Slashdot Mirror
The Joys of HDTV
Iron Webmaster wrote to us with a recent feature regarding the trials of HDTV installation. It's a semiamusing story - but it also points out some of the major problems with the cutting edge stuff. I know from personal experience in the Boston-area that even digital cable is...not as good as the companies claim. The infrastructure for this stuff is just not in place, and many companies are betting their future on it.
From the FAQ:
What is DScaler?
DScaler is the old name for DScaler, we changed the name as people use DScaler to refer to digital television and this was causing confusion. In the source and on the website you will still see references to DScaler but please refer to the program as DScaler from now on.
WTF?
Instead, I'd get a good NTSC monitor (*not* a television set...check these out) and hook it to one of the boxes found here.
HTH,
Phred
Design us some bookcases," I said, "and leave room for this."
No problem, they said, and $7,000 later, we had a beautiful built-in system, with spaces for all of my electronic components. But there was a problem, and you probably saw this coming. When the new set was delivered, it didn't fit. The hole [I think he means "recess"] was an inch too narrow and half an inch too low, and the TV went back to the store.
Not only is the guy only semiliterate, but he asks for a custom cabinet with specs that cut so close to the TV that an inch or two off and it doesn't fit. Here's a clue for you: ventilation don't go through wood.
it's actually one of the cheaper direct view hdtv sets around. my dad got his for $2100 (floor unit), but they retail for around $2500. here's a pretty good online retailer that carries it for cheap.
though you do lose out for paying less, the menus and UI suck my innards and it's RCA quality so I don't expect it to last too long. some other complaints have been its lack of digital video out. here's a bunch of user reviews for the tv.
"Just do me a favor, ok? Don't breed!" -- Adam Carolla, Loveline
Poor dears.
lol, nice sig. I loved my C64!
As far as analog cell phones, the quality here in LA was for me much worse with analog. The cross-channel interfearance was so bad it was often like being on a party line, especially during the time just before and just after switching cell sites while on the move (when you could be physically close to someone on another cell site who is using the same channel).
You just haven't been looking at the right channels. DirecTV can choose different bit rates for different channels, and the ones that they have lowered the bit rates on (Food Network for one) has noticable blocks and pixellation.
Of course, they use the higher bit rates for HBO and PPV.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Check this out: DScaler. This is Free Software (GPL'd) that can turn a computer with a $50 Bttv capture card into a high end line doubler with 3:2 pulldown! It's windows only at the moment, but I'm hoping someone will port this to Linux soon.
:)
Basically with this, the guy in the article could have piped his normal cable and/or regular DirecTV into his HDTV set and had an excellent picture, especially on material that was originally shot on film. Check out the website for some screenshots of line doubling Laserdiscs and VHS tapes... There is even a contest to see if you can tell the difference between line doubled DVD and Progressive scan DVD!
BTW, the project needs developers, I would especially like to see an industrious Linux programmer port this puppy over to Linux
Yes, in fact check out Dscaler. It turns a $50 bttv capture card and a PC into a high end line doubler. Check out the screenshots. You can make regular DirecTV/Digital Cable/Laserdisc/VHS etc look much better by piping it through something like this.
Get yourself a $50 BTTV capture card to fit alongside that one and you can line-double regular analog sources for your Barco as well with Dscaler, it's Free Software that turns your PC into a high end line doubler.
He says HDTV is "like watching a DVD all the time", but unless I'm misinformed, DVDs contain an MPEG2 at normal PAL or NTSC resolution. Sure, it's less munged around than what you get off VHS or a UFH broadcast, but it's still 525-615ish lines. I was under the impression that HDTV was supposed to be a *much* higher resolution than this.
Frankly, however, standard TV resolution should be enough for anyone, as anyone with a DVD should know. It's a shame that Americans are being denied digital TV and widescreen, unless they buy into HD.
In Europe, by the way, digital TV is not a byword for HDTV as it is in the US. Companies are fairly successfully broadcasting digital TV at normal PAL resolution (often in widescreen mind you) over cable, satellite and terrestrial transmitters.
It's usually a better picture than analogue (apart from the occasional over-compressed MPEG stream), it's a far more efficient use of bandwidth (more channels - a treat for us Brits who are used to 4 terrestrial channels). I only with they'd bothered to embrace 5.1 digital audio while they were at it.
--
I admit PAL has slightly better resolution, and better color rendition (ob. NTSC- Never Twice Same Color) (which doesn't bother me much; I'm moderately R-G color blind). What does bother me about PAL is the refresh rate.. 50 hz is just nasty. 60 is a much better; 24 (film) often gives me headaches, especially with stupid directors that like strobe effects..
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
What do you mean digital cable is not as good as the companies claim? What can they claim other than "You get 250+ channels!"? Have they promised it will clean your windows, mow your lawn, vaccuum your apartment, or walk your dog, and I just missed it? It isn't like they've ever promised better picture quality or better quality programming because of it, just more channels.
Of course, it's only worth it to me because I also have TiVo, so I haven't watched an ad for anything, including digital cable, in a long time. Maybe they are promising all those things. In which case you're right. Otherwise I have no idea what you're talking about.
Oh, bite me. I was traveling in Holland and Germany last summer so I watched some PAL. Big deal. 25 Hz interlaced at barely more resolution than NTSC. And the programs were wretched: either recycled American TV or poor imitations thereof. I'll take American (and Canadian and British) TV any day over what I saw in Amsterdam. Just to reiterate there is a huge difference between HDTV and the previous weak ass systems but you need to get material that was produced for it, not the lame upconverted stuff.
I suppose I should admit that impressive though it is I'm not willing to pay the prices requested so far. There are too many other more interesting things to do with that money. But the price and time will come. So far I've spent $50 for a WinTV-D card.
You should pick up a copy of 'The Perfict Speller'.
------------
a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Where does a newspaper reporter get the money to throw away thousands of dollars on a TV set? He didn't seem to care whether he got anything that worked. He just kept throwing around a couple hundred here and a couple thousand there regardless of whether it actually bought anything useful.
Does he put this on an expense report? Does the LA Times pay for home entertainment for their tech writers? Do they have any expectation that their tech writers do any research before throwing money to the wind?
Why do you think he wrote the article? Now he gets to write all the equipment off on his taxes as a business expense!
Just junk food for thought...
so for all the people that think the reporter just went out and blew his $7k without a thought are probably not giving him enough credit.
how interesting would the article have been if it said "i spent 2 months investigating and educating myself on HDTV and availibility
...
now i have a huge old antenna and an ATSC tuner card and it all works!" ?
the reporter is no idiot, i'd assume. the reporter just knows how to sell a good dramatization. For all we know he has a black and white zenith box with rabbit ears.
"A fool and his money are some party"
I have to concur. The FCC and the manufacturers can kiss my butt, because I am NOT going to HDTV as a consumer until it costs *less* than regular TV and allows me all of the same capabilities I have today and then-some. Why should I? What possible reason can anyone really give me?
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Your cable is great because you have a low concentration of people per cell. Digital Cable scales well to suburbs and cities with large land areas because of the relatively low number of boxes in each cell.
Cities with concentrations of people in small areas have much poorer quality because the bandwith to the boxes its split in many more pieces in each cell.
--- I do not moderate.
... no really.
If you live in an area with a high congestion of people (aka a cell with tons of people) digital cable has *much* worse quality than normal analog cable. Luckily for those of us in at&t cable land we no longer have a choice! The nice cable monopoly has decided we no longer no need analog cable and will only give us the hook up with their inferior digital product.
I really love horrible mpeg stutters, bad picture quality and spikes in sound. Thank you digital cable for showing me the error of my ways! Now I can get pissed at tv quality on four times as many channels!
--- I do not moderate.
The reporter obviously didn't research things much (for a circa $14K+ total expenditure). He also apparently didn't have a good salesperson. For example, apparently no one told him that Dish Network has 4 HDTV channels (now 5): HBO, Showtime, a demo channel, and a full-time PPV channel (it soon will have 2 CBS HDTV channels as well - if you're not near a CBS affiliate, though NYC and LA people should be able to get it as well).
There are many sets shipping with decoders, and have been since the start. Even more ship without them, which is a good thing, because it means if you want (say) Dish Network or DirectTV HD you don't have a second, unused decoder in the box. It also means that you can wait to buy a decoder (and use it as an amazing DVD-viewing set in the meantime) or replace an early-generation decoder with a newer one. Eventually, the decoders will be cheap enough it won't matter.
The standards are set (though the Sinclair group keeps bitching that they want to service to moving vehicles). 8VSB is available in almost any location that gets OK (or even poor) NTSC reception. Newer settops generally are much better at pulling in signals in tough locations or indoors.
I've had HDTV for 1.5 years now and love it. PBS, CBS (CSI is great, hell they even have a soap in HD now), HBO (including the Sopranos), etc.
