty economy. It won't be the biggest HDTV but it would at least get you something where you could read game text. This website is your friend http://www.blackfriday.info/

[Bahamut]

If you've got some extra cash to spare you could get an HDTV on the cheap with all the crazy Christmas sales going on with the shitty economy. It won't be the biggest HDTV but it would at least get you something where you could read game text. This website is your friend http://www.blackfriday.info/

http://www.bfads.net is the site to go to!

[Thalzon]

Canadian here. Black Friday does not exist up north. Instead we have Boxing Day (December 26th), but I doubt my grandma would be too happy with me for buying an HDTV over the holidays.

[JCvgluvr]

Canadian here. Black Friday does not exist up north. Instead we have Boxing Day (December 26th), but I doubt my grandma would be too happy with me for buying an HDTV over the holidays.

Stick it to the man! (Even if the man is a old woman.)

[Xerol Oplan]

It could be an over-the-air HD signal; broadcast stations can't yet use the full bandwidth of their digital channels (until the switchover) especially in VHF bands where there's still analog overlap. Therefore they have to compress the stream a lot more (it's a modified version of mpeg2, if you re-encode a DVD at a lower bitrate it'll look similar).

I'm still not yet getting high-bandwidth SDTV in digital, and the digital signals are flaky at best this far out from the station, so I'm going to be watching the analog stations until they go off the air. Hopefully after that happens they'll boost the digital signal power enough for me to get a continuous image. Right now the signal cuts out on average 5 to 6 times a minute for 2-3 seconds at a time, which is the main problem with digital - there's no such thing as a "partial" signal, it's all or nothing. My analog stations are a little fuzzy but at least they come in continously.

[djpretzel]

FACT:The only good reason to get an HD tv is to read Capcom's and Rare's in-game text.

There is no good reason to get Blu-ray...No really, there isn't a big difference between it and standard.

Really, there is. Again, if you can't tell the difference between 1920x1080 and 720x480, yeah, there's not much difference. But that also means it's time for a new prescription. You can make the good old-fashioned Wii fanboy argument that it's "just higher numbers," but in that case, may as well watch movies in 16x16 monochromatic grid of nearly-indecipherable bliss, with a THX-quality stream of monophonic 11khz audio.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like audiophiles that SWEAR they can tell the difference between 96khz and 192khz audio, etc., but in this case it's a pretty obvious difference that the lay person really CAN detect.

[Thalzon]

Stick it to the man! (Even if the man is a old woman.)

Yeah... she paid for my college, so no.

[OverCoat]

There's a big difference in 1080p and 720p if you use your TV as a computer monitor, like I do :)

I'd regret getting a smaller TV [23" samsung with a 1360x768 resolution max] but it's just such a goddamn nice TV, small resolution notwithstanding. Plus I have a 19" LCD to my right if I just need extra space :P

[Hale-Bopp]

We bought this (http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/7549/nxe1xu1.jpg) hdtv (http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/5623/nxe2nw2.jpg) (46" Samsung) last week and I have to say the difference between it and our old sdtv is HUGE. I now swear by the powers of hdtv. It also creates a nice glow throughout our entire home. We have a tiny home.

[Bigfoot]

I just got the Panasonic 50PZ800U at work, and it's amaaaaaazing.

[Bahamut]

I personally bought this HDTV back in September: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-HL50A650-50-Inch-1080p-Slim/dp/B001413EJ8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1222024449&sr=1-1

I don't regret it at all, such an amazing TV for my gaming & watching Illini football sucking ass.

[1337 1]

I cringed when my parents went out and bought a HDTV; they never use HD anything 8-O That said, whenever I'm at the house with friends/relatives, we do use it to play consoles in Hi-def...but that's only very rare.

So to remedy this, I'm buying them a blu-ray player for Christmas. :<

I swear I heard something about blu-ray players upscaling the quality of normal DVDs, or something...anyone have any idea what I'm talking, or if I'm just going crazy again?:tomatoface:

[JCvgluvr]

Really, there is. Again, if you can't tell the difference between 1920x1080 and 720x480, yeah, there's not much difference. But that also means it's time for a new prescription. You can make the good old-fashioned Wii fanboy argument that it's "just higher numbers," but in that case, may as well watch movies in 16x16 monochromatic grid of nearly-indecipherable bliss, with a THX-quality stream of monophonic 11khz audio.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like audiophiles that SWEAR they can tell the difference between 96khz and 192khz audio, etc., but in this case it's a pretty obvious difference that the lay person really CAN detect.

