What is Digg?206 Comments
- spyd3rweb, on 07/27/2008, -7/+162How about some TV shows that aren't ***** to go with that HD quality.
- gasoline, on 07/27/2008, -7/+104Yup. Takes one press of a button to start streaming and lagging is very rare. And I have hundreds of streams ready for me at any time. Oh, and the resolution is quite good.
- reddikilowatt, on 07/26/2008, -4/+92http://tvtech.com/pages/s.0081/t.2145.html
Link to a broadcast industry rag's editorial page. Article was written in 2001. I was looking for another article from the same author about how, according to the FCC, a station would be within the law to hook a VHS player into their HD transmitter. There is absolutely nothing in the DTV transition rules that say anything about image quality.
The other maddening thing is stations that don't even take advantage of the audio leveling/normalization and metadata that automatically puts the monitor in the right mode (zoom/full/wide/etc). A few stations use it, some just leave it in the same mode all the time, and some set it to wide and stretch 4X3 pictures.
And don't tell me that broadcasters are still trying to figure this stuff out. It's been over 5 years since they have been required to transmit DTV and they have had plenty of opportunity to figure it out.
Lots of other very good, somewhat "inside baseball" editorials from the same author:
http://tvtech.com/pages/s.0081/t.p0001.html - TypeEE, on 07/27/2008, -3/+82On the other hand, a lot of viewers don't care and are still hooking up their decoder box with composite wires.
- facepalmjpg, on 07/27/2008, -33/+91People still watch TV?
- HairyFotr, on 07/27/2008, -1/+54elveis: HDMI is digital, so cable quality doesn't matter.
- proliance, on 07/27/2008, -2/+50I think they care, but they probably don't realize they are not getting the best quality picture with composite cables. When I picked up my digital box from the cable company I asked "where's the HDMI cable?" Comcast doesn't provide them, so a lot of people make do with what they are given.
- sardion2000, on 07/27/2008, -0/+47@norman619, talk about missing the point completely.
- crapmatic, on 07/27/2008, -5/+44I'm saving my money for 4320p.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4320p
I'll be the first one on my block! Haha! 1080i?? Fools! - bokononrock, on 07/27/2008, -0/+36Some nice screencaps of FiOS v. Comcast: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=10 ...
- briguymaine, on 07/27/2008, -0/+35@ HairyFotr: don't tell that to Monster Cable. Their "best" HDMI 4 ft. cable goes for $150 on their site!
- crownedgriffin, on 07/27/2008, -3/+31Compressed content torrents faster.
- inactive, on 07/27/2008, -7/+32Here's the fun part. Even after everyone is forced to go digital in 09 the cable and satellite providers will still charge you extra for HD equipment because "Digital is not necessarily HD". Never mind the fact one cannot purchased a digital set that is not HD. :)
Digital sucks, at least when an analog signal gets weak it gets snowy and noisy but you have a chance of getting the information. When digital gets weak you can forget about it. lol - marx2k, on 07/27/2008, -2/+24This is why everyone on the planet should know about amazing sites like monoprice.com
- Snokage, on 07/27/2008, -2/+23i requested my, comcast carries them, its just the tech guys are stingy and you need to request them. Trust me, i got HDMI cables from comcast for nothing extra.
- digid, on 07/27/2008, -6/+25Comcast provided me with COMPONENT cables which is arguably no different than HDMI.
If I really wanted HDMI they are like $1.75 off amazon. The cheap component cables are like $5-$7 and that doesn't include audio.
So Comcast does provide me HD cables without asking. However I recently paid a visit to my dad who did have his cable box hooked up with composite. He said the cable guy hooked it up that way. I fixed it up and he had no idea it looked that much better. - TheGreatBelow, on 07/27/2008, -1/+201TB shared HD accessible from across my network by any TV in the house FTW.
