popularmechanics.com — Sure, you're excited about next week's Shark Week & ComicCon's preview of the fall television lineup. But are you sure you're seeing every last tooth & LOST easter egg? PopMechanics investigates the lawless lands of broadcast television, where the quality of the picture that ends up on your Hi-Def TV set is determined by a bunch of fuzzy math.
Jul 25, 2008 View in Crawl 4
thestuffzJul 27, 2008
So you do end up getting a good HD quality tv. maybe it only has one HDMI connector, one AVI connection, one coaxial in, and maybe sometimes the tv refuses to turn "on" because the backlight is giving you troubles.... Yay for Chinese made POS that Wal-Mart stocks on their shelfs!
deadbabyJul 28, 2008
Sorta but it's nothing new. Just about all digital cable platforms have offered it for a decade+ now. Since you're dealing with set channel bandwidth limits sometimes you need to shave off some bandwidth to make everything fit. MPEG2 is old & inefficient so it is possible to chop out some of the data without any image quality loss. Unfortunately some greedy cable companies take it too far. They see it as a way to fit more channels into their system without doing an expensive plant upgrade. I'm fine with going up to 5% but anything over that and I can start to notice image quality issues. Once you get past 10% or so it's VERY noticeable. It's basically the same exact process a program like DVD Shrink uses to fit big movies on a 4.5GB DVD. The same rules apply... high motion stuff doesn't shape well, low motion stuff does.
dandoniaJul 28, 2008
Yeah that's right d**k h**d - you stick up for big companys that screws those of us that struggle to pay for our HDTV's then struggle to get a HD subscription only to get less quality than promised.When you pay for something you're damn right you deserve it-------Bushed = Forced????? huh
farmerJul 28, 2008
To each his own, But I must disagree:to spyd3rweb, I think So You Think You Can Dance is great entertainment and a even better in HD.to josereyes0, Man - Last Comic Standing really and truly sucks. and BORING is STILL BORING in HD.
farmerJul 28, 2008
a relative of mine, who also happens to be a republican, told me recently that there is no way the USA could AFFORD to provide healthcare to all citizens, and that the Canadian healthcare system doesn't work. Funny thing is, 20 years ago She was married to a Canadian citizen and they both lived in the US and had s**t jobs that had no health insurance. She had 4 kids ALL BORN IN CANADA AND EVERY DIME OF HER HEALTHCARE PAID BY CANADIAN TAXPAYERS. after each birth it was back across the border 'cause taxes were lower. :)
sphigelJul 28, 2008
500 is a bit exaggerated. I have actually seen Best Buy sell a USB cable for $35 though and people actually pay that much for it.
sphigelJul 28, 2008
1080i isn't equivalent to anything but 1080i. You can't compare progressive with interlaced. 1080i does look like s**t though. 720p is definitely better.
smacd75Jul 30, 2008
It's a little awkward gathering the family around the PC monitor to watch a movie.
negativlApr 30, 2009
Hey, this still shows up in searches, have you come up with a better way, or do you still do it this way? Does it work with the newer mp4 files? I have a vip622 receiver from Dish and I grabbed the FUSE fs but it doesn't seem to recognize the disk to even see the .tsp files...