GOLDMAN 555

I've been messing around with high definition for quite some time now.

HD yes it's okay but it is not really FOOKINNG amazing I've got loads of 1080p stuff it is nice but its not exactly revolutionary. In fact it is not much better than the general HD stuff on sky which I don't think is even 720P. before anyone asks I've got 56" inch screen so you should be able to see the difference.

is HD(particularly 1080P) a case of Emperor's new Clothes.........



BTW:I just bought this really cool piece of kit:

If you're into downloading you should get one of these.........

Home > Products > TVIX PVR M-5110SA/5130SA

Removed.

Sky's HD ouput is a max of 1080i, which most of the stuff I've watched on HD is. The problem is how it waqs recorded in the first place. If you watch something on National Geographic HD, then you can see the difference. Unfortunatly older analogue programs often look worse when scaled up to HD. I hope you sit about 10 foot from your 56" screen, if not I'm suprised your not impressed. Try sitting too close to any screen and you'll see the individual pixels. Try working out the PPI figure, or pixels per inch, you may be suprised at how low res, HD TV's appear.

jpor

iTrader: (1)

Yep notice that BBC HD comes out much better in the picture department. Must admit that Channel 4 HD ain't bad either. The best I've seen up to now are the CGI films such as Madagascar and Ice Age 2. They were freakin awesome. Shame SKY don't do a HD 1080p box yet.

leeroywrx

iTrader: (10)

do you have to have a large screen to notice a difference with sky hd?i have a 32" samsung and am wondering if its worth the extra for the box and subscription

jpor

iTrader: (1)

I run mine through a 20" Sony LCD t.v. A mate of mine uses a Panny 42" PLasma. Have to admit the bigger screen does give the picture a better look.

miff13

Christ you'd have to have eyesight like a hawk to notice any difference on a 20" screen. I had a 26" LCD whilst my 42" was being repaired, I couldn't tell the difference. Wouldn't think it's worth bothering with HD on anything less than 40".

Suresh

I expect I'll be taking the HD plunge in a year or two, depending upon when my Philips PixelPlus CRT finally goes **** up.


Obviously I'm not an expert, but aren't people raving about HD on a big screen as regular definition looks crap on such a screen, so the difference is obvious.

An HD picture on a 32" or a 42" would have exactly the same number of pixels, surely?

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

The source is always constant. I'm into computers, so these resolutions will be wrong, but it still shows the point.

If the source is 1280x1024 that gives you the number of pixels present going into your display.

If your 32" display is a panel with 1280x1024 pixels then there is exactly one pixel on the panel for every one in the source. Job done, everything is great

If you have a 42" display then it too may also have 1280x1024 pixels. Each pixel on the screen will of course be bigger in order for it to be 42". So if you are sitting closer to the screen then it may appear pixelated. Just as if you zoom in on one of the smilies used on this page

An alternative is that the panel may have 1600xzzzz pixels. In this case the TV extrapolates the source pixels and forms a best guess. If this guess is good then the image displayed will be of higher resolution than the source. This can reduce pixelation, but is no real substitute for a better source. This is how HD TVs show normal quality pictures.

The "guessing" done by the TV is hard to do. The better the TV the better the algorithms used and the more powerful the processor. Cheaper models look bad, and cannot keep up well with moving images due to the amount of info they have to process.

SlimJ_2005

Been watching Heroes Series 2 in HD (in 720p mkv format) on my 42" Samsung and there is a marked improvement over watching series 1 on the BBC. Colours are better and the image much sharper.

However, you adjust to HD so quickly you start to question whether HD is better than SD, it's not until you switch back to digital TV you appreciate the difference.

Same with playing the Xbox 360, the image quality is great when you first switch to HD, but you soon get used to it!

Shark Man

In some respects with particular focus on 10080p, yes.

Seems frame rate is sacrficed for qulaity...or at least it looks like it.


Not sure whats screwed up with the format (or the souce/TV that processes it) but it seems to give faster refresh to item in the forefront of the picture fine enough, but when it comes to stuf in the background or panning, it totally screws up; on some screens it looks awful.

Best way I can describe it is with scrolling credits on cable/sky nonHD with some sets with iffy processing....any credits that scroll sideways end up very blurred or jerky....1080p seems suffers this issue - like the image processing cannot process the image data fast enough.

Certainly annoys the hell out of me.

StickyMicky

maybe the OP just needs his tv set calibrated with some decent settings?

it would be easy enough to make even the nicest source look crap if the contrast and stuff was whacked right up.


i was watching lord of the rings the other day and it was upscaled to 768 screen res via my xbox and i was stunned at how much better it looked, i was actually really impresed, of course the G/F could not tell the difference, but that means nothing, i had a flocked dashboard in the car for 2 weeks before she noticed it, stupid mare :lol
: i have only ever watched the 720p stuff via component leads, including a few films i downloaded from xbox live, and all the xbox games.

but i can tell the difference between 720 and 768, and now the 360 is upscaling normal dvd`s to 768 the difference is vast IMO

i can only imagine 1080p looks even nicer, although i was not convinced on 1080i?

maybe a lot depends on your tv screen / settings

RobJenks

All I can comment on is HD broadcasts here in Australia.

ABC showed the Planet Earth in HD last year.

