Is HD TV a scam?

[Flawsdraw]

Sky TV has a 100% signal so I don't get no weak signals, Analog TV is now looking like Video did when we got DVD.
Switching to Digital in the UK has nothing to do with HD signals it is to just all use Digital signals because it is a clearer, smoother pic than cruddy analog.
HD images compared to DTV are massive, I went through watching all my TV series, Films in HD on my PC, when my old PC died on me I lost everything, now when I try to watch stuff it looks rather shite.

The switch over to DTV is a step forward, where is the conspiracy?

 

[FAST6191]

I suppose some qualifying remarks are needed. Here in the UK and most of Europe there is a switch to digital going on but what they have dubbed HD* is nowhere to be seen other than token offerings. Basically digital SD as it were is what is planning to be changed to with HD being nothing more than a pipe dream.

*720 if about 40% more than PAL and feeble compared to my computer monitor, I did this elsewhere http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=739...t=0&start=0 though so I will not do it again, I contend my deinterlacing and scaling setup/algorithms can take on anything being punted as HD for 95% of people and the remaining 5% will be happy enough with it).

@Flawsdraw Kent may be fine but a 100km North interference means I generally watch a slideshow when trying to watch digital TV, interference on non digital means a bit of noise. Couple this with the signal not being able to be too strong or Holland supposedly suffers.

Secondly MPEG2 is being used. MPEG2 is fine for certain things but broadcast it is not.
As has been mentioned by others they try to cram as much into said transport stream (quickly a mpeg2 stream that is transmitted will contain many channels, this is why when you "tune" your digibox many channels will appear all at once) and their acceptance of lossy compression theory seems to be "oh look I can make it smaller" with no regards to how much is lost (meaning I end up with juddery images and and it ends up looking like a patchwork quilt. MPEG2 is not known for good quality - low bitrate (try making a DVD using low compression with DVD shrink or similar).

If I believe the conspiracy theorists it will be switched to MPEG4 (not sure what version, probably SP or ASP rather than AVC) at some point which means the usual kick in the nuts for early adopters.


All in all I am for the advancement of technology but you go emperor's new clothes or try and polish a turd and I will call you on it.

In the end though, I have a media PC (or xbox with XBMC) and TV/projector hookup. The dollar is fairly cheap and thus usenet is fairly cheap so I do not really care. Not to mention I have games, the pub and internet as well as books vying for my attention and frankly I can find a good game/book/internet site/conversation at the pub far easier than I can find a good TV series/film.

 

[Destructobot]

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!

They don't do this to make HD look better, they do it to cheap out on bandwidth. My brother-in-law works for Dish Network's parent company. He used to be in charge of this process for one of their satellites, and he told me about it.

They get the feed from the network at a certain bitrate, but they don't want to use that much of their bandwidth on the channel so they transcode it down to a lower bitrate. This is all done on the fly, so in addition to the bitrate being too low, the transcoding quality is not too good. Thus through the magic of technology you get a whole lot of crappy looking channels.

I'm guessing the process is the same for cable TV; they don't have unlimited bandwidth either.

 

[Ace Gunman]

I actually have some questions of my own. Sorry if they've been answered here previously, I haven't checked the thread. We all know February 2009 is the switch to digital in the US. And that in Canada we're switching in 2011. So my question is this: how will this affect American broadcasts to my area? Are NBC, FOX, etc, suddenly going to become unviewable without an HDTV in Canada?

And a related question: which TVs are affected by this change? All of the material out there says "antenna TVs" this and that. Well, I suppose my question then becomes, what's an antenna TV by definition? Is that limited to TVs that receive broadcasts over the old rabbit ears (and who still uses that?) or will my basic cable be affected as well?

If Canada is indeed going to be hit with this as well, we really should have timed our transition with the US.

 

[Sir-Fritz]

Not sure (since i live in aus) but why would they be forcing you to go HD? I thought it was just standard definition Digital.

 

[Destructobot]

We aren't switching to HD, we're switching from analog to digital. Most broadcasts will still be standard def, and HD signals are just scaled down by the decoder to fit standard def sets if needed. Any TV that doesn't have a digital decoder (internal or external) will not be able to pick up the digital signal. DTV is already on the air, that date is when the analog signals go offline and their bands are turned over to the cellphone companies.

This only affects the broadcast (i.e. radio) signals. Cable (digital or analog) and satellite are not affected by this change.

 

[Athlon-pv]

You would just need a set top box for viewing the signal on a normal tv. HDTV is something different from the signal change from analog to digital.

If you hit wikipedia.org im sure you can read up on all the stuff you need to know

 

[Ace Gunman]

We aren't switching to HD, we're switching from analog to digital. Most broadcasts will still be standard def, and HD signals are just scaled down by the decoder to fit standard def sets if needed. Any TV that doesn't have a digital decoder (internal or external) will not be able to pick up the digital signal. DTV is already on the air, that date is when the analog signals go offline and their bands are turned over to the cellphone companies.

This only affects the broadcast (i.e. radio) signals. Cable (digital or analog) and satellite are not affected by this change.

Ah, well then I'm golden. Thanks for the in-for-mashe-ee-own.

 

[Devante]

Oh well...

I tried.

'

One last thought though.
Destructobot mentioned that we aren't switching to HDTV, but that we are switching from analog signal to digital signal. This is very true.

And while analog signal is one way, digital signal can be manipulated to go in either direction.
To our TV's... or from them.

 

[Destructobot]

And while analog signal is one way, digital signal can be manipulated to go in either direction.
To our TV's... or from them.

No. Both signals are transmitted the same way, only the content of the signal is different. If your TV had a radio transmitter capable of sending digital signals, it would be able to send analog signals as well.

 

[notnarb]

In my area, most channels are broadcasted in 720p or better, whether channels will go through the effort to broadcast in HDTV probably just depends on how populated the area you live in is. Come to think of it, the only digital channels that I get that are 480p or lower are in spanish