Who needs HDTV Set and why?

Pezzaturra · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by Cary Grant

You've got it backwards. The drive to HD for TV and radio came from the Fed (I work in broadcasting).

It came form Fed ,but without clarifying what all those abbreviations and technical terms mean. Thus fed (as often) let retailers take advantage of consumer for TEH benefit of our gr-r-reat economic growth.

At the dawn of so-called HDTV ;retailers and manufacturers were mislabeling (lying) their TV sets as being 720p while their manuals clearly showed that those TVs did not have enough pixels to display 720p picture.
The fleecing of consumer continues with a quiet complacency from the fed.

Pezzaturra · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by A Y

That depends on the quality of your upconverter. There are some terrible ones out there, and there are some very good ones. With the right material and a good upconverter, you can fully exploit 1080p, and aren't gimmicks.

DVRs that record broadcast HDTV don't degrade quality, and arguably they are better than regular analog DVRs. That's because they record the undecoded MPEG stream straight off the air, and do the decoding when you play it back --- they don't alter the stream that's being transmitted.

My DVR easily gets 1080i quality within the constraints of broadcast TV (ie. the usual MPEG artifacts, noise, and other things endemic to broadcast TV).

--Andre

I am not talking about broadcast to DVR, almost no one uses that. I am talking about cable signal to DVR, it aren't recorded in HD.

As far as better up converters are concerned ; allow me to be skeptical

Marginally sharper picture sure , up convert to full 1080p - physically impossible, imho.

A Y · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by grundletaint

yah. they all start at 480i. it's not necessarily "lowering" the resolution as it is getting the TV to accept the original signal without upscaling it.

my old sony even had it so each input could be set differently. my DVR, XBOX, gamecube, and DVD player were all on their own settings

Was your old Sony a CRT? Digital displays like LCDs and plasmas must always upconvert 480i. You cannot not upscale a low-res input into a digital display.

Originally Posted by Pezzaturra

I am not talking about broadcast to DVR, almost no one uses that. I am talking about cable signal to DVR, it aren't recorded in HD.

Sorry to be unclear. In my usage, broadcast=cable. It sounds like your DVR is misconfigured or not made for HD.

As far as better up converters are concerned ; allow me to be skeptical

Marginally sharper picture sure , up convert to full 1080p - physically impossible, imho.

Read up on inverse telecine to see how you can get 1080p from 1080i.

--Andre

Artisan Fan · Sep 8, 2009

I personally need HDTV...BluRay is a noticeable improvement over DVD and my 1080P set looks terrific. Even upconverted DVDs look terrific.

Dmax · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by Pezzaturra

I am not talking about broadcast to DVR, almost no one uses that. I am talking about cable signal to DVR, it aren't recorded in HD.
This is not true. HD-DVRs from Directv, Verizon FIOS, Cable companies or "Cable Card" capable Tivo units do not compress the signal. They decrypt it in the same way and store it but when sent output through their HDMI connection the signal will be identical to the one output from a non DVR HD converter box. I hope you are not confusing these with regular DVR boxes which are not capable of recording undecrypted HD signal at all.

oneeightyseven · Sep 8, 2009

did not read, but I luvz my HDTVs.

ZackyBoy · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by javyn

Much of my library is still in VHS format. Going to a HD television would be a step in the wrong direction as far as picture quality goes. I have no reason to get a television with a higher resolution to make all my old media look even worse. IMO this is just a racket. Seems like people JUST replaced all their VHS with DVD, and now you have to start replacing your DVDs with Blueray at around 40 bucks a pop. I don't think so. My next media player isn't going to be Blueray, it's going to be a streamer like a WDTV or Popcorn Hour.
Blurays are about $15-20 a pop, and it's not at all a racket. HD picture and HD sound are very viable. In fact 99% of the bluray nay-sayers and haters are the ones who haven't even experienced or owned any of the technology themselves. People replaced their VHS with DVD upwards of 10 years ago, friendo. Should each technology have a 50 year lifespan?

javyn · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by ZackyBoy

Blurays are about $15-20 a pop, and it's not at all a racket. HD picture and HD sound are very viable. In fact 99% of the bluray nay-sayers and haters are the ones who haven't even experienced or owned any of the technology themselves. People replaced their VHS with DVD upwards of 10 years ago, friendo. Should each technology have a 50 year lifespan?

