HD digital TV

Sounds cool BUT for it to work the cost of HD ready TV's is going to have to be made more reasonable for the average viewer/ TV owner.

It's not just about going and getting the set, it's about convincing people to get rid of their old "box" TV's and move to the HD tv's.

Another thing I picked up whilst watching the DStv HD promo channel is that you have to buy their new decoder and get a PVR subscription for you to get the HD shows. All costs that in the current economic climate people are going to think about first.
 
Well there's another altra confusing title for you.
Anyone know of a HD tv that is not digital (electronic component & display wise)?? :confused:

Adding "digital" to it implies DvB to me. At a shop I would ask for a digital HD tv (as opposed to a CRT digital tv).

Should simply be "HD tv is next big trend" :rolleyes:

Anyway, streaming HD with our bandwidth and caps won't be the "next big thing" for about 20 years!
@ HypoThesis: By then the cost of HD tv's will be cheap so i wouldn't worry about it too much ............

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Slightly OT, but here is an interesting article regarding so-called "HD movie" downloads -

HTML: 
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=511
 
Please just let it be full HD and not the "slightly-better-than-SD" 720 crap monochoice is floging to be the best thing since sliced bread.
 
Rouxenator : You are harping on about this 1080p vs 720p...

Just to let you know, 720p IS the broadcast standard for HDtv all over the world. So Multichoice are not flogging off some substandard tech to us.
 
feo said:
You do realise that 720p is (for the most part) the global standard for HD broadcasts don't you?
Click to expand...

And so is 1080i - plus if you think about it - 720 is a mere 25% improvement over what we have. 1080 is a 87.5% improvment. Which would you rather have ?

My POV is that 720 lines is not enough to make it fall into a new spec over 576 lines.
 
I'm getting 720p as being a more than 100% improvement since your 576 standard is 720x576...

This equals 414720 pixels on the screen wheres 1280x720 gives 921600 pixels on the screen which is more than double the number of pixels on screen.
 
Rouxenator said:
And so is 1080i - plus if you think about it - 720 is a mere 25% improvement over what we have. 1080 is a 87.5% improvment. Which would you rather have ?

My POV is that 720 lines is not enough to make it fall into a new spec over 576 lines.
Click to expand...

Its all in the eye of the beholder. Do you have the HDtv, did you at all experience it? Go read the other HD TV threads where people have experienced it for the first time and gave it the thumbs up, then stop whining as it is still better than we had, better than many places all over the world, and up to par with most countries that already started the move to HDtv.

Rather whine about the broadband scene as that is where the real problem is, or are you also contend with that as that seems how most South Africans seems to be now.
 
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Rouxenator said:
And so is 1080i - plus if you think about it - 720 is a mere 25% improvement over what we have. 1080 is a 87.5% improvment. Which would you rather have ?

My POV is that 720 lines is not enough to make it fall into a new spec over 576 lines.
Click to expand...
And the bandwidth requirements to broadcast in 1080i? I only know of Japan that has HD broadcasts going out in 1080 and we all know that bandwidth isn't a problem for them but to ask for 1080i broadcasts in SA is pushing it a bit.

If you've seen the quality of Die Hard 4 and a lot of the other stuff on MNET-HD and also the Olympic broadcast, you wouldn't be complaining because MC has done a pretty good job of delivering very good quality visuals and audio as well.

We can argue specs and semantics until we're blue in the face but at the end of the day, we just want to watch high quality TV.
 
UnoPanelvan said:
Its all in the eye of the beholder.
Click to expand...

Indeed! 100Mhz widescreen CRT FTW! Colour & speed you'll never get (yet) on LCD or plasma! Just 50kg's you have to contend with....:eek:
(probably why they recommend a certain distance for viewing)

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i actually read this article this morning first thing when i woke up (having my morning "chill" smoke, contemplating life etc) and it put me in a very bad mood!
it is very disjointed, half the paragraphs look like they have been copy+pasted from other articles and it flips from one scenario to the next, constantly referring to it as digital.

i felt, this was some std6 kid doing a project with a wiki-copy-paste fetish. i declined to comment because it wouldve been a very very swear-word filled post.

so now they are referring to digital tv as junk coming down the broadband pipe too? awesome, more confusion.
 
