What's the point of HDTV?

would this be the right time to ask wether i get an SD or HD panel , hehehehehe
 
Mr.D said:
Putting sd material through a hidef plasma compromises the sd material regardless so its no wonder that hidef material looks significantly better on a hidef panel , but its not a transparent appraisal of the benefits of hidef over standard at these smaller screen sizes.

At normal viewing distances sd material on an sd panel usually looks as sharp if not sharper than the same sd material on an HD panel the same size.
That's true when comparing some of todays SD/HD panels with their cheap built in video processors. But it's not generally true in every case. Very much depends on the quality of the scaler. With a very good scaler SD can actually look just as good on a HD panel as on a SD panel. It might even happen that SD looks better on a HD panel, because you have no SDE and such stuff on a HD panel. Furthermore with a HD panel you have more pixels to play with. There are lots of advanced PQ algorythms available (like clever detail enhancement, or jaggy removal), which can improve subjective PQ, but which only work if you have enough pixels (-> HD).

Have you ever seen a good external video processor scaling a SD image to a HD panel with 1:1 pixel mapping? I guess not, otherwise I believe your comment would have read a bit different...
 
madshi said:
There are lots of advanced PQ algorythms available (like clever detail enhancement, or jaggy removal), which can improve subjective PQ, but which only work if you have enough pixels (-> HD).

Have you ever seen a good external video processor scaling a SD image to a HD panel with 1:1 pixel mapping? I guess not, otherwise I believe your comment would have read a bit different...

None of the supposed advanced scaling algorithms are particularly "advanced" . "Jaggy" removal is not normally a problem on upscaling as the main problem with upscaling is softening. Most better scaling techniques incorporate sharpening techniques to compensate for the softening that all interpolation caused (lanczos and sinc being classic examples).

Jaggies are more often than not symptomatic of poor quality filtering on down scaling. Its why theycommonly filter high frequencies on film to sd telecine. Retain too much detail and you will get jaggies and moire patterning.

As to my experience level I routinely convert video to film (both colourspace and resolution) and vice versa for motion pictures. Its one of the more simple aspects of my work.
 
Mr.D said:
Really wow I'm impressed ...see me see how impressed I am?

good for you :clap: im so glad i've impressed you :thumbsup:
 
Is this a discussion of HDTV, or whose job is the most important ?

We must not overlook the current trend of giving people important job titles because it's cheaper than giving them good salaries :cool:
 
Mr. D I think you are arguing for the sake of arguing, if the panel was 720x480 and we all lived in NTSC world and the signal timings matched the panel timings and we were getting 1:1 I would agree with you comments, but SD upscaled well looks better on an HD panel than it does on an SD panel. You do talk some tosh! ;)
 
gizlaroc said:
Mr. D I think you are arguing for the sake of arguing, if the panel was 720x480 and we all lived in NTSC world and the signal timings matched the panel timings and we were getting 1:1 I would agree with you comments, but SD upscaled well looks better on an HD panel than it does on an SD panel. You do talk some tosh! ;)

And I'm disagreeing with you . Go look at sd on a 37" SD plasma and compare it with the same material on a 37" HD plasma.
I won't even mention LCD as I've yet to see a decent one and they have way more things to worry about than the quality of the scaling.

SD looks better upscaled on a LARGE hidef display but at 42" and below its looks softer than on an equivalent SD panel.

If I'm talking tosh then explain why I'm talking tosh.
 
Mr.D said:
If I'm talking tosh then explain why I'm talking tosh.
One reason might be that SD plasmas have a native resolution of 852x480, which can't even resolve full PAL resolution! ;)
 
P.S: German's best home cinema journal (IMHO) "AudioVision" has reviewed the SD and HD 42" Panasonic plasmas in a past issue. They clearly stated that the SD plasma did a good job of hiding the fact that it can't show full PAL resolution, but that it was nevertheless "somewhat" visible when compared to the HD model, which overall showed more image detail with PAL DVDs. Or something like that, don't remember the exact conclusion words...
 
"somewhat " visible.

Oh that will have your average sprinting down to the shops that will. Not that I'd ever take as gospel something I'd read in a home cinema article , paper or net.

Like I said screen sizes at and below 42" show minimal improvement with hidef at normal viewing distances , certainly not enough to tempt the average buyer.

Hidef looks noticably sharper on large screens but these do not represent the general display buyer : getting back to the original topic.

If you like to watch your popular sized hidef screen with your nose pressed up against it to feel you can better justify your purchase decision that's fine
 
Mr.D said:
If you like to watch your popular sized hidef screen with your nose pressed up against it to feel you can better justify your purchase decision that's fine
Can't you just admit that there might be people who want immersion in their home cinema, which they can get only through a wide viewing angle? THX recommend a viewing angle of 36°. If you actually want to realize something even near to that, you do need every bit of resolution you can get.

If you don't want that, that's your choice and I have no problem with it. But don't treat those of us who don't agree with you like we'd be buying just for the hype of it.
 
I'm very happy watching hidef on my projector on an 8 foot diagonal 16x9 screen.

My point is that its not nearly as impressive relative to sd on the most popular sized screens.

And its not impressive enough to make your average person consider the upgrade worthwhile.

And personally I agree and I look at film resolution images all day before anyone feels like criticising my eyesight or boasting that they are a video technician.
 
