[mythtvnz] HD

[Steve Hodge]

On 9/5/06, Steven Ellis <steven@openmedia.co.nz> wrote:
> Steve Hodge wrote:
> > On 9/5/06, Steven Ellis <steven@openmedia.co.nz> wrote:
> >> People aren't buying normal TVs any more. Almost everyone wants a HD set
> >> and then is shocked at how bad SkyTV looks on it :)
> >
> > There's a lot of confusion about HD though - I think there are a lot
> > of sales of TVs capable of 480p, especially now that 42" plasmas with
> > that resolution are under $3000. SBS in Australia advertise HD as
> > meaning "DVD quality picture + DVD quality sound", i.e. 480p + AC3.
> > But that's not what I'd call HD. I consider 480p to be evolutionary
> > rather than revolutionary compared to SD. I don't think there are as
> > large a number of sets being sold that do 720p or 1080i natively.
>
> Some useful references
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080i
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/720p

Yup, seen those - good pages.

My point is that when you say "everyone wants a HD set" what you mean
(or at least what I see) is that everyone wants a big, widescreen TV.
A lot of those TVs (particularly plasmas) have native resolutions of
around 850x480 and are advertised as "HD ready". Which they are,
strictly speaking. But 480p is pretty underwhelming - it's really not
much better SD. Even a lot of the higher resolution sets can't really
do 720p properly because they don't have the full horizontal width
(i.e. there are often 1024x768 rather than 1280x720).

People are not going to be very impressed by HD if 480p is all they
can get (either because that's what's broadcast as HD or due to the
limitations of their "HDTV" set). Personally I don't think including
480i and 480p in the HDTV spec was a smart decision. They should have
left those as EDTV modes.

Steve