- mrhahn, on 07/27/2008, -2/+20So instead of sitting at home digging up articles about artificial resolutions, you sit at home commenting on articles about artificial resolutions... ¬_¬
- aliguana, on 07/27/2008, -0/+18it's true, whereas with analog (speaker cable etc) the quality of the cable DID matter, with digital it doesn't, as long as your 0s and 1s get from a to b they're all the same. It could be argued that more expensive cables last longer, that they have connectors that are less likely to snap or bend etc, but as far as "quality of image" goes they're all the same. The fact that Monster Cable are selling them for that price only means they are riding on the back of the old analog more=better thing, and hope people are dumb enough (and rich enough) not to realise it doesn't apply to digital
- Nismobeach, on 07/27/2008, -6/+23NTSC = 480i
PAL = 576i
HD = 720p
Full HD = 1080p
PAL sucks. - norman619, on 07/27/2008, -4/+20You don't deserve jack and you don't need HD TV. No one forced you to buy an HD TV. Next year all TV over the air TV goes digital not HD. You are forced to buy either a TV with a digital tuner or get a converter box. Get your facts right.
- marx2k, on 07/27/2008, -0/+15What should really happen is that there should be a standard that cable companies cannot claim if they compress/degrade their HD signal.
- ilgaz, on 07/27/2008, -0/+15No, they choose to watch 320x240, heavily transcoded youtube or 3 megabit compressed files claiming they are HD because resolution matches :)
- upfrontfanatic, on 07/27/2008, -4/+18So they consider 18mbps "very good" for HD? They better not be broadcasting using MPEG2. I would consider using anything less than 20mbps for MPEG2 HD-broadcasts downright fraud.
- stizz, on 07/27/2008, -0/+14We are forced to use 15Mbps mpeg-2. 19Mbps is allowed by the Cable labs spec, but they wont let us use that much bandwidth.
Consider that SD TV mpeg-2 is 3.75 Mbps and h264 for IPTV is a mere 2.2Mbps - Sphinxer, on 07/27/2008, -3/+17It sucks that they are allowed to do this, but then again a lot of people don't care what the actual quality of the signal is. As long as they can say that they have HD on their 50" plasma TV and use that to show off, then they are happy. These are typically the same people who are happy to pay 500 bucks for a USB cable for their "home theater".
- jsauter, on 07/27/2008, -1/+15Elveis:
It doesn't matter with digital. It is the same copper between the devices no matter if you buy $5 or a $500 cable. The cheap cable producers are not buying 'slow copper' to cut costs. The cables are built to satisfy a standard and if you think a more expensive cable is going to get your bits to their final destination faster/better/whatever you are unfortunately mistaken. Like the other fellow said, you could technically built a higher quality connector in more expensive cables, but the actual cable itself will not perform any better. - Lorddias, on 07/27/2008, -5/+18Lol, nowadays people got monitors larger than their TVs.
- MillionsLivio, on 07/27/2008, -1/+14HDTV's aren't just for watching cable or satellite, they can be used for gaming, watching movies, and among other things. I own two HDTV's and rarely use them to actually watch cable, mainly due to the poor HD services in my area.
- Ethek, on 07/27/2008, -3/+15Truth in advertising. Lets term it HD Lite
- ConceptJunkie, on 07/27/2008, -5/+17HarryFotr:
Don't tell me quality doesn't matter because it's digital! Sure you say it's all 0's and 1's, but with cheap cables you're likely to get -0.001's and 0.993's or maybe 0.023's and 1.0017's. Trust me, you can see the difference in a pixel with real zeroes and real ones compared to a pixel with "bit drift", which is common among almost all makes of cable sold for less than $150. Furthermore, the bits themselves are purer with very little distortion (almost no measurable wow and flutter) using the several hundred dollar cables compared to cheap cables. In bad cases, even the pixels themselves lose shape and definition making the picture significantly (and obviously to even the casual viewer) more blurry. Your best bet is a digital signal purifier, which prevents bit drift to the seventh significant figure. I paid over $3000 for mine (the ByteSharpener from Shamco, but I've heard good things about the slightly cheaper PureDigit model from Eye Ronic Systems), but my picture is better than anything I've seen, even systems set up by so-called experts.
Trust me. Your eyes don't lie.
p.s. The digital signal purifier works on your network connection too... even YouTube videos look better. - gkiltz, on 07/27/2008, -0/+12It's not that they don't care! They're still trying to figure it out as much as you are!
Remember, from a technical standpoint we're trashing everything we ever knew about television and starting over!
