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50% of HDTV Owners Don't Use HD
Ant writes "Broadband Reports and Techdirt posted The Technology Liberation Front's article that said apparently half of all High Definition Television (HDTV) owners don't actually use the HD capabilities of their set, and nearly a quarter think they are watching high definition video when they actually haven't set it up correctly. Set-top box maker, Scientific Atlanta's survey, noted that HDTV sets will be in approximately 16 million homes across the country by the end of the year."
I haven't RTFA (I really should be asleep...), but my experience with my parents backs up the headline. They recently bought one of the new Dell 50" Plasmas and had HD service installed. Their cable system places SD channels in their "normal" slots, and gives them HD versions of the same channels in the 600 range. My parents, being creatures of habit, and not traditionally technology-savvy pretty much can't tell the difference and seem to watch the SD versions of these channels 99% of the time.
:). HD sporting events and Discovery HD Theater are so nice as to be almost completely different experiences from regular television.
It almost makes me want to cry, but I'm still glad they have it, if only for the week or two a year I visit them
Game... blouses.
My parents are convinced that they are watching HD in their very rural home town. But then again these are the people who were equally convinced that letterbox cuts off the top and bottom of the picture.
This is great news.
With any luck, very few people will be disappointed when HDCP scales their backup copies to SD for them.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
and other hilarious quotes from people with more money than common sense. The worst if it is that I can't go to a bar or a restaurant without seeing another HDTV flatscreen stretching out an NTSC signal so everyone looks short and chubby.
This is one of those areas where OEMs and service providers are incredibly stupid.
The high definition should be enabled by default. The broadcasts should be in high definition by default.
It's not the customers' fault that they don't use these features, it's the technology and content providers' fault for not making those features seamless.
I've always felt the goal of technology was to become as unintrusive as possible. Making things that "just work" without fiddling or even minimal setup is one way to make technology invisible.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
"nearly a quarter think they are watching high definition video when they actually haven't set it up correctly"
Reminds me of "audiophiles" who think the sticker they attached to their speaker is helping the quality of the sound, but they didn't install it right (by which i mean they are idiots)
Well over thanksgiving my roommate came back with a brand new 51" hdtv. We don't even get cable. And the ONLY channel we get with the antenna is CBS! I seriously doubt there are too many 1 channel 51" TVs around. Needless to say I've become a bit partial to some of CBS's programming, lol.
Oh and we will be getting full cable with a few HD channels come January.
"16 million homes across the country by the end of the year"
Which country? Mongolia... Peru... Turkmenistan?
/ Your newly generated marketing word is: \ /
| HDTV. |
\ Want more?
\ ____
\ / __ \
\ O| |O|
|| | |
|| | |
|| |
|___/
cpu0: Microsoft Clippium ("GenuineClippy" ChromedMetal-Class). Paperbinding, lockpicking, fish-hook-hack support.
There are not many channels either on satellite or cable that have TRUE HD content.
MOST of it is just stretched to fit and looks like crap.
I have a friend that has a HDTV and satellite and there's a demo channel that plays some very impressive demos, they blow your mind. When you switch from that to other "HD" channels you can tell that the content was not filmed in HD..
What's the point of having an HDTV?? There's just not enough content out there to warrant dropping the bucks on the bling. It's status and ego. As for usability, it's not very usable. Not yet anyway..
I plan to wait a few years and use what I have until it breaks beyond my ability to repair it. By then HD content may have taken off and the price of the sets will be much more affordable.
But for now, I can go to Wally World and pick up a nice 27" CRT set with multiple inputs for $150 that will last me 10 years or more.
My recommendation is to wait a while before jumping onboard the HDTV bandwagon.
Save your bucks and let the tech improve and prices to come down.
I'm not trolling , but does anyone really care enough about HDTV to
fork out huge wads of cash on a new set? Perhaps its different in
the USA with NTSC but here in the UK we have the PAL system which does
a nice 625 lines per picture and a good PAL set does an extremely
good picture. Sure , HDTV would be better , but $3000 worth better?
I'm not convinced and neither is my wallet.
Have you tried increasing the amount of electricity you give your mac, also liquid cooling, cos they run rather hot, just dump out your chocolate milk on to it, and watch it sparkle with speed.
Reminds me that I really thought my Athlon64 allowed 64-bit enabled apps to run under win32, using the new features as if they were a new SSE or something, but alas.
Yea, I once read that 50% of Americans are below average intelligence.
Many people still use a single-head display even though they have dual-head graphics card and some old monitor(s) lying around in the house. It's poor use of the available hardware, which few people seem to mind. As for more analogies pertaining to software: People browse with Firefox/Opera/Mozilla/Netscape and make no use of tabs Use of heavy and sluggish Web-based E-mail, notably MSN/Hotmail
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
I had no other concern in my purchase. It is 16:9 and it has the ability to support HDTV provided I buy the receiver. I've talked with others who have one for the same purpose. The last part is one of the major reasons people don't use HD. Who wants to buy a special receiver?
Once all sets come with it built in then perhaps people will use it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Talking for myself I'm not one bit interested in HDTV. VHS-DVD made only a minor difference to me (easier to skip through, easier to store, etc.), the quality not really being an issue at all. I don't see how any sort of hi-res TV is going to make any difference to what I buy or what I watch.
On a similar note, however, if you want to sell HDTV then you have to SHOW a difference. Most of the LCD-panel TV's in my local electrical stores (even the largest retailers) only ever show a picture which seems to be from an amplified shared analog aerial, so the picture looks EXACTLY the same on a LCD as it does on a CRT TV, fuzziness, minor ghosting etc. so nobody actually sees any difference at all. If they do the same with their HDTV-capable TV's I can't imagine they'll sell a lot of them.
Also, what is this trend with widescreen rubbish? Why can I go to a shop and buy a 34" 4:3 TV and get a larger final picture (even when it letterboxes a DVD) than I would from a widescreen TV that costs the same price? And yet that widescreen TV is also only able to show 4:3 content in a size that's beaten by a portable TV I have upstairs in the loft!
This news reminds me of the people who use 17" and 19" LCD monitors but the LCDs operate at only 1024x768.
w00t
I pushed my father (who likes watching television) to purchase an HDTV a couple years ago. He simply wanted a "big screen", but after reviewing the numerous benefits of high-def over and over again (at gunpoint), he finally gave in. I took care of ordering Comcast's HD service for him as well- so in my mind, he's living life in the fast lane for once!
Fast forward two years- I find out he's shopping for a DVR. He's sold on one that will let him record directly to DVDs, but in standard definition. I asked him why the hell he would want to waste a perfectly good DVD on crap like that, and he told me it's because his VCR is starting to flake out.
I say, "VCR? What VCR? (I run downstairs to find 50+ VCR tapes of recorded standard-def movies with commercials, meaning he taped them off network television) What the fu- ahh, nevermind. Yeah, get the DVR with a DVD burner. I'll grab you a 500-pack of blanks for Christmas."
Some folks just don't care enough to change how they enjoy life.. even when their asshole childen, like me, threaten them. Well... that means it's time to play hardball.
Who is supposed to be shocked at this? My family can't even figure out how to watch the TV in the correct aspect ratio on their widescreen non-HD TV. What's worse is that they don't even know that it is the WRONG aspect ratio, despite the short fat people on their screen that were previously tall and skinny. Oh wait. My dad knows. But he doesn't like the gray bars on the sides when it is in the correct aspect ratio. FFS. I swear.
Depending on consumers to do anything right is idiotic. It's why they're so easy to sell to in the first place.
Goes along with the 50% of all surveys are bogus.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
The only reason I'd update to a HD tv set is if every channel in my digital cable package (400+) required HD to watch. As long as there is a large cable package that does not require HD I will use that. I refuse to go drop several hundred dollars, if not much more, for a HD set.
Remember when CD's first came out and having a cd player was the new rave? Yea well I was the guy still buying cassettes, and hunting them down as stores kept keeping their cassette isle smaller and smaller. Remember when DVD's went mainstream? I kept using VHS, it was cheaper and I already had my favorite stuff on VHS.
Oh and, I don't want to start a flame thing but this is my opinion, I dislike Wide Screen. I know WS shows more picture per screen and is a slightly higher quality, I know this is the current standard for filming shit and has been for a few years. I can take a screen shot from Lord of the Ring's comparisons and I hate how the heads are "cut off". Sure it's stretching the image to fit my screen, and in WS you gain more length wise than you do height but if I can see the full persons head and shit in the frame vs say, some extra scenery footage I'd take the full head shots any day.
The real radical opinion is, well, I paid for a 35 inch screen. Using WS I am "gaining" extra footage on the sides but at the same time I'm losing over 5+ inches from the top and bottom. That's like a rather large percentage of 35 being wasted by black blank space not being used. Maybe tv's grow on tree's for some people but not everyone can afford to drop $200-300 for a nice sized tv. (Not that it destroys the tv or anything but if I pay for 35 inch I want all 35 inches to be used).
Aw Frell this
7% of people watching tv dont know they are watching tv! i know it! i know it!!!
Um, I hate to break it to you, but this is the twenty-first century. Buy a new computer. Buy whatever kind you want, and watch me not care in the slightest. But if you must waste our time with anecdotal crap tests, at least test two comparable computers from this decade. Oh, and this computer has been on for several days straight, and it hasn't crashed. The only windows involved in that streak is the one I dropped it out, and hey, it didn't freaking care (it was a first floor window).
I'd say HD matters only in a small segment of the content, mostly movies - science fiction, fantasy and history. If you happen to not like those, you probably don't benefit from HD a lot.
The other 50% who do use HDTV must be the ones who are obese...
There really should be 2-way communication, so that the tuner knows if it is talking with a HDTV. If it is, it should pick a HDTV version of the channel. Of course, this means the tuner has to know that the two channels are the same content... Whilst this might be a challenge, it is certainly relatively trivial to employ. Also, seller should inform customers that they might have to select the channels manually...
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
dammit. Oh well. back to the paper due in a few hours about how to rule the world. Then sleep. I miss sleep. Sleep? I love you sleep!
1080p m3d14 d0wn5c4|3d t0 n0n-574nd4rd r350|u710n 15 73h pwn63
And there's a healthy number of us that Tivo shows (or use other DVR's). Since I don't have HDTivo, and I'm rarely there to watch live HDTV, what I get isn't nearly HDTV quality.
I do AV for work and a lot of time I goes to people house to fix their systems I will find a nice HDTV set just hook up to cable system via Coax. Cheap DVD player hooked up to it via Composit cable I have even seen one hooked up via Ch3 Modulator at times. Plus 16x9 Screen are waste anyways. not a lot of 16x9 content out there only time you will use is the time you watch DVD or HD. Other time you have to stratch it or risk the set with damn piller bars.
36" Zenith 4x3 CRT HTDV set with 16x9 compression, the best picture of any HD TV ever. 10 time better then the Sony ones and any of the plasma or DLP you throw at it.