When comparing a SD panel with 'HD Ready TV'. displaying a HD source i.e
480:852 and 1024:1024
it should perhaps be pointed out that it terms of sharpness the human eye effectively picks out the woorse resolution dimension in a panel.
The visble sharpness of a 'HD ready' plasma panel it is limited by it's horizontal resolution.
So a HD ready panel will look 20% better in terms of sharpness than the comparable SD panel.

Of course if it was a real HD display (e.g 50 inch) with a resolution >720:1280, a 720p HD source would look 50% better.

I was very surprised to see the German Video publication listed as a reference source in favour of HD panels particularly since
they recently tested a SD panel the TH37PA50 and compared it against other 2 other HD LCD panels and 1 other HD plasma.
The TH37PA50 came top in this test, in the words of the reviewer 'although the TH37PA50 is a SD panel it simply had the best picture overall and the least number of picture problems'

But of course review's should always be taken with the piece of salt.
 
I'm with MrD. on this one, HD isn't enough to warrant you average punter to buy into it, its got SACD & DVD-A written all over it. Saying that it does look much clearer on larger displays
 
MAT365 said:
I was very surprised to see the German Video publication listed as a reference source in favour of HD panels particularly since they recently tested a SD panel the TH37PA50
About which publication are you talking? It doesn't seem to be the same I'm talking about, cause the "AudioVision" never reviewed the TH37PA50, as far as I know.
 
Mr.D said:
And I'm disagreeing with you . Go look at sd on a 37" SD plasma and compare it with the same material on a 37" HD plasma.
I won't even mention LCD as I've yet to see a decent one and they have way more things to worry about than the quality of the scaling.

SD looks better upscaled on a LARGE hidef display but at 42" and below its looks softer than on an equivalent SD panel.

If I'm talking tosh then explain why I'm talking tosh.

I totally agree with you Keith, that the difference between SD and HD plasmas is not that great, with either SD material or HD material, from a regular viewing distance most people would be hard pushed to tell which screen is the HD version.

But the thread asked, do we need HD? and although not many people could point out which screen is SD and which is HD when fed the same material, I bet they could all point out which was SD and HD material when fed on either screen.
 
madshi said:
About which publication are you talking? It doesn't seem to be the same I'm talking about, cause the "AudioVision" never reviewed the TH37PA50, as far as I know.

opps yes you are right video' seems to be another publication having I said that I gather it is a very influential publication in Germany. All the retailers quote from it.
 
MAT365 said:
opps yes you are right video' seems to be another publication having I said that I gather it is a very influential publication in Germany. All the retailers quote from it.
I think the "AudioVision" is the better fit for people like us... :D
 
Gizlaroc - this is exactly it, I bet they couldn't...

How does your D-Theater look on a 42PWD compared to a PHD? This is the fairest comparison.

All I'm saying is that I reckon the extra bandwidth and capability of Sky's HD system would be currently better off delivering a lot more channels at SD resolution than a few at HD resolution...

I never claimed D-VHS or HD demos or Sky HD don't or won't look radically better than DVD or Sky on your 42" plasma. Just that it's not due to the resolution...
 
I have a 30" LCD with a native resolution of 2560x1600 pixels at 60Hz. Running video on it: 480p looks rubbish, 720p looks quite a bit better, 1080i and 1080p look pretty damn good -- the differences between them are noteable even several metres away.

One day in the not too distant future, even smaller LCDs will have similar native pixel resolutions to mine and difference will be just as apparent.

It's the sharpness and clarity of detail that ones sees at a distance.

StooMonster
 
D-theater looks alot better than even the best DVD on the PWD, and it is certainly a bigger jump than going from a PWD to a PHD.

To be honest if all the stuff looked as good as the best SD pictures you can get off Sky then I would be happy to stick with SD, but we all know it isn't going to happen. I think HD will look excellent at the start and then go downhill, but by that time I hope we will have enough other forms of HD to keep us all happy.
 
Stoomonster you are spot on!!!!

The comparison made earlier regarding the size of the screen may have been valid in the CRT days, but can't be made now without taking native panel resolution into account...Yes true for a lot of those PDP which have to down-scale to display HD signals, but totally the reverse for higher resolution panel...

My little Dell W1710 (17" LCD TV) has got a native resolution of 1280x720, high-def makes a world of difference even on such a small screen....My Dell Inspiron 9100 has got only a 15.4" screen but a native resolution of 1920x1200, high-def makes a big, massive difference...
 
The dell lcd are frankly awful with video. Doesn't matter hopw many pixels it uses the picture is mediocre at best and awful in darkly lit scenes. It makes good mpeg2 material look like a low bitrate mpeg1. I've got the 24" and its good for 3d gaming but my sd plasma is 10 times better. sd or hd regardless.
 
Mr.D. the point wasn't whether the Dell produces good blacks or whatever...But for the record...just because you don't like your 24" that doesn't mean all Dell LCD-TV's are bad...
 
My point was that analysing the benefits of hidef on a dell screen is a very low benchmark given all the associated problems it has . A screen can have plenty of pixels and still render a mediocre video image.

As for it not being indicative of all dell screens , fair enough I've not seen them all but the 24" is regarded as being the flagship in the range and is regarded as having excellent black levels in comparisson to other dell models. I dread to think what the others look like.
 

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