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.
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.
--
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?
... 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.
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.
...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.
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
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
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.
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 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.
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...)
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.