FRom Mark Cuban ( Owner HDNet ) blog:
"Over the past 5 years, bandwidth to the home has grown from 300k for broadband to 5mbs, and in some cases even 10mbs. But that bandwidth is not dedicated per user. That bandwidth is shared. The number of users sharing that bandwidth has increased even faster than the size of the pipe. Thats not going to change...the amount of bandwidth required to transmit an HDTV show vs the amount of bandwidth required to transmit a DVD quality show is about 8mbs to 1mbs...For broadcast it takes 2 to 3mbs to transmit a standard definition show, and 10mbs to transmit an HDTV, non sports program at quality that is equal to what is available from over the air HDTV broadcasters like CBS and NBC.
Which leads to point. Bandwidth to the home is not expanding as fast as the bandwidth required to transmit content.
What makes a program worthless in High Definition ? If it was shot or mastered on tape. Shows from the 1980s, 1990s, and even some shows today, are shot using standard definition tape. Why is it worthless ? Because standard definition video doesnt have enough resolution to look good in high definition. To up convert it to HD would be like upconverting music from mono to 5.1 Surround Sound. You can fake it and improve it a little, but when compared to music captured in Surround Sound or even stereo, its obviously inferior.
If you go through the schedules of many cable networks, some are made up completely or substantially of shows shot or mastered on tape. The networks that are full of music videos from the past 20 years. Networks with comedies from the 1980s and 90s. Science Fiction created for syndicated TV (Most primetime scifi was shot on Film and then HD). THere is nothing their owners or licensors can do to make them look good in HD. I dont think they will even try. "
Rest here
I just ordered a 32" LCD (which should be arriving today or Monday) and I'm finding myself with the same dilemma. I currently have a DirecTiVo hooked up with the dual tuner goodness and I've been looking into getting an HD box (the HD DirecTiVos are way too expensive, plus likely to be outdated when they do their switch to MPEG-4). The best solution I've come up with is going ahead and getting the HD DirecTV box and using the two boxes concurrently (losing one of the TiVo inputs to hook up the other box). Generally, I'd just use the TiVo box for most of my viewing. If something I wanna watch is on one of the HD channels, I'd flip it over to the HD box. Of course, I also wouldn't have the ability to pause or record any of the HD stuff, but that's life. Anyone else out there with a similar setup? Is it a huge pain in the ass, or is it really not too bad?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
This would be interesting if it was actually true. It's very rare for exactly 50% of a population to be below its own average.
:)
The correct tautology would be: "50% of Americans are below MEDIAN intelligence".
And to be more precise, it should be APPROXIMATELY 50%, since the median person is either in the middle or is the average of the two middle people, so in the first case the population below him is 50% minus half a person and in the second case exactly 50%
My two very geeky cents
It's just the same with surround sound - I know so many people who have shelled out for full 5.1 or 8.1 speaker sets but due to amateur wiring are really just listening to stereo.
To be fair, it still sounds a little better than two speakers due to the number of speakers, even though they're all pumping out the same signal. I imagine a similar thing applies to HDTV - even if the resolution is no higher, the mere fact that HDTVs are newer, clearer and have great contrast will probably mean the picture looks nicer; hence these people being convinced they're watching a HDTV signal.
Bless.
We haven't got much HDTV in this country (UK) yet, but I can see the same thing happening here when we do;
One of my girlfriend's friends hasn't got a DVD player yet, but bought DVDs and got me to copy them to VHS tape. When I asked why she didn't just buy them on VHS, she said that she wanted to watch them in DVD quality!
I own 2 HDTV sets, and I don't have HD programming at all. I use them to watch movies (for the 16x9 more than the high def, as dvd's aren't high def). My parents have an HDTV and they have the HD package from DirecTV, my friend has the HD package from Comcast, and another friend has dish networks HD package... In short they all suck. I refuse to pay an extra $20-50/mo for 10 extra channels that say they are "HD" channels and only actually broadcast HD maybe 20% of the time.
The worst is ESPN HD, 90% of the stuff they show on that channel is standard def, and just to rub it in your face the fill up the rest of the 16x9 screen with banners proclaiming ESPN HD! It's such a rip off. On the DirecTV HD package only 2 channels broadcast in HD more than half the time, Discovery HD and HDNET, Unfortunately, I'd say 50% of Discovery HD's programming from what I've seen is pictures of birds and flowers, no actual content, just a glorified screen saver.
In short, I'm suprised 50% of HDTV owners are actually wasting their money for a few channels that once in a while broadcast HD shows. Bring the content to HD, and more people will subscribe... Of course the networks won't have that, cause they're afraid of piracy, so until all the TVs are locked down there won't be any content....
I still feel my TVs were worth the money just for watching movies, with a good DVD player, good surround sound, good cables everywhere, watching a movie in my basement is just as engaging as watching it at the theater.. and I don't have to worry about gum stuck to my shoes or the inevitable jerk in the row behind me that refuses to shut up (or that brought his 1 year old to a 10pm showing, and wonders why the kid won't stop screaming).
That's almost 55%!
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Oh wow, man, I'm, like, having a flashback....Far out!
SD (standard definition) looks like shit on just about every HDTV I've looked at. I have satellite and so does my friend's dad. On his 50" Samsung or whatever DLP HDTV he has the picture looks absolutely shitty compared to my 52" SD Toshiba. We've tried every mode and setting and the only thing that does make a difference is "movie mode". Another relative has a large plasma and has the same problem with digital cable. And except for the occasional sports broadcast the HD programming never looks as good as the test channel, so what's the use? About the only thing that does look great on these TVs is a good quality DVD.
I realize that the crappy picture has a lot to do with a low quality signal input into a high quality TV. In that situation you're going to notice the difference and until satellite and cable providers get a clue and start to broadcast to the capabilites of existing SD TVs (compress much?), never mind HD, they just aren't going to sell me and many others on it.
Study: 95% of VCR Owners Don't Use Recorder.
When you have people who don't really understand the technology, or have little experience with it, it doesn't get used.
By comparison, here's a representative college-years dialogue between me and most any girl "friend", who naturally considered me so non-threatening as to nearly be asexual:
Her: "Then we did 69 for like a half hour. Have you ever done that?"
Me: "I have a pee pee."
I helped my parents shop for an HDTV last year. When they got their TV, they also switched to DirecTV since the local cable company only had one HD channel. So the setup guy from DirecTV comes to install everything. I had left a DVI cable sitting out right in front of the TV for him to use when connecting the HD tuner. Next time I talk to my parents on the phone, they tell me the TV looks like crap and they're thinking about taking it back. When I came over, I discovered the brilliant technician had connected the TV with composite video (the yellow cable), which is pretty much the worst possible connection besides old school coax. Had I not been there to see and fix the mistake, they would have taken the TV back or been stuck with a shitty picture and not known what the problem was. You'd think that someone who does this all day for a living would know the difference between composite video and DVI or component video. Ugh.
Assuming a symmetric distribution about the mean, of course. Which is a pretty good assumption given the amount of data: I'd bet reasonable money that it follows a nice bell curve, with no skew... Of course, only the 50% of Americans above median intelligence will know what I'm talking about ;)
</pedantry>
Christopher Harrison
For bars showing SD in the wrong aspect ratio there actually is a some logic here -- most patrons will not be seeing the screen face on, so more people will actually see something closer to the intended aspect ratio. Also with more screen area used more detail will be seen from a distance even if the aspect ratio is wrong, enabling being able to read the actual scores for instance. For bars and other venues this can be a smart move so I don't get my panties in a bunch over this.
Letter To Iran
When I go to my parents house to have dinner and watch tv over there, I always have to fight with them over watching things on the HD channel or the SD channel. The problem here is the nature of the signal -- when the analog stations lose signal there might be a little static or picture quality loss, but it remains watchable. When the HD channels lose signal, there are audio and video hiccups which really end up being far more disruptive of the viewing experience than a little static.
Personally, I think the quality of HD video more than makes up for the occasional hiccups, but the rest of my family disagrees.
We've had Time Warner out a number of times, and the house has completely new wiring now, and enough signal to "feed the entire neighborhood" according to one of the technicians who's been out. I'm not sure where the problems are coming from -- maybe it was the SA8000-HD box (I've since gotten them to replace it with an 8300-HD), or maybe it's just a faulty connection somewhere down the line. Either way it would be nice if these boxes could use some transport to guarantee packets arrive, and buffer enough that these hiccups never happen. It's especially annoying when the hiccup occurs over some key dialog and you end up missing something key to the plot.
...and I don't have it set up for HDTV. I have a top of the line Samsung models, too, that does 1080p. If I want to watch HDTV, I have to get a HDTV card for it (which I can't seem to find anywhere on the internet(!)), or I have to pay extra to my cable company to give me a set top box, and no longer use my TV's tuner. Talk about clunky...
So for now I will watch regular TV and upconverted DVDs (which look pretty nice). Maybe I'll get a MacMini at some point and use it as the monitor. I consider the device an investment in the future and something to block a hole in the wall in the living room.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I know a lot of people who watch pirated DVDs that have movies copied from VCDs or such and are very happy to see a "DVD quality" movie for less.
I also know many people happily hooked to their TVs showing a picture covered with 50% snow, black bars, wrong colors or flickers.
General public mostly wont complain about bad sound, badly adjusted contrast/color/brightness/badly tuned TVs etc etc .
People flaunt their shiny laptops with 4GHz chips, which run slighty faster than a snail.
So yes, feed a cow a choco cake or sweet grass, its the quantity that matters.
God created man in his own image, but somehow he evolved into a hairless monkey.
Not till HD TIVO is $200 not $800.
I bought my HDTV knowing that there is limited available HD content. BD-/HD-DVD production is still a long time out; satellite HD is too expensive (have to pay for 200 channels I don't want to get the ~10 HD channels I do want); cable is limited by condo board; OTA is probably sub-par since there is a medical complex & college between me and the transmitters...
I use my HDTV for the 16:9 aspect it offers and I hope that BD-/HD-DVDs will be available soon.
Get some glasses, cow!
!ERR: Signature not found.
I remember watching many _good_ films as a kid on out old b&w telly (my parents upgraded to colour only in the mid-80's iirc). The lack of colour didn't really harm the experience. (only as a kid i thouight big bird was white). If the programme is good, it's worth watching whatever the image quality is, otherwise, HDTV soesn't make it any better. Get a grip. I know this is /. and all, and I'm biased because we live in a house that's so much more enjoyable to live in because it has no TV, but let's face it: HDTV is for wankers.
I have my plasma on Discovery HD pretty much 95% of the time. Nothing like African tribal women breasts hanging out in front of you in high defination.
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
DRM makes me dizzy.
-=[ place
Zach: Slashdot has a few "classic" posts that appear almost every day as a joke. This one has been hanging around for about seven years.
...to tell the difference between HD and SD you have to sit uncomfortably close to your HD set?
