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Question of the Day: Which is the most hair-raising South African mountain pass you've driven?
I can see why they made it to be a "similar" beast... it makes for better sales of HD Ready televisions... although I'd say it would be a little unethical to do this. With the sudden market wave of HD and HD ready televisions everybody suddenly thinks the answer to their "problem" is HD.... when all they require is either DSTV, or a top set box... yet that is only required in 2011...
AirWolf
Honorary Master
Yep, lots of people are confused by the issue because of the current advertising being unclear that HD has nothing to do with digital.
avr-rulez
Expert Member
“The SABC’s digital move makes no difference to the picture quality,”
Whats with this guy - is he and idiot ? Jeesh
Whats with this guy - is he and idiot ? Jeesh
I think he just wants to avoid confusing people with differences between analog (and its quality issues - ie poor reception) and digital; and SD vs HD. If you have perfect analog reception and NICAM stereo sound you will basically see little quality difference between
analog and digital broadcast, in fact if the digital broadcaster is fitting too much data in his spectrum and therefore compressing too much, you will see MPEG2 artefacts on the digital data which are not there on analog.
analog and digital broadcast, in fact if the digital broadcaster is fitting too much data in his spectrum and therefore compressing too much, you will see MPEG2 artefacts on the digital data which are not there on analog.
semiautomatix
Honorary Master
Will there ever be HD terrestrial television? Or are we stuck with satellite and fibre options?
HD can definitely be broadcast over terrestrial this is being done Europe already. I find it a bit odd that this article states that it will take two to three years for Integrated Digital televisions to hit the SA shores when its almost standard with all TVs in Europe with no big cost difference. Does anyone know is SABC will be using Mpeg2 or Mpeg4 for their broadcasts?
QUOTE
“Even the fanciest flat-panel screen is analogue, not digital,” Buchanan said.
“There are digital sets available in the US and Europe, but there are none in South Africa and it will probably be two or three years before they become available here.”
UNQUOTE
?????!
“Even the fanciest flat-panel screen is analogue, not digital,” Buchanan said.
“There are digital sets available in the US and Europe, but there are none in South Africa and it will probably be two or three years before they become available here.”
UNQUOTE
?????!
brixton tower
Expert Member
I read through the SABC's DTT FAQ's on their site and they say that as of now there are no plans to broadcast in HD- I believe they do have the capability though but costs couldn't be justified considering the few people with HD-ready sets. My bet is that depending on demand we might see etv adopt HD too differentiate itself from the SABC.
AFAIK SA will be adopting the DVB-T2 standard which uses mpeg4 which as you know will free up way more bandwidth than mpeg2.
Yeah that's an oversimplification. There are two types of widescreen displays available on the market. The first are called TVs and contain tuners. At this stage those tuners are all analog for UHF or VHF frequencies. The other type of display is a monitor, you can get 32, 40, 42, 46, 50 etc inch displays too
which do not contain tuners. I have one of those. I rely only on the DSTV decoder for TV and a DVD player (BD player, VHS machine) to watch stuff on
that monitor. You do not need a TV licence to buy a display without a tuner.
However none of these displays is analog. What they are have are digital or analog inputs but the circuitry inside converts incoming analog signal into digital, processes it and then outputs it to the panel.
What the guy means by analog is that there is no digital TV receiver present in any of these TVs. Since the South African standard hasn't been finalised yet, TVs with such receivers may not have worked in the future anyway. Secondly what the guy doesn't mention is that many people rich enough to afford a big screen TV at R10K plus can also afford a DSTV subscription and watch DSTV instead of SABC and ETV or MNET terrestrial. A set top box will not cost a fortune and will probably provide a digital connection (HDMI) to the
panel anyway.
Basically he should be telling people that SABC is now doing what MC did 10 years ago when they introduced DSTV. That was the same PAL signal
but without analog reception issues. A digital signal is either received or not,
its an all or nothing scenario for much of the reception singal quality spectrum, say the signal strength is only 60% of what it should be, the picture will still be fine, but maybe when it drops to 59% you'll have NO SIGNAL. Meanwhile analog signal will only look good at say 100-90% of the strength, then as the strength declines there will be interference lines across the screen and perhaps audio distorsion until at say 0% there will be no signal at all. People living in a 70% signal area will get worse quality than DSTV which will still look perfect while their signal will suck because of lines and audio distortion.
The other issue is that digital picture is compressed when transmitted.
This for DSTV is MPEG2. Since SABC will employ MPEG4 we may see fewer
intra frame compression artefacts - they look like blocky picture. However,
SABC may decide to not provide enough bandwidth and the better compression may still look cr@p and have compression artefacts.
dragon-za
Member
Greetings. Is anyone in the Cape Town area getting anything of the digital test transmissions. I am getting about twelve data channels and nothing else on 586Mhz. I am using a USB stick on my computer.
all tv's in SA are analog via it's aerial port.only via dstv then it's digital.
<moLe>
Expert Member
"spitting into a cup as I slowly walk through this thread hands stroking my gun's holster" Enough is enough...SABC is ****tt..who gives a damn, chances are that If u dont have DSTV then u either dont watch TV, or dont mind exactly how ****tt SABC is. And I'll be surprised if more than ten people who actually own full HD TV's dont have DSTV, or if they even have one use it to Watch SABC. So seriously I think this is a dumb story..or not dumb but just doesn't really in my opinion have an audience...
Well in CT there is squat yet from Tygerberg. DATA channels????? Is that what your EPG says? Computer might be different to normal digital TV tho. Mine says Jack digital services avaiable.
Anyone know what time on Saturday signal is going live so we can check?
And some of us poorer bastards have very old 10 years plus 32" widescreen CRT digital tv's that weigh 50kg's who can't afford monoscums outragous subs (no sci-fi he he he), who can't wait for a crystal clear picture (that monoscum can suck on) 5:1 surround in 16:9 format.
Hell knows we been waiting long enough and no, it is not HD, but 100Mhz in CRT in digital will beat the socks off your LCD (with DSTV signal) my friend!
Think Multiscum is so good...I still get 4:3 and sh*tty stereo sound from them - even with that single HD channel which is mostly NOT HD and looks cr@p on a widescreen TV and compressed to hell it's all blocky and wait till there is a tineyweeny bit of bad weather!
I hate those black stripes top and bottom of screen with tiney little pic inbetween.
Look Here - it is a small step in the right direction. If they take that step or not remains to be seen.....Saturday!
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ldmelsa
Executive Member
or can't afford it
I do, and I don't have DSTV. I use it for DVDs.
There is no such thing as "full HD". That's a marketing thing, but I know what you mean.
that is when you transmit 4:3 on 16:9 some lcd's have a stretch funtion but then everything looks long....
arf9999
MyBroadband Member
When did a merchandise manager of a discount store become the god of all things television?
CharReaper
Well-Known Member
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or can't afford it
I do, and I don't have DSTV. I use it for DVDs.
There is no such thing as "full HD". That's a marketing thing, but I know what you mean.
full HD refers to a resolution of 1080P