High Definition:No Difference for TV?

1024x576 is PAL square pixel widescreen. I know it is not a real native D1 resolution, but then neither is 768x576 – that's just a convenient working resolution for square pixel 4x3.

Sonce DLP chips have square pixels, and my TV only has analogue inputs, the important thing is that at 576 vertical resolution it is line for line PAL.

Nick
 
"So my question is are there any situations where we can actually view a 1080p film or other currently available? And if the answer to that is no then most of the discussion seems a moot point."

I believe that the Playstation 3 outputs 1080p, as do the Blu-Ray players. The early Toshiba HD-DVD player was (I could be wrong in this) limited to 1080i output, with subsequent players to bump it to the p. From what I've read, we'll be stuck with 1080i for the forseeable future in the broadcast world because they're hitting a bandwidth constaint.

Even in broadcast, it's pretty amazing to see the difference in "HD". I've seen a couple of "Sunrise Earths" on Discovery HD Theater that I couldn't reasonably tell from uprezzed SD. HD is such a buzzword now, and normal folks (our customers) don't yet fully realize that we have a huge qualitative jump even within the HD world (e.g. HDV all the way to HDCam). At the end of the day, the better glass and better sensor and better codec and workflow will shine through, and that's what RED will give us.
 
This one usually puts 'High Definition' into perspective.
Dave,

E:\Documents and Settings\david\My Documents\My Pictures\bbc hd.jpg
 
icon1.gif

opps....this plaque says it all.......


http://my.integritynet.com.au/barkertv/
Click to expand...

Well they do say everything comes round in circles:)


I think in the end it will be the price of TVs and PLayers/ recorders that will decide whether joe public will move in on mass to the next level (HD) irrespective what like the HD image is compared to SD. It was price for most people (in UK anyway) that saw the massive move over to DVD players from video recorders. It took almost 20 years for video recorders to get below the £100.00 mark. By comparison it took DVD players five years and now they are down to £25.00. Widecreen TVs took about seven years to become the only telly you would buy. HD TVs by contrast are being marketed so hard and are already numerous in the big name retailers. Most of that has happened within the last 18 months and most punters dont even know if they are watching HD or SD. I know more than a few people who think that everything that is broadcast on their new HD telly is HD. Sometimes ignorence is bliss:)

Michael
 
No, and they never have.

They mandated a switch to DTV (i.e., Digital Television). But that only means that they have to broadcast digitally, not that they have to broadcast high def. There are 18 digital television standards included in the ATSC specifications; only six of them are HD. A station can broadcast standard-def digitally and be in complete compliance.

There is not now, nor has there ever been, a government mandate in the US that television be broadcast in high def.
 
And, of course, most people these days have cable or satellite anyway. The FCC has no power over what formats are distributed through these private networks.
 
Chris Kenny said:
And, of course, most people these days have cable or satellite anyway. The FCC has no power over what formats are distributed through these private networks.
Click to expand...

Both not true.

Over the air Broadcast television is still huge in most markets. Though yes cable and satellite are popular too, but to say that few people watch OTA is misleading.

And yes, the FCC regulates Cable and Sat just as they do terrestrial TV.

- Mikko
 
Nick_Shaw said:
I have a 44" rear projection DLP at home which is only PAL SD resolution (1024x576) and has no HDMI input, but can take an HD component input.
Nick
Click to expand...

Hi Nick,

PAL is always 720 x 576 regardless of aspect ratio.
16 x 9 has a pixel ratio of 1.442
4 x 3 has a pixel ratio of 1.067

Stephen
 
Stephen Williams said:
PAL is always 720 x 576 regardless of aspect ratio
Click to expand...

This is getting way off topic! Don't know why I'm bothering continuing this line of conversation really!

If we're being strictly accurate about it, PAL is the name of the analogue composite video format, and being analogue has no absolute horizontal resolution, but does have a fixed number of scan lines. 720x576 is I agree the D1 standard for digital recording formats based on the 625 line formats (PAL and SECAM) and one could argue that horizontal resolutions above that do not carry any further picture detail as they are above the bandwidth of baseband video. I'm not arguing that 1024x576 is a real standard, just a PAL compatible square pixel display format. It is also a display resolution used by many computer graphics cards with a composite output.

Anyway, enough of my pedantry. I promise to say no more about it!

Nick
 
mikkowilson said:
Both not true.

Over the air Broadcast television is still huge in most markets. Though yes cable and satellite are popular too, but to say that few people watch OTA is misleading.