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
Do you have the internet?
Technologically "Limited" People: Oh yeah, are you kidding? I have been on AOL for years....
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Only a handful of stations are available in HD through my cable company (Time-Warner), and 99% of the content isn't worth watching. So I bought a plasma EDTV - it's half the price of comparable HDTV plasmas, and DVD's still look fantastic. As a bonus, standard broadcasts look better than they would on an HDTV.
Better question would be: "how many HDTV channels do you have access to?". Most likely the answer is in between 0 and 3 (in Europe). I know a TV salesman that didn't get rid of the only HDTV he ever installed in his shop. Now he uses it himself. It is a great TV, but it has to see its first HDTV signal yet.
The Geek : ...those news technologies that restrict users freedom and cripple the functionnality in name of copyrights shall be bannded !
(Goes signing pettitions on website no-one has heard about, writes article read only by other geeks, listens to speeches by well-known geeks in NerdCon.05 etc)
Joe Six Pack : Woah ! This new model is surely better ! There's a new thing written on it : HI-GH-DE-FA-NI-TI-ON. Shiny !
(Buys it. Even if he doesn't know what it means.)
The Industry : Money ! Here I come !
(new technology becomes new standart because everyone is buying it)
The Geek : you suck.
(Cannot use new media in his old linux-powered hybrid E-toaster-coffemachine)
The Geek : you really suck.
(eventually, manage to circumvent the protection scheme because it was designed by a 2 years old. Strangely, HE is the one who gets blamed - because of suputative piracy - and not the boss of the engeneering team - who employed children and even let them do underage drinking while designing the scheme).
The Geek : you really really really suck.
The Industry : Wait, I have more useless, stupid, freedom-crippling, ads-enforcing, shiny technologies to sell !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm with the other 30%.
Big Bird's a brother?
I'm biased because we live in a house that's so much more enjoyable to live in because it has no TV, but let's face it: HDTV is for wankers.
There's nothing more annoying than the piety of someone who doesn't own a television. Well, the piety of a church elder, I suppose.
It's the video formats.
1) Aspect ratio
Am I the only one who thinks it is ridiculous to have to look at the signal, determine if it looks kinda squished, then hit the aspect ratio button? It would not have been the hard to embed an aspect ratio signal into the broadcast. It's even sillier on wired signals like component video. Only DVI/HDMI sends this information. That's dumb. My TV should be told if the image is wide or not. And for cases where an image is 4:3 letterboxed, it isn't THAT hard to write an algorithm to check if the signal has black bars on all sides and re-scale the image to fit the screen.
2) Resolution
Half the channels are compressed so badly HD looks no better than SD. Couple that with the fact that many HDTVs will de-interlace SD images, but not HD images, and you are actually getting a worse signal.
(Don't believe me on that last point? My Panasonic HDTV does this: It deinterlaces 480i-->480p, but 1080i is displayed as 1080i. So the 1080i looks waaay worse than the 480i. I would rather it downscale the image than display it all flickery and wonky).
Here's all the HD channels I get http://www.io.tv/index.jhtml?pageType=hdtv_channel s at no extra cost either.
Your bandwagon comment is bull and I've had my HD ready TV for 4 years now.
> half of all High Definition Television (HDTV) owners don't actually use the HD [...]
> HDTV sets will be in approximately 16 million homes across the country by the end of [2005]
So that makes the projected HD market penetration by year's end, what, two and a half measly percent of *homes*? Compared to ordinary television's penetration level of something like three TV sets average *per* home. In other words, HDTV is all hype, and practically nobody is actually watching it.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
when I needed a 16:9 the only ones available at the time were sold as HD monitors, in other words needing a converter. EDTV sets, which are at most what a DVD needs, are a recent attempt to sell more plasma sets as the price of the HDTV version was putting too many people off. I did buy with the intention of using it for HDTV broadcasts but like many others I will not pay $200+ for a receiver capable of it.
Get the receivers down under $100, preferably under $75 and then I'll look. As it stands now, other than sports and maybe discovery hd, what is there that really benefits from the better signal?
I guess if Porn was in HDTV (and the actors were really really good looking) there would be more popularity. Sitcoms don't need PvP, reality shows don't need it, and most certainly game shows aren't going to be enhanced by it. Hell my SO doesn't truly watch her soaps as much as listen to them!
Use the extra resolution to add more content to the screen might be one direction to go. Hell I could even see a market for live scene broadcasts in HDTV from certain places in the world. Imagine a real fish screensaver (well ok, use one of the big national aquariums). Give people a reason to have it in the background and more use will come along for regular viewing.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I wonder how much of it may have to do with the costs of having to buy extra cables to hook all that crap up. A set of 6' component video cables will run you at least $10, plus more for audio cables. You could easily spend another $50-100 on cabling if you combine a TV, DVD player, digital satellite or cable receiver, and a home theater together. I know because I did. Not to mention the component video cables for my Xbox.
That and there's always the whole "I can't see the difference, so why bother?" argument.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
I watched "The Triangle" on sci-fi earlier this week, and the quality of the night scenes just sucked, really, really, sucked, because DirecTV is cramming too many channels onto too small of a bandwidth.
I've also noticed this with star scenes on astronomy programs on TDS, and with night scenes generally.
If DirecTV et al do the same thing with their HD channels, then what's the point of having HD at all (except to watch DVDs)?
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Lot of modern european PAL CRT do 100Hz progressive scan with quite good de-interlacing algorithm (good enough for the shows).
And it's damn cheap.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
On the other hand, why not use a your MPC with REAL PC DISPLAY ? You know, the kind that can do 1600x1200.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Most people who own a Ferrari never take it out of 2nd gear either.
I'm on the verge of getting a new set for the family room. My old Toshiba 27" (about 20 years old, passed around the family since sometime in the 80s) is showing signs of demise. With the technological and price issues of HD being what they are, I was wondering how long SD will be viable. Should I get a "cheapie" SD and wait it out? Or will SD receivers be obsolete and unusable at some point in the near future?
I went to Wally World last week and that #@$@#$ moose told me they were closed.
If it involves more than plugging it in and turning it on, then no wonder people don't have their HDTV set up correctly. Heck, how many open WiFi networks do you know because people just "plugged it in and turned it on". Personally, I think the HDTV crap is just that....A push by the government who sees $$$$ in their eyes on the chance to sell the relinquished analog frequencies for big bucks, so they can spend that money on something stupid, to buy votes back home. Both parties are corrupt and need to be tossed out, along with ALL the lobbist in DC.
I bought a 36" Sony big tube 4:3 HDTV. I don't get HDTV signals from the cable company in my area and my condo faces the wrong direction to get satellite signals.
So why did I get it? Videogames! PS2 in progressive scan / wide screen (for the games that support it) is pretty. I also have an up converting DVD player that boosts the signal to 1080i. It might not be true HD but it sure looks pretty.
Hmm, that reminds me of the best email spam I've ever recieved.
"Are you one of the 80% of males with below average penis size?"
At the time I was taking probability and and random processes(statistics), thinking about the distribution to get that percentage cracked me up... But oh well.
Ooh, ooh, HDTV... er... so what ?
What's it going to be good for ? If you're lucky there'll be one 30 minute program worth watching in amongst the gazillion cruddy adverts, "newsfotainment" and brain dead lowest common denominator crap.
I'd rather spend the money on beer in muy local (which has no TVs in it) and talk to people.
TV absolutely fucking sucks ass. If you find yourself sitting around watching TV a lot do the planet a favour and get a lobotomy. TV is midless shit.
I build HD video editing systems for a living. So yeah, I know the difference.
I have a 55" HD set in the livingroom with HD cable. I actually use the DVI connector. I *gasp* read the fine manual and set the box to the correct HD output mode for my TV, unlike the Time Warner cable guys who left it set for SD.
Having said all that, I hardly EVER watch HD on it.
The lipsync is seriously off. It's such a low bitrate that the MPEG artifacting is terrible. What content is available is extremely limited. Many of the available shows are just upsampled SD. Most of the shows on the "HD only" channels use every single thing the camera person shot. Multiple times. Can't waste that expensive footage!
Instead I end up watching the first 100 analog channels through RF directly from the wall.
Try it sometime. Through RF, the analog SD channels haven't been digitized by the craptacular cablebox yet. MUCH cleaner picture.
Gee, I can't wait for the DTV revolution.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
...and Joe twelvepack gets the royaly screwjob
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
First of all... Anyone who's ever looked at a standard digital cable broadcast on a standard-def CRT next to the same broadcast in "true" HD (720P or 1080I) on a "true" high-def widescreen (720P or 1080I, signal matching)and can't notice a difference is blind!
It would be like saying you can't notice a difference between a CGA monitor and an DVI connected 21" that supports 32 bit color at 1600 X 1200.
The "standard" needs work, and it's nothing close to being standard at all.
I own a 50" DLP 720P widescreen... Of the 14 HD channels I get, some are broadcasted in 1080I, some in 720P (far superior), some content is HD, and some is just up-converted... Worst of all is Fox! They will take a standard full-screen movie and to avoid stretching it, they cut off the tops and bottoms of the picture to make it widescreen (they also zoom it). It looks horrible!
A lot of HDTV buyers cable and configure them incorrectly, which also ruins the experience.
Anyone w/ a true HD set and real HD content available is cheating themselves unless they have the receiver connected to the monitor via DVI, HDMI or at least component. If you own a native 720P monitor, your set top box's output should be configured to 720P, if you own a 1080I native monitor, you should be set to 1080I. Many people complain of sound sync issues with HD monitors and many of these can be avoided by matching the output of your HD receiver with the native resolution of your monitor. If the monitor has to down-convert or up-convert the signal, there can be a delay. An action movie in high-def will always look better at 720P than at 1080I. Some slow-moving panoramic content (much of the IMAX stuff) might look crisper in 1080I.
I know 2 people who've gone and bought what they thought were HD monitors, but in reality purchased EDTV monitors (480P).
I think the real problem is with the broadcasters and cable providers. The broadcasters need to settle on a standard and commit to a date in which they will broadcast in HD.
There's also the issue of bandwidth... Right now, some cable providers are struggling to squeeze 15 channels of HD, hundreds of digital channels and high-speed internet connectivity in the same pipe. The source of this problem is the older cable customers still using analog cable. Analog takes up a lot of the available signal space within the spectrum. Someone once told me that for each analog channel they remove, they can fit 4 or more true HD channels (or something like 15 standard def digital channels. The cable companies need to just bite the bullet and give the analog customers a free upgrade and keep the cost the same for the service.
This should all settle down in the next 6 years or so, but I think it'll get worse before it gets better. HD set makers are now building 1080P sets, which will just confuse consumers more! (But will have the clarity of 1080I with the moving picture performance of 720P, although those of us who purchased 1080I or 720P sets will not benefit).