I'm reminded of something I saw back in 2005. It was the 60th anniversary of the start-up of one of my local stations. They had an engineer who worked that first broadcast on, and he commented, "Just getting on the air, and staying there for more than a few minutes was half the battle back then"
We are not quite back to that level, but with the digital conversion of over-the-air television approaching, that is what is getting the technical resources right now. As we go forward, and a stronger technical knowledge base forms, the situation will improve, and the technologies that can't pass muster will fall by the wayside, with no amount of hype able to save them. Same as AM Stereo! - norman619, on 07/27/2008, -3/+15Nice try. I don't see people not watching TV because it's not in HD.
- mousky, on 07/27/2008, -2/+13According your post, PAL has more resolution than NTSC. Therefore, PAL is superior to NTSC. He didn't say that PAL is better than HD.
- epstephen, on 07/27/2008, -1/+12I got a really nice TV as a wedding gift, and for reasons that don't have to do with the TV itself, the whole process has been frustrating. I notice that yes, Showtime and HBO seem to do HD well, as does National Geo and some others, whereas TLC HD, for instance, looks downright *****. Though for what its worth, I've been enjoying the experience much more since switching down from 1080i to 720p.
If one of the satellite or cable cos. could really improve the situation, I'd change over in a heartbeat (ok, once my current contract expires...) But I bet more people are like my father, and well, clueless. - gasoline, on 07/27/2008, -3/+14Why should he come back?
From the Guardian:
"Despite spending $230m (£115m) an hour on healthcare, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country. And while it has the second-highest income per head in the world, the United States ranks 42nd in terms of life expectancy.
/---/
The US infant mortality rate is on a par with that of Croatia, Cuba, Estonia and Poland. If the US could match top-ranked Sweden, about 20,000 more American babies a year would live to their first birthday."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jul/17/inte ... - GliTCH82, on 07/27/2008, -0/+10@cubbiesx
check your sarcasm detector - Zerophnx, on 07/27/2008, -2/+12@mcsurvery:
"After all, 1080 lines of poor-quality pixels may technically be "high-definition," but that doesn't mean it looks very good."
No, it just says that even if you have 1080 pixels the picture might not look amazing. - chiklit, on 07/27/2008, -1/+11I've seen this with Dish Network. Their MPEG2 HD channels are broadcast at 9-10mbps and their H.264 HD channels are broadcast at 3-5mbps. If you rip them off of the DVR they look especially bad compared to OTA HD broadcasts.
- adstretch, on 07/27/2008, -4/+13OTA-HD for the basic stuff. Torrents for the premium. FIOS for internet, and I'm a happy guy.
- Hawk117, on 07/27/2008, -0/+9I wish I had FiOS in my neighborhood. :(
- Spuy767, on 07/27/2008, -1/+10Nothing tells anyone how to source their video. They could be 100kbit video so long as the video itself has a frame at least 720 pixels tall. Loopholes like this are the reason that comcast nearly doubled their HD lineup without any improvements to infrastructure, just compress the video more. The one place I've seen that seems to have great video quality on their HD equipment is DirecTV. I've had DishNet, and the DTV service blows their HD away, don't even get me started on cable. The FCC needs to set up a bandwidth window to be able to call your programs HD, that would solve the problem.
- cave, on 07/27/2008, -1/+9This really should be it's own Digg story.
- MalenfantX, on 07/27/2008, -0/+8@computeruser: Is that a meaningful question? My theater PC is connected to a 1080p video projector. People from a computing background would see it has having TV on my PC, and people more into TV would see me as being able to put my computer on the big-screen TV.
- proliance, on 07/27/2008, -4/+12You really need to get out more often. I happen to think America is a pretty nice place.
- proliance, on 07/27/2008, -0/+8Far from being forced to buy an expensive 1080p tv, the govt. is giving away coupons for $40 off digital converter boxes.
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/dtvcoupon/ - MasterPain, on 07/27/2008, -0/+8I have SD TV & it looks like crap with Time Warner. Every time there is a dark scene or something underwater the screen gets all pixilated looking. I could not imagine what HD would look like witht his much compression.
- epadafunk, on 07/27/2008, -1/+9All the stuff on cable is ***** anyway, you're not missing anything when you switch from 500 channels to 8.
- ghostlywind, on 07/27/2008, -1/+8I wonder what Lawrence Fishburn's face would look like on that
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