Not saying it should or shouldn't, I'm just saying I'm not buying. Never seen Blueray, but have seen HD. Looks nicer, not trying to argue that. I'm arguing it's not nice enough to justify having to replace my entire library for it.

oneeightyseven · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by javyn

Not saying it should or shouldn't, I'm just saying I'm not buying. Never seen Blueray, but have seen HD. Looks nicer, not trying to argue that. I'm arguing it's not nice enough to justify having to replace my entire library for it.

you don't have to replace your entire library. If you have DVDs, I'm sure you can still play them on a Blu Ray player. If not, just keep your DVD player hooked up to your new tv. All that is required is that you purchase an HDTV.

Pezzaturra · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

I personally need HDTV...BluRay is a noticeable improvement over DVD and my 1080P set looks terrific. Even upconverted DVDs look terrific.

dvd is 480p and looks the best on 480p TV set.

A Y · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by Pezzaturra

dvd is 480p and looks the best on 480p TV set.

DVD is 480i.

--Andre

Piobaire · Sep 8, 2009

I love my 1080p when a good BluRay is on. If you want to see some jaw dropping scenery, check out "Mongol," (story line is a bit shallow). The Dark Knight is pretty good for effects and The Watchmen was pretty incredible.

Pezzaturra · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by A Y

DVD is 480i.

--Andre

Yes you are right. It is dvd player that bumps it to 480p. So in that light why the hell we are buying 1080p Blue Ray players? If inverse telecine is working then we only need 1080i .

Do they shoot TV programs nowadays with 1080i/1080p cameras?

Are movies still shot on film have almost unlimited resolution? (The film-grain being much smaller than any pixel currently.)

turboman808 · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by Pezzaturra

Isn't the whole HDTV bonanza nothing but marketing ploy to make people upgrade their TV sets? Or in other words spend their money...

I have read that cable companies stream every HD signal compressed. So I plugged the antenna into my TV's tuner and i was blown away by how sharper and 3-d the picture looked. Then I read a bit about broadcast HD and learned that the highest quality is only 1080i...

So there is no cable or broadcast signal that provides 1080p resolution thus 1080p TVs are useless, unless you play Blue Ray dvds .

Then I went back and looked again at my FIOS cable, man was it lacking compared to free air broadcast channels.

Where is FCC when you need them to protect consumers from false claims?

End of rant.

I need it.

Whats funny is you are talking about Cable and OTA broadcast. Haven't done over the air in 15 years and dropped cable 2 years ago. To those who do maybe they don't need HDTV.

I have terrabytes of TV shows on my network. I have literally thousands of movies and even more tv shows in a stack of drive about the size of 10 VHS tapes.

All accessed by my popcorn hour(s) that are about the size of a single vhs tape.

I don't have tapes, cd, dvds, or the players for all these things junking up my house. With flat screens on the wall it makes the place super clean and nothing is intrusive in any way. The technology makes my place more of a home if you ask me. But thats just my opinion.

Tokyo Slim · Sep 8, 2009

Originally Posted by Pezzaturra

dvd is 480p and looks the best on 480p TV set.

This is entirely subjective at best and just plain not true at worst.
Not only do most HDTV's and current DVD players upconvert pretty well, but they are much better suited to play movies in their native widescreen format than most older tv's. Maybe you think that a 32inch letterboxed to 24 inch picture looks better than a full screen (or nearly full screen) upscaled dvd, but I know a lot of people who would disagree with you.

If you are one of those people who bought 4:3 ratio DVD's then I assure you, you don't care about picture quality anyways, and have nothing to complain about.

Who needs HDTV Set and why?

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