Fear-based apathy and laziness. Technology is always cumbersome in it's infancy. Think it was easy the first time these people drove a car? How about operated a microwave? My dad used to cuss the microwave daily. "Damn new-fangled gadgets." Now he's a pro. Technology should work for us, yes. However, these so-called "challenging" technologies are not that difficult. There's nothing worse than someone who won't do something technical for themselves because either they fear it or "I can't understand this stuff." Excuses. Take setting up an HDTV. Is this really a difficult process? Cables are provided. Picture-laden instructions show you where to connect them. The channels you are supposed to view are labeled "HD" in the name. Come on... we are supposed to be intelligent adults here. Remember the toy you had as a child where you put the triangle into the triangle shaped hole? Are people really sitting around scratching their heads trying to put a component cable into an hdmi port? The truth is people want their cake and eat it too. "I want HD, but just make it work for me." Ah the consumer mentality. This attitude in general really just sucks. Of course this is all just my opinion.
Yes, in two homes recently. One sports a 55 inch plasma, on the wall. Fed by SD CATV. Another home has a 42 inch projection Sony, which is in the "formal" living room while everyone watches a SD set in the den. Both are successful businessmen, but not "techie". No real HD in either home, but the guy with the projection set says "it looks good with DVD", and was feeding it with one video cable. AAK ! A bigger problem is going to be Cost. I get my HDTV OTA with a big antenna, and Dish for $40 or so per month for those "cable" channels. I figure the antenna and hardware is well amortized at this point, after calling my local cable monopoly. To get HDTV via CATV, I need to spend about $80 per month. Basic cable + Broadcast package + upper tier + Digital service + HDTV tier. Wow. Kind of like what car makers do to you if you want SatNav in your new car. Now, an $80 cable bill is normal in my area, but I can get the service for half that price via Dish, and my OTA HDTV is twice the channels offered by Cable, and is "free", with a minimal equipment investment. (TV antennas are a 50 year old technology which cause confusion in the land of "magic" cell service) Not only are there tech problems, but pricing will be a bar to many. SD at 50 + inches is not up to the job.
Okay,
I have been shopping my little heart out recently for a larger sub 5k HDTV (60 to 50 inch is most reasonable for my viewing area).
A KEY concern for me is 1080p. However, most HDTVs out do not accept it. Why do I care about 1080p? The simple answer is that I really only watch movies and I want to be able to watch 1080p content and not have to change my freaking TV again.
There are VERY few TV sets that offer 1080p input... key words... 1080p input.
The most likely contender for me, right now, is an HP MD6580n. No, I do not work for freakin HP. However, I cam really close to buying a Mitsubishi or Samsung before I found that nugget.
The only drawback I see is that wobulation stuff that they do. It seems that the DLP mirrors can change state at 1/120 intervals. My eyes are not nearly fast enough to worry (I think). Wobulation does some nifty things where it lets the mirrors "fuzz" two pixels out of one mirror. Rainbow could be another worry but I seriously doubt it is a big deal with the HD4 DLP chips.
I have high def, and I love it. Right now I only get OTA HDTV, but still I'm very pleased (and the price is right.. free, if you don't count a 3 grand plasma and a 70 dollar high def tuner off ebay). At any rate, PBS regularly has great high def programming, FOX/CBS/etc broadcast a lot of primetime in high def these days. And finally, even if its not in high def, I'd rather watch the high def stream with stretching/whatever just for the clarity of the signal. OTA I get NBC, CBS, FOX, PBS (OETA), a few religious channels (why?) and a local channel that always does old school tv programming. I wish everything was in high def, the difference is considerable, most anyone can notice it, especially sporting events.
They won't give us more $#@$#@ HD content! Oh and while you're at it make it $#@$@# 16x9! ;) Not to be all negative I did appreciate Lost, The Apprentice and some show with a lot of nice Bikini clad Brazillian women.
-Xen
Comcast Sports Net is the worst. They take standard definition games and stretch the screen for you. That is fucking abhorrent. They're telling you that they have HD programming on there, and over 90% is just a stretched screen. They're lying to your face!!! It's not high-def!!! I would love to sue those bastards.
People are stupid when it comes to any sort of technology. They don't read the cryptic chinglish manuals that come with their stuff. They attention span is so short for this type of thing that they often do things wrong. Also, the average person can't tell the difference between high quality video OR audio, only how large the screen is and how loud the sound is.
...film at 11.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
I live in a small bubble in Minnesota where Charter Communications hasn't upgraded their equipment to be able to show any HIDEF channels. Glad I bought the 52" hidef widescreen television instead of waiting....
Dude, that happened to me too! The cable guy set up my HDTV with coax! That's his !#@!@ job!!!
Our local PBS station bit starves their HD by adding a second SD channel on the same frequency range. It seriously sucks. I'm a fan of Nature and Frontline - but the bit starving makes these programs unwatchable in HD. Pure pixelization on the slightest camera movement. *sigh* --M
I personally can back this up. We have a Samsung HDTV, Comcast digital cable, yet not the HD part of the package. Last I checked, there's only like 6 total channels they offer in HD here, and of those, I think only two or 3 of those were local stations. Most of the TV that we do watch isn't available in HD, and the ones that are, we wouldn't use. I don't think we're about to START watching stuff we don't want to just because it looks nicer. Eventually I'd like to get it for the sports (maybe around the time of the Superbowl or March Madness), but I just can't justify the extra cost just to "have it". Heck, I still haven't gone and gotten a nice DVD player (still using s-video) because we just don't watch enough movies. It was one of those things where we wanted a new TV, and might as well get one that supported HD. There's just not enough content yet to make full use of it. This is probably the case in a lot of places. Or maybe I'm just incredibly lazy and cheap. Just my $.02.
Um, maybe it "sucked" because Sci-fi isn't in HD yet. If you're watching an SD source upconverted on a HD set then any imperfaction in the picture is going to be magnified. Directv looks great on my 32" SD CRT (although I do see some artifacting, but I'd much prefer that to the snow that cable offers me). Don't expect to throw it on a big expensive HD set and have it look great. That's exactly why I didn't spring for HD. I'll revisit it in a couple of years though once they bring HD locals to my market and expand their HD programming offering.
Silly slashdotter, it's wireless! There aren't supposed to be any cables...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
I was just comparing "Lord of the Rings 1" DVD to HDTV. The DVD is letterboxed 2.35:1, while the HDTV version was fullscreen 16:9. The TV version has some cut off the left and right, but actually shows MORE above and below. Presumably it shows extra bits you don't see in the cinema prints.
I purchased a new 50" HDTV and have had no problems with picture quality or compression problems. The cable companies and satellite companies are notorious for compressing the signal. I live 40 miles from a major city and have an external antenna (remember those?) with a pre-amp. I get crisp, clean signals with no loss. I even get a 24/7 feed of PBS HD. That alone makes me glad I have invested in HDTV. The technology is there. The providers just have to step up and give it to their subscribers. By the way, thanks to multi-casting, I have as much selection as I do on my satellite system. I am dropping them. Besides, I don't need to be watching so much TV. When I do watch it, it should jump out and shine!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Standard DVDs are nice and sharp, and that resolution sure comes cheaper and lower-maintenance than the current generation of HD sets. I'm a movie buff and the HD thing doesn't do that much for me; it's the wide screen I would care about.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Conventional TV pictures and sets have a resolution that matches the human eyeball resolution. People can see pixels about 1 arc-second in size. Take a 36" TV design for conventional TV viewing across the room and, not by coincidence, pixels subtend 1 arc-second.
If the the viewer kicks the picture into HDTV, 400-500 NTSC pixels becomes 1200-1900 on HDTV and pixel size shrinks to one third or less. The best viewing position requires 1 arc-second pixels so the viewer needs to sit at one third the distance.
Ever notice that people watching HDTV lean forward? They know there's more resolution there and subconciously want to see it. I've have HDTV and know how to use it. But unless I'm willing to sit on the floor right in front of the set, 90% of the time I don't bother.
The only HDTV that makes real sense requires that the set grow by 3:1 or 4:1 and fills the whole wall.
If that average intelligence is the world average the US certainly is dumb for a first world country.. ;)
It may have a hundred more lines of resolution, but it flickers like hell. When I was an exchange student in Germany, I used to get headaches if I watched TV for more than 15 minutes. It was nauseating. Interlaced video at 25 Hz is just plain inadequate.
...of our good looks.
I did a wedding video for a friend, and when I went to show him on their 60" TV it was all whacked. They wouldn't let me change the TV, insisting that it was only the cable that was affected, not the DVD. Yeah, right. I had to render it again in letterbox to minimize the effect. Then I was there watching football and saw their foul-mouthed ADD kid flip the thing into stretch mode during commercials. Forgetting, of course, to flip it back, so then I had to point out we're watching a nice HD football game all distorted.
Little creep just couldn't stand the 4:3 commercials.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
And what percentage, do you suppose, know what the word median means?
$META_SIG_JOKE
My parents have an HDTV (60" Samsung DLP) and they don't use HD (they haven't subscribed to anything and don't have a tuner for picking up broadcast) which sucks, but I like plugging in a computer into its VGA input. Very smooth!
There are around 280 million people in the US, and the typical household size would probably be 3. Divide population of 280 million by 3 to get roughly 90 million households. 16 million households out of 90 million means HDTV penetration is 18%.
I can't seem to convince him though that DVD's aren't High Def.
It's one of those deals where you come to realize that you'll never convince them, they'll just think you're a wrong, stupid asshole when you're done arguing. I don't argue that the DVD's don't look better on an HDTV, but they're not Hi-Def.
Instead of trying to argue the point more, I'll just wait for HD-DVD and/or BlueRay to come out and his head to explode.
Schnapple
and I dont use HD, but I don't watch a lot of television. I only bought it for gaming and dvd's.
HDTV has been caught in a catch 22 for the last decade. Content providers don't want to invest the money converting their broadcasts to HD because the market of HDTV owners is small.
Consumers avoided buying HDTV's because there wasn't enough content.
So, who needs to initiate the HDTV revolution? Consumers or Content Providers?
Content providers should have taken the reins and initiated the HDTV revolution like 10 years ago. They should have started making all their content available in HD broadcasts, it is easy enough to down grade the HD content to standard def and put them on two different channels. Digital Cable has been around for over a decade allowing dual HD and standard def content. With content immediately available, consumers would have adopted HDTV sets more quickly and thus this technology would, by now, have been well underway to becoming a mature and successful implementation.
Instead, content providers are slowly rolling out content, and I have really only seen this year cable channels promoting their content in HDTV.
Also, why are HDTV's so expensive? LCD's and Plasma's are luxury items, but not the only technologies capaple of HD digital content. Anyone with a CRT computer monitor has been able to display HD content for over a decade, and CRT monitor resolutions exceed HD resolutions. There is no reason for CRT HDTV's to have been $5000 when they were first introduced, and still these televisions are over $600, when an equivalent sized standard television could be bought for $300.