Using probably the same box I get digital cable through Cogeco (in Ontario). While the picture is fairly good generally on the movie networks (while they hype digital TV, in reality only the movie network and a couple of other token channels are actually digital...I was quite surprized discovering that when all the ads simply talk about "Digital TV", yet 90+% of the channels are still analog), there is some wicked posterization in scenes of gentle color gradients (obviously they are overcompressing) and the picture in general most certainly is not "DVD quality" that they love to spout.
One funny thing about the digital cable box: Because it changes channels so slowly (even for analog stations) I never, ever "channel surf" anymore, and always check the online guide to see what's playing. This has been a revolution in television watching because now I'm much more selective and don't just watch what has the naked boobs (yes I had to say it...) visible when I flick by.
Yes, nice set that seeing as it comes with a DirecTV receiver built in too.
Now can anyone tell me why RCA decided not to allow anyone to record DirecTV programming by not including any video outputs ?
Europe tried going the HD analog route. In the US it's all digital.
What would happen if 'Car & Driver' got a 16 year old valley girl to road test a Ferrari ? She would think the car was crap because, not knowing how to drive a stick shift, she would never get out of first gear.
Come on.
You'll just need a new, or perhaps upgrade your existing, ATSC receiver/decoder.
Yes, but how many TVs actually display the full resolution? I've been watching HDTV sets for a while now, and I'm not sure I've seen any that support 1920x1080. I've seem a few that support 1080 (many just do 720 vertical), but those that do only support, for example, 1280 or so horizontally.
So, even with a good signal and a $3000 TV, you still might not get full HDTV quality. They really need to be more specific in their branding -- HDTV-ready vs HDTV-compatible (that might downconvert to 1280x1080, for example) vs fully-HDTV-compliant-in-input-and-display. Urgh.
I have a Canon XL1 MiniDV camcorder, and a semi-professional editing system (Macintosh G4 450 dual processor, Final Cut Pro, etc).
When I view my productions on an external NTSC set, the quality problems break my heart.
Would the better quality of a HDTV set help me? Is there any way to go digitally from FireWire to whatever inputs HDTV sets require? The folks at Best Buy say no, but I'm betting Slashdotters have a better idea.
Thoughts?
D
----
Thanks for the links!
All the converter boxes do, of course, is what my camera does when I hook it up to the G4. I should probably get one, or maybe a MiniDV VCR, just to minimize wear and tear on my camera. I was pretty surprised at how expensive most of them were; the VCR wouldn't cost that much more, I don't think, and I'd be able to record my productions without using my camera.
Sony's web site is pathetic. It didn't view at all on my Linux machine running Netscape. Ironically enough, it only works on Netscape on my Macintosh. I don't understand why developers produce such user-hostile content.
Where does one get a Cinewave card? That sounds cool. Pity the only HDTV camera I know of is a $130k Sony. Do you know of any less outrageously expensive ways to shoot in HDTV?
Thanks again.
D
----
I researched it, and the only HDTV camera I know of runs $100,000 for the body, $30,000 extra for the lens.
:-(.
If anyone knows a cheaper way, I'd love to hear it. HTDV strikes me as a pretty cool format for lower-cost filmmaking when it matures, but at those prices, well, it's not going to be lower cost anything
D
----
I know of someone who has a TV that's about 20 years old. Why change it?
Of course the picture is so bad as to be unwatchable, but she doesn't care.
For this reason, I can't say I like the government's proposal; why force people to upgrade when there's no reason in the world for them to do it? And I say this as the owner of an (expensive and newish) Sony VEGA.
D
----
Aw shoot ... whatever it is, it's a great TV :-).
The logo on the box with the two Vs forming a W made me confused.
D
----
Ahem I still use my laserdisc, and I bought Episode 1 - star wars WAY before all of you were able to get it on DVD.
Laserdisc is still going strong, and new titles are coming out weekly.
Oh, and I dont suffer from that stupid region coding.... I have a KILLER animie collection that most of you will never have because of DVD's limitations.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
WE laserdisc users can get tings that DVD people cant.
I was watching Episode 1 of star-wars on my big screen a full month before it was even rumored to be released on DVD.
DVD? no way man.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I can answer that - it's because the FCC is forcing us to, right? I thought that in 2006 or so there aren't going to be any standard TV broadcasts any more. My plan is to no longer need to watch TV by that point, and just keep my old set for video games, but of course if the PS6 requires HDTV too then I might be out of luck.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
"A fool and his money are soon parted."
:)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Well, very funny, but the guy didn't do his research. I went for a cheap "transitional" hdtv set (Toshiba TW40x81 - $2500) that at least provides better SDTV/DVD watching. Then I added an wintv-d hdtv card to my convergence pc ($300) with an amplified directional antenna ($140). We now have 7 DTV stations in Dallas, with very little HDTV programming and very difficult reception. But every so often, it does work, and it's marvelous.
tcboo
...to have that much money to just toss around, AND THEN not even realize that yes, Virginia, about the only HD signals out there are broadcast over-the-air currently (apart from the HBO mentioned.) Do your homework, ace reporter.
I don't think *any* sets are shipping with built in HD tuners/decoders yet, and worse still, has ANYONE decided on even a few standards to broadcast in?
Dollars-to-donuts ALL of his brand-spankin-new HD kit is quickly made obsolete and unusable when "they" decide to encrypt and license everything broadcast, or decide on a broadcast spec which his set and/or box doesn't handle....
Blech. Signatures.
The European DMAC and D2MAC formats of more than 10 years ago were analog and even for direct satelite broadcasts they took too much expensive bandwith, even at standard resolution the widescreen took some 30% more.
It's been used in the Scandinavian countries and France for a bunch of subscription channels but never on a regular basis in HD, always just wide screen. Some HD tests were been run, especially during the Olympics. The main benefit was it had (in the beginning) a decent scrambling=subscription system.
But once that was cracked the last fun was out of it (for the companies).
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Yes, he didn't do much research on HDTV and throw a lot of money in it, so what's the point of bashing him? That's what happen to an average user. Do you guys read the last line "Times staff writer Thomas H. Maugh II covers medicine"? He has the money to throw into it, I bet. And many of you guys would spend $$$ on drugs that you don't completely how they really works. If you get troubles by taking viagra, should this guy tell you, "obviously you didn't do much research on Viagra before you spend fortune in it."
Let's face it. I would be happy someone like this person that would spend fortune into new stuffs, get pissed, and tell everybody about it such that I, as a poor person, would not follow the same steps. At least, I don't have to do my little research of HDTV and know that I'd better to wait longer before I re-visit the issue later.
A sig is redundant.
c'mon. he didn't ask his cable provider if they offered hdtv service? granted, the average consumer may not realize this, but this guy confesses up fornt he is a gadget junkie. this is a bit like buying a car that runs on natural gas, and then complaining that your favorite gas station doesn't have a natural gas pump.
as a public service, let me help out with what one needs for hdtv service.
an hdtv. with built-in decoder, or seperate decoder.
and hdtv source. be it directtv (like the article says, they have very few high definition channels), or over the air, or a cable provider that offers it (very very few i've heard of).
for over the air, you'll need an antenna, as he discovered. there are small discreet ones you can mount to your dss dish if you have one, or hide along your gutter pipes to avoid your neighborhood's largest eyesore.
that's it. be aware that getting an hdtv feed is the hardest part.
complex
In 1998 I purchased a Dish Network receiver - the JVC DVHS unit (DVHS and Dish 5000 receiver all in one) with the expectation that I would be able to use the unit for a while and easily hook it up to my future HDTV.
Lotta good that thought pattern did.
Dish dumped the HDTV upgrade for the DVHS unit. Then they said the DVHS did not work with HDTV (even though the unit is able to record a 19Mbps bitstream). Then the stupidity started....
On one of the Charile Chats with Dish CEO Charlie Ergen, the HBO guy was on talking about the HDTV upgrades and how HBO was fully behind HDTV. He was right - they were fully behind HDTV but were doing other things back there instead of supporting it. What were they gonna do with their brand spankin new HDTV feed? They were gonna send down the movies in 4:3 aspect ratio at 480 lines. Huh????
That is when I pretty much made up my mind that HDTV was a joke. We ain't gonna see it any time soon.
> I make it a rule, despite my huge craving for anything new and shiny, to hold off on buying the first versions of anything.
As for \me, I'd rather see them spending the money improving content rather than improving format. High-definition crap is still crap, and so is most of what I see on the telly.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
With DVDs officially a "mainstream" technology (meaning that Blockbuster rents them), how many companies are going to continue producing laser discs? When the two choices where cheap crappy VHS and expensive high quality laser discs, there was certainly a niche there. Now with three choices, you have cheap crappy VHS, fairly cheap high quality DVDs, and expensive slightly higher quality (says you) laser discs. Laser discs may be the medium of choice now, but basic economics are going to make them a medium of the past very soon.
-B
And well it might, since some line-doubling causes video games to look horrible on HDTV sets.
About a year ago, I picked up a widescreen HDTV-ready projection TV (a Toshiba TW40X81). I have yet to see a true HDTV television show on it, but that's okay...