And yes, the FCC regulates Cable and Sat just as they do terrestrial TV.
Click to expand...

85% of American homes have cable or satellite.

And I didn't say the FCC had no regulatory power at all over cable or satellite. I said they couldn't dictate formats. The closest they've come is requiring digital cable systems to adopt CableCard... but this still says nothing about, for instance, SD vs. HD. And cable company lobbying efforts result in the deadline being continually pushed back.
 
Cable and broadcaster lobbying. The broadcasters don't want to give up the analog spectrum.

The original goal, as I understood it, was that the digital broadcasting system takes up much less bandwidth in the spectrum of frequencies than analog broadcasting does. So by switching to digital, the TV stations would then relinquish the analog frequencies, which could then be re-sold to cellular or wireless companies or whoever else needs bandwidth.

But the TV stations are holding on to both. Instead of resulting in some big windfall of government profits from reselling the frequencies, the net effect so far is that even more bandwidth has been given away. So until they agree to turn off the analog broadcasts, this situation will continue.

And turning off the analog broadcasts sounds a little bit simple, but let's figure that only 15% of American households have an HDTV set at all. So 85% don't have any manner of HDTV, and presumably an extraordinarily percentage of those households don't have any manner of DTV tuner either. So what do you think's going to happen when one day 85% of the households in America turn on their perfectly-good, bought-and-paid-for TVs and find that none of them work anymore? And that they all will have to either buy all new TVs, or buy set-top conversion boxes? Let's just say that that's going to be an unpleasant day for the elected officials who caused it to happen. And because of that, the "deadline" will be pushed further... and further... and further.
 
"85% of American homes have cable or satellite"

where did that 85% figure come from ???
i would believe 85% of Amercian homes have "access" to cable or satellite but i just find 85% "have" cable /satellite a bit too high ...
i have neither - i choose braodcast using rabbit ears on HD TV .. when i compared cable HD vs. over the air HD broadcast ( using rabbit ears antenna, viewing winter olympics) ) i found cable HD had too many artifacts that i found distracting (on action/movement) ...
 
The US Analog TV shutoff date is at current Feb 19th 2009... which is rapidly approaching. It's been set as that date for quite a while now (the "pushing back" seems to have stopped [for now]) I'm pretty confidant that it will work on time, though more public education on the matter is desperately needed.
Here in Finland we will loose Analog next summer ... and DTV (mostly through Converter Boxes ("DigiBoxes")) is almost in every home now. Market penetration of DTV is very good. We however have NO HDTV broadcasts, or even plans for it with regular terrestrial.
Much of Europe is in a similar situation with regards to digital, many countries will be shutting off analog within the next year.

Even with the 2009 date, the USA is lagging very far behind on this one.


Regarding HD and the FCC. While the FCC is not requiring HD transmission from any station, it is in the process of requiring Cable Channels to carry any local HD signals as HD (not down-converted to SD) also on their system. So the FCC is definitely involved in Cable content too.

Even if your figure of 15% of people receiving OTA TV is accurate, that's still 44.3 million people. A number that I would definitely call "huge", and definitely not something to be overlooked.


- Mikko ... has no Sat or Cable, but does have a DigiBox on both his TV's.
 
My takeaway: technology is only as interesting as its price point - HDTVs are starting to gain acceptance because prices are coming down and frankly, SDTVs aren't available on the market nearly as much. But HD playback devices are still extremely expensive compared to the incredibly cheap, pretty darned good quality of DVD players, which can be had for as little as 1/10th the price of even the LEAST expensive hig def disc playback devices.

Therefore slim market adoption until the prices come WAY down.

-mike
 
mikkowilson said:
Even if your figure of 15% of people receiving OTA TV is accurate, that's still 44.3 million people. A number that I would definitely call "huge", and definitely not something to be overlooked.
Click to expand...

It's by household. And, of course, not every household has a TV. There are 16.7M households which have TV but don't have cable or satellite.
 
Sometimes lagging behind on a technology puts a country in a good position to upgrade later on, since it puts the burden of research and startup costs onto someone else.
 
Lowkus said:
Sometimes lagging behind on a technology puts a country in a good position to upgrade later on, since it puts the burden of research and startup costs onto someone else.
Click to expand...

Very true. Just look at PAL and NTSC. NTSC was first, but PAL is better (and learned from NTSC's problems)

Just as the US (ASTC) system is HD ready (and inclusive), our DTV system in Finland (DVB-T) is not HD ready.

- Mikko
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top