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Explain to me this "high definition television"

Nekofrog

By Nekofrog,
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Xerol Oplan Newbie

Xerol Oplan

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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.

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djpretzel Enthusiast

djpretzel

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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.

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1337 1 Newbie

1337 1

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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:

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JCvgluvr Newbie

JCvgluvr

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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.

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SLyGeN Newbie

SLyGeN

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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.

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Ajax Newbie

Ajax

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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.

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Avatar of Justice Newbie

Avatar of Justice

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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.

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DoctorDevice Newbie

DoctorDevice

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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)

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Calpis Newbie

Calpis

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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.

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