Cable HDTV Not Ready For Primetime?

A reader writes: "Shelly Palmer head of the New York Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Advanced Media committee and the man that gave us the singing cats in the meow mix ads has posted a very entertaining article on his blog about finally getting a Scientific Atlanta SA8000HD High Definition, DVR-enabled cable boxes from Time Warner Cable in Manhattan, his adventures getting it to work, and its less than stellar performance."

Comments

The World is 4:3

[stecoop]

Just accept the fact that 4:3 TVs and go on. See in HD the width is 16:9 and if you want to watch 90% of the Broadcasts in today market than that 16:9 is going to have to be stretched or chopped from the 4:3. Now lets say that you accepted that 90% of the broadcasts are 4:3 and that neither chopping nor stretching is acceptable then what do you do - get a 4:3 TV.

Ahh, I here but what about HD 16:9 signals - well we have watched DVD that can range are even wider than 16:9 on 4:3 TVs for years and I can accept the black bars at the top and bottom.

Do I hear more rumbling about screen size and weight as the wight of a 4:3 is quite high - Well I have two Tivo machines and a replay (for comparisons) driving a projector as I don't have digital TV at my local yet. In the past with digital, I could hook up directly from my digital turner to my audio tuner to handle the audio video distribution.

Let me tell you that anyone that sees the Projector is astounded and its only an cheap HP with 1500 Lumens @ 800x600. Yeah it needs to have the curtains closed but at night it like a movie screen. The cost was only like ~700 bucks and the weight savings is a factor of like 500 pounds. The projector can't show true HD quality but it is more than enough for DVD 480p; thus, save your money if you go this route and wait until more Lumens (brightness) and resolution (something that can show 1080p) comes along at a cheaper price.

Re:The World is 4:3

[fahrvergnugen]

I have a Sony 32" HD WEGA set with a 4x3 aspect ratio, and even here, I'm screwed. If the set detects an HD / widescreen signal, it will automatically letterbox the top and bottom of the screen, in order to get a 16x9 aspect ratio.

But! If the HD broadcast is in 4x3 and has side letterboxes, then the picture is effectively 50% of my total screen real estate. I wind up with an incredibly clear 16" picture in the middle of my 32" tv, surrounded by black boxes on all sides. And of course, there's no way to override this "feature."

Some numbers: Interlaced SDTV: Frame resolution: 640x420, 153,600 pixels per frame. Also known as 480i Progressive Scan SDTV: Frame resolution: 640x480, 307,200 pixels per frame. aka. 480p progressive scan HDTV: Frame resolution: 1280x720, 921,600 pixels per frame. aka. 720p. 6x the resolution of 480i Interlaced HDTV: Frame resolution: 1920x540, 1,036,800 pixels per frame. aka. 1080i. 6.75x the resolution of cable / broadcast TV

Despite all the naysayers, this is not an incremental jump. The electronics superstores and the HD subscription services are largely to blame for creating this perception. The stores will run a DVD or other non-HD content through the HD sets, and try to sell the picture quality. Another place where they fail is that they will often not set up side-by-side comparisons of the same material being presented in both HD and SD. The true difference is astounding.

Meanwhile, DirecTV and the cable companies overcompress the ever-living shit out the video signals, adding nasty artifacts and degrading image quality to the point of it being barely acceptable. One would think that since DirecTV & digital cable are 480p MPEG-2 signals, you would receive DVD-quality video and audio, but in fact the picture quality is strikingly inferior most of the time (check out Family Guy or Futurama broadcasts vs. the DVD sets to really see the difference). It's funny, but right now for HD free, over-the-air broadcasts offer the best picture quality of any of your options, should you be lucky enough to live near a transmitter.

HD is ready for Prime Time . . . This HD-DVR isnt

[Qwest94]

I have one of the TimeWarner HD-DVRs he writes about. The box is really flaky. Go over to AVS Forum and you will see a lot of complaints on it. Im almost sorry I gave up my rock solid Tivo for it, but am hopeful that through firmware updates that the constant stuttering of sound and video and lockups will stop.

Previous to getting this particular box I had a standard HD set top box, which never had a hiccup. And for what it is worth, watching a sporting event on a big screen in HD is spectacular.

I guess the point is that his conclusion that HD is not ready for primetime is really not a valid one, rather, I can attest that this particular HD-DVR is clearly not ready for prime time.

The Issue is bandwidth

[ralf1]

The spec for a full HDTV signal with DD 5.1 audio is an uncompressed 18 megabit/sec stream vs like 1 for a regular channel. No way is the cable company going to allow an HD channel to consume 18X the bandwidth than a regular channel, so they trhottle the heck of of them. Leads to poor picture, artifacts, slow tuning, all the things the article referes to. Right now (SW Houston) the OTA HD signal from my local affiliates is FAR superior to anyhting the TWC puts out. Problem is most folks either a) are not sophisticated enough consumers to know the difference or b) are so happy to get any HD content after buying a 5K TV set they accept sub-par signals as the best they can get. Gonna be a while before this resolves itself, till then go buy a yagi antenna from Radio Shack and enjoy real HDTV (assuming you have an OTA set top box.....)