Rouxenator said:
And so is 1080i - plus if you think about it - 720 is a mere 25% improvement over what we have. 1080 is a 87.5% improvment. Which would you rather have ?

My POV is that 720 lines is not enough to make it fall into a new spec over 576 lines.
Click to expand...
Rouxenator, check here for some comparison pics of Multichoice's SD vs HD. I'm sure you'll agree that the difference is far greater than 25%.

Regarding 720p vs 1080p - like others have mentioned, and it is well documented (google is your friend) - 720p is a universal HD broadcast standard. The bigger issue with HD broadcasts is MPEG2 vs MPEG4, and fortunately MC has gone the latter MPEG4 route. MPEG4 is a much more efficient and superior encoding format, resulting in vastly improved picture quality.

@Feo, don't want to add to any confusion, but your posts referred to 1080i. I'm sure you meant 1080p. The bandwidth requirements for 1080i are not much more than 720p, and is quite do-able. However, 1080i is an interlaced format, and therefore results in an inferior, blurry picture when displaying moving objects, and therefore not seen to be suitable for anything other than still pictures.

Joe public often gets confused because they see the bigger number (1080i vs 720p), and think that 1080 must be better.
 
sybawoods said:
@Feo, don't want to add to any confusion, but your posts referred to 1080i. I'm sure you meant 1080p. The bandwidth requirements for 1080i are not much more than 720p, and is quite do-able. However, 1080i is an interlaced format, and therefore results in an inferior, blurry picture when displaying moving objects, and therefore not seen to be suitable for anything other than still pictures.
Click to expand...

I was under the impression that Japan had a few broadcast going out in 1080 interlaced format, could be progressive though, I'm not sure. But you're right about the MPEG-2 vs. 4 issue and that seems to be overlooked by people a lot.
 
feo said:
I was under the impression that Japan had a few broadcast going out in 1080 interlaced format, could be progressive though, I'm not sure. But you're right about the MPEG-2 vs. 4 issue and that seems to be overlooked by people a lot.
Click to expand...
Yep, it may be that they have some 1080p (progressive) trials going - that would be quite an achievement, and probably achievable for them given their broadband infrastructure. 1080p, as a broadcast standard, will remain prohibitive in most other parts of the world for the foreseeable future. Even where it is technically possible, the cost vs benefit, will continue to make it prohibitive.
 
sybawoods said:
@Feo, don't want to add to any confusion, but your posts referred to 1080i. I'm sure you meant 1080p. The bandwidth requirements for 1080i are not much more than 720p, and is quite do-able. However, 1080i is an interlaced format, and therefore results in an inferior, blurry picture when displaying moving objects, and therefore not seen to be suitable for anything other than still pictures.
Click to expand...
@sybawoods, to be fair that's not entirely true. 1080i is inferior for fast moving objects. Thus 720p is better for sports, and due to the limited bandwidth available is the first choice of most broadcasters. However, 1080i is great for movies and general interest content. If your screen is big enough, 1080i looks better than 720p for most content, and only fails with fast moving content where it tends to break up on details.

feo said:
I was under the impression that Japan had a few broadcast going out in 1080 interlaced format, could be progressive though, I'm not sure. But you're right about the MPEG-2 vs. 4 issue and that seems to be overlooked by people a lot.
Click to expand...
@feo SkyHD in the UK (unusually) picked 1080i as their choice, so it is a real option for SA as well. The Pace box is capable of handling a 1080i signal. Ideally Multichoice should alter the encoding based on the content... 720p for sports, and 1080i for movies... but i don't think that that'll happen.

edit: Just to confirm what sybawoods said: 1080i doesn't use much more bandwidth than 720p. (720p = 921,600 pixels per 50th of a second; 1080i = 1,036,800 pixels per 50th of a second... but since most content is, in fact, 1440 x 1080 and not 1920 x 1080.. it works out at only 777,600 pixels per 50th of a second)
 
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