Actually, you're probably right. I was being somewhat satirical in that post, so what you're saying is most likely true. But I still have a hard time telling the difference.

Yeah... she paid for my college, so no.

LOL, I know what that's like.

[Majin GeoDooD]

I was instantly hooked as soon as I hooked up my 32" Westinghouse HDTV. Being able to watch hockey in HD alone makes it worth it, the wider field of view and better definitely is amazing.

[Brushfire]

Team Fortress 2 is so much easier to snipe in when you have a 40" 1080p screen.

[SLyGeN]

Nekofrog, I asked a tech buddy of mine the same question about the HDTV's on display at places like Wal-Mart. They look like shit, and they're grainy. What's happening is they're splitting the signal amongst all of their 20 or whatever TV's, and the TV is doing some of its own upconverting to compensate for signal noise... or something like that.

So yeah, you're right.

[Bigfoot]

That, and people usually don't adjust the TVs settings. So if you're at a store, don't judge a TV by how bright/dim it looks. I always find a model I'm interested in, and I look for reviews for it online anyway.

[Ajax]

I managed to pick up a 22 inch lcd monitor, that also has component inputs that handles up to 1080p, a while back for like... $220 which handles all my HD needs. It doesn't have a TV tuner though, but I don't watch TV anyway.

A pity my only current gen console is a Wii... I don't think I have even used those component inputs yet.

[sgx]

We bought this (http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/7549/nxe1xu1.jpg) hdtv (http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/5623/nxe2nw2.jpg) (46" Samsung) last week and I have to say the difference between it and our old sdtv is HUGE. I now swear by the powers of hdtv. It also creates a nice glow throughout our entire home. We have a tiny home.

I got the 40 inch version of that a couple months ago. Yummy!

[Avatar of Justice]

I cringed when my parents went out and bought a HDTV; they never use HD anything 8-O That said, whenever I'm at the house with friends/relatives, we do use it to play consoles in Hi-def...but that's only very rare.

So to remedy this, I'm buying them a blu-ray player for Christmas. :<

I swear I heard something about blu-ray players upscaling the quality of normal DVDs, or something...anyone have any idea what I'm talking, or if I'm just going crazy again?:tomatoface:

The PS3 does DVD upscaling. But only if you're connected with HDMI. I guess Sony wants you to only output the upscaled video to "trusted" devices (HDMI can do security handshaking analog crap can't) so that you can't put it up on Bittorrent. So make sure you read in the Blu-Ray player's owner's manual or whatever about whether you need HDMI cables for upscaling.

My parents were in the same situation and I just bought them some component cables for their DVD player and it looked just fine. No Blu-Ray necessary.

[DoctorDevice]

there are several reasons why the HD display looks lousy.

if the issue is big blocky artifacting and choppy video, that tends to indicate reception issues (a lot of big-box stores get their TV via satellite). if it is general fuzziness and smaller artifacting, it is more likely signal degredation during splitting (because big box stores don't run the signal digitally from end to end. if you look at the back of the TV, they are almost always using the component connectors)

and, of course, if two almost identical TVs are playing the same thing side by side, and one looks awful while the other is gorgeous, then the store is trying to convince you that monster cables are worth the obscene markup (or that you need to get your HDTV calibrated)

[Calpis]

HD's benefit can be negligible for movies (although it DOES look better)
I think it also depends (in the case of DVD) on the disc. I bought a 42" Samsung and it looked great for just about everything, but when I put in my old Amadeus DVD in, it looked terrible, and I honestly still don't really know why, but it's got a lot of dull browns and dark scenes, so maybe that's got a lot to do with it, but I bought the new 2-disc director's cut and it looks a lot better, but still worse than other titles in my DVD library.

Although, I do definitely notice the difference between DVD and a movie on an HD channel or an HD movie On Demand, although I don't have a Blu-Ray player so I don't know if there's a large difference between Blu-Ray and (what I'm guessing is) a compressed HD movie from Comcast. Anyone have anything to comment on that?

I will say though, I was resistant to HD in the beginning, but ever since I switched over, everything on an SDTV looks a little fuzzy in comparison.