I notice the difference. Of course, you don’t notice it in something that isn’t broadcast in HD. Most material still isn’t. I watched the SuperBowl in HD and was stunned that I could notice depth of field. In a long shot, you could see what the camera was focused on, cuz the background was out of focus. IMHO, you can not see that in SD.
I bought a PS3 cuz reviews suggest it’s one of the best Blu-Ray players out there. I just played the HD version of “Planet Earth”. Outrageous. I was mesmerized. It’s like watching an IMAX movie. The PS3 is also great at playing BR (or BD or whatever they call it), starts up in seconds.
OK, so maybe you don’t notice the difference. I do. I got an enormous bonus from work, so I decided that once before I die I’m gonna splurge. Humongo HD LCD TV (a story in itself), small but potent Sony 5.1 theater receiver, PS3, Tivo. Course there’s nothing worth watching, but I can surf channels in style LOL
The difference is striking, but I’m overly sensitive to compression artifacts, and they’re obvious on almost every HDTV broadcast I’ve seen (including over-the-air, which is supposed to be superior to what most cable companies provide.
It depends on the broadcaster. They have 19.2 Mb/sec to play with. If they care about quality, they’ll devote the entire amount to a single, high quality channel. But if they care more about money, they’ll have additional SD channels and reduce the quality of the HD channel. I’ve seen HD channels starved to 10 Mb/sec so they can broadcast 3 SD channels (which look bad as well.) In that case, the cable version might be better quality, because they’ll send the 35 Mb/sec network feed to the cable company via fiber, where they’ll encode it as QAM.
I know that HD TVs have been one of the top selling electronics items of recent years, so every now and then I wander into a store to check them out. Yeah, I can tell the difference, but I’m just not blown away by HD. Possibly because even my cheapo laptop has higher resolution than HD, so that level of detail is nothing new to me. But mainly because, as others have said, content is more important to me than picture quality. I’d rather watch something I like on YouTube than random stuff on HD. I also second the point above about visible MPEG artefacts. If I spent all that money on a HD TV I’d be disappointed by that.
I think it is an incremental change, too. Six times more resolution does not mean six times more perceived picture quality. It’s subjective. Personally I’m happy enough with SD. Mind you, SD is higher resolution here, 576 lines rather than 480.
Add another person who can tell the difference and just doesn’t care.
My dislike/ineptitude for electronics and remote controls is such that I’m perfectly happy with whatever screen comes on when I get to my selected channel. If it’s HD, fine. If not, I’m not going to try to figure out what button to push to get HD.
You have an ‘el cheapo’ laptop that has a screen resolution of greater than 1920 x 1080? That’s the highest HD resolution. My laptop can output that resolution and more to an external display, but the internal screen is, I believe, only 1440 x 900.
I wonder how the age demographics would break along this question. My guess is that those who don’t care will tend to be older.
For the record I’m 29 and I can tell the difference (As I’m not blind) and do care simply because so much of my entertainment is derived from my TV or PC monitor. Going to the movies (except for the occasional one that’s really worth it) is just too expensive when I can fire up my HDTV and watch with my sweety in the privacy and comfort of home.
Also, low resolution games suck. Plain and simple.
I suppose I can see how it might not matter to people who don’t derive a significant portion of their entertainment from their TV though. But some of the people on this thread seem very technophobic to me and remind me of picky or unadventurous eaters. The ones that always eat the same thing and would never ever try something new no matter what. It’s like their afraid the lobster will eat THEM or something. I have no patience for that type of personality.
Ever since watching sports in HD I could never go back to SD. The combination of sharper detail and wider screen is such a vast improvement I don’t know how people who are sports fans could say they don’t care.
Hockey which was typically considered “unwatchable” on TV by many people for many years has suddenly become “watchable”. You can see the puck now. You can see the ice wear down as play goes on.
Same with golf. You can see the ball much better now. And you can tell the difference between fairway grass and rough and not just because they are different shades.
