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- dankoleary, on 10/12/2007, -4/+49"The Funniest thing is you will find yourself watching the stupidest stuff just cause its in HD, I watched "Sunrise Earth" the other day for an hour! (It's a show just watching sunrises :-)"
Dude! I've started many a morning with coffee, newspaper, and sunrise earth. Seriously how awesome is Shark Week in HD? - pondster, on 10/12/2007, -6/+51The TV doesn't matter, its all about the content. You need to be fortunate enough to live in an area where your cable provider has good HD content then your all set and its as simple as calling your cable provider. I had Direct TV and that sucked monkey balls, recently moved into the city and the cable is awesome! Several local channels in nice crisp HD as well as a host of other channels. PLUS I called the other day and the representative told me over the next few months they are adding more HD channels!!!! The best part with using cable is they provide an HD DVR just for ordering HD! Amazing! If you haven't yet experienced HD or tell yourself whats the diff - just sit and watch it for a few hours, after that you are disgusted with regular programming. My wife will occasionally ask why is the image fuzzy and I have to remind her that channel isn't HD.
The Funniest thing is you will find yourself watching the stupidest stuff just cause its in HD, I watched "Sunrise Earth" the other day for an hour! (It's a show just watching sunrises :-) - pixelmixer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28keyword there is "average".. not necessarily "American"
- TheThirdWheel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22It says a lot more about the American salesperson. I run a cable contracting company, we get constant complaints where a customer was told all of their channels would be HD, that they don't have to pay extra for an HD cable box because their TV has an HD tuner already, et cetera. Your average consumer goes into a store, sees the great picture on the display model, gets the TV home and flips out because on many TV's standard signal actually looks worse on HDTV's. Customers buy widescreen TV's and don't want bars on the side of their screens during standard definition broadcasts, and they don't want the distorted image that's created from stretching.
Every HDTV buyers guide (and salesperson!) should go over the necessity of an HD source (HDDVD, Blu ray, HD over air, HD cable, or HD satellite). You would be amazed at how many service calls we get where the customer complains of poor reception after buying a 1080p TV and hooking it straight to coax, receiving only analogue channels. - SlashNot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23because 90 percent of people who buy the HDTV's think that they are just going to hook up there existing cable box and it somehow is going to look AMAZING. They don't realize how much more goes into making the HDTV experience.
- TheThirdWheel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22Hey you're one of those people I was just talking about. Get a source for HD, HDTVs aren't meant to make standard definition look better; they are supposed to make HD broadcasts look great. Get HD cable or satellite and tell me that Lost, Heroes, House, and Law and Order don't look great in HD widescreen.
- Cytranic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20*****, most companies compress the stream. I know for a fact Comcast does.
And Highdef is right, I dont know why you are digging him down. Perhaps you are the person that they mention in this article.
Most if not all HDTV's over $1200 have a built in HD Tuner. This means you can hookup plain ol $3 rabbit ears and get a 720p/1080i streams over the air. Its called Over the Air HD. The downside is you have to live in an area that supports this, but its pretty common. A lot of religious HD channels... - Morky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17I visited my downstairs neighbor to watch a game. He had a nice LCD HDTV and even knew to get the HD cable box from Time Warner. He thought he was watching HD, but it was instantly clear it was stretched standard-def. I noticed he had his component cables sitting in a bag, so I hooked him up and he was shocked to see the difference. Most people are more clueless than my neighbor, so I'm not surprised that this is a problem in the general public.
- Lungkisser, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19Glad to see I'm not the only one who just likes to watch Discovery HD Theatre "just 'cause it's in HD." I keep it on most of the time until they decide to air American Chopper or Monster Garage, in which case I'll quickly change the channel.
How awesome is 100 Greatest Discoveries? I didn't realize how much I missed Bill Nye the Science Guy from my childhood. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17"zttrx, Best Buy sales people do not work on commission."
No, they work on a steady diet of misinformation. :) - highdef, on 10/12/2007, -7/+23People need to learn how to hook up an old rabbit antenna. More sets have tuners now and off-the-air looks better than any overly compressed cable or satellite HD signals.
- WiZZLa, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18zttrx, Best Buy sales people do not work on commission.
- mhockey14221, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16yes because the average Canadian or the average French person can set up an entire home theatre system flawlessly with their eyes closed, but the average American cant
- Cytranic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12@ Loker
I know for 110% fact that you are wrong. Here is an artical where comcast admits they use mpeg encoding. Here is a burb: 12/18/2006
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6400524.html
"In general, an HD signal in the current standard of compression known as MPEG-2 gets encoded into 19.4 Megabits per second. That is several times the rate of standard-definition channels, which are typically coded at 2.5 to 5 Mbps.
