Impractical to watch SD broadcasts on a 65" TV?

[AidenL]

Hi all,

Been a while since I posted. Just saw 3D TV in action today and I'm pretty impressed - read the reviews of the VT20 50" and the 65" .

My question is, is it totally impractical to be able to watch SD broadcasts, from Sky or Freeview on a screen this large?

Is the 50" a better bet?

I suppose if Im upgrading from my Fujitsu panel, I'm looking for a good reason, and the screen size increase might be one?

 

[AidenL]

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[AidenL]

lol, ok, seems not

 

[airmyx]

What is your viewing distance?

 

[ArmitageShanks]

I'm also curious about the SD performance with the 65-inch VT20/25. Personally I think it's going to be pretty poor at the distances I sit (and to be honest, who would by a TV that size to have to sit miles away from it?)

Hence I'm thinking of hanging onto my olde CRT set for SD broadcasts, use the big screen for discs (and Sky HD/3D if I decide to sell my soul in the process).

 

[AidenL]

What is your viewing distance?

3m away for me

 

[ArmitageShanks]

3m away for me

About the same for me, maybe even a tad less.

 

[sTTuey]

I sit approx 9-10ft away from my set, a 63" Samsung.

to be honest the SD broadcasts (that's Sub-Definition btw) on a lot of channels are atrocious, often worse than an internet youtube download... and this is surely wrong?!

I think a lot of channels are skimping on bandwidth with not only vicious compression but also far lower than standard definition resolution. Some channels look so ridiculously "soft" that they must be broadcast at 384x288 or lower!

With decent compression and full 768x576 resolution, standard definition can actually look quite acceptable even on a screen of 60+ inches.

There is no doubt that the quality of TV broadcasting has and continues to deteriorate. We seem to have reached and passed the pinnacle of TV broadcasting standards as in previous years the drive was to continually find ways to improve quality and give viewers a better viewing experience. Now, it seems the drive is to see how crap they can make it and still get away with it! I really wish the drive would focus on quality and the viewing experience again. STOP trying to squeeze another God channel+1 into the existing bandwidth - just invest in providing more bandwidth for flips sake I would take fewer channels ANY DAY for better quality, I think most would agree.

High Definition can (obviously) look fantastic, but the likes of BBC and ITV already think the drive should be to get away with giving us less. BBC HD (that's "Higher Definition" btw) has a horizontal resolution of 1440 pixels (of course scaled to fit the screen) and ITV HD ("Huh definition") is 960 horizontal pixels, literally half the definition your TV is able to resolve. Because it is "slightly better" than the SD equivalent channels they think no one will notice, partly because it is easier to detect fewer lines (vertical pixels) in the image than fewer horizontal pixels. So they get away with it.

I seem to have digressed - but anyway at the end of the day I just put up with the crappier channels safe in the knowledge the shight image is due to the broadcaster and not my setup.

 

[ArmitageShanks]

I think a lot of channels are skimping on bandwidth with not only vicious compression but also far lower than standard definition resolution. Some channels look so ridiculously "soft" that they must be broadcast at 384x288 or lower!

High Definition can (obviously) look fantastic, but the likes of BBC and ITV already think the drive should be to get away with giving us less. BBC HD (that's "Higher Definition" btw) has a horizontal resolution of 1440 pixels (of course scaled to fit the screen) and ITV HD ("Huh definition") is 960 horizontal pixels, literally half the definition your TV is able to resolve. Because it is "slightly better" than the SD equivalent channels they think no one will notice, partly because it is easier to detect fewer lines (vertical pixels) in the image than fewer horizontal pixels. So they get away with it.

No you're not wrong at all - BBC are broadcasting in anamorphic 4:3 (1440x1080) and to make matters worse, they almost halved the bitrate claiming that they were now using a "better" codec. When I saw BBC HD on Freesat on a friend's 40" Panasonic G10 a few months ago, the first words out of my mouth were "is that standard def?" It looks simply awful - which is why I doubt actual SD broadcast content would look any good on a +60" display.

Upscaled DVD content might look acceptable though - I had a 58" Samsung plasma demo'd to me and while Bluray looked jawdroppingly awesome, the DVD playback wasn't too bad either once you got used to it.