Finally, its the greed of cable and satelite companies that has stagnated HDTV adoption. The requirement to buy or rent a digital cable terminal in order to view HDTV content is one reason why few people are adopting this technology. I don't want to buy a $4000 television and then another $150 - $500 for the "convertor" box. Cable companies need to OPEN UP digital cable broadcasts and allow ALL HDTV and SDTV's to be able to decipher cable content and HDTV content built-in, WITHOUT PAYING A PREMIUM. I know that many HDTV's are being built with ATSC tuners capable of over-the-air HDTV broadcasts, but cable companies do not allow 3rd party television makers to decipher the program guides and other features that made digital cable easy to use. Also, digital cable companies don't allow 3rd party PVR's to read HDTV and digital cable content, allowing for quicker adoption of HDTV technology by buying 3rd party devices with recording capabilities.
It is greed which is preventing HDTV from becoming a "must have" technology. Greed by the content providers by not investing in the conversion to HDTV broadcasts until there is a well established consumer base, and greed by the cable/satellite companies for not allowing ubiquitous HDTV technology adoption by allowing 3rd party companies from decoding and using digital cable and HDTV broadcasts. And ultimately, it is greed which is stagnating rollout because all companies involved CANNOT find an easy to implement solution that will prevent people from recording digital content and distributing it for free online.
I for one will continue to wait, patiently, until such a time where I can buy a HDTV set with built-in digital cable and ATSC tuners without the requirment of having a cable company box attached to my tv as well, and pay extra for HDTV content. I want a PVR that can use the same digital program guide that the cable boxes display to be able to select which shows I want to record WITHOUT having to buy the feature limited box from the cable companies. I want CHOICE in this industry, not force fed content and products at the discretion of greedy corporation who have been stalling adoption simply because can't find an easy way to protect content from being copied.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I live in a rural area of Virginia and don't even have access to cable, so I use dish network http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/products/hdtv/i ndex.shtml. The problem: One of my TVs is HD ready, the other two aren't. That would mean I would have to have two different receivers, as well as two different dishes mounted to my house. It's a couple hundred in equipment and installation, plus extra monthly charges (not to mention the extra eyesore on the house). We considered it, but decided that we really didn't need to watch "Joey" http://www.nbc.com/Footer/HDTV/ in high definition.
I just bought a high-def TV, and apparently I am going to have to call the cable company and pay them more, because Digital Cable apparently just costs more than analog cable and doesn't come with hi-def.
Having just switched over to HD last month (our 7 yr old Phillips tube died, so it was time to upgrade), I can see how it would be easy for alot of folks to misunderstand. Here are some of the problems I had to overcome...
* Purchased new HD set, but didn't know I needed HD service, and a new set top box to get the broadcast.
* Purchased HD service and don't realize that not all the channels are HD...nobody tells you this stuff.
* Purchase HD service, and don't receive a manual for the DVR box (damn you Cox/Sci-Atlanta!).
None of this was that difficult for me, and I had no previous experience with HD. But what alot of engineers haven't figured out yet is that if it's as hard as programming the clock on an old VCR, than it's too hard for Joe Sixpack.
Someone above asked if it is really worth upgrading. Considering that I was able to get a 62" Mitsu DLP ($2800 at Costco), and HD service with an HD DVR (installed free) for an additional $20/mo, I'd say yes. For that price, I've got a picture that's twice the size, much higher quality, and the DVR is a godsend.
Just another day in Paradise
I just bought my Sim a large flatscreen TV to hang on the wall. I don't think he's set it up properly though, because it looks like it's just stretching out the picture to fit the wider screen.
Can anyone else's Sim advise him on what to do? I think he's depressed about it because he's talking to a large, pink bunny.
There's no compelling content to justify even the extra $5 per month. Then I cancelled digital cable for the same reason. Now I've got basic cable..
The only thing I use the HDTV 1280x720 for is as my computer monitor, where I can wirelessly surf, play music, view photo albums, check email, etc. from my couch. Slideshows look phenomenal.
With the lack of HD content it's not suprising.
It's sort of like when USB first came out, everyone needed a computer with USB ports, however very few people actually made USB devices.
I imagine in 2-3 years the ammount of HD content will increase greatly.
The FCC mandate of shutting off analog tv broadcasts will only help this.
As for the people who don't own HD equipped tv's(Myself included). Most dont care
the tv shows, news I watch will probably never be HD, with the exception of maybe some educational shows, travel shows etc...
Do most people want to watch "Thats So Raven" in HD, doubtful.
Couple points:
1) Video game consoles now have native resolutions of 720p and 1080i. Having a 360/PS3 without a HDTV should be a crime. The difference on the 360 is astounding.
2) DVD's are not high def, true, but they are 480p. Normal TV's are 480i. You will see a difference besides the "wide-screenness".
3) DVD players now upconvert to 720p and 1080i. It isn't as good as a pure HD signal, but they do an excellent job for the money.
4) Most people with HDTV's are probably sports nuts, and you cannot compare watching a game on a 50"plasma in HD to a 27" CRT.
Oh, and the scariest part of this story is that this guy wound up graduating with something like a 3.9 GPA as a CSE student.
You have to be Wise to see the difference.
...they want yesterday back.
Better yet. How many have EDTV (480p) plasma screens that think they are watching HDTV at full resolution just because they blew away a boatload of money on their pasttime.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
It doesnt help that the cable techs themselves know nothing about technology and HD. I recently had a HD DVR installed, and I requested that they just drop off the box so that I could do the "installation" (plugging in 4 cables) myself. Well, it turns out they need to call in to the company with some number on the box and make sure my "picture is optimal". Of course it didnt help that neither of the 3 cable technicians I've ever had to my place know anything about HD at all. Me: "I think we need to turn on the options for 720p and 1080i within the box" Them: "uh, no, your picture looks great sir". Me: "Yeah but try to go to an HD channel" Them: "hmm, that channel isnt coming in, it must be a programming error, let me call my support Me: "NO! you need to enable HD within YOUR cable box in the menu, please let me do it! Them: "No I have it configured correctly and if you change it you will damage your TV" Me: "Fine, make your call" 55 minutes later.... Them: "I fixed it! There were some options we had to configure in the cable box for HD! I FIXED IT!" Me: .....
Them: "Oh and make sure you have your picture stretched all the time on Zoom mode for SD stuff"
Me: "That makes peoples faces look strange"
Them: "No it doesnt, its better for your TV also".
Oh the brilliance...
Well, you know what 3.6Ghz CPU with 1GB of RAM, CD-RW, DVD-R, USB means and that your car has ABS, GPS and a radio that will play MP3s... etc. etc. you get my point.
I always find it amazing that people have such a resistance to things that are scarcely any different in concept from the oodles of other similar things they already own and understand. Yet, still, you throw out an unfamiliar acronym and "GAH! MY BRAIN!!! YOU GEEKS ARE EVIL!!!"
No, they're just not stubborn, thick-headed dorks.
DVDs are the same resolution as an EDTV. Upon realizing this why not simply get an EDTV now, and wait until there is enough HD content to warrant an HDTV purchase.
My cable company charges an installation fee for a HDTV box. Whether I am technical savvy or not they insist on coming to my home and hooking it up with me. They confirm that a high def signal is getting to my TV, They show me the HD channel numbers. Now then, for the forgetful or stupid people why not get the installer to ask them if they would like to "force" HD programming where-ever possible? All it takes is the set-top-box makers to add a software set-up feature that can be enabled so that whenever someone selects e.g. Fox SD (e.g. channel 6 analogue) they actually get shown fox HD channel (e.g. channel 881)? For the really stupid people it could even pretend to be the analogue channel number i.e. a duplicate.
Geek huh... lets see:Uh oh, hold on:
Excellent work, grasshopper, but you still have much learning to do
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Since (over the air)SDTV is going the way of the dodo sometime this decade, it means people either have to buy cable/satellite or buy new receivers for HDTV broadcasts. If the cable company wants to compete with the FREE over-the-air broadcast HD, wouldn't they give the HD content to its subscribers for free (and don't make the "cost of equipment" argument... I pay $5/month for the privilege of having a receiver to receive the digital content I already pay for!)? Maybe it would even hasten the adoption of HDTV in Joe Everyman's house (which the Government would LOVE).
I'm just sayin...
And I lift my glass to the awful truth which you can't reveal to the ears of youth except to say it isn't worth a dime.
Most SUV drivers have not need to and never go off road.
Both HDTVs and SUVs apart from being status symbols ( a rather stupid thing ) are a complete waste of resources.
When there is something other that pure crap on television that would truly be enhanced by hdtv then I would consider it being a worthwhile purchase.
Content first, then worry about content delivery.
The 50% figure seems low to me - it's more likely in the 98% range. I love going out to a bar and watch NBA and NCAA basketball, especially during the playoffs. In Toronto - it has been nearly impossible to do so - whether it's at a multimillion dollar so-called sports bar (Madisons), a regular bar, or even a high end hotel bar (main bar at the Downtown Marriott ).
When there is an NBA game on - typically the NBA ball players are "5 foot tall and five foot wide" with the basketball looking like a football! Let me explain.
Most bars have wide screen TV's - that are meant to be used for high definition TV programming. High definition programs have the same height/width proportions that one can can see at any movie theatre. It's called "letterbox"; that is, a ratio of 16 units wide by nine units high". In order to receive high definition (letter box proportions) the bar must have a high definition TV tuner and high definition cable or satellite feed.
But most bars don't have the latter: and instead take a regular TV program (with screen proportion of four units wide to three units high) and stretch the program in width to fill the high definition TV screen!
But that is just the beginning. To make matters worse, the SCORE TV network, for example, takes the NBA basketball feed and then installs a banner running along the bottom twenty percent of the screen - by compressing the TV picture in height. Put that compressed TV picture on a wide screen TV that has stretch the NBA game to begin with - the result? - 7 foot tall NBA players that are in fact now 5 foot tall with the basketball the shape of a football. Bush League? You bet!
When I mention the problem to managers at these bars - they look at me as if I just got off the rocket from Mars - and they typically say "but nobody else has complained". I guess these managers never heard of:
"It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."--Abraham Lincoln.
When I used to work in repair shops, I was always amazed by how many items would come in for repair with the clear plastic protective film still covering the display windows, keypad bezels, etc. Usually well yellowed with age and nicotine residue....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
I've had an "HD-ready" TV for years; currently I have two of 'em. But I still don't have an HD tuner of any sort. Here's why:
1) Compatibility Uncertainty: For a long time I wouldn't even think of buying an HD tuner, because I knew it would probably obsolete by the time the big changeover came. I'm still not sure that I trust the industry not to change things around again, most likely for some new DRM-of-the-week.
2) Lack of Content: until recently, there really wasn't enough content out there to justify the expense (and hassles) of an HD setup. This was especially true for OTA broadcasts (also for the rinky-dink cable co. I had until recently). This is starting to change, of course, though not as fast here as in some major markets.
