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I STILL Want My HDTV
jhaberman writes: "Slate.com has an opinion piece talking about the horrific mess the HDTV rollout has been. It seems everyone's
been to blame from the hardware manufacturers, to the cable/satellite companies,
to the producers of the actual shows. I fell into the trap a year ago buying a
top of the line Sony Wega digital TV and I STILL don't have ANY HDTV! Here's why..."
At least the USA is making inroads into HDTV. Here in the UK, only a few channels seem to be able to broadcast widescreen effectively (namely the BBC and Channel 4).
BSkyB (part of News Corp.) seems totally incapable of doing any 16:9 broadcasts. For instance, Enterprise is shot in 16:9 but we get it as 4:3, even though most pay TV in the UK is now on a digital platform (DVB) and a sizable percentage of homes have a widescreen set. Certainly as a percentage, more homes in the UK have widescreen than the USA has homes that have HDTV
..and came across a few links that show all the HDTV broadcasters in the U.S. Kind of interesting, there's one in a town 100 miles north of myself.. woohoo.. :P
www.nab.org
www.hdpictures.com
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
Give me a break. The FCC has tended to be a corporate tool for the past few decades, and HDTV rollout is no exception; it was the corporations who pushed the FCC and Congress to set HDTV standards.
The corporate sector is a hundred times more greedy and short-sighted than even the most ineptly run government agency.
DirecTV is carrying HDTV on channel 199. Of course you need the HD DirecTV Receiver, to go along with your HDTV. They are carrying 16 Hours a Day of HDTV transmitted by HD.NET which was founded and run by Mark Cuban of Broadcast.com and Dallas Mavericks Fame. Currently they are running the Olympics in conjuction with NBC. The schedule can be found here Hey it's not the latest movies yet, but if you're really jonesing for some HDTV it's better than nothing...
why not rejoice in the fact that you have an incentive to go outside and interact with the world, it's considerably less pixelated than even HDTV.
Agreed.
DVD's are not HD. They may be widescreen(most of the time), but they do not have the high resolution that HD gives you.
Well, the industry pushed the standards, but it was the FCC that asked them to initially. It all comes down to bandwidth, and the sad fact that we just don't have enough to go around down at the low end of the spectrum (where signals carry well). Digital transmission will allow the FCC to phase out the current wide-band analog TV bands, and to re-use (i.e., sell) the bandwidth for things like fleet dispatch, which is always screaming for more spectrum.
While the ISM and similar bands (900MHz and 2.4 GHz home wireless) are great bands for their purposes, they don't tend to overcome terrain obstacles as well as lower frequencies (and no, this is not really a question of broadcast power). So it is natural for the FCC to want to make more effecient use of the spectrum by reclaiming wide analogue channels and replacing them with narrow digital channels, thus freeing spectrum for other uses. That's what we pay them for. That's their job.
While I am happy to see some attention being bandied about concerning HDTV, I wish it were a little more accurate. It is a complicated subject though, so it is a comming thing in the articles that have been written to not be 100% factually correct.
For example, you do not NEED two dishes for DirecTV... only the one oval dish. Two would also work though. For Dish, you do need two.
Fox digital broadcasts are not simply "480 lines". They are 480p, like a progressive scan DVD player. While a FAR cry from CBS's 1080i, or from ABC's 720p, it is still much better than what most people see even on their DVD's. Fox has other problems in their presentation though. For example, they "zoom" the picture so it fills a 16x9 TV. This effectively cuts off an inch on the top and bottom of the picture. Why they don't just send it through standard, like ALL the other networks do, and leave it to the viewer to decide on how they want to view it (standard, stretched, zoomed, etc), is beyond me.
Another little known fact, is that the OTA (over the air) broadcasts that are available to most, comes in a better picture quality than analog cable, digital cable, or digital sattelite. It is a very noticeable difference too. The digital broadcasts done OTA are not compressed in any way... great 480i picture (usually better since many/most HDTV's use a line doubler of some sort). Broadcasts done over cable or satellite are all compressed to certain degrees, resulting in pixelation and downright nastiness. Some are better than others, but OTA is better than all of them.
If you like to watch TV, I think it is worth it. Check out www.antennaweb.org to see what digital channels are available in your area, and what antenna you would need to receive them... I guess there is a place to check.
Check out www.avsforum.com to learn all you could ever want to know about anything to do with Home Theater, HDTV, HTPC, and more.