A HDTV is like a giant VGA monitor. Sure, it doesn't support mega-high resolutions compared to your desktop, but it does support resolutions like 640x480, 720x480, 1920x1080... and its a true, non-interlaced monitor. Forget what you've seen with TV-out cards, this setup looks SWEET.
So buy one. Hook up a PC and play some Quake. Grab an emulator. Be cheeky and buy a Dreamcast, which outputs 640x480 with the VGA box and looks INCREDIBLE. Nintendo is taking the same concept with the Gamecube - HDTV gaming!
Sure, the PS2 doesn't output HDTV, but at least it has games that take advantage of the 16:9 setup.
Who needs TV? Give me HDTV gaming anyday.
I'm still watching crap, but at least it's clear, crisp crap!!!
Really now. This guy needs to get a life and go buy a ticket to a play, or a book. Then he could get real resolution and could really feel like he was there. Where the hell does a non-executive get $12,100 to spend on a TV and some bookshelves?
My opinion is that this is a fluff, 'consumer education' piece. Not education in the 'here's something you need to know' sense, but in the 'this is what you should believe' sense. Consumers must be re-educated to believe that they need to spend $(N x 1000 + 100(M x num_months)) just to watch the crap the mega corporations spew at us.
Hey, buddy. I only spent $600 on my 36in TV, and it came with a stand. I didn't have to buy an extra 'decoder', and for the few shows I like to watch (the few with character deeper than a sheet of cardboard), I don't even notice the small amount of snow from the broadcast. Hell, the snow would disappear if I'd spend $50 on a decent antennae, but why would I? Me and my woman can have a lot more fun with that $50 in 90 minutes than you will have watching that preview station 8*)
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
All that money, only to be spent on something that in a few years will probably be the biggest brick in his house. Reporting for the LA Times, I wonder if he'll get permission from the MPAA to complain about it.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
"MPEG, and almost all audio and video compression is 'lossy', it actually removes part of the signal to compress it."
Although you are an AC I should point out that this statement is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what I said. Also, the max res on a DVD is only very slightly higher than your decades-old NTSC TV.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Sorry man, but they are not better quality. Allow me to explain.
In video or audio, compression is a means of maximizing usage of a given amount of bandwidth. You start here by thinking of the bandwidth as a fixed quality. For example, we all know that uncompressed 44khz/16bit CD audio sounds a lot better than a 128kpbs MP3. However, which sounds better: a 128kbps MP3, or uncompressed audio at 8 bits, 16khz (a 128kbps uncompressed audio stream)? Try it sometime.
So you have to realize that in most cases, a compressed stream will look/sound better than an uncompressed one of the same bandwidth. So your hypothetical 704kb/s MP3 would have the potential to sound better than CD quality. Granted, there are always flaws in the algorithms, and sometimes you will see an artifact. In the case of DVDs, this depends a lot on the amount of computational time spent on the MPEG encoding.
Now granted, an LD, uncompressed, could still look a lot better than a DVD if the LD had a higher image bandwidth. Problem is, it doesn't. A frame of a DVD flatly contains more information than a frame on an LD. So even an uncompressed DVD would still look better than an LD.
The compression on DVD is not so that you can fit a movie into a smaller space. It is so that a movie fit into a given space will look as good as possible.
I hope this clears things up for everyone.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
So, affluent man with too much time on his hands spends $7,000 on new cabinets and a TV, but has not yet done the research on actually how to get HDTV hooked up?
Awww, I have so much sympathy that I'm practically bleeding from my eyes.
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
One of my co-workers wasn't impressed with the picture on his digital cable setup until I told him that he should connect the box to the TV via the RCA jacks and NOT the coax. It looks a lot better now. Jackass.
I'm pissed as hell that my box doesn't include S-Video, only coax and RCA. Why? I don't know. When will we be able to buy our own boxes with the features we want?
--Mike
I don't need the DD decoder, my receiver already has one that will be better than the one they'd put in the cable box. All I need is S-Video out and digital out (Coax or TOSLink). I live in MA as well and this is the second time I've gotten Digital Cable. First was in Cambridge, now I am on the north shore.
--MIke
plus i'd like to add that i am fucking sick of 'journalists' focusing on the journal in their job description.
when did reporting degrade into bitching and moaning about your personal foibles and ignorance? every time i pick up a magazine or newspaper i'm reminded why i don't subscribe to them by articles like that one.
it's gotten so that when someone actually writes something without telling us they've got scabies they are heralded as the new paragon of writing.
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
I didn't have any idea that anyone made non-DOCSIS modems. Did you hit an Ebay auction or something? And with all this talk about research..everyone should know by now that you should call your cable company and ask them what type of modem to purchase.
Confucious say: a fool and his mango are soon parted.
Colour television?
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
Hey, that "concrete computer" article was a joke, and was never intended to be taken seriously. Noticed the foot icon near the story?
HDTV may be a joke too, but certainly has not been intended that way by its designers...
Yeah, I only have a 25' TV. Takes up my entire wall...
At that size, you would need more than 625 lines - hell you would need more than 1024 lines, non-interlaced!
HDTV will happen in countries with space restrictions - smaller living areas, hence people sit closer to the TV, hence they will detect lower resolutions. Namely - Japan. PCs have high resolution - you sit 1' away from them. TVs have low resolution - you sit 10' away from them.
At least HDTV will make those Internet boxes and everything worthwhile. No more 640x512 smudgy interface...
You're right, we do..well....my friend does. I haven't invested in HD but he has. It looks great and WRAL has done a good job. But, there still isn't enough on for me yet, and I can't give up my TiVo.
If college basketball starts being broadcast in HD, then I'm in.
I don't have an HDTV, but I know you need an antenna to get most channels for it. I wish I had an extra $10K sitting around to throw away like this.
As for digital cable, I'm not impressed. We have Time Warner digital in Raleigh, NC. All of the network stations are still transmitted in analog, so you get no advantage there. Luckily though, I mainly watch Discovery and History Channel and those are in digital. The only problem is they compress the mpeg so much you can see the artifact blocks whenever the screen gets dark. This is really wonderful when watching a show on space on Science of the Deep and all you see are dark blue squares where the deep ocean should be.
How about they take off a few unneeded channels and lower the compression a bit. Do we really need 5 different home and garden channels, or all those food channels?
I think you miss his point. I've seen HDTV up close and in person, and I won't argue that the differences aren't apparent, but I will argue that my TV-watching experience isn't significantly enhanced by the extra resolution. I mean, how many of Jay Leno's jokes am I going to not get because I'm still watching him on an analog TV? I can tell you that my enjoyment of "Mission Impossible 2" wasn't significantly reduced because I watched the opening on HDTV and the end on regular analog.
The point is that most people think that their televisions work well enough and don't see any crying need to make any significant changes. This is not the same as color television because it was generally acknowledged by the great unwashed masses that color was enough better than black and white to justify paying a hefty (at one point, on the order of 3-5 times the cost of the B&W TV) premium.
Anyway, since there is no general acknowledgement, especially among the "aluminum foil-enhanced rabbit-ears" crowd that makes up the bulk of television audiences, that the improved display significantly enhances what people watch television for, it is not clear to me that the "progression is inevitable" or that the economies of scale will ever kick in and drive the costs of HDTV lower before HDTV itself is abandoned and the equipment can be bought on closeout for ten cents or so on the dollar.
Yes, it looks better (when it works at all, and HDTV is significantly less robust than analog television) but it's a quantitative difference rather than qualitative. That's why HDTV is such a hard sell and why it's adoption is way slower than most HDTV advocates expected.
With respect to the conversion to color television from black-and-white, it really was something that the "grass roots" end users wanted. The most certainly did not need to be "pushed" to accept it. When the only televisions were B&W, everyone expected that there would be an eventual conversion to color and that expectation drove the search for and the eventual widespread acceptance of a color television standard. That situation really isn't comparable to HDTV. HDTV isn't something that very many end users want. Instead, it was something that some electronics manufacturers sold to the US government as something necessary to keep the US up technically with the rest of the world. The end users didn't get any choice in the matter except the one they're taking: They simply don't buy the televisions or watch the programming.
Barring a radical change in display technology, I don't think the prices for HDTV's are going to decline quickly any time soon. While the technology to build CRT's for computer monitors may be similar to that needed to make CRT's for HDTV use, the tooling is different and the details are different (there are significantly more holes in the shadow mask and each one must be very precisely drilled) and the production lines are not optimized for the 16:9 aspect ratio CRT's.
That means that it is not necessarily just a matter of time before $500 HDTV displays are available, and the cost per unit probably has to get down to about half that before it'll truly be mass-market. You'll have to wait for the economies of scale to kick in and that means that there has to be substantial demand for the product, which simply isn't materializing, for the cost to come down to the point where it'll be competitive with analog TV's.
Go ahead and be confident, but if the people who are making budgeting decisions for their households don't view HDTV as "progress" then they won't spend the money to buy the equipment and what I have predicted will actually happen. I guess we'll see in a decade or so. I can wait.
