Pretty much, yeah. I think it’s called RamCable and I can’t even find the damn thing on google. My complex has some kind of deal with them so that when I moved in and tried to called Comcast, they couldn’t even find that my address existed. It’s pretty cheap, but the whole system is beamed in on a massive satellite dish by the clubhouse that goes down whenever we get rain.
They also run the only available cable broadband internet here. I signed up when I first got here and it was hilariously expensive (something like $60 or more) and speed tests showed that I was literally getting dial-up speeds. Like 7k a second for downloads. Needless to say, I dropped them like a bad habit and got speeds five hundred times faster for less than half the price with Yahoo/SBC DSL.
Do your local network affiliates broadcast an HD signal? If so, I was under the impression you could get their signal with nothing more complicated than an old-fashioned rabbit ears antenna (someone correct my oversimplification, please). Check out their HD network programming and then you can decide whether to junk everything you own and upgrade.
IMHO, if you don’t watch a lot of sports, it may not be worth it if your tight on cash.
If you do watch sports it is the shiz-nit!!!
I watched Twins vs. Tigers baseball, The U.S. Open (tennis), NASCAR, 3 NFL games, and the British Open (golf). All of them were just outstanding in hi-def.
Getting the wider field of view and a highly detailed crisp picture took sports watching to a new level. I look forward to the hockey season.
Other than that Letterman and Leno look nicely crisp but it dosesn’t necessarily increase my viewing pleasure. Same for network dramas/sitcoms. Nice picture but I could take it or leave it.
Broadcast movies in high-def I really don’t notice a difference. In fact I think they look better off a DVD. Must have something to do with transferring movie film to a hi-def broadcast. It just isn’t that sharp.
And sure, Discovery HD is pretty and all but I get bored watching wild geese mate all day.
How far back do you sit from your TV? With a 32" display, the ‘sweet spot’ for HDTV is probably about 5-7 feet back. The ‘sweet spot’ for standard definition is probably 8-10 ft or so. If you sit 10 feet back, your eyes may not be able to resolve the added detail you get from high definition. If you sit closer, you’ll definitely notice it.
I would suggest going to a good TV store - one with a proper viewing area - and asking them to put on an HD source on a TV the same size as yours. Measure out the distance from your seating position to your TV at home, and then stand that far back in the showroom, and have him switch sources from HD to standard def.
It can be misleading to watch HD in a TV store, because you’re typically only standing a couple of feet away from the screen. So the difference between HD sources and SD sources is dramatic. Then you get home, sit 11 feet back from the screen, and wonder why it doesn’t seem that much better than what you had…
This is also why most HDTV’s are big screen models of 45" and up - in a typical living room setup, you want a screen that big to get the full benefit from HD. Smaller screens like your 32" are better for small rooms, bedrooms, etc.
BTW, be aware that “HD-ready” doesn’t mean “HD Resolution”. All “HD Ready” means is that your TV can accept and decode high-definition signals. It doesn’t mean that it will actually display them in all their glory. For example, my projector will display high-definition, and I feed it a 1080i or 720p signal from my HD cable box. However, it only has a 1024 x 768 resolution, which means that in HD mode I’m downconverting the HD signal to 576 lines of resolution instead of 720. So I’m not seeing full HD, and won’t unless I upgrade to a projector with a widescreen panel with 720 lines of resolution.
There are some ‘HD ready’ projectors that only have 480 lines. They can display full DVD resolution, but if you play an HD signal through them, you’ll get… DVD resolution.
Can any of you pro-HD folks add any input to my weird TV situation?
We have a small weekend cottage. When we first got it, I decided not to have a TV at all. Because really, if you are at the lake for the weekend, you should be out enjoying the lake or sitting on the porch drinking beers. That’s my motto.
(To be honest, no TV was not really a big deal because we don’t watch that much TV to begin with.)
Meanwhile, back in reality, it turns out that sometimes it is raining, or really cold, or you would like to relax with a movie after a hard day of enjoying the lake and drinking beers. But the real turning point was that we started having an annual football party that turned into a whole football weekend with out of town guests etc etc. And I feel that when you promise people a whole weekend of football, you have to deliver 1) beer and 2) 24 hour ESPN coverage leading up to your game.