The information is out there; the problem is that you have to go look for it. I agree... the sales people should know more about this stuff so consumers don't get screwed. But really, is sale person's lack of knowledge about a product they are selling something new?
Jeff
If you use a computer monitor as your display, HDTV isn't terrifyingly expensive. That's no good if you want a 45 inch screen, of course, but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing.
I bought an HDTV box a little while ago and wrote an article on the subject of getting all this stuff happening for cheap. You can read the article here.
(-1, Wrong. Troll or daft, the eternal question...)
Catalytic converters have been legally required on all petrol cars in the EU since '92 IIRC. In the UK, leaded petrol is now only available on the condition that it doesn't sell more than a certain (extremely low) percentage of the total market. Any car which requires it either has to be converted, run on LRP or accept that maybe 1 in 30 garages carry fuel they can use. Further, emissions regulations are tightening on a very regular basis for new cars - which are also taxed according to volume of CO2 emissions. Older cars are subject to emissions tests in their annual roadworthiness test (can't run a car without one) and if they fail, they're off. Finally, you can be pulled over and tested at random to establish that your emissions are within defined limits and fined if they're not, plus required to get the vehicle up to standard within the time or it's off the road. Tailpipe emissions are never pleasant, trust a cyclist, but they're rather better than they might be over here.
As for LPG, erm, no. Conversions are actually subsidised for many vehicles, not taxed more than anything else. I'm assuming you mean 20,000 km -well, that's around the breakeven point in one year IIRC. Conversions don't have to be done every year, sir.
Yes, we have tax at that sort of level on the petrol. Something has to pay for the road building and maintenance and for healthcare costs from vehicle accidents and pollution related illnesses. Personally I quite like the idea of mass transit such as buses and trains being subsidised by cars, considering that they're far less socially invasive and help reduce congestion, along with providing mobility to those who can't drive (can't afford / too young / disabled) which means they can be economically active, too, which seems A Good Thing.
All forced by the government.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
HD NET (A Mark Cuban thing) has 24x7 HTDT 'stuff'. It ranges from sporting events (even the Olympics) to nature shows.
Man, the difference between full 1080i and regular broadcast TV is HUGE.
Those who whine about HTDV sucking are probably sitting in front of their analog tube.
For those of us who are used to PAL, the increase in quality that HD gives you is negligible in the home.
For those of you used to NTSC, it's huge. Progressive scan helps as well, but it's the stable colours and the resolution that make the difference.
However, the one thing we have been involved in has nothing to do with HDTV, it's to do with HD in the cinema. And the trend there is to cut the costs of making a movie by doing it all digitally. The nice people who make film stock rake in a small fortune every year on stock; in comparison, HD tapes are free! HD provides close to 2K resolution (a film industry term) and anything you see that has been into a computer for effects work will have been scanned in at 2K res.
So, HDTV is certainly not a technology looking for a market, it's just that in the US, the need to replace the awful quality of analog NTSC transmission with something better is much more pressing than in the PAL world. Hence the heartache.
Any transition is painful, but the real crime in the USA is that you're going to be saddled with an off-air transmission system that is not up to the job. The FCC, in it's infinite wisdom, has decided that rather than fall in with the rest of the world - and the laws of physics - it will mandate the 8-VSB specification as the only modulation standard for the US Digital TV broadcast transition (rather than the more recent and just plain better COFDM standard). The FCC seems to have almost completely ignored the technical arguments - instead, it has followed the advice of various industry groups - like the ATSC - who's members control the 8VSB technology. So don't forget to blame the FCC is all this mess!
However, having spent some time in the US, I will also say that the thought of getting the crap that goes out on TV in sharper detail makes me shudder....
"Fox probably thought, 'Since widescreen at 480 is good enough for the millions who watch DVDs, why spend a lot more to please the few purists?'"
As much as I hate to admit it, from a purely business standpoint the network executives are probably being most prudent in not commencing with the conversion at this point.
Uh... no.
The article was wrong here, as well as in some other points. Fox has done some of the conversion to HD already, although they're the slackest of the five broadcast networks (the leader is PBS, which probably surprises a lot of people). All the other networks are broadcasting in either 1080i or 720p at some point during the day.