It was without doubt the most visually mind blowing format I have ever seen .

I was projecting the image onto a 100 inch screen and to my eyes was flawless - But I do think the series was recorded on the best equipment and no expense was shown in the production . I might add my projector is a native 16 :9 720p

No DVD in SD comes close .

gallois

i have a 46" bravia, and sky SD is really bad, UK gold in particular and any recorded progs on sky+, the quality through BLu-ray is incredible though, but it just makes it worse when you watch sky afterwards.

GOLDMAN 555

The post on AVforums goes to underline my point(although the people on that forum seem very concerned with detail)

1080P seems a little bit unnecessary right now

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

It's nothing to do with frame rate, it's to do with deinterlacing.

An SD picture, or an HD 'i' format picture, is transmitted in two chunks called 'fields'. The first contains all the odd numbered lines of the picture, and the second contains all the even numbered lines. This means that you only get 25 complete frames per second, but a CRT appears to flicker at 50Hz and not 25. This makes it watchable.

An LCD or plasma screen displays the whole image at once, so the two fields have to be combined together to form a single image. The problem is, though, with most programmes the two fields are taken from DIFFERENT images captured 1/50th second apart, rather than being two halves of the SAME image. Display them at the same time, as part of the same image, and you get a nasty 'combing' effect that looks horrible.

So, to combine the two effectively, the TV needs to process each field, working out what's moved where in the 1/50th sec between one field and the next. This needs a surprisingly powerful CPU, and in many cases, text scrolling across a static background totally confuses the algorithm it uses. So, although the programme may look OK, the credits at the end get screwed up.

Naturally, throwing more money at the problem makes it better

PeteBrant

No


Next.

PeteBrant

Rubbish

It entirely depends on the size of screen you have and your position in relation to it.

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

I'm getting ready to buy a tvix player. I have just got over 30 films for it recently and my collection is growing by the day. I have only seem them so far on my 30" pc monitor so I'm looking forward to watching them on my big screen. For what I have seen so far comparing them to a normal DVD I'm well impressed quality is soo much sharper and the colours look much better.

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

The tvix player won't play the blueray stuff !! You need the newest version to play MKV files. The one above is more for normal dvd's


This is the one I'm going to buy

Home > Products > TVIX HD M-6500A

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Looks like a nice piece of kit - maybe even something that could finally replace my ageing Tivo in due course.

Only problem is... no digital terrestrial TV in my area

I don't suppose you know of a box that could do the same for the new BBC/ITV Freesat HD service?

Power Junkie

iTrader: (1)

Give the format time to get going, as of yet there is little true HD material for them to display, over the next few years when they get to grips with it we will see some stunning results, just remember back to when DVD's first came out, it took ages to get a good looking picture from them.

Leslie

I get such a good picture,analogue or digital on my Sony 42" plasma that I really don't see the necessity of paying out all that extra at the moment to receive HD. I agrre that HD would be likely to be a better picture but I am quite happy to wait until it is generally available.

Les

Shark Man

You mis quoted me, The above mentioned credits example was an extreme example of a somewhat unrelated problem suffered on normal definition tv (CRT or otherwise) when displaying from a poor digital source, but visually helps me explain a noted problem with HD with a non-interlaced source. It's just illustration of an obvious issue that 99% of people will have noticed at some point and can relate to the comparison. So explaining the well documented cause of the above isn't explaining the problem with 1080p source on a 1080p screen.

However, the point being, is nothing about credits or interlacing. The problem is the jerky background motion present on 1080p with 1080p souce. Note: - non-interlaced (1080i suffers too, 720p less so) regardless of frame rate (which could conflict with refresh). In lamens, it "looks" like it can't keep up with correctly displaying the full image during normal programming; Another example: Like that of a old GFX card in a computer runnning the latest game, difference being its not the whole image, just the background during normal programming.

Now, one would like to think that this, being a modern format would not suffer this with a matching HD format source and display (1080p HD-DVD on a 1080p tv) with the correct frame rate, and that is the annoying problem. Especially seeing its hardly criticised or acknowledge by the manufacturers

One would like to think a £6K setup would cure this, sadly its still a problem. Although maybe its out of date overpriced junk. Or maybe the format/sources/screens were released before these issues were fully addressed. Or the converstion to Blueray/HD-DVD is poor. Or the data link between the TV and source is restricting the data rate (doubt it 4.96Gbps should be enough ). Or a duff cable (it has been noted). Or the case of mismatch of frame rates, or just as likely the frame rate differing from the refresh rate, causing issues if not processed right.

Or the whole thing is just a compromise in aid to give better resolution.

I'm sure setups will come out eventually that will fully address this, but I'm not sold just yet. It should be right in the first place, not X number of years down the line.

Leslie

Thanks for that info Shark Man-interesting.

Les

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

I've not seen what you describe, so I can only guess at what you're seeing. I do have a pretty good background in video, though.

What you describe sounds to me like the result of MPEG4 encoding with too little bandwidth for the compressed data, so the codec prioritises those parts of the image with the most movement and leaves the background relatively unchanged for a frame or two. That's the only part of the chain that actually treats different parts of the image differently.

MPEG4 and H.264 are very efficient, but it is sometimes possible to see how the codec starts to fall over at low data rates.