3) Cable HD Costs: I really don't want to shell out for the cable co.'s HD service. It costs too much especially when you consider that a lot of the content is still in premium channels which I normally don't subscribe to.
4) I Hate Cable Boxes: The other half of the expense+hassle equatuion. I had (SD) digital cable a while back, and it just drove me nuts. Not being able to change channels quickly, interfacing the thing with recording devices for scheduled recordings, etc. Plus I just hate the fact that I can watch some channels on one TV that I can't on another (w/o a box). Note that a lot of this applies to OTA boxes as well. A TV with a builtin HD tuner would help here, but then you run into item 1) in a big way...
I live in the Cleveland area and currently enjoy watching free over-the-air HDTV. People get hung up on paying for the service through their cable/satellite company when it's already out there. The standard channels are mostly what you get when you pay for HDTV anyways. My recommendations is get a tuner and use the antenna that has been on your roof for years.
Wow thats almost 60%!
ACT is actually part of the name of the bill.
So we have the following statistics:
Windows users: 95%
Users who don't set VCR clock: 99%
Users who don't use firewall: 50%
Users w/o antivirus: 50%
User w/o antispyware: 60%
HDTV owners w/o HDTV programmning: 50%
Voters who voted for GWB: 55%
Boy, I am losing all hope for this country.
This same people surveyed were also found to have a P4 3.0Ghz computer with 512MB ram and 160GB hard drives to browse the internet and send email.
Yeah, I read that 50% of are below average . Or more accuratley 50% are below the median but when working with a large sample set the mean and the median tend to each other. :)
well, here in the best buy flyers (in canada) we see a tiny ** next to every device marked as HDTV or HD-Ready. This morning I was curious and looked very hard around the page. It took me a while to find, in very teeny print at the bottom of the page, seperate from the * comment (you'd think they'd be right after each other), I found the line that says 'requires HD source'. You'd think that for something like this they'd write it in the item description, like 'batteries sold seperately', or 'does not include stand'.
its almost like there's a consipiracy going on. maybe they just don't want people to know that only a few channels are available in HD and avoid them getting dissapointed. better for them to _think_ that they have HD and watch their favorite actors fatter and shorter than the actually are - its just a 'feature' of HDTV.
I am unique, just like you, and you, and you...
I work in television. I am a videographer with ten years of experience shooting on everything short of film, daily. I scrutinize the television images I get daily. I love the HDTV at the lobby of my office. I love the image.
There is no way in hell I am going to buy one.
Simply put, a great looking image over a pretty great looking image is not worth three #$%^ thousand dollars.
My CRT television looks great. It handles television well. It's big, and it cost me a whopping $400 new a long, long time ago, which I almost had a heart attack buying. No way in hell I'm spending anything near a large percentage of my earnings on a television.
Guys, I make TV. I am starting to produce on my own, and I will tell you this: I would rather spend the money on a Canon XL2 or Sony Z1U before I would buy a plasma. Sorry, it's the truth.
Make your own TV. That's the way it is going.
I'm not going to spend the rest of my life going, "Oooohhh. Pretty flowers."
If you've got it hooked up to an HD Set, the box itself should swap the HD and SD Channel layout.
You tell your box to switch to Fox on channel 28, it should switch to the HD version of Fox 28. The box is a computer, it can handle remapping the channels to make it transparent to the user. It could even through in a little HD/SD overlay at the corner of the screen for a few seconds when you change the channel so that you know you're on the HD channel.
(I almost never go to the theaters anymore, because of this and the MPAA's bad attitude.)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
You mean like a 37" 1920x1080 Display?
I dunno about HDTVs, but when it comes to projectors they usually supply you with a VGA cable, svideo and composite.
...
...
NO COMPONENT cable, and usually it is a messed up proprietary connector that connects to the VGA input, and costs a lot
my projector can handle 800x600 native or 1024x768 converted (i know it is 720p at best which is not true HDTV but better than 480i pixelsize the size of my head),
but most people will use svideo at best because Epson sells the cable for $110
of course my kind goes the "check the wiring and buy parts at radioshack and build it" way, but most won't....
I am sure when it comes to hdtv you get component cables with some, but I am sure the average customer has no clue what gives better resolutions, and I am sure some will connect devices that have no COMPONENT out at all.....
in a world where people would connect a DVD audio output to the "phono in" on amps, and do not realize that everything is distorted, they do not realize the difference between 480i or 1020i/720p
You jsut have to buy smart. I recently got two HDTV TVs for a grand total of $600. I got a 30" and 32" Tubes from a discount store called Value City. I hadn't purchased a TV since '93 and when I saw these, I couldn't pass them up. Of course they were remanufactored, but I don't have a huge space for TV viewing. These fit hte bill perfectly, and since I live close to DC, I get tons of Broadcast channels from DC and Baltimore.
You don't HAVE to spend big $$$ to get beautiful HDTV - IF you shop smart. Of course, if you want the Biggest/Best(Tube supposedly give the best HD picture though), it will cost you more. But isn't that true for most things?
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
I don't watch TV, but playing Guild Wars at 1920x1080 on a 70" DLP is pretty spiffy.
There are very, very few useful summaries. Try starting with this synopsis
Cheat-sheet of the some of the basic lingo I found frustrating:
Formats:
p = "progressive scan" good i = "interlaced" bad, unless the jittering doesn't bother you and you need to watch fast motion (e.g. watching sports while drunk or on caffiene high - probably rules out most geeks right there) 1080p60 1920x1080 progressive at 60 frames per second - this should be the sweet spot for playback on a 24" high-res widescreen active-matrix LCD computer monitor - possibly theInterconnects:
Digital: HD-SDI : High def serial digital interconnect Mostly for video editing equipment, carrying video and multiple audio channels. Typically a single high-bandwidth BNC connection SDI : serial digital interconnect carries SD video, similar to DV carried over firewire HDMI compact digital interconnect, also carries digital audio channels. Also encumbered by copy protection flag DVI Many forms of this, single-link (up to 1920x1200), dual-link (twice the pins for higher res displays, like Apple cinema display), DVI-I (can also carry analog signals). DVI-D tends to be the most common nowadays... the analog pins could make things confusing. Analog: RGBHV 5 BNC connectors carrying separate channels for red, green, blue, horizontal, and vertical sync. Used by most computers via the more common HD15 interconnect (which also includes some data pins to allow the monitor and video card to exchange DDC informtion) RGBCs 4 BNC connectors - H and V are put on one Composite sync line RGsB 3 BNC connectors - the Green channel carries the composite sync signal, used on older *NIX workstations Component YPbPr 3 BNC or RCA connectors carrying luminance & composite sync, luminance - blue, and luminance - red. SVideo the little 4-pin round connector, usually carries Y/C (luminance & chrominance) channels. Should be able to support a maximum resolution of 800x600. Composite video Single BNC or RCA connectorIt's amazing how seldom things match up with computer components:
16:10 Widescreen aspect ratio used by most LCD computer monitors 4:3 Aspect ratio used by moHD really worth it? Mind you I still use DIALUP! www.offtopic.com Up and coming OFF TOPIC MESSAGE BOARD. Talk about anything here!
Obviously, you've never played with a video editor like VirtualDub, etc...
Motion interpolation and up-scaling is about inventing information that didn't previously exist (motion interpolation adds additionnal morphed frames, up-scaling algorithm like SAI,HQ3x,etc invents inbetween pixels).
On the other hand : de-interlacing is just about re-ordering and repeating the lines correctly. The only subtelty is choosing which scanline to repeat between the one just above (loose resolution, increase flicker, but avoids comb effect) or the one from the last half-frame (better resolution, less flicker, but comb effect). The whole magic is the logic which choose which solution to use (which is a little bit trickier on Analog TV compared to digital AVI files, because the signal is noisy and most algorithms use a "which line has less differences" logic).
It's just scan-line re-ordering, and when proprely done it's a non destructive reversible process (see Telecine).
Of course, then you may try to use additionnal interpolation to try to give better quality to your deinterlacing (which *IS* inventing new infromation that wasn't here before).
Because a huge deal of the PAL movies are 25 fps 576p recoded as 50hz 288 (interlaced 576i), re-ordering the scan lines give you the exact original aspect, minus color combing artifacts due to PAL encoding (hopefully nowadays good color-decombing exists). Of course no combing artifacts when feeding RGB signals from local source.
And if you need to read computer generated text, just hook it up to a real monitors (that's why I loved the Dreamcast and hated the XBox : the VGA connector).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The interface for doing things like that is bizarre. Most people have never set the clock on their VCR. Most people don't care--they just want to watch a little TV. I find it easier to subract one hour from the time on the clock in my car than go find the manual every six months to figure out how to set the thing. Modern interfaces are getting silly.
Would y'all quit your bitching? Almost every comment is complaining about how HDTV is confusing, unnecessary, overpriced, broken, lacks programming, etc.
Any time there's a transition there's always going to be the same type of grief:
1950's: "Oh lol they bought a color TV set and the only color show on is Bonanza."
1960's: "What's this FM bullshit?"
1970's: "I can't keep these standards straight: Reel-to-reel? 8-track? Cassette? wtf? And metal-oxide what?"
Relative to all the other consumer technology transitions we've gone through in the past few hundred years, HDTV will probably be the quickest and easiest.
Confusing? Sure, but what new technology isn't a little confusing when it's first released. Isn't figuring out this stuff that part of the fun? Expensive? I dunno, compared to the cost of a vacation, $1500 for a plasma didn't seem too expensive, and provides many hours of entertainment. Unnecessary? Yeah, duh, it's not food and shelter. Lack of programming? Again, transition period waiting for a tipping point which will come pretty soon.
_______
2B1ASK1
As a result, we mostly watch SD Tivo, except for the occasional football or baseball game. The convenience is more important than the picture quality for most TV shows.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
My TV died recently, and I got a bonus at about the same time. So, I got an LCD HDTV.
I have a DVD player which upconverts to 720p via Faroudja DCDi. Looks incredible. The limiting factor is generally the DVD encoding and the original film material, since I tend to prefer independent movies.
For TV, I have DirecTV with TiVo. No HD channels. The DirecTV HD package only offers 1 channel I'd actually watch (Discovery HD), and I'm not interested in paying $10.99 a month for that. Particularly not when I'm already paying for all those news and sports channels I never watch. I might drop $25 on an antenna to see if I can get PBS HD.
Regular DirecTV on the HDTV looks just fine. The upconverters on HDTVs are pretty good these days. Cartoons generally work well with "smart stretch", as they aren't accurate reproductions of physical shape anyway. Quite a few shows are letterboxed these days. For the few 4:3 shows I watch, the joy of LCD is I don't need to worry about burn-in of the sidebars.