However, to conserve additional space on bandwidth-starved systems, virtually all operators ratchet down some HD channels even further, to as low as a 10-Mbps stream, in a process known as transcoding. The AVSForum guys derisively refer to the result as “HD Lite.”
The practice isn't advertised, and none of the operators who spoke with Multichannel News would detail which specific channels get the treatment and how far down they compress the signals. But at least two major operators COMCAST and Charter Communications, both confirmed their systems use the technique. - DanmanD87, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13@loker269: Come on, everyone knows that Comcast doesn't count. They just suck too much
- podwich, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11You're probably going to get dugg down mainly due to your incorrect rant on Sony and 1080p. 1080p is not just "pushed" by Sony. It's the highest consumer resolution currently available and presented in a progressive scan. It's definitely the best option currently available. Now if we could only get some more bandwidth...
- Taikun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Part of the problem is that so many places were blowing out garbage TVs on Black Friday/Boxing day. Here in Canada a local Visions store sold a 42" Plasma for $999 CAD, which seemed like a good price until you discovered the TV is only capable of 480i and doesn't even have a cable tuner.
Remember, you get what you pay for. - Elranzer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7It's really not that the "average American consumer" is dumb. The HDTV situation is so fragmented that no normal person, outside of a computer geek or videophile, really understands all the requirements. TV is fragmented between SDTV and HDTV signals, 480/720/1080i/p resolutions and let's not get started about those ATSC DTV channels (10 vs 10.1) that require a new tuner outside of your cable box.
Channels have not fully adapted widescreen yet because execs only look at the bottom dollar and only program for the "lowest common denominator" which is that most people still own 4:3 TVs. It's a chicken-vs-egg deal where if the content providers don't do widescreen content because people don't own widescreen TVs, but people refuse to buy (or buy but return) their widescreen TVs because everything they watch is still 4:3 and is distorted/letterboxed. The consumers are waiting for the widescreen content, the content providers are waiting for widescreen TVs to become more common.
The buzz these days for TV technology is unfortunately DLP, LCD and Plasma. The problem with them as that they're fixed resolution. They're absolutely dreadful to watch any content on them that is not exactly their screen's resolution. 720 content looks ass on a 1080p TV and vice versa. All DVDs (and most last-gen video games) are 480p max and 480 looks ass on both 720 and 1080 TVs. There exists CRT-HDTVs (like the wonderful Samsung flat-CRT units) that can display analog (multiple) resolutions, not just 720/1080) and they display 480p DVD and games just fine as well as 720 games and 1080 Blu-Ray and HD-DVD... but most people think all CRT is "old tube, non-HD TV."
We (computer geeks and videophiles) know you need to buy component or HDMI cables for the correct aspect ratio and resolution. The average consumer is confused why all these different cables (coaxial, composite, S-Video, component, DVI, HDMI, etc) even exist. For $3000 why doesn't the TV include the required $9 cable that is required for an HD signal? Nearly 100% of HDTVs misleadingly include composite cables and so that's what the unknowing consumer will use.
It's the FCC's job to regulate that all content conform to a technical standard, such as widescreen, 720 or 1080 resolution and digital broadcast or not. Instead they're too concerned whether boobies or the word "*****" might get seen/said on TV and so the content providers are absolutely fragmented on standards.
I really can't blame the average American consumer for being confused and pissed over HDTVs. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Wow, how old was that thing when you bought it? I thought even the cheapest, chiggety-China sets supported 720p for the last 2 years. No HDMI on it? And you claim to be a home theater buff?
Sorry but I gotta call ***** on this one. - Dylan16807, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It's freaking engadget.
The link is fine. - Wolf451man, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Loker, Comcast "claims" they do not compress.
That is true. COMCAST doesnt compress.
But they have no problem rebroadcasting the compressed feeds and not asking for higher def feeds.
It is a slimy play on words by Comcast.
DirectTV is just as bad and I'm pretty sure Dish taint far behind.
They have a limited amount of bandwidth.
DriectTV was even shutting off some channels on the weekend to send down HiDef PPV packages. - hansamurai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Agreed. A lot of consumers were basically tricked into thinking they were buying HDTVs when they were really buying EDTVs.
- mshea, on 10/12/2007, -9/+14It doesn't help that the big business folks couldn't agree on just about anything when it came to HDTV. They spent years in a room and came out with the following:
Resolutions? We have five "standards".