The only way to make people buy HDTV sets is to *force* them, which the US government is readily doing, by setting 2006 as deadline for scraping analog altogether. People don't need high definition TVs. Regular people, that is. They just want to watch the pretty pictures after coming home from work and before going to sleep; they just want Jerry Springer, they don't care if it's in 1800x1200 and Dolby Digital. Look at the computer monitor industry, how long did it take them to move from 15" to 17" as the standard choice? How low did the price have to go for a lousy 2" difference?
Then again, I don't really know much about the subject, so I may be wrong...
Any digital signal in real time blows. The same
for phones. Digital is unable to recover from
signal loss gracefully like analog. Analog may
weaken and fade, but its still viewable/listenable. Not so with that all so great digital. Frozen pixels and chopped convos.
Yeah thats progress.
Times staff writer Thomas H. Maugh II covers medicine.
You're paying WAY to much if you're paying $3500 for a 25" TV.
I have a 34", 16:9, Direct View (read TUBE) HDTV, and that was $3000. If you drop to a 32" 4:3 ratio tube, they drop to $1700.
Geez, I mean you can get a 51" 16:9 projection HDTV for about $4k-5k.
The kicker is the $500 HTDV/DirectTV reciever you have to by... Only RCA has a TV with a built-in HTDV Tuner, and that's $3500 (34", Direct View, 16:9 aspect ratio).
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
You need to see to to believe it.
Even on a conventional TV, an HD signal is PHENOMINAL.
Several of the local stations don't have much true HD signals, so the just 'upconvert' their regular broadcasts... even THESE are better than the analog equivalent broadcasts...
And, if DirectTV gets more than 2 channels, it gets even BETTER, 'cuz DirectTV, IMHO, blows the DOORS off cable...!
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
The average person IS going to assume digital means HDTV. What average non-tech head has the patience to wait on customer service lines to ask for details from a phone rep who won't have a clue anyway. As you can see, he DID try to phone and email several people who SHOULD have known, but they gave him the wrong information (or just ignored him).
---
The downside of course is all the garish neon colored advertisments :-(
What I want to know, is how can a reporter afford stuff like that as if it were a drop in the hat? Heck, I'll switch to journalism from ComSci in a heartbeat if the Times will pay me the way he seems to be getting paid...
We seem to have missed the boat, reporting is where the money's at now fellows!
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Laser Discs are still the medium of choice for the high-end videophile. The purity of the uncompressed high resolution images of most laser discs is prefered to DVD when you're dealing with large projector tube screens.
Someone you trust is one of us.
My bad, you are correct. I stand by my exacting technical description of VHS as "crappy".
Actually, I think he is technically correct. As I understand it, the pits on a Laserdisc are not of a fixed length or interval. So, instead of the pit/no-pit (binary) situation on a DVD and CD, the laser on a Laserdisc player uses the varying lengths and varying spaces between the pits to read off the video and (sometimes) audio signals. (CD-type audio can be encoded too). So yes, technically it is analog (non-discrete values). But it's kind of like they made an LP where the needle was a laser and the LP grooves were sealed under clear plastic -- you could get really high quality that wouldn't degrade with repeated playing (Note I said "kind of" -- it's a very approximate analogy).
Dude, your answer is much better. I'd give you mod points if I had 'em...(and hadn't posted already...)
I had a Laserdisc player for about six years before I switched to DVD, and it was *great*. During all the time others were watching crappy VHS, I had uncompressed digital video and CD-quality sound. I had no problem finding places to rent Laserdiscs. The Laserdiscs I bought were often cheaper than the VHS versions (go figure). My core collection of movies was relatively small, so switching to DVD wasn't that big a deal (and it carried the benefit of Dolby Digital/DTS/DVD Extras). It was also my CD player. Laserdisc was great tech for its time.
So let's say I bought a $500 player and $1000 worth of discs (both those numbers are probably high) -- I got six years of enjoyment for $1500 of sunk costs. Compared to the money I've spent on computers and how quickly they become obsolete, Laserdisc was a bargain.
I don't see why everyone is so hypercritical of this guys expensive adventure in high-definition TV -- in fact, I hope he has still more problems and ends up spending still more money -- it may just pull us out of this economic downturn! In fact, here is a much better business model than 99% of most dotcoms had: sell a never-ending series of incredibly expensive HDgadgets to Thomas H. Maugh II!
Yeah, but a lot of the digital channels I've seen on digital cable systems have so much compression it's almost unwatchable. Some of them are so bad they look like a ultra-low bit rate RealVideo stream. How do you put up with that?
Free Hans!
I love my non-DOCSIS cable modem! True I didn't buy it, rather just rented it from the cable company but it's great, especially since the non-DOCSIS system runs off of seperate shared bandwidth connection then the DOCSIS system in my area according to the cable guy. And since only 20 people signed up in my node under the the non-DOCSIS service (most of whom have moved away) I pretty much have all that bandwidth all to my self. Man I love 300 k/sec 24/7! Now if i could only get more then 40 k/sec upstream.
_______________________
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
I don't know anyone at all who has a 30 foot TV. Most people seem to have 2' - 3' TVs (24" - 36").
-- Steve
Look at the money this guy is blowing to watch TV! They're leading him around by the nose and he's begging for more. Go for it, bud.
[My apologies in advance for drifting off topic here...]
Background
I'm a Linux user.
A few days ago, after about a week of research, I bought a TiVo.
It looks like a great product for viewing time-shifted recordings off DirecTV and off the air NTSC broadcasts with S-video display quality. I don't mind paying for both the DirecTV and the TiVo services I'm getting. But.
Observation
There seems to be a precarious balance going on between convenience of fair use playback and the underlying recording technology here. As in, playing back on arbitrary devices and in editting any recorded video and in getting high quality input from arbitrary sources into digital video recorders
AFAICT, TiVo's will likely save the video stream in a format that is not open. Worse, it looks like it will get more heavily encrypted with increasing generations of TiVo software and locked to such an extent that it can only be replayed by that particular TiVo (Write once, run one-where).
So, the end result is: I can only view the recordings through a particular piece of hardware, even if I do manage to get a terabyte file server connected up to the TiVo through Ethernet (assuming future revision of TiVo software don't close out hacker upgrades such as big disks and Ethernet but do close out easy reading of video format).
I fear the digital video revolution is being postponed until the cost of hardware encryption/decryption comes down enough that it will be incorporated into the ends of every I/O channel that is of decent quality.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
You need to see to to believe it.
Even on a conventional TV, an HD signal is PHENOMENAL
HDTV isn't phenomenal, it's just slightly better.
Oh, sorry. I forgot you were in America and used to watching NTSC. Here in Europe (well, apart from France) we've had PAL for 30 years and almost such good quality as standard.
The programmes are better in PAL too 8-)
But when do you get the value of what you paid for out of anything anymore.
Nearly every time. If you're not going to - then DON'T BUY IT !
Here's a clue - If you don't need it personally, send it on to your president; You don't NEED all this crap.
Consume Less America ! - you'll get better stuff, and you'll enjoy it more. I can think of plenty of stuff I'd love to buy for $7,000 - but I'd think it a very poor deal to end up with a mere TV. How about a low-end tank ? There are plenty around for that price. A video edit suite, and make your _own_ movie ? You don't need all your fun pre-packaged at the factory, and sold to you by the AOL-Cola-Disney corporation. Get off your butts and do something.
30K for a car ? Why should I change the 200hp Alfa Romeo I bought for $1800 ? OK, so I travel by bike most of the time (and my best bike cost as much as the car), but the Alfa is a blast 8-)
Ah. Quake. Now maybe you have a point 8-)
I still don't think a HDTV is the way to go though - why not a nice big plasma display ? These are great for Quaking, they're dirt cheap at the moment (oh, I love recessions) and even brand new you're within that $7K budget for something decent.
--
Free Mac Mini
Don't believe me - check out http://64.14.37.123/browser/tv.jsp.
This isn't directed towards you but it just got me going when I saw "Vega".
NOTE: I am currently wearing an "anti-can-of-whoop-ass" t-shirt.
That is your ass, and this over here is your elbow, and NO they ARE NOT the same thing.
A quick note about your suggestion for the Dish Network system:
The quality of the Dish Network signal is far superior to that of regular broadcast TV, cable, digital cable and most other satellite services. You really have to see this for yourself (doesn't even require a good TV). Because of this, it is difficult to tell the difference between their picture and an HDTV picture. Plus, they have been supporting dolby digital for quite some time.
The best combination right now is arguably Dish Networks PVR (Tivo-like set top box) system and a good HDTV. You won't be able to tell the difference between that and an HDTV signal anyway, plus you get Dolby Digital to boot.
More
Well, considering people have been watching NTSC television (PAL in Europe), which is interlaced, for years and years without complaining, I would say that the increased resolution is indeed a big deal. It should also be noticed that part of the reason interlacing sucks on a computer screen isn't a problem with most television programming: Displaying screens of static information. It is difficult indeed to tell interlaced from progressive (assuming the same *total* resolution) except by sort of a "feel" of it (try it at your local high-end television store with a big display).
