DSTV HD

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Obelix

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I have a few Dstv HD questions.

First and foremost, can anyone confirm weather DSTV is broadcasting its HDTV in 1080i or 720i ? Many folks seem to think that they dont have the bandwidth to do 1080i. This would then also drop the TV requirement and there is a huge price diff between 1080i and 720i tv's

Secondly, Can i get an HD PVR now, but only use it on a normal TV ( skipping the use of the HD channel of course ). What im trying to get at, does it only have HDMI out on the back, and if so, is there a way to "convert" the video part of the hdmi signal for a normal tv and send to sound to a SPDIF compatible amp ?
 
DSTV is broadcasting in 720p. The official line is that this is the best for fast moving scenes like sport.

The HD-PVR has HDMI, composite video, normal video out as well as an RF out port. You can use it on an SD TV and you will get 150 hours of SD recording on it.
 
Obelix said:
there is a huge price diff between 1080i and 720i tv's
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That would definitely be between 1080p and 720p. The "i" stands for interlaced, which means every alternate line is duplicated, so 1080i would only have 540 lines, which is SD. Avoid i, look only for p if you're looking for a hi-def system.
 
MaD said:
That would definitely be between 1080p and 720p. The "i" stands for interlaced, which means every alternate line is duplicated, so 1080i would only have 540 lines, which is SD. Avoid i, look only for p if you're looking for a hi-def system.
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Depends on the refresh rate, if an (pi) runs at double the refresh rate of a (p) then it's exactly the same quality, just different programming.
 
stoke said:
Depends on the refresh rate, if an (pi) runs at double the refresh rate of a (p) then it's exactly the same quality, just different programming.
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But the refresh rate is the number of times a screen is updated every second, and 1080p looks much better than 1080i as it has double the detail as no lines are duplicated. The refresh rate for most sets is generally 60Hz, and the new expensive ones are 120Hz and last I heard there's a 240Hz one on the way, and the main objective is to make motion smoother, which it does very well as the hardware interprets the data to display between each frame given to it, which is a lot less than the refresh rate.

If one were to say run Windows at 1080i it'd look terrible as there would only be 540 horizontal lines being duplicated to give the effect of 1080 individual lines , where as with 1080p there'd be 1080 real individual lines. For movies though where one sits a few metres or more from a screen the difference between 1080i and 1080p wouldn't be terribly noticable unless you have a rather large screen, say 50" plus.

If one sits fairly close thought the difference is very noticable, especially if you use it as a pc screen like I do :)
 
thanx pope - for the only relevant answer.

So i can buy a hD pvr right now, and only subscribble to the SD channels ( or is the hd chan included anyway ) and watch it all on a normal TV??
 
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