480i (What we had before)
480p (DTV, progressive)
720p (HDTV progressive)
1080i (HDTV interlaced)
1080p (non-standard progressive pushed by Sony with the PS3 and some new sets).
Connections? Try eight different possible video connections, all at different resolutions.
Ye Olden coax
Composite cable (single RCA video cable)
S-Video
Progressive Component (480p max like the Wii and progressive DVD players)
HDTV Component (HDTV compatible, not necessarily the same as the one above)
RGB (some sets and devices have VGA, not just computers)
DVI
HDMI
The home entertainment market is a wasteland of overcomplicated gadgets fueled by the greed of huge conglomerate corporations like Sony that care more about pushing their own proprietary anti-consumer formats than they do about consumer satisfaction. People pay $100 for a Harmony remote simply because home theater systems suck suck suck when it comes to usability.
People spent $600 on PS3s and the stupid glossy pieces of crap can't even do 1080i gaming through component cables.
Some big company is going to make a mint by offering a true Home Theater in a box with all the dedicated connections, receivers, speakers, and a good remote that controls everything. They'll make it as easy to use as an ipod and they'll steal the market.
Until they can get their ***** together and come up with REAL standards, everyones going to be watching TV on piece of ***** 27" standard TVs forever.
Of course, I'm ranting to the Digg crowd; a bunch of guys who spend more time wiring their HDTVs than most do watching them. - moofer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5If you're into online shopping, Crutchfield.com is a great place to buy HDTV's. Good selection, and delivery process. They also stand behind what they sell.
- wordfan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Maybe you should try explaining it to her in another language. Does she speak German? That might be a better language to explain it in.
- evansls, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Pretty interesting article... Many folks, but not all, that I talked with who were thinking about buying an HD TV really had no idea a special box/antenna and or HD service would be required. This one couple I know are very careful with their purchases didn't even have cable, but they purchased a DLP this xmas for their HD viewing. That's a lot of extra money they will now be dishing out to feed their HD TV with good picture quality. They didn't even know they would have to upgrade their DVD player, too. When my in-laws come to visit -- what they think is HD on our TV is actually not HD. It's very fusterating to then have to explain what they were watching wasn't HD and that *changes channel* this is HD. They're look is puzzling.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"I keep it on most of the time until they decide to air American Chopper or Monster Garage, in which case I'll quickly change the channel."
No kidding! Discovery is going to ***** with these shows. I've recently started watching Disc HD too. My personal favorite is the snake hunter. At some point i'd like to order the others such as discovery civilization, etc. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7"480p content doesn't look any worse on an HDTV, compared to your old 4x3 TV. "
Actually, yeah, it does. When your old 4:3 SDTV can only display 480i content (physically), it fills the screen and everything is pixel-for-pixel. Put that same low resolution on a big 16:9 screen and what happens? Say it with me now... "UPSCALING". You have to make those same pixels fit a display that has at least twice the resolution, so every pixel grows in size. End result: 480i or 480p looks worse on an HDTV set. - omgbanana, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@wordfan
Du. Du hast. Du hast ein verwirrendes Fernsehen.
? - apothekari, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I know all of us here on digg are looking at this,{And I see by the majority of responses here, already} and saying people are stupid!
But I have to say,I got a 1080i set a year ago and it has DVI inputs no HDMI and is victim to the does not display 720p issue I will also say I am a photographer and build my own computers from scratch as well as a Home Theater buff.I am the PRIME candidate these TV manufacturers are targeting I did a fair amount of HD research before I bought my set and not ONE article or anything I read at the time, mentioned the 720p/1080i *****.
Now I have been really happy with my TV but I personally did ALL the legwork on everything from deciphering the multitude of different connectors for every device I planned to hook up to the TV to trying my damndest to hook up my hdtv to my computer.
It wasn't easy,in fact, I think building my first pc was WAY easier.
From DRM to DVI , HDMI 480p 720p 1080i 1080p and lets not even discuss audio connections and sound.
The simple fact is we are moving from a paradigm where the consumer was king to one where the providers seek to force feed us new unneeded formats and connectors in order to subjugate what we as consumers wish to do with the content we've rightfully purchased.
It is in this new paradigm where the pirate flourishes,Because they give the consumer what they want.
Content without the goddamn hassle.
People will gladly pay what is fair,witness the success of the Ipod , Wii and you tube.
All are extremely easy to use and a good value.
The manufacturers and content providers RIAA and Sony and their ilk are held immovably to the 1st law of consumerism.