HDTV has a much greater hurtle to cross than Color TV did.
I don't think your analogy is quite correct. B&W and color tv's were "backward compatable". You could still watch any TV with a B&W set. It just wasn't colorful. With HDTV, you need all this converter crap. It's not a simple plug it in and go machine.
Until they can get the HDTV's to the point that the average user can use them it will remain for the users with the money.
(that may be 5 years or 10...depends on the manufacturers and broadcasters).
Sean
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
Now, what I really like is the naming of the groups who come up with copy protection schemes: 4C, 5C, ...
If your "digital cable" is like what we have in Des Moines, it's lousy (save for the improved selection). Des Moines started out with a low-quality cable outfit called Heritage Cable that only allowed for about 35 channels (and some of those were time-shared, so that just when the program you wanted on the Discovery Channel was about to come on, bam! it's pre-empted by Des Moines City Council meeting reruns...), which was later bought by TCI, then AT&T (and now another outfit is buying it). Rather than bother to provide people with a reasonable selection via analog cable, they opted to sleaze out and save bandwidth and give people bad MPEG, plus all the bother people may recall from the days of separate cable converters. (Oh, you say you bought a special picture-in-picture TV? Too bad; if the digital cable box is on, it's worthless. Oh, you want to watch one digital cable channel while time-shifting another channel, digital cable or not? Sorry, Charlie...)
I have to say that I have been exposed to directv signals since the very first rca receiver my parents bought for about 1300 with the dual lnb and the high speed data port. I currently have time warner cable at my house and opted for the digital cable about 6 months ago. In my area the digital cable is excellent. The problem with digital cable is the regular channels are still analog so they aren't any better but the higher up movie channels and other premiums that are in the digital block are great. Note I don't work for them and wasn't at all happy with their service when I first bought my house but when I got digital I was happy, and our road runner kicks ass around here. 3Mb down almost all the time and still about 60KB/s up!
I would love to own a honda insight or a toyota prius. First year models of that kind of technology is worth any hassle...
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
I just bought a jeep liberty, what problems did your friend have with his?
I didn't get to look around much at NAB this year, and was stuck in the (condemned, literally btw) Sands Hall. But 2 years prior, the HD cams were $100k, so I would think they have dropped some (I know, b'cast equip doesn't drop very far or fast). I'll see what turns up.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Yes and no...The broadcasters were given the channel allocation, which does have a use it or lose it time. (Also, 1 of the 2 channels will have to be given back after the conversion, stations choice, pending FCC approval) Those stations that don't get their permits and business plans in order will lose their new allocation. Then there is the capital equipment cost. Transmitter: $1+ million; antenna (probably a new tower as well - most current towers are fully loaded): $500,000, without tower, add $1-2 million for new tower; manpower - there are VERY few teams of people who can build towers and install antennas. You try installing a large antenna array 200-500 feet off the ground while clinging to an 18 inch wide tower. Not many people do, and those that do are well paid and booked for years now. And finally, don't forget the power bill and back up generator. ($10,000-$30,000/month for power).
Now the studio. Tape decks: $100,000 each. (at least 3 for air, plus 2 per edit bay, 3 or 4 edit bays...) Cameras: $50,000-$100,000 each (probably 3-5 cameras minimum). Router, distribution amps, etc.
This is a huge capital purchase - $10-20 million disappear very fast.
HD can be a huge success. The problem in lack of content. Why pay to watch all that crap with a better picture? It doen't make it any better. No content until there are consumers. No consumers til there is content. Loop.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
The Canadian satellite TV service (Called StarChoice, I think) is not limited by these regulations, so they offer a couple HDTV channels that consolidate all the HDTV from the American networks.
The next best alternative in the U.S. is the Dish Network. They seem to be more committed to providing HDTV. They worked out a deal with CBS to provide their HDTV programming to U.S. subscribers who could not get it via antenna.
But, probably the best situation is if, like me, you are in an area where all of the local broadcasters have converted to digital broadcasts and you can get the HD content for free with a $15 Radio Shack antenna.
So what are people's experiences with digital cable? Here are mine:
We recently switch from RCN "regular" to RCN digital. This is in the Boston area.
Negatives:
1) The picture seems slightly worse. For example, the NYC scene behind David Letterman's desk shimmers, although Letterman himself doesn't.
2) RCN took away the "force tune" option, which forces the tuner to switch to different stations at a pre-set time. This was useful when taping more than one show on a night.
3) RCN screwed up our bill (sigh).
Plusses:
1) More channels, like VH1 classics, BBC America & more HBO channels (HBO Latino!). Also more music channels (no images, they're like radio stations w/o DJs).
2) It's cheaper, if you have a cable modem.
3) The TV Guide menu seems more useful, although it has ads now.
There are also digital artifacts when you switch channels, although that's really brief & doesn't bother us.
So, for now we're keeping it. Wish the image quality was better, although many channels have such variable image quality anyway that you get used to it. I've been spoiled by my DVDs. Everyone talks about how HDTV will give us such high quality video, but I think the broadcasters will just carve up the bandwidth & give us 4 crappy channels instead of one high-quality-video channel. After all, people will still watch it & they'll make more in ad revenue.
http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/programming/ppv /features/hdtv/hdtv.html
You can get some movies, but you're better off just buying the DVDs. If anyone is like me, I usually have most of the movies they show on HBO etc anyway. It's really not worth the extra cash.
I have a 61" RCA HDTV with a built-in DirecTV/OTA decoder that I paid $3200 for. I don't think that is too much to pay for the TV...especially when you see the true quality of HDTV. The author mentions it is like watching a DVD all the time. He obviously does not have his TV calibrated correctly, because shows like Leno and CSI blow DVD quality away.
"Only RCA has a TV with a built-in HTDV Tuner, and that's $3500 (34", Direct View, 16:9 aspect ratio)."
Paid less than $3000 for mine.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
You're in the best city in the country for HDTV. WRAL recently started broadcasting their nightly news in HDTV. They are the first station to do that -- they were also the first station to broadcast anything in HDTV. You should be getting at least four stations in HDTV in Raleigh just as we Charlotteans. Heck, maybe even UNC-TV (PBS) has started HDTV broadcasts in the Raleigh area, they aren't doing it yet here, but plan to soon.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
No, it isn't. Laserdisc's color bandwidth is seriously compressed which is why (particularly Technicolor) films look much brighter and more colorful than laserdisc. Roger Ebert also uses DVD as his main video source now.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
The input that my RCA tube HDTV requires is simply a coaxial cable jack, just like standard cable; or a component video cable. What you need to worry about is formatting the signal into 480P or 1080i DTV modes before sending it out over one of those mediums. I unfortunately can't help there, but maybe Apple can (since they make Final Cut Pro).
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I got a 38" widescreen HDTV television with built-in HDTV and DirectTV receiver for less than $3000. I can pick up four HDTV stations (not including their substations) with my horrible $20 antenna in Charlotte. And, since I don't have cable, this allows me to get The Simpsons in pristine quality for free, as well as watching various shows in HDTV including The X-Files, and almost every show on CBS. PBS will be the fifth channel to broadcast in HDTV and they will be going live shortly.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
OK I'll give you the "me" could've/should've be "I am" but I don't see what's wrong with English Degree
---
This
I have a Communications Degree (read Journalism) and an English Degree (read I can read) but I ended up a SysAdmin/IT Manager for the money!
Clearly the real money is in Journalism! This guy dumped a ton of cash on a TV (In the end it is just a TV) so he must be doing much better than me!
---
This
I have seen 1.5Gb/s HDTV streams (and interactive video) at SC2000 (this particular demo wasn't over IP; University of Washington uses Gigabit Ethernet cards and interlaced HDTV: roughly 700Mb/s). It's quite impressive; now I know why I never want to watch movies on regular TV.
-- Stanislav Shalunov
$15 for my 14" colour. Beat that.
The Best Buy near me eliminated it's minidisc section earlier this month. In its place are stand-alone CD recorders.
-- nolesrule
I have an HDTV, but no High Res signal. I've tried Digital cable from Shaw (my local cale provider) and was appauled! The picture is not any cleaner and the "digital sound" only supports pro-logic (not that well may I add). Since I've replaced it with a DirecTV dish and dumped Shaw all together, I am MUCH happier. Picture is crisp and sound is thundering by comparison. Now I just have to get a new decoder box to support HDTV. If only we could get Tivo in canada without having to setup a US mailing address!
WURD!!
$3000...
That's only a little under 5 times more expensive than this 35" normal TV.
Let's see: 3 times the resolution, 5 times the price. 3/5 of the benefit isn't going to make me rush out and buy one anytime soon.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
-Dave
Ive had DirectTV for several years and they have definitely made adjustments...
:/ Those ignorant bastards.
(Aside from the fact that they have DOUBLED the amount of time it takes a channel, or the guide to actually APPEAR on the screen...)