Give me a way to get HD channels instead of news and sports crap, and I'd take it. But I don't care enough about HD to bloat my bill by another 20%. (And yes, I've seen real HD.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I was an 'early adopter' of HD, purchasing a 57" HD set four years ago. I primarily watch DVD movies on my set, which look very nice at 480p upscaled. In order to watch broadcast HD content I'd have had to spend an extra $10 a month with DirecTV to get their measly content, and close to $1000 at the time for the HD-TiVo (there's no way I'm going back to sitting through commercials.) I'm not into sports, so Football and Baseball aren't really selling me on the whole HD concept, and I just can't see the point in paying that extra cash just to get extra pixels in the latest sit-com or reality show .
Of course I'd love to be able to watch HD-DVD when it comes out, but since my $3000 set only has Component Video inputs for HD and therefore I'm just a thieving pirate waiting to rip off the media megacorporations, I won't be allowed to.
*sigh*
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Whoosh!
First of all, 50% is a conservative estimate. I've even seen Time Warner cable guys screw up the aspect ratio because they're not familiar with every TV's menu system.
Most "HDTVs" have a resolution of 1024x768 or lower. The two common HD specs (720p and 1080i) have resolutions of 1280x720 and 1920x1080. I took some photos of my Dell 2405FPW which has component inputs and a resolution of 1920x1200.
This is what HD is supposed to look like. Here is another, check out the detail on his jacket zipper.
If you really want a good picture stick to the tube based HDTVs. Sony has a good 34 incher. The LCDs are high resolution but they're not great with lots of motion. I have a tube based HDTV in the living room for sports and freaks people out.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
My parents just got an HDTV, and with no plans to upgrade their cable service, the only thing other then typical analog cable signals (ack, not even digital cable!!!!) that they use are DVDs (which are of course a fraction of the resolution HDTV can do), and that's just because a DVD player is built into it. It's a cruel thing for a broke, gadget-loving college student to see....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
A post-processor such as ffdshow (open source) and a decent DVD player such as ZoomPlayer or TheaterTek can post-process, enhance, and upscale SD DVD content quite nicely.
Results look wonderful on my 58" TV. Still, I am looking forward to HD DVD formats coming out if nothing else than for the extra space. I wish that they would settle on a format, though.
There were about 120 million households in the US in 2000 according to the UN Human Settlements Program. That still means about 13%, though.
The point that I was trying to make is that if DirecTV uses similar crappy video encoding for its HD channels (at least, crappy compared to what it could be), then the increased resolution that HD offers will be nearly useless (for watching satellite channels).
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Native resolution of HDTV monitor, 1080? 720? 480?
Then go in the special menus and ask the HDTV decoder to up/down convert the SDTV/HDTV signals that the HDTV monitor expects.
But wait... if the HDTV can up/down convert, is it better to let the TV set do it, or have the set top box do it? And what about upscaling SDTV? That means you have to use the set-top remote to zoom the 16:9 content, but let the TV upconvert and the TV's zoom button is used instead.
When I explained that to my father, his eyes glazed over right around 'Native Resolution'.... after several explanations and emails rehashing the above, the concept started to sink in.
When the cable guy comes over with the HDTV set-top box, he plugs it in, does a basic smoke test, hands you the remote and leaves. He spend ZERO time tweaking your configuration to optimize the display quality.
From Cowboy Neal's posting of Ant's summary: Just in case youse guys have been surfing Maui for the last week or two, that would be future Cisco subsidiary, Scientific Atlanta.
PS: If Cisco 0wnz both the TCP/IP [to include VOIP] and CATV/HDTV markets, does that make them evil enough for you? Or will they also need to branch out into kitchen sinks?
We dont nead inglish clases lol b-cuz we lern on internet!!!! we nead A/V clases so i can hoock up myself t.v.
no!! nead inglish class!! lol hav A/V class!!!
i vote u 4 teacher lol!!
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No, it's not a Virus, lol!!
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
The way they claim the eye works, there should be no difference between a stereoscope image seen by one eye, a flat image seen by one eye, and anything else seen by one eye.
I bought myself a 55 inch projection HDTV 3 years ago. I've generally been happy with it. I paid the cable company for HDTV service for about a year. It turns out that I'd much rather have the time shifting capability of my TiVo than the HD quality. I stopped paying for the HD Cable box because it was just one more thing to shose from.
I use the TV in 480p mode to watch DVDs and have my 6.1 surround system perfectly set up for the room.
I've been using my Tivo now for 5 years. I bought the lifetime service when I bought it. I upgraded my TiVo hard disk and added a TivoNet card. What I really want is a HD TiVo, ideally that can recieve HD Channels from either an over the air antenna or a cable company.
I don't want to pay the cable company for an inferior PVR. I want a PVR that I can add drive space to as drive capacities keep increasing and prices keep falling.
I *just* bought a new non-HD television. Why? Because a decent 27-inch analog TV costs $150. Out of the box it can recieve broadcast signals and works with all common hardware from satellite and cable companies. A comparable HDTV monitor costs somewhere around $300. If you want to receive broadcast signals, you have to pay an additional $200 for an HDTV receiver or buy a $600 TV (I still can't figure out where the extra $100 got there, but that's the prices I saw in the stores). If you have cable or satellite, you have to get an HDTV decoder for their signals, and the upgrade can cost money with some providers. In other words, I saved a MINIMUM of $350 by not buying HDTV. The government can just buy me a decoder when they force the shut down of analog signals in a few years. Screw HDTV, I'll buy it when it's at a reasonable price.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
It's all about formats and protocols. And that's why there are too many gadgets to keep up with--all have essentially the same function, but no interoperability so each vendor can confuse the marketing crap out of you by telling you it's a different device.
*looks up* WTF was that?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
I have a HDTV, but I don't have the HD service. Why, because it costs too dam much. Heck, regular Sat. TV costs too much. I'm paying $105 a month. What I really want is ala-cart TV. I only watch about 10 channels of my 100's. But I have to have the 100's to get the one channel that I like the most.
The above is not worth reading.
Since the programming providers (the channels themselves) bundle multiple channels together, if the cable/sat companies are forced to offer a-la-carte under the current system, you'll be paying high dollar for almost every channel, and a-la-carte will only save you money if you only want a very few channels (even 10 is probably too high for the price you're paying). After all, if they have to pay big bucks to ESPN to get that small channel you want to buy, they're certainly going to make you pay for it to offset that big cost.
It never ceases to amaze me how people are willing to pay more, for less channels, just to keep from "subsidizing what they don't want".
FC Closer
all our children are above average...
...where TV sets (even from Sony) switch to widescreen/4:3/zoom modes automatically, thanks to the magic of SCART and control signals embedded in the TV broadcasts. Ok ok, we don't have HD yet, and nobody has mentioned if the same features will ever be implemented in the HD tellies. If they won't, I'll get mad.
I get about 6 High Defs. HBO, SHO, PBS, Discovery, and INHD are usually in Full 1080i with DD, but the big networks are usually DD with black bars arround a 4:3 picture. Though FOX does occasionally stretch the image, it's still not anything near 1080i.
You seemed to have had it easy. My triangle shaped hole had a DVI interface, but was lacking HDMI/HDCP support where the new triangle I bought required it. I went through a couple of different triangles and sure they were all three sided objects, but some claimed to have a 4:3 ratio, some had 16:9, and I never did figure out what the anamorphic triangle was. Finally I got fed up and tossed my old toys and asked the local triangle provider what I need to make this work right. After buying a whole new set I discovered that only a couple of the triangles were going to fit properly anyways, the rest would be misshapen hacks that are stretched or squeezed in when they used to fit perfect. This is just trying to use it as it was intended, don't even get me started on what happened when I tried to make a backup of one of the triangles.
I bet the same thing happened when colour TV was introduced...
But seriously. Other posters ask what the fuss about HDTV is - when correctly configured, it's stunning. For me, though, it's not about watching the same old rubbish on TV, but sharper; it's about a new medium for watching good film - that's the killer app. Before HDTV you'd have had to operate your own 16mm or 35mm projector to get that quality watching film in the home (laserdisc defenders, don't even start).
you had me at #!
While we wait, DVDs and a surprising number of mpeg4 downloads look pretty good. Even Gilligan's Island...
It's probably Super 35 you're referring to, except that Super 35 is shot in 1.60:1. The Matrix movies were filmed with this process. The 4:3 versions of the films show more on the top and bottom, but slightly less on the sides.
Source: Amazon.comMatthew Brundage
Silver Spring, MD
What gets me is the people who watch SD-TV on a widescreen HDTV and somehow don't notice that the image often has been stretched horizontally. For example, I was in a sports bar that was showing an SD professional basketball on one of its HDTVs, and the players actually appeared to be short and squat. Now, not all HDTVs will do this -- some will reverse-letterbox the video. But how can you not notice when the image is stretched? It's just as annoying as having some DVD players playing widescreen videos in fullscreen mode (this happens all the time with older models, and the same effect occurs sometimes when the wrong lens is put on the projector at the movie theater). In that case, the video is squished horizontally and stretched vertically. And most of the time, nobody notices but me!
I understand that not everyone has a great eye for video quality; most of us can "tune out" the grain. But I hadn't realized that so many people were totally lacking a visual sense of proportion.
I hate it when people give that poor excuse, "do you know how much I spent to raise you?"
Well, do you realize how much more your kids will have to spend to raise their kids? You may have had to spend, oh $100,000 on your son, but due to inflation, he'll have to spend $150,000+ on EACH of his kids.
And did you ever pay back your parents for raising you? When grams and gramps get their money, I'll think about giving you yours.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
What the hell is the point of dropping an extra $2000 on an HD TV to watch the same ad-sodden, blathering noise with sharper edges ?
Evidently, most HDTV owners don't know the answer, either.
5 years ago I went to a Best Buy near my parents' house while I was visiting them for Thanksgiving. Looking at the big screen TVs, one in particular looked far better than the others. It was much brighter and clearer, and was, of course, an HDTV set. Even when showing normal TV, its line-doubler and other features gave it a much nicer picture, and a much wider viewing angle than the standard big screen sets.
So, 4 years ago I bought a tunerless 55" Toshiba HDTV (4:3 aspect) set (55HX70) from crazyeddie.com for ~$2100. I do not have cable. I live in a small college town in the boonies. I have zero chance to view HD broadcasts, but I do use the Hi-def features for several things. Heck, I could use a 3rd set of progressive component inputs on my set.
First is my computer, which I primarily use as a Home Theater PC. I download anime and a few broadcast TV shows and watch them. The picture is FAR superior to standard def sets. Connection is progressive component.
Second is my PS2, which looks stunning using the component out. Some games even run in HD mode, like Gran Turismo 4 (I play in 1080i) which looks stunning compared to "normal" mode.
Last is my Progressive scan DVD player. I actually run this off s-video ATM since it is the least-used of the 3.
So I don't know how they count their 50%, and whether I would qualify or not, but I am certainly getting more out of this set than I would from a normal one.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
i guess its also indicative of a technology that is too complicated for the average consumer. if there were perhaps simple lights on the front of the display people may pay more attention... eg. a green light for standard def that cahnges to blue when the set is operating in HD mode.
ahhh whatever, i dont really care enough about this stuff really anyway.
