# HDTV problem.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hdtv-problem/728916
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 26, 2015, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hdtv-problem/728916 "2015-08-26T03:44:50Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2015, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hdtv-problem/728916/21 "2015-08-28T11:50:43Z")
Just to clarify:
Using an S-video cable, a composite RCA video cable (Yellow), or using coax (from a cablebox) will **NOT** give you a high definition picture. And coax will give you the worst picture (again, when using a cablebox\*\*\*\*\*). Component RCA cables (Red, Green & Blue for video and Red & White for audio) will be HD, as will an HDMI cable. HDMI will not only give you a better picture it is more convenient, one thin cable for audio & video instead of five thick RCA cables (R/G/B for video and R/W for audio).
And as kanicbird says above, don’t bother with ‘premium’ cables, they are a complete rip-off. Stick with generic ones like Best Buy’s Dynex brand.
\*\*\*\*\*Using coax from an HD aerial (antenna) and the TV’s internal tuner will actually give you the best possible HD picture, because over-the-air broadcast HD signals doesn’t use compression. The downside of course is that depending on where you live you’ll be lucky to be able to tune in maybe a half dozen local channels.
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### Author:  [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2015, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hdtv-problem/728916/22 "2015-08-28T11:54:37Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#):
>
> \*\*\*\*\*Using coax from an HD aerial (antenna) and the TV’s internal tuner will actually give you the best possible HD picture, because over-the-air broadcast HD signals doesn’t use compression. The downside of course is that depending on where you live you’ll be lucky to be able to tune in maybe a half dozen local channels.
Yes it does use compression. OTA HD broadcasts use MPEG2 and each channel has about 19 Mb/s to divide between its main broadcast stream and any sub-channels they want to have.
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### Author:  [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2015, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hdtv-problem/728916/23 "2015-08-28T20:35:30Z")
> [@kanicbird](#):
>
> If you think that a standard HDMI cable is great, you should upgrade to a Monster brand HDMI cable, much better and clearer signal, again like night and day, see and hear what you are missing.
> Just kidding - basically and briefly, HDMI cables due to being digital either work or don’t
Hmm. odd that you were kidding because that is what I bought. The gold plated Monster brand was on sale at Menards for only $4.99. They’re usually like 40 bucks or something like that.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2015, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hdtv-problem/728916/24 "2015-08-28T21:17:54Z")
So basically, **pk** , you inadvertently gave yourself a demonstration of the difference between standard definition and high definition! HD is ever so much better, n’est-ce pas? 🙂
As for HDMI cables, yeah, being digital, they’re pretty much all the same except for build quality and thus durability. That is, pretty much all the same except when they’re not. HDMI is a high-speed protocol and not all of the different HDMI version implementations are robust. I’ve seen low quality HDMI cables generate occasional intermittent communication errors, or sometimes even not work at all. It’s rare, but there are cases when quality in an HDMI cable actually does matter.
> [@jz78817](#):
>
> Yes it does use compression. OTA HD broadcasts use MPEG2 and each channel has about 19 Mb/s to divide between its main broadcast stream and any sub-channels they want to have.
That’s true, but **Hail Ants** does have a point. All digital video is compressed, but the problem with many cable (and some DTH satellite) providers is that they additionally compress the signal on top of that, and very often over-compress to the point that motion artifacts and other compression artifacts are visible.
Of course an OTA broadcaster might load up on sub-channels and over-compress, too, but in my experience that’s rare and OTA HD tends to look stunningly good.
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2015, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hdtv-problem/728916/25 "2015-08-31T10:36:36Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> So basically, **pk** , you inadvertently gave yourself a demonstration of the difference between standard definition and high definition! HD is ever so much better, n’est-ce pas? 🙂
And the difference between how an SD signal looks on an HDTV instead of an SD one. Those problems probably would not have been noticeable on an SD TV. Maybe the sound, but the picture probably would have been blurred out enough so the ghosting wasn’t visible, and the frame rate drop (the jerkiness) would have had motion blur.
There’s no reason to include a high quality downscaler for SD TVs if the user wont notice the problems.
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### Author:  [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)
#### Post date: [August 31, 2015, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hdtv-problem/728916/26 "2015-08-31T13:47:39Z")
On the improvement…
When we bought an HDTV a few years ago we already had a PDA which was not HD compliant. Since we watch most of our TV recorded (it’s all OTA) we do not get the full benefit of the HD.
We can watch HD live and the quality is better, but not hugely better. Having the new TV was a big improvement, but I also think that now that all TV is recorded in HD, even the low def signal has improved. Colour on old repeats tends to look washed out.
We tent to use HD for wildlife and Blue Planet type programmes but the standard for drama and films. Any TV show that came from the USA (a lot of them here) is not improved at all.
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