Anyway, I remember watchin Braveheart on DTV (pan and scan) when it was first available on TV. Any time you had a very complicated scene it made me think I was having LSD flashbacks. Everything on the screen was just a wiggling blob. (Classic MPEG... you only have so many bits per second to describe any one scene, so the complicated ones get really messed...)... other problems occur when scenes are dim.
Lately these problems have not been very apparent.
A think rain cloud (thick as in Arkansas Thunderstorm) will block the signal completely. (Just has to be a think cloud, rain does not affect it. Also, and INCH of ice on Dish will block signal.)
As far as HTDV goes. I REALLY don't want to spend 1000 on a TV screen... I want HDTV on my already high quality, high resolution vga Monitor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
That's what they're supposed to do. And it would seem the fair thing to do. But broadcasters have a long history of getting the rules changed after the game has started. This is only to be expected when such huge amounts of money are involved.
__
I used to have Mediaone Cable. Since 1998 they provided us with a wonderful service. Every time you switched the channel a simple "white text on black background" text box popped up showing you what was on, when it started and ended, and a brief description of the show. The TV guide acessable through the set-top box was also simple, and easy to use. Sure, it looked a little retro, but all the features were there and quick to access. With the limited resolution of todays TVs, simple text and lines is the best way to present information. The set-top box was small and fit on top of our TV. We also saved $10 off our cable modem because we got cable from MediaOne. A bunch of mergers and acquisitions happened but our service stayed the same.
A few months ago, AT&T enticed us to sign up for their digital cable service by offering a reduced rate on our phone - the phone and cable would be one package which would be the same price as our cable alone now. They installed "digital cable" which included a set-top box wider than our (large) TV. Now we have pretty little menus. But they are so slow! It seems like it takes seconds to change the channel because it needs to "decode" the image. The menu boxes are larger and have less information in them. You need to hit an "info" button which takes you to an alternate screen in order to find out anything about what is on. That takes time, because it has to draw all those graphics and ads. Also, the bottom of the screen is filled up with advertisements whenever you switch channels! The picture quality has also suffered and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to change channels if you don't have the remote. To put it bluntly - it sucks!
And to top it all off it is actually more expensive because our phone bill has yet to be integrated into our cable bill. I would go back to the old system in a second, but I don't think they will let us.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
Most people are simply not going to toss out a perfectly good TV set in favor of a grossly more expensive model. I sure am not, because it's just insane to spend thousands for a new idiot box that doesn't have the functionality of my current one or isn't a computer.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Actually, it's more the fault of broadcasters that HDTV's entrance into the US market has been slow. They (understandably) do not wish to spend the money to upgrade studio and broadcasting equipment to handle HDTV's requirements. The most stagering example of this is the transmission towers - current transmission towers cannot be used to broadcast HDTV signals, meaning local broadcasters will have to build new towers to accomodate HDTV. This is an extremely expensive venture, and a huge turn-off to broadcasters.
One of the main problems with the HDTV campaign is that HDTV is being pushed toward the wrong audience. The general public doesn't want to spend the money to have a nicer image on their TV. The people who are interested in HDTV are movie watchers - the same people who bought the very first DVD players on the market, who have 5.1 dolby digital surround sound systems, etc. Unfortunately for HDTV, that audience is not large enough to sustain the industry, which is why it's being pushed to the general populace.
It is also important to realize that the FCC has mandated that all broadcasters switch to HDTV within "10 years" (10 years of what I don't remember - 1999 or 1998 perhaps). So far, they aren't really making much move to keep up with this, but if the FCC enforces it, then we may all HAVE to buy HDTV's sometime along the line.
By then the technology will be less expensive, and it won't be so painful.
Everyone take a look at this post and admire it. It is one of those rare absolutely misinformed in every way possible.
First, what is "too high?" Best buy has a 61" widescreen HDTV for $2250 right now. That seems pretty damn reasonable, considering a 36" Sony WEGA is around $800-900?
Second, I don't think they sell 25" HDTVs. I know sharp has a smaller LCD widescreen for around $2000.
Finally, the HDTV resolution is up to 1920x1080. And if you want a 61" computer monitor, I think that might be a bit more than the $2250 mentioned above.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
The discussion if a better standard is needed anyway is always held when it is getting introduced. For HDTV think of live sports coverage (right word?) where you can recognise the players by their face.
Of course at first it will be the high-flyers and trendsetters who will purchase the first expensive sets, but this was exactly the way it was with the cellphones.
I don't say that HDTV is to normal TV as cellphones to wired ones, but when more and more HDTV broadcast systems became installed maybe more and more people will think about switching to the newer technology.
And the picture? It's like watching a DVD all the time. I can't wait for football season to start again.
Until CBS loses the bid to host the NFL and then it's back in the dark!
It just goes to illustrate that these early adopters are the ones that pay for all the advancements while cheapskates like myself wait until everyone and their dog has one. But then my savings account is usually a bit higher than my peers as well. I guess I just don't care that much about TV.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
But the 1920x1080 resolution is interlaced. Ugh. Computer users realized interlacing sucked way back in 1996 at the latest. I am sure eventually the HDTV's will up convert the 1080i resolution out of interlaced (sort of like what high end tv's and projectors do to NTSC now) but there will be all the problems and artifacts of interlacing that we have now with DVDs. What progress.
Nah, lets just de-interlace NTSC, I've seen DVDs from a regular player run through a de-interlacer and it improves the quality much more than an increace in resolution will.
God, I wish I had so much money that I could afford to drop $10k on getting a new toy. (Though I can tell you it certainly wouldn't be a new TV.) And, having spent that much money just to be able to have a clearer picture of Jay Leno's chin, I would probably be too embarrassed to tell the world about it. Not that I've done that...really...
Of course, it just goes to show the problem with buying high tech stuff from large chains. The sales people seldom really know what they're talking about - especially with new technologies - but they're always going to try to make the sale. You just have to recognize that it's more of a caveat emptor situation, when you buy new tech at chain stores...
credo quia absurdum
Hmm, good point :-)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
When you think about it, why does one need a better TV definition ? really, it's only to get a better picture on large TV sets. How many people in the US and in the world have TV sets with a size that justifies a better definition ? many many less than the masses who have sub-30' TVs. Therefore, given the kind of massive investment networks would have to get themselves into to upgrade to HDTV, none of them are really ready to adopt the standard and convert all their equipment. Most people don't complain about the quality of their TV image, so the market is just too small for that. It's easier to just let TV manufacturers come up with clever ways to display 625 lines better (and really, if you think about it, on giant retroprojection TV sets for example, it's a miracle that the image is so good considering the low resolution).
In short : widespread HDTV ain't gonna happen.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This isn't a particularly funny article... it's just plain sad.
Looks like, at this rate, the HDTV system will be simply zip-tied and duct-taped together in 2007.
Kinda like my NOC.
--
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
Vote of no-confidence: ABC dumped it for Monday Night Football last year and sold their HD truck. Sure, HD editing systems and hard drives get cheaper, but lightly-compressed HD decks and other infrastructure items carry such a high price tag, it would make you want to cry. The only solution for the consumer-end will likely be so compressed [ala digital cable & DSS] that consumers will be unable to tell the difference between NTSC and HDTV.
This is what we call the "big plate of crap" theory. Why would consumers spend all that money for a bigger plate of crap, trading analog noise for digital artifacts which blur the image rendering the higher resolution moot?
You're still going to see HD take off as an e-cinema vehicle and at big trade shows. But I don't think broadcasters [who got all this bandwidth for FREE for this very purpose] can be trusted to deliver the goods without mucking it up with multiplexed NTSC and data services to boost their bottom lines.
I could have kicked his ass for half the price.
HD decoder boxes are not like Tivo boxes "except higher resolution." Just wave that magic wand over the mess and call it HD, eh? Oh, people like you are wonderful- I bet you have a metric tonne of unsupported 'lectronics in your basement. Smart man.
Again. You have never actually seen HD over the air. I can't believe that you have. Otherwise you would never have said that. DSS/Digicable look like crap. Digital TV over the air is a bucket of ass. Crank that up by 6x and you have the mother of all fiascos.
Have fun with your "big plate of crap."
Folk, all this talk about this guy wasting his money because he didn't do his research.
I am not convinced he spent any money that was his own. I am quite sure that he expensed the entire thing. How else would they be able to produce such high quality content? You need to spend money to make money.
Even if he didn't expense it, he was absolutely able to write it off on his taxes as job related.
So in summary, he didn't care how much he wasted, it was worth the risk to have HDTV, because it wasn't his money.
Now why aren't other people buying HDTV....
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
Why don't you just use the same address for tivo that you use for directv or buy a replaytv unit that doesn't require a subscription
Off the top of my head, non of the video philes I know use projector screens. They all use CRTs. I haven't heard them complaining too much about the switch from laser disc to DVD. I do hate it when films have compression artifacts though. I was recently watching one film that quite a lot of compression artifacts.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
I know a lot of people who use Minidiscs. They didn't take off for music sales, but a lot of people use them to transport audio for radio and video work.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
HDTV-"Ready" means you need a decoder.
