I have had HD since the 2000 Olympics and never looked back. I am a huge football fan and most if not all of the games are now in HD. Channels like Discovery and History are now in HD and some of the content is breathtaking.
I too, loathe standard def broadcasts which look awful IMO.
I will say that while the normal movie star pores and such never bothered me, my favorite local channel was finally added to DishNetwork’s HD lineup recently, and there are certain news anchor people that I never, EVER wanted to see in that kind of detail. It was kind of painfully shocking.
Purchased a 32-inch LCD Samsung HDTV last month and it’s great!
We don’t have cable. We don’t have dish. Nothing but the airwaves. We get NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, CW (old WB), one independent, plus something like SIX different PBS stations. Plus each local news station broadcasts a second “24-hour weather channel” too.
Watching DVDs on it is fantastic.
I’m not impressed with all the stations (CBS and FOX leave a lot to be desired) but everything else is great.
HDTV has always been “meh” to me, no matter the screen size.
I honestly can’t tell the difference between HDTV and standard TV. Plus, I don’t want to have to think this much about my TV. Some of the above posts were exhausting.
If you can’t tell the difference, then either you’re doing it wrong or your eyesight isn’t very good.
(And I don’t have to think too much about it–I just watch tv like I always have. Only now it looks a lot better!)
Really? Really really? In what context? I just find this statement so alien as to be unbelievable.
Well, some people aren’t as impressed with nose hairs as they are with a picture that doesn’t pixalate.
Can someone explain this to me? My partner and I got an hi-def TV last month and we haven’t seen any kind of pixelating. Is it something that happens in shows broadcast in HD? We don’t subscribe to any kind of cable, but we do get HD broadcast shows through the antenna. In fact we get more stations now because the tuner is superior to our old set. When we first turned on the set, we had to adjust the contrast and some other functions because shows and DVDs looked grainy, but we haven’t seen anything that looks like pixels since we got the settings to something we like.
My personal opinion is that the hi-def image is abnormally sharp, beyond what I would normally expect to see in real life, but I imagine that if I watched a SD set it would look muddy now that I’m used to the HD image quality. Of the things that are important to me when watching a movie, sharpness ranks around the least important.
Pixellation can occur with any digital signal–not just HD. Back when I had standard-def digital satellite service (DirecTV) on a standard-def set, it was not uncommon to see some pixellation.
One thing that is weird for me is that everything looks like it was filmed with the same camera techniques they use for soap operas. What’s up with that?
My friend’s HD on the HD channels looked kind of blurry to me. They gave me a 20 minute dissertation on 1080 vs. the other number and i vs. p. The set needed to be tweaked, argued about, then the proper channels ordered and the correct device obtained from the cable company. Considering I have a real deficiency in the mechanical/electronic area, I can’t see myself trying to go through that many hoops for a better screen. I only watch House and the VH1 reality shows anyway. (Shut up. :))
The only time I really noticed a substantial difference was when I played Oblivion on a 60’ high definition with HDMI. That was kind of cool. But other than that, I have never known or noticed anything unless I have been told it’s HD. It just looks either slighty sharper or kind of blurry.
No. But I went with a 50".
The last person who told me she just switched to an HD tv and wasn’t impressed, was diagnosed with cataracts about 2 months later. Get your eyes checked!
This must be what colorblinded people had to deal with before color blindness was discovered. It is quite possible that what is percieved by you, may not be the same for everyone else. I assume most people can tell the difference with HD vs SD/Regular. For those that cannot tell any difference at all? Maybe their internal “CMOS” is different than yours. I would not be suprised if that was the case.
I think just about everyone could tell the difference between 2 sets side-by-side. Most likely even on a single set that is switched back and forth.
But I imagine there are a great many people like me to whom TV just isn’t so important, that if you replaced their old TV with HD while they were sleeping they might notice it looked a little different, but after all, it is still just TV. Having HD would not change the enjoyment they derived from TV watching, or change their watching habits in any respect.
I think the same is true of many things. Stereo for example. The audiophile can point out things you can hear on his system that you can’t hear on your clock radio - but if all you are using it for is background music…
I would say it’s possible if the only exposure you’ve had to HDTVs is in the stores. Wandering through Best Buy, we were amazed at how awful the picture quality was on the screens. Later at a Sony Store we saw the same sets but the picture was great, so we asked the guy. Best Buy had basically one signal source that was being spliced for 12-20 TV sets. The problem wasn’t with the HDTV image, but rather the source signal was degraded to the point where it was going to look like shit no matter what set was feeding off of it. At the Sony Store, they had one Blue Ray for 4-8 sets.
If you only see the HDTVs in the stores, you may only be seeing the ones sucking on the same media teat and looking like poo.
ALso, are you sure you are watching a show recorded in HD on an HD channel? If you are just watching an SD channel it will look like crap.
My GF sometimes complains that she can’t tell the difference. That’s probably because she’s used to watching a TV 1/3 the size of the new one.
We just got a new LG 52" LCD HD TV. I didn’t notice much difference until my husband found out that our 5-yr-old cables were obsolete. He got HDMI cables and the picture is phenomenal!! I don’t know much about this topic, but I am truly amazed at the picture quality.
My wife is one of those who doesn’t care if it’s in HD or not.
For Comcast the major networks have standard definition channels down in the 1-20 range, and their HD channels are in the 230-240 range. My wife is always watching the SD channels just because “I know the channel numbers”.
She’ll also DVR network shows on the SD channels because “they take up less space on the DVR” even though we have never went past 25% capacity.
Drives me nuts.
But when I observe how she watches TV she doesn’t really “watch” it. She more listens to it, files her nails, and glances up once in a while. I tried explaining to her that she misses 75% of what’s going on (e.g. The Office has so many visual gags and subtle gestures between characters) but she’s stubborn and watches (listens) to TV like she wants to.