Hey there Noggin! I've always said you're in the wrong job, you should be with the R&D guys and gals! I'm soo glad you were able to answer my question, cheers matey
And yes, the plasma has the HD ATSC tuner... good deal actually, $950, should have been close on $5000. Want me to bring one back with me?! hehe
Ditto to the Aussie's and European countries, they've had widescreen for a good few years as well. Perhaps its the NTSC signal that is conflicting the widescreen?
There's no reason that a 525/60 can't be 16:9 FHA, but they can't really broadcast widescreen on their analogue TV (NTSC) just in the same way that we don't with our PAL system.
Yep
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The diffrence with the US is that they've gone straight from analogue 4:3 SD to digital 16:9 HD.
Yep - this is the case for terrestrial digital - but not for other services.
There are hundreds of 4:3 digital SD services on cable and satellite in the US - just as in the UK.
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Although there are some SD digital services; digital in the US equals HD, also they don't use DVB like the Europe and Australasia.
Again this is only the case for terrestrial broadcasting - where we use COFDM DVB-T in the UK and Aus, and the US uses the 8VSB ATSC system.
However again digital satellite and digital cable in the US carry many hundreds of 4:3 SD services - and there are DVB-S services in North America...
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The alternative ways of doing things are probably to do with the states of our respective TV systems. The US has a very high level of cable penetration and due to geography and use of VHF & UHF the terrestrial system carries more stations in the cities...... but the picture quality isn't great at times. Us in Europe on the other hand had a system with better quality pictures, but not many channels.
Yep - the US is based on local "stations" and it is not unusual for transmitters to be on different sites for different stations. The European system is more usually based on co-sited transmitters based around a far stronger network based model, and our smaller geography means we have a far greater and higher quality terrestrial system
Also our European PAL systems are wider bandwith and the colour system is more robust than the narrower and less robust NTSC system. This means our signal received by an aerial/antenna in the UK is often higher quality than an NTSC signal received in the same way. In the US cable - even analogue cable - often delivers a better quality picture than an aerial/antenna - completely the opposite to the UK - where analogue cable has always looked worse than a good off-air signal...
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So over here the drive was more channels, whereas in the US the drive to digital is picture quality. The problem with the US way is that the services started later than ours and take-up is slower due to the need for new TVs
Sort of... Technically the US launched their HDTV OTA system in 1998, around the same time as we launched DSat and DTT. However the Freeview digital system in the UK - with lots of FTA channels and cheap SD boxes has really driven digital take-up in the UK.
In the US you don't get many channels via OTA HD - and there is a much smaller choice of set top boxes - and they cost more as they have to cope with HD not just SD broadcasts. (In Aus they get round this problem by simulcasting SD and HD services - so SD TVs can receive the SD service with a cheap SD box. In the US they have to receive the HD signal even if only feeding an SD set - though this is now quite a cheap thing to do, it wasn't 5 years ago)
Hey there Noggin! I've always said you're in the wrong job, you should be with the R&D guys and gals! I'm soo glad you were able to answer my question, cheers matey
And yes, the plasma has the HD ATSC tuner... good deal actually, $950, should have been close on $5000. Want me to bring one back with me?! hehe
You may find something as cheap as an Antiference Silver Sensor will get you some OTA ATSC HD.
You may be pleasantly surprised how much HD there is out there.
All ABC, NBC and CBS scripted drama - apart from Scrubs I believe - is now HD. Similarly a lot of sport is covered in HD.
NBC's Nightly News and Today programmes are from HD studios, with a small amount of HD OBs. ABC's Good Morning America is also from an HD studio.
You may also find your PBS station has an HD feed - though this depends upon whether they have subscribed to the HD PBS network feed - which many haven't.
The only thing I dislike about the US 16:9 system is that TV shows that networks don't want to spend money on upgrading, will still be in 4:3. If it was SD Anamorphic 16:9 then at least it would be 16:9 except upscaled.
There have been a few affiliates that have started doing 14:9 on digital, eg: KTLA, KNBC and others either stretching or cropping the picture. They use it as a compromise til they fully upgrade to HD. (KTLA is now in HD)
Try here Techy : http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx All ABC, NBC and CBS scripted drama - apart from Scrubs I believe - is now HD. Similarly a lot of sport is covered in HD.
NBC's Nightly News and Today programmes are from HD studios, with a small amount of HD OBs. ABC's Good Morning America is also from an HD studio.
Muchos, muchos gratios! Any chance you can raid the cupboard and ship out some decent programmes for BBC America to screen? Am fed up already of "Changing Rooms", "How Clean Is Your House" etc being on 24/7 hehe
Try here Techy : http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx All ABC, NBC and CBS scripted drama - apart from Scrubs I believe - is now HD. Similarly a lot of sport is covered in HD.
NBC's Nightly News and Today programmes are from HD studios, with a small amount of HD OBs. ABC's Good Morning America is also from an HD studio.
Muchos, muchos gratios! Any chance you can raid the cupboard and ship out some decent programmes for BBC America to screen? Am fed up already of "Changing Rooms", "How Clean Is Your House" etc being on 24/7 hehe
Thanks again
Toodle Pip old bean
Keep your eyes peeled for Benny Hill and So Graham Norton. The irony is how many programmes on BBC America weren't made by the BBC!
Muchos, muchos gratios! Any chance you can raid the cupboard and ship out some decent programmes for BBC America to screen? Am fed up already of "Changing Rooms", "How Clean Is Your House" etc being on 24/7 hehe
Thanks again
Toodle Pip old bean
BBC America is absolute crap at the moment, UK*TV in Australia and NZ get more modern programmes than BBC America gets.
I've downloaded the odd programme made or at least converted into US SD Widescreen from the old interweb. Are the versions i've been downlaoding just badly ripped or is US SD Widescreen not actually that....wide? I imagine NTSC having a less vertical resolution than PAL has something to do with that?
I've downloaded the odd programme made or at least converted into US SD Widescreen from the old interweb. Are the versions i've been downlaoding just badly ripped or is US SD Widescreen not actually that....wide? I imagine NTSC having a less vertical resolution than PAL has something to do with that?
I think you may have the wrong end of the stick. How 'wide' you want to make your anamorphic picture has nothing to do with the resolution of your native image.
I've downloaded the odd programme made or at least converted into US SD Widescreen from the old interweb. Are the versions i've been downlaoding just badly ripped or is US SD Widescreen not actually that....wide? I imagine NTSC having a less vertical resolution than PAL has something to do with that?
If your ...ahem.... downloads have been Divx or similar 16:9 TV captures then they will have been downscaled from 1920x1080 or 1280x720 to a lower resolution to reduce their filesize. These are the two native resolutions of NBC,CBS and ABC,Fox respectively.
When I was in the US, we got HD from and Aerial, seeing as i was 10 miles from the transmitter and could see it physically, but it was choppy, because of the anoloughe interference. The only extra channels were a music video channel, 2 weather channels, a few different PBS feeds, and a kids channel
When I was in the US, we got HD from and Aerial, seeing as i was 10 miles from the transmitter and could see it physically, but it was choppy, because of the anoloughe interference. The only extra channels were a music video channel, 2 weather channels, a few different PBS feeds, and a kids channel
The terrestrial stations only transmit 2 or 3 services on their digital frequencies - known as Digital Subchannels
Most stations use these for news and weather services such as NBC Weather Plus. PBS, according to the article above split theirs into 4 SD channels during he day