Football is amazing with the wider field of view. You can watch more players at once because of it. You can see if the ball is spiraling or just floating. That playoff game between Seattle and GreenBay in the snow was just… beautiful.
The widescreen shot of a tennis court is amazing as well as being able to see a 120mph aced serve.
The blades of grass, the infield dirt and dust, the sweat on a pitchers face, all put me at the game. I get none of that with with SD.
I guess if your a person who watches sports by listening to them rather than actively watching them and maybe glances at the score once in a while maybe you don’t care. But for me HD is like being there.
1080i vs. 720p, that opens up a whole 'nother can of worms. An interlaced picture with a higher resolution will be better for programs with static images, like sitcoms, some dramas, non-action movies, and some nature shows. A lower resolution, progressive-scan picture is going to be better for fast moving shots, like sports, action dramas and movies, and fast-paced nature shows.
Ah! At last I’ve found a real reason to regret my spinster status. I need a hubbie who MUST have State of the Art TV to watch football. So I could bitch about his allocation of our mutual funds–but get to enjoy the upgrade. Especially for all that nature & cultural stuff that I watch anyway.
As it is, I’ll make the jump eventually. When systems are cheaper. And when I realize that my life is incomplete because I’m not watching enough TV.
An equal-sized LCD TV will use less wattage than a CRT, hands down. Plasma is hard to compare, because you aren’t going to find one smaller than 40", and you aren’t going to find a CRT larger than about 36", realistically. So yeah, the smallest plasma probably uses more than the largest CRT, but it’s a bigger TV. And from what I can gather, it seems a rear-projection TV uses a similar amount as an LCD.
As for DLP…well, I’ve got no clue, because I think DLP kind of died anyway…LCD TVs got better and cheaper, so the niche that it filled is now taken by LCDs.
If you can’t find plenty of good stuff to watch on TV today, you either have RIDICULOUSLY picky taste, or are watching the wrong shows, or haven’t discovered watching shows on DVD. I think TV has really been enjoying a renaissance of sorts recently. In the past decade, for instance, we’ve had:
The Wire
Deadwood
Rome
Six Feet Under
The Sopranos
The West Wing
Buffy
Angel
Firefly
The Office
30 Rock
Pushing Daisies
Battlestar Galactica
Heroes
Lost
The Daily Show
The Colbert Report
Veronica Mars
Friday Night Lights
And that’s just shows that I happen to like, off the top of my head. Is there nothing there that appeals to you at all?
I can tell the difference, but I find, unless I’m paying attenton to something specific (FoodTV), that I stop noticing after a little bit.
I’ve got a 50" 720p DLP TV that does a GREAT job with HD, if the channel cares about broadcasting a good signal (FoodTV), if they don’t, the only way you can tell it’s HD is by looking at the station logo in the lower corner.
I’m Really Glad all those sports nuts invested Billions in the HD infrastructure, I’ll even occasionally watch a football game just to see the grass on the field.
I’ve found that HDTV (and the Billions spent to create it) really just translates into: better hair.
That’s it. You can see each individual hair.
You can also see where the makeup artist stopped. (Marg? She’s got a freckly chest. It didn’t match the makeup on her face very well.) 9News? MAN do they have some hot lights…you can see the sweat on the Anchor’s forehead.
I’ll be happier when teh whole transistion is done and everything goes HD.
Danger, if you really do set your monitor to 640x480 and have a carefully laid-out desktop icon arrangement, you’ll lose it, everything from the bottom and right will get squished towards the center.
I would guess that a lot of people that get an HDTV are not really seeing HD. My grandmother bought a widescreen TV and feeds it with plain old cable. A HDTV won’t do you one bit of good without a HD source.
What’s worse, she has the picture stretched so everything is stretched out horizontally. She likes it so I won’t rain on her parade, I don’t think she’d want to mess with a cable box anyway. Although she might have to after Feb 2009.