HDTV signal is broadcast open-air, and all you need is an antenna and a set/box that will decode the analog signal.
Any time a salesman tells you you need to buy more than one thing to get one thing, he can be talked out of it. If they want to give a special price for buying the bundle, fine. But you should ALWAYS be able to by a discrete component seperately.
You need 'wiggle' room. Always allow for 2-3 inches in any opening for a TV to allow wiggling to move it in/out
Frankly, this guy is stupid. That he would spend so much money on toys without knowing what he was buying is idiotic. And if he truley lived on the "Cutting Edge" of technology/electronics, he would know better. That this fool was willing to pay for both digital cable AND DirecTV is amazing. Does he have both electric and Gas furnaces, too? This guy's problems had more to do with his own ineptitude than any issues with the technology.
- Dan I.
Actually, the resolution for HDTV is either 1920x1080, 1280x720, or a few DVD-quality tv resolutions. 1024x1024 doesn't appear anywhere in the ATSC standards.
Also note that these are generally big fscking widescreen displays. Generally the only thing that comes close on the PC end is a standard 21" or a 24" widescreen display. When the prices for a HDTV set go down until you can get a real one (i.e. not just a normal sized projection screen that downconverts an HTDV feed) in a size equivelent to your average 25" or so TV, you should be able to buy one at an excessive premium instead of an insane premium.
If you have ever seen the display, it's damn nice. Of course, unless you absolutely love new toys and k3w3l 31337 TV, it's not worth it yet.
Gentoo Sucks
You don't *have* to do interlace.
You just have to run at 24,25,or 30fps instead of 60fps.
Depends on what you want to do with it. Movies are progressive, but sports should be interlaced because things are fast moving.
They wouldn't have been able to fit it in a 6MHz band if they used 1920x1080x60fps progressive, so they had to cut corners.
Gentoo Sucks
No question of that - but keep in mind what it says at the bottom of the article:
Times staff writer Thomas H. Maugh II covers medicine.
I guess my point is that at least the LATimes is not paying him to be a moron on technical issues. I would be much more annoyed if this guy was their technology writer.
It doesn't make me too confident about their medical coverage, though
Agreed. I have an HDTV. Where I really see how bad analog TV is, is when I tape a show and play it back on the digital set. I might as well be watching it through a sheet of waxed paper. The picture is just bad.
'Same speed C but faster'
I recently got HDTV working here, though I went a cheaper route; I spent $1000 on a store demo RCA HDTV/VGA monitor, and swapped that in place of my Sony Trinitron. I then went to the local Time Warner center and swapped my old digital box for a HDTV box. Plugged three RCA cables between the two, and poof! HDTV.
:-)
Time Warner gives me four HDTV channels, HBO and Showtime, East and West coast versions. Not all the shows are broadcast in HDTV, but when they are, they're niiiiice...
I did have a few problems. A slightly loose antenna connection introduced a LOT more noise than you'd think it could, causing one HDTV channel to stop working and another to be contaminated with pretty colored splotches (thank you MPEG).
But all in all, I'm glad I did it. And the computer in my entertainment center is happier with the VGA connection than with S-video.
Of course not. Every country, I'm sure, has its good and bad TV programming.
Malcolm in the Middle is freakin brilliant
You've GOT to be kidding! This is a perfect example of the caliber of our TV-watching population in today's world. Sheesh.
He's having transmission problems that were very similar to the ones seen with the Cherokee it replaced... to the point he's nearing protection by the "Lemon Law".
I love our Wrangler and it happened rarely with the Cherokee, but it's still preventing me from parking a Grand Cherokee in my driveway.
That's great if you have support for it. Our cable company requires a DOCSIS modem now. I despise renting something which would pay for itself in rent, so I bought... and got screwed.
;)
Now there's a standard and I feel I can buy my non-DOCSIS modem without the worry of being burned again. Of course, you might be the guy who bought my old modem on eBay, so maybe you'll be the next to get burned.
My modem was purchased when the cable company had, in fact, specified a particular brand and model of modem. This was before DOCSIS was used by everyone (nice because they were unable to throttle bandwidth). I did my research and saw that, within a year, purchasing the same modem would have been cheaper than renting. However, when standards were created, the cable company switched over and swapped any rented modems to DOCSIS-compatible. My modem was rendered useless to me.
I sold it on eBay for a loss slightly less than what I would have paid in rental charges, so I wasn't livid. I only feel burned because I ended up "renting" when I did my research and made a conscious decision not to.
I make it a rule, despite my huge craving for anything new and shiny, to hold off on buying the first versions of anything.
Anyone get screwed by buying...
Beta? (no quality arguements, just show me the Walmart aisle)
Laserdisc?
Minidisc?
Non-DOCSIS cable modem? (me... very recently)
First year car model? (friend's Jeep Liberty)
Let the standards be decided and buy then. It's absolutely killing me that I don't have my widescreen HDTV, but I'm waiting until I see that it's becoming more commonplace and less likely that I'll get burned. Seeing an article like this only reminds me I made the right decision.
This guy clearly didn't even bother to do the slightest bit of homework. If he would have bothered to spend $4 and pick up a copy of The Perfict Vision or Home Theater he would have avoided much of his problems. It doesn't take a lot of research to find out that the RCA DirecTV receiver has DB-15 output for VGA. It takes even less time to find out that DirecTV only has 1 "actual" HD channel. (BTW, if you want HD, buy a DISH Network system. They require multiple dishes in many instances, but you get several more HD channels, with much more room to grow.) There is definitely a problem with HD broadcasts right now. However, this article just sounds like a rich guy saw a Best Buy ad and decided he had to have HDTV NOW! Had he done a bit of homework, he would have realized that it isn't that easy.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
I think the biggest advantage for HDTVs will be when we get consoles that support the higher-resolution. My biggest gripe with the Playstation and PS2 is the crappy resolution. Who wants to play a cool 3D game in something that looks like 320x200 resolution, no matter how many polygons you have.
HDTV is a relatively new thing that the government has taken a long time to adopt as a standard because they wanted to get it right the first time. Getting HDTV is an real difficulty, as the article alludes. Digital cable is a possibility for those of you that have access to it and are willing to pony up a little more, but it is not as hideously expensive as HDTV, and can provide some of the quality that you might be looking for until HDTV is avaliable.
HDTV sets are still very expensive and ill worth the cost because the basic infrastructure is still being designed. I have seen the costs of HDTV sets drop though as the market becomes bigger and bigger, as you would expect in any market. Face it, people want to sell TVs, but most people aren't going to buy at the current price. The people that are laying the groundwork have an incentive to do so as fast as possible. HDTV will be more practical in 5 years then it is today, just like any comparable invention (TV, color TV, cable TV, the internet) takes time to be widely available and get better with time as more and more people demand higher quality products. As this occurs, the price will drop and ease of use will increase.
HDTV will of course replace all TV as the standard, as color TV did. As we get closer to that point, the effort to get HDTV sets and signals will become easier and more accessible to the average consumer.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
I'm pissed as hell that my box doesn't include S-Video, only coax and RCA. Why? I don't know. When will we be able to buy our own boxes with the features we want?
I don't know where you are, but AT&T in MA doesn't offer a complete Digital Cable box, they just aren't ready for it yet. In a move they made so they could keep up with DirectTV, they instead offer a bare-bones Digital Cable Box for the time being. The complete box(which you can look at online at the manufacurer), which hopefully will be distributed in the future contains all the fixings, including a Dolby Digital decoder!
Give it time, Rome wasn't built in a day.
Of course, this is the LA area, so I guess it should be taken as a given
D - M - C - A
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
Unfortunately, this isn't limited to Digital. On my plain-old-analog cable I have the exact same problem, since my cable provider obtains many of their signals digitally, rebroadcasting them analog on the cable.
The result is the worst of both worlds: bad analog signal of a digital signal showing stutters and dropouts.
> The only solution for the consumer-end will
> likely be so compressed [ala digital cable &
> DSS] that consumers will be unable to tell the
> difference between NTSC and HDTV.
I don't know how you are making this stuff up. HD decoding boxes are very close to Tivo decoding boxes, just higher resolution. The only price issue in consumer side is probably the cost of the TV monitor, i.e., sending "very compressed" data doesn't reduce costs.
The broadcast side is expensive though. But networks have money and they were quick to get their free spectrum. So instead of bitching they should get on with it.
> This is what we call the "big plate of crap"
> theory.
Indeed, you are full of it.
>> You sound like somebody ...
> HD decoder boxes are not like Tivo
> boxes "except higher resolution."
HDTV is based on MPEG2 video compression. MPEG2 decoding is the bulk of the computational load at the receiver as you need to buffer anchor frames for motion compensated prediction (read memory requirement), do inverse DCTs and so on. HDTV MPEG2 decoding is very similar to what your DVD player as well as what your Tivo box does. The main difference is the resolution.
Beyond the MPEG2 decoder,you need electronics that will handle the physical communication layer (costwise negligible), the monitor (not negligible) and memory. This is your basic HDTV. Add to this more features packaged in a set-top
box if you must (again negligible compared to the price of the monitor).