So now I have these visions of getting the amazing HDTV package. But in essence, it would primarily be used for one three-day weekend out of the year, plus some random movies. Could it possibly be worth it for that limited time? I feel like someone needs to talk me down.
(I need to figure this out soon, because this year we’re going from a three-day football weekend to a four-day football and hockey weekend.)
This is undoubtable true. I had a panasonic plasma that defaulted to grey side bars. However, there was a setting to change it anywhere from white to black. I picked black because that was the least visually intrusive, but after awhile, i noticed that the sides of the screen were somewhat noticeably brighter than the center.
That’s interesting, as was your whole post. I can’t see a difference in picture quality myself, even though I’ve studied up and really tried to get it. I’ve heard that the naked eye can’t see the difference in picture quality unless the screen is amazingly huge. I’ve also heard that many people who think they have HDTV don’t have it set up properly and aren’t really watching anything in HD, but I don’t understand that.
My brother has this one chair in the middle of the room that his HDTV is in, about 5 feet from the large screen. I could never do that! Even when I sit in the chair, it looks out of focus when I watch a DVD. But he has a great sound system. I am convinced that many people think they’re getting a better picture when they watch a DVD movie, but it’s really the better sound effects that are affecting the experience.
My 25 year old TV with a super sharp picture. I’ve thought about replacing/improving my TV but whenever I go to the stores, they have the TVs set up so that the TV screens on even the most expensive TVs have crappy quality pictures. Why would I buy a TV if the TV store can’t make it look good on the sales floor?
But some of the super flat, super skinny TVs are awfully pretty from a design standpoint. I just can’t justify the cost because of that.
It’s a function of screen size and viewing distance. A 32" screen is fine if you’re sitting back just a couple of feet from it. Your eyes will be able to resolve all the detail in the HD picture from there, and it will look gorgeous. From 10’ back, you won’t be able to tell the difference between an HD and an SD signal.
If you play standard TV signals though an HD set, you get standard TV resolution. The TV industry has done an absolutely horrible job of explaining how to set up TVs and connect them to various sources, and many, many people are watching much poorer pictures than they need to.
For example, a cable box has multiple outputs on the back of it - there will be an RF output, which looks like your standard cable TV connector. Then there might be a composite video output, which is an RCA jack. Then there might be an S-Video connector, which is a small multi-pin round connector. There might also be component video outputs, which will be three RCA jacks, generally color-coded red, green, and blue. There may also be a DVI connector, and/or an HDMI connector. ALL of these provide a video feed, and if you plug any one of them into your equivalent plug on the back of your TV, you’ll see a picture. I imagine a lot of people just connect up a coaxial cable to the typical cable type connectors, and think they’ve set it up correctly. But this is the lowest-quality output. If you tune to an HDTV station, you WILL get a signal out of this connector, but it will be ‘downconverted’ to standard TV resolution.
The only HD-compatible connectors on the back of the box are the Component, DVI, and HDMI connectors. Alll are capable of providing a full resolution HD picture. None of the others will. In addition, if you play a DVD player through any of the other connectors, you’ll get a markedly inferior picture, because a DVD player can only provide an interlaced signal through the RF, S-Video, or composite outputs. If you connect your DVD player with component out, and your DVD player is progressive-scan, you’ll get a picture of greater contrast and better perceived resolution with far fewer artifacts.
Also, most people buy TVs, take them out of the box, and start watching. The thing is, direct from the factory TVs are often calibrated to look good in a showroom. That means the brightness is too high, the contrast too high, the colors too saturated, etc. You should calibrate your TV after you get it, which will get you anything from a slightly improved picture to a greatly improved one. You can buy or rent calibration DVD’s for that purpose. “Video Essentials” is one of them.
5 feet back might be great for watching HDTV, but watching DVD from 5 feet back is going to suck.
Every combination of screen size and pixel resolution has a ‘sweet spot’. Sit any closer, and the smooth picture will devolve and look like a jumble of scan lines or pixels. Any farther back, and you’ll start to lose detail and psychologically feel like you want to sit closer.
