HD TV

Woweeeee!

Now *that* I want to see!

Not really, far too many channels are heavily overcompressed- you can see the artifacts, even several feet away from the screen. I read some channels go as low as 2mbps, and from what I've seen recently, I wouldn't be suprised- I've seen quite a few cases where the entire pisture turns to "blocks" for aroudn half a second- I believe as more channels are squeezed in and the bitrates lowered further.

Often it is widescreen. but it's usually the 4:3 cut-out stretched to fill the screen- these people don't have a clue.

No desire myself to go HD anytime soon - I'm happy enough with the digital picture.

The other thing that puts me off is how long will it be until something even better than HD comes along? Not long, I expect!

Yeah 3DTV will be next!

Merry Christmas everyone!

I remember 3DTV being demonstrated at Live 96 Earl's Court years ago (well 1996 obviously) the technology wasn't amazing, it was like a lot of the rear-projection TV's in the sense that you had to be in exactly the right position to see anything,

The only way (if I remember correctly) where 3D images were effective no matter where you stood was on a conventional telelvision (or even cinema screen) wearing the polarised or, Red/Blue Glasses.

I'm sure technology must have improved since, not heard anything about it, could just be lack of demand I suppose, nobody really want's Moira Stewart jumping out of the TV and onto the Sofa to present the evening's news (as lovely as she is!)

However if it was Jane Hill!....

I think HDTV isn't just going to be about providing higher definition for people with big screens, it's going to be about sorting out the cacky SDTV digital system we have. Mid-90's compression technology using MPEG2 is not the future, is old hat and obsolete. It's serviceable - within it's limitations, but it's being pushed beyond those limitations. It might be able to make DVDs look stunning when the source isn't being encoded on the fly, it might be able to deliver high quality SDTV provided it's not overly compressed, but it cannot deliver what was promised - a 'crystal clear' picture, looking far superior to anything analogue can deliver, *and* a huge range of choice.

Much of the digital TV we have looks absolutely sh*te. You cannot have broadcast TV channels running older material or fast moving sports coverage with bandwidth dropping to a few Mbps at times, which frequently happens now. You cannot have channels running at very low resolutions (ITV on Sky, E4 on DTT) and expect it to look OK on anything but a small screen. You cannot in 2002 specify that absolutely no more than 4 video streams can fit onto a multiplex in 16QAM, and then squeeze in a fifth one without dramatic increases in compression artefacts (which are evident). The technology simply cannot deliver what is demanded of it. Although only people with big sets will be able to see the improvement which HDTV offers over standard definition, it will hopefully result in everyone once again being able to enjoy a decent quality picture on a par with a good analogue one, even if they don't have equipment able to show off the extra definition.

HDTV might finally be able to deliver what existing digital TV never has - something better than analogue.

Although analogue broadcasts look better than standard definition digital when a perfect analogue broadcast is compared to a perfect digital broadcast, for most viewers, digital is an improvement. This is because when compared to anything less than a roughly 90% perfect analogue signal, digital pictures always look better. Essentially, the artifacts introduced by low resolution, highly compressed MPEG -2 are less annoying than the artifacts introduced by a weak analogue signal.

Also, because MPEG-2 quality is dependent on the encoder, the quality of the picture produced by an MPEG-2 stream at a given resolution improves as encoders become more advanced. So the picture quality of standard definition digital television will continue to improve as the hardware in the encoders becomes faster and the encoder software is further optimised.

I saw a 42" LCD displaying HD in Dixons last week - the still pictures looked amazing, but once the camera started to pan there was too much smearing.

If you've got a fast enough computer (and the patience to download 100mb files), you can download some HD WMV trailers from here.

The best one I've seen so far is Dolphins. At some points it almost fools the brain into thinking it's 3D.

David

However, with an analogue signal, there is always the option of perfect pictures there because the broadcast is perfect (by 'perfect' I do of course mean 'virtually perfect', I do realise that there will always be some degredation with an analogue signal). Someone might have a weak analogue signal with an unamplified set-top aerial, but they have the option of buying a signal booster and/or getting a roof aerial to improve it. Some people might never be able to get a perfect picture, but other people receiving the same reception can.

However, with digital it doesn't matter how good your reception is, how good your aerial installation is or how good your equipment is - if the source is crap than it will look crap. And IMO the standard of much broadcast digital TV at present is unacceptably low, and not a worthy successor to an analogue system which is theoretically perfect within the limitations of the display technology.

Our analogue terrestrial system continues to have some of the highest technical standards in the world for a standard definition system, can the same honestly be said of any implementation of digital which we have here? I think not.


Perhaps it's a personal thing, but a digital picture covered in compression artefacts and broadcast at low resolution is inherently more annoying than an analogue picture with a tiny amount of noise (written whilst watching Father Ted on More 4+1 and witnessing how shockingly bad the picture is just because a couple of glitzy reflective jackets are in the scene).

Yes on my Dad's plasma, a lot of the UK satellite output is absolutely awful, however on the continent the picture tends to be a lot better, they must broadcast at more Mbps because it looks a lot sharper.