Price is dictated by what the market will bear.
Value is in the eye of the beholder.
And so it shall always remain. - PhantomZmoove, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Until they can get their ***** together and come up with REAL standards, everyones going to be watching TV on piece of ***** 27" standard TVs forever."
Hey, I've got a POS 27 inch TV still. It was given to me used in 93. So I'd say its ~15 years old. Its made out of wood and looks like a piece of furniture, but that damn thing will never break so I can replace it! - S4MF1SHER, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5First off, don't make the mistake of buying a HDTV from Best Buy. The subhuman retards working there don't know much about HDTV or how to hook it up properly. They do know about getting you hooked up with Netflix, Entertainment Weekly, and making you buy product replacement plans for your cordless phone. By the way, they would probably make you buy Monster Cables for anything you buy. Rant over.
When it comes to any big purchase, take the time to do some research. Do you buy a car without doing the necessary research? I must have looked at dozens of article related to HDTV, component cables, hooking my Xbox's and PS2 to the HDTV, etc, before I purchased my TV. People need to stop being lazy and take some responsibility for what they are buying. The sales person may not know everything. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"Customers buy widescreen TV's and don't want bars on the side of their screens during standard definition broadcasts, and they don't want the distorted image that's created from stretching."
Well then the customers are dumb. It's up to the salesperson to educate them. If you don't want a 4:3 image distorted on a 16:9 screen, you live with sidebars. You get one or the other, the only way it looks perfect is by watching 16:9 material, which there just isn't enough of yet. I feel your pain though...I know how hard it is to drill facts into an uncooperative client. - evansls, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The simplest way I explain 16:9 to 4:3 without getting technical at all is, seriously at all: the movie theater is widescreen and typical TV is not. That's why there are black lines when you watch a 16:9 movie on your TV, because it was filmed for wide screen. Obviously there's a lot more to it than that -- but *keeping your fingers crossed* she should then understand, no?
- Mitchl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5As someone who has recently spent about $3500 getting his HDTV setup , I can empathize. I think the manufacturers have missed the opportunity here to make it simple and I don't understand why. I have it running pretty well now, with my picture often perfect now and I am only challenged by the audio. on avsforum, there are constant questions about what settings to use for the DirecTV HD DVR and this or that set. When they introduced HDMI, why did they not make some simple protocols for the devices to talk to one another about how to pass audio and video. For example, the TV should communicate which resolutions it will accept, and the devices shoudl communicate which they will transmit. If you wanted to make it really user friendly, they should pass back some rating to each other about their upscaling capabilities to determine if the DVD player, receiver or the TV should do the upconverting on 480p and 720p pictures.
Then you get the audio-- I am using my TV for all the switching now as it has 7 inputs to it. But I still have not figured out the right settings on the Directvbox and the DVD player and the TV to get it to always correctly pass 5.1 to the receiver. And I can nerver get the TV to correctly pass DTS to the receiver even as a pass though. I resolved this by having most sources go audio direct to the receiver, and with a Harmony remote this is not a problem as the remote will switch everything to the right inputs as I change activities.
And then closed captioning doesn't even work half the time on HD signals. , (but it works great on SD) - nixfu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4
Still say the best advice is THIS:
Don't but ANYTHING "HD"......wait until there no longer is anything such as HD because its the STANDARD and your no longer paying extra for 2 letters, and more than 10 channels are available.
BTW, from me experience.... NOTHING beats the quality of HD signals from a good ole fashioned antenna over the air.
I wonder if the cable and sat companies will take this seriously enough to realize that the one thing they got them in the door orginalliy against regular antenna broadcast (much better signal/less noise etc) is NOW the OTHER WAY around. - HalBSure, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You're life sounds rough. I'm sorry you have to live that way.
- fletch101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3My dad went thru the same thing. His "highly rated" Samsung distorts the picture on SD, which is all he has and my mom wishes they had never bought the damn thing. In all honesty, they should be more upfront and tell people these things are a step down from a CRT if all you have for content is SD. Also the thing is too complicated for the average consumer as I am always having to help them with the remote,etc. If they don't start educating and making things easier for the average consumer, HD is going to get a bad rep as a not ready for prime time-step down from CRT
- videoCT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3people are not the idiots - the electronics stores are - they should give out pamphlets next to each TV saying what else you need to buy.
Another problem purchase this year is DVD camcorders. Overall a moronic idea. Most major editing software does not edit DVD video very easily, and you cannot transfer the video like with a DV camera. - Zuhaib, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I am with TheThirdWheel (this is a more of a reply to TheThirdWheel btw) on this one.
