DSTV HD vs SD comparison pics

rave said:
I have a 106 inch screen and when I view the normal SD broadcasts it suffers terribly from artifacts ect.
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:eek:
106 inch... like this one? http://www.panasonic.co.za/ProductDetail.aspx?CatID=60&ProdID=773 okay, that's only 103" so yours is even bigger!! :eek:
edit: pic for reference-
th103pf9wk%20lrg.jpg





...or did you mean centimeters (i.e. 42")?
 
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sybawoods said:
Short answer: MPEG2 was developed in the early 90's and evolved from the earlier MPEG1 standard. MPEG4 became a standard in 1999. Satellite bandwidth is limited; moving to MPEG4 allows broadcasters to use their bandwidth efficiently, while improving quality. Unfortunately, due to the high penetration of MPEG2 hardware in places like the USA, it has made it hard for broadcasters there to switch to MPEG4. The impact has been that they have to apply high compression to their MPEG2 broadcasts to maximise bandwidth, affecting the quality of the broadcast.

A, perhaps over-simplistic, example - take a movie, compress and encode it in MPEG2, and it will take up a 4Gig DVD. Take the same movie, compress and encode it in MPEG4, and it could fit to a 700 meg CD, with quality equal to the DVD. DivX is probably the most popular example of an MPEG4 codec.

For the long answer, see Tom's hardware .

Disclaimer for the purists: over-simplifying to make the answer short and understandable.
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I'll check your source, but I think you've explained that MPEG4 uses less space, but not whether it is an improvement. I suspect that its popular because of the space advantage like MP3 is over CD, but not better quality-wise.
 
Question to all the real gurus on here (that's you arf9999 and TivoZA):

My new plasma 42 incher (Samsung PS42A410) has a screen resolution of 1024x768, which I'm a bit bummed about, if I get DStv HD will the image quality be less than that of a plasma with a res of 1366x768 and if so, how noticable will the difference be?

Oh yeah, more pics please! :D
 
feo said:
Question to all the real gurus on here (that's you arf9999 and TivoZA):

My new plasma 42 incher (Samsung PS42A410) has a screen resolution of 1024x768, which I'm a bit bummed about, if I get DStv HD will the image quality be less than that of a plasma with a res of 1366x768 and if so, how noticable will the difference be?

Oh yeah, more pics please! :D
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Um, well... yes, it'll be slightly lower horizontal resolution...

But will you see it? For video probably not really unless you're pretty close up. Plasma is pretty forgiving on scaling (unlike LCD). I think you'll be happy. :)
 
I think the SD and HD images are worlds apart. Its well worth the extra if there is sufficient content to be broadcast in SA.

Thanks for the comparisons. Its nice to see a local example of HD applied in a broadcast situation.

I have never been a DSTV person. Just dont watch enough TV. Have always been a movie person though and I appreciate HD. Maybe DSTV HD will change my mind!
 
I'll wait a few years until all the channels are HDTV. By then we would have much better TVs to buy and the already good ones that are available now will be cheaper.
 
I wonder how it will take till we have a number of HD channels available? Anyone have any idea?
 
Would anyone with an HDPVRbe willing to do a quick test for me?

I live in a complex and thus only have a single LNB feed.
Can anyone take out all the lnb feeds except 1 from their HD PVR and see if it is still useable. I know it will probably not be able to record but I only want to have it for HD as a temporary measure.

Someone on the DSTV forums said it still works but I would appreciate some confirmation before I shell out R2500.

Thanks in advance!
 
gifs said:
Would anyone with an HDPVRbe willing to do a quick test for me?

I live in a complex and thus only have a single LNB feed.
Can anyone take out all the lnb feeds except 1 from their HD PVR and see if it is still useable. I know it will probably not be able to record but I only want to have it for HD as a temporary measure.

Someone on the DSTV forums said it still works but I would appreciate some confirmation before I shell out R2500.

Thanks in advance!
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Of course it will work, The two PVR channels wont work and the EPG wont work Thats it, Just get a switch from 1 to two and then the EPG will also work
 
Wynsam said:
I wonder how it will take till we have a number of HD channels available? Anyone have any idea?
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..a while , HD takes alot of bandwidth(hence costs), and if you see how little chanells some broadcasters overseas have (although it may seem like alot of channels to us) you can see how slow the HD channels are rolled out
 
gifs said:
Would anyone with an HDPVRbe willing to do a quick test for me?

I live in a complex and thus only have a single LNB feed.
Can anyone take out all the lnb feeds except 1 from their HD PVR and see if it is still useable. I know it will probably not be able to record but I only want to have it for HD as a temporary measure.

Someone on the DSTV forums said it still works but I would appreciate some confirmation before I shell out R2500.

Thanks in advance!
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Nope... doesn't work. You can't update the firmware with only one input for some reason. You need a minimum of 2 inputs.
 
arf9999 said:
Nope... doesn't work. You can't update the firmware with only one input for some reason. You need a minimum of 2 inputs.
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The 4th channel is required for the EPG, updating , interactive media, future pay video hire, etc. Therefore you need at least one input for HD and one for EPG/Updates.
 
Cant wait for DSTV to broadcast majority channels in HD. way overdue i think ...
 
CaTcH21 said:
Cant wait for DSTV to broadcast majority channels in HD. way overdue i think ...
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Well, they can only broadcast stuff that was shot and produced in HD. And everything they broadcast is not. SD stuff upconverted to HD looks horrible.

Will probably also cost them more to buy programming in HD than SD from overseas, but that wont be much I think, if it is like that at all.

To produce HD stuff locally cost quite a bit more than producing in SD.
 
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