The catch here is that the cost difference between broadcasting a high-def digital format vs a standard def digital format (both of which fall under the umbrella of DTV) is minimal. Really. Either way you have to buy a boatload of new equipment -- new digital cameras, digital editing equipment, encoders, decoders, a new antenna and all it's associated equipment, yadda yadda yadda. This is not cheap. By the time you've paid for all of that the difference between resolution costs is truely minimal.
So why doesn't Fox want to do HD? Because Rupert Murdoch would prefer to use the bandwidth, which was given to the broadcasters for free for digital interactive services, multiple channels, etc. Despite the minor nit that this was not what the spectrum giveaway was for.
Anyone who has actually seen HD on a decently setup monitor knows just how good it looks. And how shabby 480, even 480p, looks in comparison. The issues are rampant though, and I'm seriously doubting that HD will take off now.
The biggest issues, which were missed completely by the article, are the FCC and the content providers. The content providers (e.g. - hollywood) are once again wringing their hands over copyrights. A connection and encryption standard was finally set about a year ago, but there are still companies complaining that they want the right to reach into any recording device and delete, limit the viewings of, or otherwise invalidate a recording. The FCC has made all of the problems with HD even worse by doing absolutely nothing. They refused to beat the industry into a connection standard, a set-top box standard, or anything else beyond vague warnings that if the industry didn't set a standard then they would. Sometime. Really.
Probably the worst decision, and the one that is likely to doom HD to dieing, is the FCC's decision that HD does not fall under the "must carry" rules for cable. Under US law cable providers must carry local broadcast channels to their designated broadcast areas. When HD came about it was unclear if these new signals would fall under that law as well -- they were broadcast by the same channels, but it wasn't any "new" information, just higher bitrate. The cable companies don't want to touch HD because it eats too much of their bandwidth - which they'd rather use for another dozen or so low bitrate channels. The FCC ruled in favor of the cable companies. The problem is that 80% of the US receives ALL of its television over cable. And for HD, mere rabbit ears don't cut it. You have to have a full blown rooftop or attic antenna. Preferably directional. Because 8-VSB sucks.
If you really want to learn more about all of the crap that's gone on, I highly recommend Stereophile Guide to Home Theater. They've done a pretty good job of keeping on top of it, particularly on their website.
First off, I work for one of the major manufacturers of HDTV systems.
There are a number of glaring factual errors in the article. First of all, there are about a quarter-millon HDTV _displays_ SOLD total (that's not counting the ones sitting in warehouses). But there are only about 25,000 decoders SOLD (again, differentiate versus those sitting in warehouses. I have _no_ _idea_ where the article author got 300K+ decoders sold). The vast majority of HDTV displays are being used to display DVD / LD output, and have no means to recieve off-the-air transmission.
In short, the average HDTV station has a viewership of less than 200 people.
The current FCC rule is also "stations do not need to relinquish their analog bandwidth until 2005 or until 85% of their viewing market is equipped to recieve HDTV signals." Essentially, that's an infinite delay, as even _color_ TV didn't hit 85% until 1998.
Another omission: Service Area: the field test of HDTV's 8VSB digital modulation screwed the pooch; actual propagation of the signal in a multipath environment (i.e. where people live, with things like telephone wires, tall buildings, etc.) is _far_ worse than predicted. The current tests I've seen on real deployments indicate between 3 and 10dB worse performance than predicted, almost all of it due to multipath. In other words, a perfectly viewable analog signal does not predict a decodeable HDTV signal from the same transmit/recieve pair, as although there's adequate field strength, the signal/noise ratio is insufficient to get a good decode. Since HDTV either decodes correctly or the ECC fails, there's no such thing as a "noisy signal", you just get an onscreen message saying "No signal at all". You can't watch a weak HDTV signal, all you see is bluescreen.
Given all those factors, most station managers are seeing the writing on the wall (and the million-dollar-a-year power bills - work out how much it costs to run a 10-megawatt system for 18 hours a day at 10 cents a KWH). They're taking advantage of an FCC rules loophole- the right of a station to lower their transmitter power without renegotiating their license, and have cut the power outputs of their transmitters drastically. Since "effectively nobody" is actually watching HDTV, this inconveniences no one and saves the stations a bundle of money on the electric bill.
As a Long Island resident who has always used an antenna (why should I pay monthly for something that's "free"? OK, the Sci-Fi channel is good!), I won't be getting HDTV any time soon. But as others have pointed out, I wonder how many sales people in the local electronic stores would even mention this obstacle?