The only savings coarse compression may buy you are probably a lower clock and reduced memory in MPEG decoding. You are hallucinating if you think this will be comparable to the price of the monitor which is around thousands of dollars.
Reread what I have written. I am not comparing the quality of Tivo or DVD to HDTV. I am comparing the costs and the technology which are very similar except for the HDTV monitor, which is quite expensive. Even then this is only part of the HDTV story. The main problems slowing HDTV proliferating are based on broadcaster issues: Expensive studio equipment, cable must carry issues, etc.
These will be resolved if FCC is serious.
...the duration of time that it will take before every encryption code and codec has been broken and HDTV becomes a new route onto the internet and P2P file sharing becomes ABSOLUTELY HUGE.
You thought Napster was bad, RIAA? Try this: mega-bandwidth cables transferring GIGS through the line. Song takes 30 seconds to download. DVD takes an hour....he he he...HAHAHA.
The preceeding has been a power trip. Now you try it.
---
I got nothin'.
For those who don't know about it, I'll expand a little bit: DScaler and a TV capture card takes input from a regular NTSC video source (cable TV, VCR, TiVo, DirecTV receiver, whatever) and applies a bunch of video processing algorithms to remove the visible artifacts caused by the fact that NTSC is an interlaced video standard. It uses your PC's video card to scale the image up to whatever resolution you like. It'll even do fancy tricks like displaying film material at an even frame rate if your refresh rate is a multiple of 24Hz (the frame rate used for most film material), or automatically detecting letterboxed movies and expanding them to fill a widescreen display. Lots of people are using it in place of expensive standalone video scalers to display analog TV on their HDTV sets. If you have a clean source signal you can get a picture that looks nearly as good as standard-definition digital TV. Not HD by any stretch, but it still looks quite good.
Best of all, it's GPLed.
The main place where it's discussed, and where all the developers hang out (and a great place to discuss using PCs for watching TV and movies) is AVS Forum's Home Theater Computers message board.
That said, for those of us in places like the San Francisco Bay Area, which has a large number of digital stations, DTV and HDTV are just lovely. On a clear day, my rooftop antenna picks up six or seven digital stations. The picture quality is stunning even on the standard definition stations, much crisper than the clearest cable channels and most DirecTV channels. And HD shows look better than the picture at the local movie theaters. The picture has yet to fail to elicit a "wow" when I've shown it to people.
And the cool thing is, it's on my computer using an ATSC tuner card which means I can record the digital signal to my hard disk for later viewing - not as slick as a TiVo, but adequate. (And before you ask why anyone would watch HDTV on a 17" monitor, the monitor on that PC is one of these, more or less, less expensive than a new HDTV if you buy it used.)
I do wish the prices would come down on more traditional HDTV sets and that they'd get the integration issues straightened out so a separate settop box wasn't required. Better market penetration will equal more incentive for the networks to produce more HD shows. But if you're willing to actually learn about what you're buying, the technology is out there and working.
The price of HDTVs is too high. Who would spend $3500 on a 25" tv??? My computer monitor with a voodoo card can do 1280x1024, which is higher than HDTV(1024x1024) and it costs a lot less.
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
I have digital cable from TWC and agree, the quality is terrible. It's worse on some channels than other, particularly the movie channels. The picture has a pixellated moire pattern like a badly-compressed AVI (OK, so that's redundant...). This is especially evident in scenes with smoke, fog, or dust. Needless to say, I couldn't enjoy Dune on the SciFi channel because of the poor picture quality. We have complained to TWC and they do not understand the problem. They even sent someone out to fix the box. I showed him a pixellated channel and he just stared blankly at the screen, unable to see what was wrong. My coworkers think the problem is either caused by encryption or bandwidth issues. I think that TWC should have waited to introduce digital cable until they could get the dang thing to work properly.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
The point is that most people think that their televisions work well enough and don't see any crying need to make any significant changes. This is not the same as color television because it was generally acknowledged by the great unwashed masses that color was enough better than black and white to justify paying a hefty (at one point, on the order of 3-5 times the cost of the B&W TV) premium.
I would argue that this is very similar to the arrival of color television. As you said, "how many of Jay Leno's jokes am I going to not get because I'm still watching him on an analog TV." Content of course doesn't drive this advancement, but the same factors that pushed people towards color TVs still exist. A big part is manufacturing costs, and really HDTVs are priced a lot higher than they need to be. Essentially they're made with the same technology as standard computer monitors, it's just a matter of time till some manufactuer just changes the circuits of a CRT display and sells it as a $500 low end HDTV. But this goes hand in hand with the functioning of our economy, that is to say the interest Americans have in luxury goods. A lot of people buy "cool toys", the trick is to price things so that the average American can buy it with just a paycheck or two. Manufactuers are going to be all over this because they've almost run out of enhancements they can stick on the newest TVs, at this point they're doing more with the look of the box than it's contents.
Of course, I look forward to HDTV myself, but then that's because I want to plug my computer into my TV. For people like me, this stuff is almost a justification in of itself. But even though this technology is dependant on the acceptance of most of America, I still feel pretty confident. The US continues to drive itself forward in all aspects and when this isn't possible it drives in circles. The point is that no industry here stays stagnant for long, something as well loved as TV will be forced to progress like everything else.
I'd like to point out that you still haven't explained what I'm missing at the lower resolution.
Well, as you've indicated there really isn't a quantitative analysis that can be done to prove that HDTV provides a better experience. All I can do is point at the general trend in the market today, specifically movie theaters and DVD. Theaters, for example, have expanded their sound systems significantly over the last decade because they found it attracts the audience. People can tell the difference and are willing to go drive a little further to get better sound and picture, even if they're going to see a comedy. DVD is probably a better example, the qualitative gains of DVD vs VHS are more in line with the improvements HDTV provides over normal TV. People wouldn't be spending ~$5-$10 more on a movie to buy it on DVD if they didn't see some definate gain. And these aren't just popular with the big screen/surround sound crowd, quite a few people attach their DVD player to a fairly cheap TV.
Barring a radical change in display technology, I don't think the prices for HDTV's are going to decline quickly any time soon. While the technology to build CRT's for computer monitors may be similar to that needed to make CRT's for HDTV use, the tooling is different and the details are different (there are significantly more holes in the shadow mask and each one must be very precisely drilled) and the production lines are not optimized for the 16:9 aspect ratio CRT's.
I rather like the idea of converted monitors, hobbiests are already doing this. The 16:9 ratio is really the only problem with them, and this can be fixed by simply "scrunching" the image so it fits on the screen (Sony offers TVs that are already doing this). Not the ideal solution, but as LCD becomes more popular in the business world the prices for CRTs are going to plummet. As for standard HDTVs, their prices are going to continue to be forced down by the manufacturers simply out of survival. As I said before, it's going to get harder to improve on standard TVs so these will be offered to entice people to upgrade.
Really the main reason no one buys these monsters is the lack of promotion. With the exception of a few commisioned salesmen, there hasn't been a desire to push these things out the door. The root of this obviously is the lack of support from the networks, until most of the nation has access to HDTV programming interest will be lacking. But once the manufactures sense that the interest is there, they'll push these puppies as fast as they can. It may not happen according to the government's schedule, but it will happen.
When you think about it, why does one need a better TV definition ? really, it's only to get a better picture on large TV sets.
There is a shortage of stores that actually show HDTV samples on their HDTV sets, but if there's one near you go take a look. The differences are apparent, especially on standard CRT TVs (most of the rear projection, big screen models look like CRAP IMO). Now you may question whether the improvement is worth the cost, and at the moment it probably isn't. But the future will bring cheaper and cheaper manufacturing techniques, HDTV displays will start to be pushed by the manufacturers to replace peoples' old TV sets. The progression will be as inevitable as color TV was. In 20 years you'll be so used to the higher definition, the older sets will look bad in comparison.
_______________________
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
You sound like those people that say, "Is it really worth X thousands of dollars for that audio equipment?" without hearing music on the equipment.
Once you've had a taste of broadband Internet access, DVD movies, CD audio--you'll never want to go back to using the older format it replaced.
--
Aaron J. Shaver
http://aaronshaver.com/
No matter how much definition you add to crap, it's still crap. The only thing I'd like to see at a higher quality then regular cable are movies, but that's what DVDs are for. Well...maybe hockey games too. Mmm, high definition hockey.
--
"I strongly urge both the faint of heart and the faint of butt to leave the room at this time."
- Strong Bad
The problem with emerging technology is this much the same to this... the broadcast, cable, etc. companies that traditionally relied on analog start selling digital cable and whatnot. That's fantastic... except for the fact that the majority of the channels are still analog at some point in the network.
Broadcasters, cable companies, whoever will say they have HDTV broadcasts... yeah, well, I'll believe em when the TV picks it up.
I support the freedom of distribution of all forms of entertainment, but until that becomes a reality, encouraging people to break the law for spite is a bad thing.