My friends dad got a new 50in Plasma HDTV and is convinced that you dont need any extra hook up to get HD from his Standard Sat. So he is always complaining how games (football is what he wanted it for) look crappy and that some games are not in HD, when in fact they are being shown in HD and on DirecTv. He did not finally accept that he needed an HD Box from DirecTv till i brought him to my house and showed him an HD game on my old, but very nice HD CRT. I also explained to him about getting HD over the air as we live in San Francisco that has great HD over the air. He is a happy customers but i can see a lot of people who dont know much about HD, and really cut throat sales people who will say anything to sell an HD TV. - rda52, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9OTA HD FTW!!!
- Wonderkind, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Wow. It looks like so man you of you are missing one whole side of the argument. A lot of us don't want to have to become experts in electronics just to buy a TV that has an excellent picture. Do I need to study breeds of cattle in order to buy a friggin' hamburger? Also, the standards change with incredible frequency.
Some people don't have time or the inclination to study and learn 100 different new acronyms and cables and standards.
The manufacturers started tricking us when they told us to measure the screen diagonally about 60 years ago.
They often throw names at us that mean nothing.
Yes, we know that buying a new TV will not get us laid by a 22 year old bimbo. Yes, we know we are being lied to.
It just that the sellers are getting better at lying most of the time, but after a while, there is backlash. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Even Comcast only has.. what.. like.. 15 channels of HD content in their expanded package? Maybe in a few years, but right now much content isn't available. Comcast doesn't even have Scifi or Comedy Central in HD-tv. Now Yule Log HD on the other hand....... !!!!
- bdbr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Nearly all the over-the-air HD stations are UHF. Rabbit-ear antennas are VHF (but may pick up UHF poorly). Little (but important) technicalities like that cause those with limited knowledge to give out bad information.
(I'm watching football on an HDTV via a 2-year-old tuner with a UHF indoor antenna, it works great!) - Tenlow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Well my only HDTV experience so far has been that if you're not watching HD content, picture quality is reduced drastically. Side by side, a non HDTV will look MUCH better when viewing non HD content.
So while it's silly to assume everything will look better out of the box, i think it's reasonable to think it would at least look the same. - deodand, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The problem is with the manufacturers and progress of technology, not the salespeople or the consumers. People want TVs that they plug in and work. But TVs are becoming like computers, with competing standards, rapid obsolescence, a rat's nest of cables, etc. They are just too complicated. Nobody can be bothered to sort out all that crap, except some technogeek nerd...which the average person is not.
- andreo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5@ Junkyarddawg
Congratulations you are the person that this article was written about.
You will not get a better picture from standard def material. Period. Matter of fact, you will see more flaws in the material. The simple rule here: garbage in, garbage out. If i have a crappy 20 year old cassette tape recording that sounds like crap on my wal-mart $30 boom box. It will continue to sound like crap if I purchased a $1300 Pioneer Elite and played it on that. Matter of fact, it may seem to sound even more crappy because of the price that I paid for the receiver.
SD material looks like absolute garbage on my Samsung DLP. But when I put in a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, or watch OTA HDTV you would be hard pressed to find anything that looks better.
And as for the price... they are at the lowest prices that I've ever seen. There's no reason to wait another 2 years. Even 61" 1080p sets are sitting below 2k now. Are SD TVs priced lower? You bet they are. But again, so is that $30.00 boom box from Wal-Mart vs the Pioneer Elite... - sporkman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3all you people talking about Best Buy employees working on commission need to shut up. I work at best buy, I get NO form of commission, the only form we get is if we meet our sales goal for the day, every day for 6 months we CAN get a bonus. the whole point of that system is so we DON'T push more expensive products on people, we TRY to match what people need with what we have, the problem comes from that most people WANT an awesome TV at a ***** TV price.
I just work in the computers, I know a lot about computers, more than most of the people that work in Geek Squad. Do you expect someone to sit down with every employee in Best Buy and talk to them about what new technologies have come out? or do you expect every employee to go home at night and just start studying electronics?
why don't you stop complaining and actually do research on the products you want to buy? sure, I'll agree, more than half of the people there will ***** you to get a sale, which makes no sense to me. - Technopundit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Why? Because some asshat salesman talked them into it, that's why.
HDTV is OK, but content is still scarce, and most of our old faves will never be HD. I'm staying with standard cable (as much as I hate Cox) and the CRT behemoth for a while. I'm just a simple guy. - VeryAngryJim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3agreed, Crutchfield rocks.
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