HDTV - Is it just yet another commercial gimmick?

Since Sky HD has popped along, HD has been pushed into my face a lot. Especially at work where people bring in cameras and cry at me because they have filmed something in HD and want it downconverted to SD because no one has HDTVs yet. Well not over here anyway.

So i thought ok, i will have a look at this HDTV thing, and just see what the big deal is about. So i take a stroll down to my local Euronics and have a look a few of them. I was staggered.

I walked in and saw a Sony Bravia i think it was, with an HDDVD (or whatever Sony use) playing samples of what the TV could do. The first thing i thought was "This is sh*t! My 1980s Sony TV is better quality than this!" And this is a DVD made by Sony, no doubt to the exact specs of the TV to make the TV look as good as possible. I went round to the back of the shop, and saw what i think was a Sky HD promo, and with the compression it was even worse.

And I think i finally know why now!

Has anyone noticed over the last couple of years, what with the introduction of Flat screen TVs, that the quality of TVs has really reduced. Flat Screen TVs especially show so many artifacts, and even when you put DVDs in these TVs, you still get the artifacts. Even Tube TVs have this problem.

Yet my 1985 Sony Trinitron TV is amazing quality. Even on analogue TV, not one sign of an artifact. DVDs play absolutely amazingly. The colours are so vibrant, yet on all modern TVs today they are totally dull.

I was just astonished to see that the HDTV had a lower quality picture than an 1980s SD TV, and this was on a specially made promo DVD for the TV. It was definitely an HD disk, it said so on the bumph.

So have they just made complete crap over the years to then sell us something which isn't quite as good as what we originally had anyway but is cheaper to make?

Sorry it's such a long post, i'm just interested as to why we think HDTV is such a big thing. And no my eyes do not need testing at this point!

I heard somewhere that new TVs use cheaper, lesser quality components due to demand (and to get a bit extra cash in).

My old 1980s Hitachi has a better picture than the ones I've seen in the shops.

This is entirely true. I was saying in the digital switchover thread about how I hate LCD TVs; their picture quality looks poor and it baffles me why there would be such a thing as a HD-Ready LCD when you lose so much quality due to poor display.

I personally reckon some more manufacturers should've gone ahead with CRTs instead of us being stuck with what seems to be just one single model from Samsung.

In my eyes, depending on what sort of screen you are buying, you might as well be downgrading, because higher resolution is nothing if the set displays colours and contrast poorly.

Whatever your objective opinions about a particular HDTV you have seen in a shop, you can't escape the facts about how much more information there is in an HD picture.

Your 1980s television tube is probably so burned out that you won't see compression artifacts from DVDs. It doesn't mean they aren't there. No wonder the colours are saturated. I also enjoyed my Trinitron until just a couple of years ago.

Its true that televisions are made 10 a penny these days, and it is true that there are more cheap sets around than ever before.

Compression technology is constantly in development. H.264 for HD is far superior to MPG2 for DVD.

I suggest you spread your wings further than Euronics (whatever that is), and seek a better executed demonstration.

That's a bit of a silly comment isn't it? It's not the only older TV i've watched. They are all pretty much the same quality wise, especially the Sony ones. If that "is" the way a so-called burned out TV displays a picture, then fantastic, burn away. I can't wait for it to burn out more. I dont care if the artifacts are there or not. If i can't see them and the picture quality is sharp, colourful, bright and without ghosting, then fantastic!



Well what do you suggest then? I saw TVs in that shop which range from the mundane cheap JVC HD Ready LCD, to the extremely expensive Sony Bravia. I've always seen Sony as making the best quality TVs on the consumer market. Plus i'm making a fair comparison, since both TVs are Sony and are in the same price range, and yet the 21 year old TV has a better picture quality (in my opinion) than a new TV which is in the same price range.

Your comment about better compression is true, but as has been said, you've got to have a decent means of displaying the compressed media in the best way. You can have the best compression codec in the world, but if you have a pants display to play it on, it's still gonna look pants.

What's the betting that HDTV will become the digital SDTV of today. Yes, it might look nice on paper, but I am sure once the bean counbters get their hold on it, like they have done with the current digital TV and radio systems, the bitrates will plunge in order so squeeze on more crappy channels. Yuck.

At the risk of being told I'm utterly wrong by noggin, I'm suggesting that the phosphor coating on the screen does indeed burn over time, and that might well cause the picture to darken, increasing the contrast (enriching the colours and 'hiding' compression artifacts).

My experience was also of an excellent image - until the picture seemed to collapse into a single super-bright line. Then it died during an all night Big-Brother session while I slept.

I had a few television sets around me 20 years ago, and only the trinitron survived for so long.

Perhaps that speaks more about Sony build quality in the 80s than anything.

I had a Tatung 4x3 television until 2001. It was bought brand new for £170 in 1990.

Then I upgraded to a 28" Sony widescreen TV, and now I've just spend two weeks wages on a 50" wall-mounted HDTV and I must say the quality is out of this world. It's astonishingly crisp and every minute detail is picked up precisely.

I just wish the programmes were better!

CRTs, LCDs and Plasmas all decay with age - it isn't particularly tied to CRTs.

However CRTs do still offer excellent picture quality - you won't find many broadcasters making quality judgements on anything else (even with HD images)

Sure Sony are trying to convince the broadcast industry that LCD is good enough for quality work - nobody really believes them.

The fundamental problem with LCD and most plasmas is that you aren't watching the actual video source - you are watching a heavily processed version of it. CRTs - apart from the 100Hz stuff (again a technology not used for broadcast purposes - after all it absolutely mangles pictures) - are still usually pretty decent displays - with excellent black levels, gamma, colourimetry and motion rendition.

Where CRTs fail is geometry and EHT regulation (where bright areas "bend" the picture)

If I could buy a decent HD CRT - I would. Sadly the Samsung is not a decent HD CRT. I'm watching the BBC HD material on a decent LCD PC monitor - and it looks cracking - but the monitor has major limitations (poor black levels, poor response time, dodgy colourimetry etc.)

Pop to your local Currys and take a look at the HD demos they have there. It's pretty impressive.

I mean really, who goes to Euronics..!

I wasn't aware that Currys were any more capable of setting up decent HD demos.

Not just Digital TV, but DAB as well. DAB sounds nasty, heavily compressed with stations in mono.