There are several cabling standards for HDTV. The one that most people will use is S-video, but you can also use HD15 (VGA cables) and two different component setups (RGB with separate horz and vert sync and Y,Pb,Pr). You can also use component over coax, but you loose quite a bit of quality. There isn't a current standard for an optical video cable.
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
What's missing from the original post is the understanding that the greatest contributor to increased picture quality is not the increased resolution HDTV affords (especially on screens smaller than about 8 feet diagonal), but the change in color space. NTSC was designed in the 1950s to enable black & white television sets to display a black & white image even if the signal being broadcast had color encoded in it. In order to do this, the color information has the bejeezus compressed out of it which is why it looks so lousy.
The single most important change that can be made to improve the quality of broadcast television is NOT to increase resolution, but to start broadcasting a component (e.g., YPrPb) signal while ensuring that the entire production chain, from origination through production to distribution and reception is component end to end.
When coupled with a widescreen aspect (a feature of most modern professional cameras), the component signal can be easily broadcast over existing equipment, or with minor and comparatively inexpensive transmitter upgrades. Most importantly, there is no incremental increase in cost to produce programming in widescreen D1 as there is in HDTV. Finally, monitors/receivers/decoders are much, much, cheaper.
But -- even this is not the issue. It's not about (and never was about) making it easy for consumers. It's about broadcasters wanting free spectrum without the onerous requirement of "wasting" it by having to broadcast HDTV all day long. The spectrum allotted for HDTV broadcast is enough to simultaneously broadcast 6, widescreen D1 streams. Now, instead of having one station in a market, a broadcaster can have 6 -- or rent one or more of the channels to others for other uses.
It's politics, always has been. Probably always will be. {sigh}
Clay
"I never metadata I didn't like."
Lets face it when you're pulling the waves out of the air, static at 1080 is still static.
No, it isn't. There is no static on an HDTV broadcast, any more than there's static on digital cable or DBS or any other digital TV delivery mechanism.
If something interrupts your data stream, you'll get flickers or brief interruptions, but you'll never see static.
oh, you were talking about *analog* TV? The one without keyboard?
Actually, the HDTV standard is much more than just better picture and sound. Included in the broadcast spectrum is 1.6Mbps allotted for "other transmission". I worked for NBC when the standard was being nailed down, and part of my job was to try to come up with a use for the extra bits. That was, of course, before my whole dept. got axed.
So, anyway, we tossed ideas around, like being able to broadcast 4 distinct shows on one channel, or netcasting movies or mp3s that would be stored on the set-top while you were watching the broadcast. Think of HDTV like DVD over the air. Multiple angles or audio commentary, multi-language, etc. There is a lot more to HDTV than the guy at The Wiz knows about.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
I suspect the "filter" involved here is the film on which the show is shot...AFAIK, news, sports, and soaps are the only things that get shot with video cameras instead of motion-picture cameras (news and sports because they're live, soaps because they're cheap). If a show does a live episode (like ER did a couple of years or so ago), the difference is blatantly obvious since they have to use video cameras for anything that's live. Everything else gets shot on film and is then telecined to bring the framerate up. (Film is typically 24 fps. NTSC is 29.97 fps. What's the framerate for ATSC?)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
A few points:
1. There is no static. You either get the channel or you don't.
2. Digital cable is not HD. In fact, for the most part, the quality of the signal decreases as Cable TV companies try to squeeze more channels into less bandwidth.
3. DVDs are not HDTV killer apps. they look better, but they're still 480p. True HDTV (1080i or 720p) is amazing, but HD-DVDs are held up for reasons related to the next point.
4. The real problem for studios is that there is no copy protection on HDTV hardware. They are afraid of giving out theatre-quality resolution video, and component outputs (95% of HDTVs) have no built-in copy protection. It's not enough that there is no commercially available HDTV signal recorders. Networks and studios are belatedly seeing HDTV as a chance to integrate copy controls to prevent unauthorized recording, copying, etc. to combat TiVO/Replay. There had been at least one HD-DVD player that was pulled from the market shortly after introduction. As part of this, the industry is moving to Firewire instead of component signals, because Firewire has copy protection built into the hardware, obsoleting 99% of existing hardware. A Firewire -> Component converter is unlikely, because that would defeat copy protection. This pisses the early adopters off and hardware manufacturers are not interested in producing cutting edge new hardware which may be obsolete under the new Firewire standard, and distributors and retailers don't want to be stuck with unsellable new hardware.
