Is HD TV a scam?

[Devante]

Does anyone think that this whole mandatory digital conversion is a scam?

And I'm not talking about video quality or companies making money.

 

[Banger]

Forces in technology have to be made somewhere, and why waste money on 2 systems when you can use just 1 single system?

 

[jesterscourt]

Go on....

 

[cepheus]

I doubt it is a scam.

and I think most providers will give you a converter box for free if you tv can't handle hd. I know my provider will be giving me a box since my tv doesn't have digital inputs.

 

[dukenukethis]

If it was a scam who would be making the money? Perhaps it's a conspiracy; digital signals don't travel as far as analog signals through the air. When the digital switch happens, all the people that live in the boonies (like me) that can't get cable or decent reception and don't have satellite (not me) TVs will go out and they'll be forced to get Dish Network or DirecTV! That's it!

 

[thieves like us]

if it's a scam, then so was colour tv and migration from 8-track to cassette to cd's and digital distribution.

it's called progress. without it, we wouldn't have any of the high-tech devices that we currently enjoy. plain and simple, tv was originally developed with an analog delivery system. however, the bandwidth limitation will not support the datarates that digital television requires. conversely, it's gotten to the point where it doesn't make sense for the broadcast companies to try and support what is a 60yr old technology any more.

at some point, you just have bite the bullet and make the jump in order to further progress and technology. (and considering that this "jump" was supposed to originally take place back in 2005, everyone's had plenty of time for prices to come down and televisions to advance to a degree where the purchase justifies itself.

 

[Joe88]

If it was a scam who would be making the money? Perhaps it's a conspiracy; digital signals don't travel as far as analog signals through the air. When the digital switch happens, all the people that live in the boonies (like me) that can't get cable or decent reception and don't have satellite (not me) TVs will go out and they'll be forced to get Dish Network or DirecTV! That's it!

actually your left out the option for the converter box

with the govt coupon, you pay only a little amount (I think about $20) and get to keep your antenna

 

[Banger]

If it was a scam who would be making the money? Perhaps it's a conspiracy; digital signals don't travel as far as analog signals through the air. When the digital switch happens, all the people that live in the boonies (like me) that can't get cable or decent reception and don't have satellite (not me) TVs will go out and they'll be forced to get Dish Network or DirecTV! That's it!

actually your left out the option for the converter box

That is like trying to get water from a hose thats not connected to a faucet.

 

[Destructobot]

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the US the changeover came because the government wanted to sell the UHF and VHF radio bands to telecommunications companies for hundreds of millions of dollars. If it weren't for that they could have just forced TV stations to use digital broadcasts without forcing them to stop the analog broadcasts.

 

[Sir-Fritz]

Going digital is a good idea but High Definition Digital is just pure bs. Unless you have a massive tv you wont be able to tell the difference. Some show can also look worse on a big hd tv through upscaling.

 

[notnarb]

If my TV didnt have a digital tuner built in, I would gladly purchase a digital converter box for 50-100 dollars (which is considerably more then the boxes are after rebates), even if analog broadcasting was still sticking around. The video quality is much nicer, better then cable if said cable company doesn't broadcast in HD. If you're lucky you even get a few free channels (I got a weather channel, a sports channel, and a legit channel)

 

[Destructobot]

With the coupons (you get two of them) I got two DTV boxes for $13 shipped. They aren't very good, but they work, and I get almost twice as many channels that never have anything good on as I did before.

 

[Try2bcool]

The digital changeover is to give more bandwith 'in case' the TV stations need (or want) to broadcast in HD. My local stations are only broadcasting (over Timewarner) in digital standard def until primetime, then select shows are in HD. Even then, their idea of HD is 1080i (if you're lucky, most of the time it's 720i max), not 1080p, so it it looks much better than 480i, but it's still pretty crappy (at least on a 60" Sony SXRD and a 42" Philips LCD). Interlaced signals just don't cut it.
The converter box will down-sample the signal to whatever your TV can handle.

And to answer the subject of this thread...

YES! HD is a scam! The millions and millions of TV shows and movies that were shot in SD (or less) are never going to be remastered into HD, so only the ones that are now being shot in HD are going to look worth a shit. I can only hope that after the changeover they will start broadcasting the new stuff in progressive scan instead of interlaced. (720p would be fine, 1080p would be better!) Otherwise, Blu Ray is the only thing that takes advantage of the 1080p capabilities of my very expensive televisions. (I'm not bragging, I'm just pissed that I spent a boatload of money on these HDTV's, and the only thing that makes it look good is a BD, and a select few PS3 games.)

 

[Devante]

I wasn't talking about the quality of the signal or how much money it will be costing...

More like...

Why are we being forced into HD TV signal?

Why is the government being so helpful about ushering HD TV into our living rooms? When have they ever helped us with anything like this?

 

[Joe88]

bring on the conspiracy theory's

 

[Destructobot]

Any DTV box (and I assume any digital ready TV) will scale HD signals down to SD. You won't need any HD equipment at all if you just want an SD picture. No expensive hardware is needed.

 

[m3rox]

DTV blows. I hate watching television on a 48 inch tv with DTV. The signal strength is always weak (even with an antenna). I'm always seeing a distorted picture (where the picture will freeze, audio will cut out, and the image will distort), on any channel I wanna watch. The only exception being a presidential debate (the distortion still happens, but not quite as often). Seriously, I can't enjoy a single TV show like this. I wish they would have just stuck with analog (I have an old color tv in my room that still receives the analog signal, and I never have any problems watching shows with it).

 

[OSW]

All HDTV's have cameras hidden on them, tracking your every move.

1984 FTW!

BTW i hate that book, but i had to read it back in High School lol.

EDIT: sorry shoulda realised that this isnt testing area...

 

[Deleted User]

All HDTV's have cameras hidden on them, tracking your every move.

1984 FTW!

BTW i hate that book, but i had to read it back in High School lol.

EDIT: sorry shoulda realised that this isnt testing area...

WHAT? You can't make jokes in off topic?

Either way I think that HDTV is awesome

I dunno but looking at SD pictures makes me feel a little pleh now

It's not bad, but I really wish it was in HD and sometimes that puts me off

 

[Rayder]

I don't know......all this Digital/HD stuff just doesn't really matter to me. As long as I can see the show, I'm good. What annoys me is that I can see that they've been purposely degrading video on some shows in SD to make HD look even better. I've watched shows where they have the digital conversion set so low that any panning in the show is choppy, fast movement distorts badly, constant stuttering going on throughout the whole show. THAT is what bothers me.

Don't believe me? Watch a Star Trek episode on Spike and you'll see what I mean. It looks like it was recorded on a Windows Media Center PC set on medium record quality, and on a PC that wasn't really fast enough to capture all the frames accurately. They show a ship flying through space and it's stuttering and hiccuping through the stars. LAME!