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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."
Sorry, you're wrong. It IS the customer's fault. They are too dumb to realize that in order to get HDTV you need to get digital cable and watch certain channels. A lot of them also fuck up their AV wiring and don't use the component or HDMI cables necessary to get things really working properly.
Seriously, this is the kind of shit we need to teach in schools that we aren't. Setting up standard A/V equipment is a skill people need to have, and only geeky people ever learn it properly. I can't tell you how many times people in the office need an IT person to setup the conference room projector for them.
If you want to blame the service providers blame them for not properly educating the customers. But I blame the user for being ignorant.
There was actually another study recently, don't know how good it was, that showed that people couldn't tell which TVs were HD and which ones were not. Someone should test that a bit more and see if it's because of bad eyesight or whatever.
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I'm in the UK and have an HDTV (Samsung LE32R41), but no HDTV sources to use with it until the BBC starts HD in a few years. I just bought it because all the decent large LCD TVs seem to be HD now and they aren't that much more expensive. A decent PAL picture does look very good though, I agree. The problem I see more often is not the number of lines, but that the digital broadcast itself is so blurry and blocky. Shows converted from NTSC in particular look truly awful, especially as they are almost never in widescreen.
My HDTV was purchased for DVDs
Except DVDs aren't HD - you could get identical quality out of your DVDs with a standard definition 16:9 screen...
http://blog.nexusuk.org
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
Except the 4:3 aspect was the standard film aspect before TV was even invented. In fact wide screen movies started as a way to provide something extra to keep people going to theaters AFTER television came out.
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Except DVDs aren't HD - you could get identical quality out of your DVDs with a standard definition 16:9 screen
D -on-HDTV-Display.html
Not true. Standard definition sets show an interlaced image. Since DVDs are recorded with a full frame, it will look "better" on an non-interlaced monitor (provided you have a "progressive scan" DVD player).
I believe that you would need an 'EDTV' set in order to say you would get "identical quality" with HDTV for DVDs.
http://www.oppodigital.com/Getting-Most-out-of-DV
What he says is true, but note he says more of the negative is shown, not necessarily more of the movie. When some movies are filmed, they are intended to be widescreen, but they do in fact shoot 4:3 and then trim it to widescreen for release. So, while technically there is more image in the negative, the fact remains that the widescreen version is what the director wants you to see.
When a movie shot like this gets released on DVD as fullscreen, they actually show you the whole negative (tho I don't know if that's how it's always done, some may be left and right cropped) but sometimes you'll see things you aren't supposed to, like boom mics and such, because in the proper format, widescreen, they aren't seen. This is when a full screen release is referred to as Open Matte rather than Pan and Scan.
Its more likely its your Cable provider or a weak signal or sattelite reception issues. I have a 57" HD set and I too am connected via DVI. I have perfect clarity and sync with no artifacting problems etc. Any Station that has an HD broadcast I will watch in the HD and not the standard. I think your problem has nothing to do with HD itself. Oh and 1080i xbox 360, amazing.
There was an article on here a year ago about MGM admitting that their widescreen versions of movies were the pan&scan versions with the tops and bottoms chopped off. Here is a blogcritics page detailing the settlement. I was also able to find this page to give some examples of what they're talking about. Can't seem to find the original slashdot article though.
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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.
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I proudly bought an HDVTV a few months ago and had Comcast come by to deliver/install an HD DVR box (I went all-out). They asked on the phone if I had an HD box and I said yes.
A few days go by and they deliver it. They hook it up with the old RCA cables (2-audio, 1 video). I say "But hthis is an High Def TV and that's a high-def box, why are you hooking up RCA cables?" He looked at me blankly and said "High Def doesn't require anything special." And before anyone mentions, no they weren't Component cable, just standard RCA.
I went out and bought a DVI->HDMI cable and hooked it up myself, then had to go to non-obvious menu to turn on the High Def support.
So, if my cable guy was any indicator, a lot of people are probably not getting Hi Def that ordered it.
[from WikiPedia's entry on "Widescreen"]
It's also worth reading up on Super 35, which is a format that James Cameron typically shoots on; it's easier to go straight from Super 35 to the mainstream formats (widescreen/fullscreen/cinema), due to how the image is stored on the film and the lenses involved.
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Right now Im dead tired but my skin is itchy, I feel too hot in my bed (with a multitude of fans), my balls itch, its too bright, etc. and I just CAN NOT FALL ASLEEP!
I sure hope it's a guy.
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But oddly, it looks a little bit like a stereoscope where you have one eye closed. Or a 3-D Viewmaster (remember that little thing you put up to your eye and pull the lever to change the picture that came on the disk).
That's not the fault of PBS.
What you are most likely seeing is the "rainbow effect" of a DLP system.
Unlike LCD, DLP difracts light through a color wheel to create the image. This generally allows the set to produce a much brighter image and higher contrast, but it does also tend to create the effect you are describing.
Some people are very sensitive to DLP rainbows, while other people can't even see them. If you are one of the lucky people who doesn't notice them, then a DLP set is often a good way to go. I've been told that some of the newer DLP sets do a better job of avoiding this problem, but as I'm currently very happy with the projector I have (a Panasonic LCD-based system), I haven't really been shopping around lately.
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Or maybe HDTV is just overrated by TV manufacturers who want to scam people out of thousands of pounds for unwanted technologies. My TV is 14", I doubt I'd get much of a better viewing experience with a slightly higher resolution. We're not all dot-com millionaires with 50" plasma screens on the walls of our penthouse apartments.
0 03.html. This is not something that TV manufacturers would just DO without demand from their customers. And let me tell you, as someone who has been legally blind since I was 7, to see television in HighDefinition is to see like I never thought I could. And that right there is more than worth the $14/month extra to pay for HD programming and the box.
Either you forgot your sarcasm flag, or you don't know wtf you're talking about. Obviously you've never seen an HD broadcast, a video game in high-definition, or anything else. FYI - I paid $1000 for a 52" HDTV with DVI input (to connect my computer) *3 years ago*!!! And I watch programming in high-definition beyond anything else. You don't have to be a millionaire - hell the 50" plasmas are going for $1500 bucks this season. Jesus... I remember when basic TVs cost that much!
The technologies are not UNWanted. In Japan, they are standard delivery. It's not a slightly higher resolution: http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/34579/118
Not to even mention watching football in High Def. I can actually watch Soccer and Hockey games now and TELL what's going on! YAY! Please, before you go spouting about what you don't know about, have some experience and knowledge first.
Jho
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.