5. There are websites that have information about which channels are broadcasting around your area and antenna recommendations.
--I hate people when they're not polite -"Psycho Killer", Talking Heads
First of all, what is avertised as 'digital cable' is not HDTV. It is somethign completely different. 'digital cable' is the equivalent of DirecTV or Dish Network over a cable instead of over and satellite dish.
The HDTV signal is a very tightly compressed signal. To give you an idea, the native production format is around 1.5 GIGAHz of bandwidth. This can be squeezed down to a 19.3 MEGAbit/second signal. The 19Mbs signal can be shoved through a 6MHz pipe.
There are several pipes you can listen to at you house, each is handled differently.
Over-the-air:
You need an arial antenna (rabbit ears or rooftop yaggi) to recieve the signal. Then the signal must be run through an ATSC decoder. The decoder aka settop box, decodes the MPEg and creates a HD signal that you feed into you HD montior. Care must be taken that you chose a settop box that has outputs that match the input of your monitor. ATSC decoders are $1,000 last time I checked. Could be less now. What you get -> Possibly 5-6 HDTV stations of the local area with less than 15 hours/week of actual HDTV programming.
DirecTV:
You buy the special DirecTV HDTV reciever for $700 or so. Hook it up to dish antenna, plug into your HD monitor. What you get -> ONE channel of HBO movies. That's it...
Cable TV:
Most cable TV systems do not retransmit the HDTV signal, you have to check with your cable provider. If they do, you will probably need settop box from the cable company that makes a signal that feeds a second ATSC decoder settop ($$), then that feeds your HD monitor. What you get -> Depending on local cable system, you may get some of the local HDTV stations.
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Let me break it down for you... MONEY.
The natinal debt caused Bill Clinton's Administration to try to make the FCC become a profit center for the US Federal Govt. So why give the people their airwaves for free when you can sell the band and pay down the debt?
So they (the FCC) were going to sell the bandwidth to the telephone companies (where the money is in T-com) for cell usage, until high compression digital phones made the idea worthless several years into the plan. Every television engineer in the world saw this coming. They all said, "this whole plan will dry up when digital phones come along, because this is predicated on the idea that telecomm technology won't advance. Telecomm tech is one of the fastest advancing techs out there, if not the fastest." Of course, digital cells came out, and all of that HD band move for the sell off became useless. We (broadcasters) were stuck with the grandchild. Cable, of course, makes the highest profit in the industry, and hasn't had to do a fucking thing.
Now we (local television stations) are stuck with the idea of making millions of dollars of changes for a pittance of high end users... when most people watch TV for the shows, not the technical specifications. Many have never heard of HD.
Bill Clinton did this to us. He wanted ways to pay down the debt without slashing anything, so he hit the one industry that is one of the most regulated short of atomic energy, and wrapped it up in a bow that said, "progress." It was a big lie.
Why is is not here yet, even though it is regulated to be here RIGHT NOW?
Well, most of the broadcast quality digital equipment is made by single manufacturer overseas companies (like Sanyo or Toshiba), so they can charge literally whatever they want without worrying about anyone messing with them... why? They pushed the idea on the FCC, and they hold all the patents. Its literally the whole Rambus thing all over again. When the FCC says jump, local television stations are forced to say, "How high, Master?"
The current cost per HD user nationwide is several thousand dollars in the hole per user, if not tens of thousands, depending on the market.
I understand the reason for the FCC, but their power is absolute over private businesses that already give people what they want OR THEY FAIL MISERABLY. The truth is, the FCC lost touch along the way. Completely became a post for political insiders to sit on like being the Drug Czar, and now they just constantly muck up a system that is extremely market reactive. No one in the FCC knows shit about television. They have a late 70's Sesame Street NPR attitude about one of the most cutthroat businesses out there.
HDTV is not in your hometown market because they can't afford it. Period. The Gov't can say, "We need you to be HD NOW!" and they respond with, "We just got hit about as bad as the airlines, we just laid off workers... we don't have millions lying around for 15 A/V enthusiasts. Up yours. Pull our license. See what the people think about that when people can't get 'free' local TV all over the country."