Aside from football games and beer commercials, where's the HD content? I am compelled by neither American football nor American beer. I am too cheap to pay extra for HD premium channels (an HBO, a Showtime, etc). No real point in buying or using an HD set if that's all the choice there is.
In this country where one of the largest sellers of HD equipment was displaying HD products with standard sources for several years does the article come as a supprise? My wife and I used to laugh at them trying to sell TVs at 10x the cost of a standard set when the image being shown did no justice to the product. If most of the US gets this stuff from (insert big-box store name here) and the store doesn't utilize the features, why should you expect them to be setup and utilized properly at home?
It's crap, that's what it is. I'm one of those people with a HDTV with no digital content except for my DVD player. I cancelled my subscription to HD Cable. Why? Because it's bad enough that you have to remember to go from watching the Discovery Channel on 56 to Discovery Channel HD on 623. But on top of that, there's a worse problem!
Oh? There's a program I want to watch on Discovery Channel? Cool.. I'll watch it in HD. You switch over and... Whaaat? It's a completely different program! The show you wanted to watch in HD, simply isn't on, because all the HD channels aren't simply the same programs in HD.. They are completely different channels with completely different programming! That's what none of the content providers want to tell the public. They want you to believe you get all your normal programming, but with the extra benefit of HD!
It's simply NOT TRUE. It's like a bait and switch. Watch Discovery Channel in HD! But you can't, because all you get on Discovery HD is the same 10 programs about Ocean Life played over and over again, while none of their "normal" programming is ever broadcast in HD!
IQ is defined with 100 in the middle i.e. half will be below average and half will be above So it is a truism to say that: "Yea, I once read that 50% of Americans are below average intelligence."
FRIST POST!@
I have been working at Sky on their new HD service.
The new box is a Sky+ box with a 300 Gb HD, though some of that will be reserved for push content and will not be accessible to the user. The HD channels are transmitted in a codec similar to MPEG4, so have only a slightly higher bit rate compared to standard def channels.
There are currently 10 HD test channels (290-299) on the new EPG. The HD channels include Sky one (mostly up sampled), two sports channels, Arts world and some Pay per view movie channels. Currently there is a Barker (demo) channel (similar to ch 998) but this will probably change in future.
Currently all Premiership football matches are being recorded in HD (and have been since the start of the season), so when HD lunches, native HD football matches will be available immediately. Obviously Movies on both movie channels and PPV will have been telecined at High res, so that will also be available on native HD at launch. That only leaves normal entertainment content, but much of that has been recorded at HD by forward thinking production companies, so there will be more native HD content than you might think.
The HD sky one is on a different channel number from standard def. I think it was a wasted opportunity for the box not to automatically select the HD version of a channel when it is available, and use the same channel number, but I guess that marketing would prefer the HD channels to be visible in the EPG, to encourage people to upgrade.
I have no idea what pricing will be, but £10 extra per month, plus about £300 for the box sound like a reasonable estimate. The box is large and black. It is larger and slightly heaver than the old Sky+ 160 box. There is a new remote which has a slightly more angular appearance than the old sky+ remote, but has the same buttons in the same places. Sky+ remotes work on SkyHD boxes, but not vice versa. The box has HDMI and component outputs as well as the usual Scart, S-Video and UHF outputs. From what I have heard HDCP will only be required for PPV moves, though that may change in future.
The box was originally planned to launch for Christmas, but has suffered delays due to technical faults, and obviously won't hit that target. The new target is to launch in the spring in plenty of time for the football world cup, however with the continuing problems that is looking less likely. I have heard and internal rumor to the effect that there is a launch window imposed by the European commission that closes sometime in March, and if the box is not launched before that date, then sky will have to wait at least six months.
The BBC also has plans to launch a HD service, though not for some time, from what I have read in trade publications they are planning to start terrestrial test transmission in the London area next year, as well as appearing on subscription cable and satellite services.
In the long-term, it'll make a big difference. Right now, established channels can create new channels by forcing operators to take them or else pay a high price for their high-line channels.
For example, you tell DirectTV that if they want to offer ESPN it is $20/customer/month. For ESPN and ESPN2 it is $10/customer/month (total). For ESPN,ESPN2, ESPNews and ESPN Classic, $5/customer/month (total). For ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews, ESPN Classic and ESPN U, $2/customer/month (total). And thus they can force their new channesl to be carried.
So, since it is so easy to make new channels, they do it all the time, and in order to get people to watch the new channels, they pick up EXACTLY one show worth watching. They either create it, or buy it (see Bravo's experience with Law & Order years ago). So we have a zillion channels, and you say if we had a la Carte, it'd cost a mint.
But if we have a la Carte, people won't get Animal Planet, and Animal Planet won't get any money and they'll disappear (actually, bad example since Comcast owns Animal Planet, right?). And any decent shows will migrate to only a few channels. Then you can get those a la Carte and do just fine.
If we had a la carte all this time, we couldn't have 400 channels right now, we'd have 100. And then DTV wouldn't have to tell channels they can't be carried in HDTV since they don't have room for 400 channels of HDTV on their satellites.
See, ESPN created ESPN2-HD at a point when they had very little HD content on ESPN anyway (not even SportsCenter). They hoped to produced between ESPN and ESPN2, 200 HD events per year. That's one every other day between the two!
It's just a land grab. Get the channel out there, get it carried in the basic package, then create a single show so that you can then jack up the fees to the cable companies. The cable companies can't drop you since some of their customers watch that one show. Et voila! You now have a percentage of the revenue from every basic cable subscriber nationwide AND you can charge more for your ads because you have near-nationwide clearance. And thus, the cost of basic cable goes up for everyone to cover these fees from the operators. All because USA Networks or Viacom created a new channel, regardless of whether you watch it.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Thanks to the propellerheads who design this shit these days. Even fucking "consumer" electronics are too difficult to use.
Can someone tell me why we need several HD resolutions? No, I don't care about the reason, we don't. Aspect ratios? Six fucking different kinds of cables to connect the shit? US vs European standards?
Now, if I was the king of the world, there would be *one* digital AV standard. Perhaps 1600x900, 30 fps (or more) progressive scan only, 60hz LCD, 90 hz CRT, all connected by firewire from begining to end, and TV would autoselect aspect ratio depending on content without user intervention. Simple and idiot proof.
It is because of these reasons and also the bullshit DRM on new products that has led me to boycot any new technology purchases besides my computer. My computer is the only thing I can still trust to work, although people are working on undermining even that too. They are all designed by *idiots*.
I'd love to start cracking some skulls, because I used to love all this shit. But, every year I think more about reverting back to just curling up with a good book from the library in the evenings and never spending another cent on it.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
Have you ever seen Nova? You'd be hard-pressed to find a more consistently interesting and informative show. Sure there's lots of boring or crappy stuff on PBS, but which network is all good?
Don't you just love how that got modded insightful...
I don't have one
That Mac that you're flaming is not only 8 years old, it needs work!
I checked the big brother to that 8600, a 9600, which is essentially the same except for added expansion slots. Timing file duplication on the original drive (using the built-in SCSI buss) showed 250 megabytes per minute copied. Clearly your machine has a problem if a nearly identical Mac is 250 times faster. A failing drive, bad SCSI 68 or 80 to 50 pin adaptor, or improper termination could cause a very high error rate slowing transfers and eating CPU time. You may also have a nearly full slow drive with both source files and free space heavily fragmented. You may be using too much memory and have heavy virtual-memory swapping happening on the same drive you're trying to dupe files on. Perhaps a pile of extra extensions have been added and you could do with a clean install.
You may have ALL of those problems. None of them would be the computers fault.
In spite of being 8 years old, those Macs support up to 1/1.5 gig of memory, can handle G3/G4 CPU daughtercards, can handle DVD/CD burners and bigger/faster drives along with faster drive interface cards, can handle cards for faster ethernet or added ports such as Firewire and USB, and can run OS X with the help of open-source XPostFacto. With the right video card, even Quartz Extreme can work, using the GPU on the card as a coprocessor. It's generally not worthwhile to buy those upgrades at retail now (new Minis are cheap...), but they can often be found nearly free in machines at thrift stores etc. A friend got a fast CPU, ATA card, USB/Firewire card, and ultra-160 disk with interface for $15. He's able to do full-screen playback of the downsized HDTV shows common on the net. It's not full HDTV quality, but looks great. He can copy between disks at 1 gigabyte a minute. Except for being slower at video compression, he's able to do pretty much everything the newer machines do on an 8 year old computer. 8 years without virus hassles too... It may not be a race horse any more, but it's good for company and pleasant ride through the woods. Some people kill horses when they can't race any more. I'd rather see them live a full life.
I have no interest in convincing you to switch. If you can get good use out of a 486 or other PC, be happy, and keep it out of the landfill, good for you and for the environment.
If you want to split hairs, NTSC actually has 485 lines, and the 485th line is only about 2/3 used. But nearly all SD TV is digital these days (even if you're getting analog reception, it's likely to come from a digital uplink at the base station) so most of the time only 480 lines will be used.
I do notably remember that ST:DS9 was 485 lines on my local UPN when I last checked.
If you synchronize the pixel clock with the color clock* (which is convenient for a composite signal), NTSC is roughly 740x485 (roughly, because various sources use slightly different portions of the horizontal space). Years ago I watched TV in a custom 768x485 video mode so there was utterly no resampling or cropping, using my ATI All-in-Wonder Pro and a custom-modified version of GATOS.
PAL would be about 768x576 with a synchronized pixel/color clock. But I've never had the opportunity to test that with a real PAL source. I don't know whether most real PAL sources use more than 768 or less than 768, nor how many extra rows there are, if any.
*The NTSC clock referred to is 14318181.8 MHz (910*525*30000/1001), four samples for each cycle of the color clock.
The 25% of people that have HDTV and aren't using it can most likely be blamed on the cable companies, and additionaly because of the box manufacturers. Aside from the people that don't know the difference between the HD and digital (and even analog) channels.
I had my cable operator "install" HD for me (why can't I just pick up the box and do it myself?) and unfortunately, the clock/channel display was going bad on the front of the box, so I called them to come replace it. When I got this second box, the guy checked to make sure it was in 1080i, and it was. And then I realized that the first box I had was NOT in 1080i!
I had previously searched everywhere through the menus and there was absolutely NO configuration menu to make sure it was in 1080i. The guy actually hit some button on the front of the box to verify it. How was I supposed to know? The cable guy never provided an instruction manual with the box, and why wouldn't you expect to be able to change the resolution settings with the remote? I even tried to go to the manufacturer's website to download the user manual, but you had to register with them to get it. Like I'm going to do that.
Luckily, this second guy knew to verify that it was in the proper configuration. But if the display wasn't going bad, I would have never known.