Just went to HD-DirecTV (and am enjoying their recent deployment of ~40 HD channels). Some thoughts:
[ul]
[li]Some people should not be viewed in HD – too much pancake makeup, now-visible wrinkles, etc. Our local newscasters are much older than I’d imagined.[/li][li]OTOH, some women have turned into total knockouts now that I see them in all their HD glory. (Can’t comment on guys; I think we all look like, well, guys).[/li][li]I’m not a sports nut, but damn! There are some beautiful golf courses out there, and when did football broadcasters get the magical first down line that is digitally superimposed onto the field? That’s way cool.[/li][li]I think it’s my duty to tell y’all that I’ve purchased a Blu-Ray player, which will result in HD-DVD quickly becoming the market standard. You’re welcome. Blu-Ray is much better than upsampled DVD images, but the upsampled DVDs still look great (meaning, I’m not sure how quickly High-Def disks will be adopted, at least in comparison to how DVDs were adopted. But that’s for another thread).[/li][li]Kudos to the nature / documentary programs for embracing HD and showing how much beauty is in the world. (Also kudos to programmers who knew that there’d be a market for High-Def shows wherein bikini-clad women wander around the world wearing bikinis and doing things that require that they wear bikinis. And they wear bikinis).[/li][li]If you don’t want to spend $100/month on cable or satellite, that’s okay – local digital broadcasts come in stronger and clearer than older VHF broadcasts. But you don’t get Bikini Destinations, Get Out! or Sunrise Earth. (I live in LA; YMMV).[/li][li]Harmony remotes are difficult to figure out at first, but if you spend the time to figure them out, they rock.[/li][li]Some broadcasters screw things up by stretching 4:3 images to 16:9, making it impossible (IMO) to watch them. Do people really want to see lots of wide people wandering around flattened vistas? If you only have a 4:3 picture, just display it that way. (History Channel, I’m looking at you).[/li][li]Even though they’re not 16:9, many older programs still benefit from the increased bandwidth used in HD broadcasts. However, now we’re at the mercy of the broadcasters – they can dial back the resolution to whatever they want, resulting in some still-crappy-looking programs. (I think there must be some sort of horse trading going on – lesser channels like ABC Family seem to have low bandwidth and look muddy, while popular channels get more bandwidth and more detail).[/li][li]My supervisor’s acting like a timid weenie, and I’m getting tired of trying to figure out what he’s talking around. Time is money, and communication via allegory is really inefficient. Sorry about that, but it’s really bugging me.[/li][/ul]
Worse still, some channels seem to broadcast some of their 4:3 content in a horizontally-compressed box in a black 16:9 background - even when I force the TV to stretch it to 16:9, the box still seems too tall and narrow - so everybody looks too tall and thin. I guess again they probably do this to save bandwidth - plain black compresses down to more or less nothing.
Come off it. You know Milton Keynes is someone’s idea of a joke, like Mornington Crescent and the BNP.
You know all those people who hate letterboxing because “They’re stealing my screen!”? The same thing is going to happen with the vertical-bar version from showing 4:3 stuff on a wide screen set. People will clamor for the pan-and-scan or stretched versions so they don’t see those “ugly black bars stealing my screen”. Hopefully TCM remains unsullied and shows all of their old movies with the vertical black bars.
Groo, what a great post! I would add that I never dreamed I could become a NASCAR fan — until I saw a race in HD. My god, it’s breathtaking.
One thing to remember about digital switch-over is that all VCRs have analogue tuners. You can use them to record programmes from you digital TV but you will lose the ability to watch one channel while recording another. So you will have to get either a hard disk recorder (called a PVR) or a DVD recorder and they must have twin tuners.
I already have one of these (a Topfield) and it’s excellent. The recorded sound and picture as good as the “live” programme. You can pause a recording , you can “chase-play”, which means you can start watching the beginning of a programme while it’s still being recorded, and it stores 140 hours of programmes all nicely catalogued and easily retrievable. But you are looking at cost of one of these machines of between £100 and £200.
I forgeo to point out that the PVR also acts as the Freeview box.
Update: Best Buy, the electronics retailer, ceases selling analogue television receivers, presumably in the US.
And you can load this, this or this on it and turn it into something very like a Sky+ (arguably better), but with no subscription. It is absolutely the dog’s bollocks.
Woohoo! Another Toppy owner
Seriously, for people who get cable or satellite, does this matter? Should I be looking for a flatscreen bargain? Does this mean the TV has no HDMI input, or what?
I use the Mystuff TAP, excellent.
Every hair on the bear… 
Your need for a large aerial will vary. I can pick up most channels perfectly with a shitty £10 aerial from Argos (and a shitty £30 digital box). I’ve had it a couple of years now, while I don’t use it all the time, it’s one of the best £40 I can recall spending.
Once the analog signals have been turned off they’re supposedly going to boost the digital one, making it easier to pick up. That should help me with the other channels.
I might be in the minority but I love the new ‘Dave’ (UKTVG2) channel. I can finally watch those old ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’ episodes!
Amen.
I’ve said it before–I’ve seen digtal, & it’s a big ho-hum.
Someone enable my laziness: What is the FCC going to do with the bandwidth reclaimed from analog TV in America? Is it going to be given to the digital TV stations or split among multiple users or left fallow for a while?
It will certainly NOT be left fallow (which is a funny visual…leaving the airspace to recover its nutrients for next year’s crop.)
There’s a BIG auction for that airspace that’s being persued by cable industry, telco industry, and folks like Google and Microsoft.
It’s got a TON more theoretical bandwidth than anything that’s currently available, and it goes through walls and buildings.