That is where we stand. The TV stations try to look like their complying, because they like their license. The FCC wants a cool new standard, no matter what it costs to the common man and television stations.
And it was all over trying to sell off your public trust of the bandwidth to big rich phone companies, because politicians like big government programs and waste, and it was an idea that was fundamentally flawed because they thought the world was going to be analog forever. Way to go FCC. Are YOU EVEN AWAKE?
"I really can't understand people who think that watching a movie which has been compressed with a lossy algorithm (DivX image is fucking full of artifacts!) is worth watching. On a tiny monitor screen (21" monitor vs. 36+" TV) no less.
.
:) )
.
:) It looked so damn good that it wasn't until a few minutes after the movie was over that I realized exactly how damn annoying that little bastard was. (you know which bastard I am talking about. . . .)
That's like butchering the movie. The only right place to watch movies is the movie theatre."
This is obviously a troll but. . .
Ugh.
First off a WELL DONE DivX encode has _NO_ I repeat, _NO_ artifacts in it WHAT SO EVER. (at least visible to the human eye, bleh).
Pulling this off typically requires that a person run a crudload of filters on the video before even THINKING about using a lossy codec on it. These filters are to optimize the video for DivX compression. This pre-optimization is mostly comprised of removing any existing artifacts from the video (noise or any other sort of signal degration) preforming proper deinterlacing on the video (if necessary) and proper IVTC (read that page over completely until you understand it.
A PROPER DivX encode does NOT use Flask.
At all.
Ever.
A proper DivX encoding is going to be running at a maximum of ~8fps, though 1 or 2 FPS is far more likely. No your CPU does not really matter at this point in time, quite frankly the difference between 1.5FPS and 2.25FPS is minimal. (1ghz computer VS 1.5ghz computer, and that is assuming a linear increase in CPU speed in regards to Encode speed!!)
A properly DivX encode will end up looking BETTER then the DVD source that it came from.
Yes that is right folks, I said it will look BETTER.
This is because even some of the finest mastered DVDs out there now days tend to have at least a few artifacts in them. A person who is good at their craft of video encoding will know how to REMOVE these artifacts and compress the video with the HIGHER QUALITY MPEG4 codec.
For crying out loud, MPEG4 is what, around six years newer then MPEG2? Of course it is more advanced.
Oh, and Analog Mediums by their very nature are lossy. That video that you see at the movie theater is covered in noise. It is just that you quickly become accustom to it.
Even digital projectors are not immune to noise unless the video was handled in a LOSELESS digital codec for its ENTIRE existence.
Which is not TOO likely to happen. At least in the near future.
Oh, and my home computer MONITOR _IS_ 36 inchs.
Which means it is progressive of course.
Wish I could find out a way to get it to do 720p. It is a Gateway Destination screen, hmmm. . .
Ah, oh well. DVDs do defintly look better on it then through the SVIDEO port on my RCA TV screen.
(It is that RCA TV that was rated the "Worst TV ever made" a little less then a year or so ago back.)
And yes, Theaters DO rock for movies.
Specifically the Cinerama which is the second highest quality source cinema entertainment that you can get, only bested by an Imax screen.
And Imax does not show Lord Of The Rings or Harry Potter.
Hell even Star Wars: Episode 1 looked good at the Cinerama.
If you have not seen Gladiator with a PROPER THX sound system (as in the kind you CANNOT get unless you are in a movie theater) then your life is incomplete. Period. (Hint: In the intro scene you could COUNT the arrows flying by you just by the sounds that they made. Yes, they sounded like they were flying right past the audience, and each and every arrow was audible. Kick Ass.)
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I've actually been looking forward to HDTV for years. I like the 16x9 aspect ratio, and the clarity of the picture is awesome.
However, I am really sceptical about all of this copy protection that I keep hearing is going to be incorporated.
I watch almost no TV live, I record it and watch it later. And some (a very small amount) shows that I particularly like, I save the tapes so that I can watch them years later (currently only Buffy the Vampire Slayer :). And yes, I have lent my tapes to friends who had starting watching the show in the 3rd season and wanted to see what had happened in the 1st 2. If the move to HDTV takes away my ability to do this, then I don't want it.
MikeYou can also use component over coax, but you loose quite a bit of quality.
I find it unlikely that one would ever intentionally "let loose or release" quality. It seems more likely that you would fail to retain it. The word you were looking for is lose.
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