You can see that right now. Your monitor is at least HDTV resolution, and you’re probably only sitting with your head a couple of feet from the screen. Start moving your head forward. If you’re sitting too far back, you’ll notice more detail as you move your head forward, but at some point you’ll start resolving the pixels themselves, and suddenly the whole illusion of a smooth display will break down. Now move your head slowly backwards - at some point you’ll feel like you want to squint to read letters. In between those extremes is the ‘sweet spot’. If you turn the resolution of your monitor down, you’ll want to sit farther back from it.
A typical television is about 32" in size. The ‘Sweet spot’ for a TV of this size at NTSC resolution is about 7-9’. And if you go around and look in the family rooms of most houses, that’s about how far away you’ll find the TV from the main seating area. One of the reasons big screen TV’s didn’t sell all that well in the beginning is because if you put one in a typical family room, you’d be sitting inside the ‘sweet spot’, and the picture wouldn’t look very good. But when HDTV came along, people suddenly found that if they wanted to watch it in their family rooms, they needed a much bigger screen to maintain a ‘sweet spot’ at the distance their room was laid out for. That dictates a screen of 45" and above. So when HDTV came along, suddenly people found themselves wanting big screen TVs when they didn’t care about them before.
Most people don’t understand any of this. They just know what they like. We perceive all this at a pretty low level.
Three things: One is that TV salespeople in big box stores don’t know what they are doing. Second, it can be hard to get a good picture when you’re feeding the same signal to 30 TV’s, unless you have a good distribution amp and proper cabling. Third is that you’re probably looking at TVs in the store at a much closer distance than yours, and perceiving that as ‘less sharpness’. Go stand 3 feet from your TV, and see if it still looks sharp.
Don’t bow to marketing pressure. If you’re perfectly happy with your TV, why upgrade? This is all subjective. Some people are audiophiles, and others are happy to listen to MP3s on cheap computer speakers. Some people are videophiles and enjoy HD pictures. Others couldn’t care less.
I say no. Everything involving the letters “HD” seems to be chock full of DRM. That is, your equipment, your media, and everyone involved in the chain from producing content to displaying it on your screen is conspiring against you to keep you from getting access to it except in the few specific ways they want you to. People who bought into HDTV when it first came out are unable to watch movies at full resolution, because they don’t have the new sooper-sekrit encrypted digital connections (HDMI) that their players demand for full res: god forbid they might actually be able to intercept the data they paid for as it travels over the cable they paid for from the HD-DVD player they paid for to the HDTV set they paid for.
The best way to stand up against that BS is to vote with your wallet. I, for one, am not spending a dime on anything HD–let alone the approximately $3847.99 it costs to buy a nice big HDTV set–until I know the DRM has been neutralized.
To much! you need to change satellite company’s. You can get it else where for 9.99.
Wait about two weeks and look into the HR20-750 HD-DVR. No need for an antenna and by the end of the year Directv should have close to 150 hd channels.
HDMI itself is just a digital audio and video port. Copy protected content can be sent over HDMI, but the port itself is blameless. If you want the best picture quality, you will go from your cable box, DVD player, or whatever by HDMI.
A beautiful 42" Plasma can be bought for $1,999. That’s a lot of money, but the prices had come down enough so I went ahead and got it. I am not one to splurge on useless stuff, I find that widescreen DVDs, content off my computer, and HD network TV content is all breathtaking. Even the Tonight Show is just beautiful in widescreen HD.
Prices continue to fall. Time’s on your side if you’re holding off.
Digital audio and video ports are what facilitates the DRM! If you use analog component cables, you know for sure your equipment isn’t working against you, at the price of only a negligible loss of quality. That is, unless your equipment manufacturer decides to spit in your face by intentionally downgrading the picture they send over component cables, but the fact that they’d do that to you is one more reason not to give them your money.
My TV was about $250, and I can’t imagine paying any more than that for a new one, so I still have a lot of waiting to do.
That’s silly, that’s like saying that having a credit card lets people make invalid charges to your account. It can, but for most people that’s an acceptable risk. Join the 20th century.
I’m as paranoid as the next guy, but any computer person will tell you that a digital signal is cleaner and less lossy than an analog one. Plasma and LCD TVs are digital, you want there to be as few digital -> analog -> digital conversions as possible.
DRM is an entirely different subject matter. I’m completely against it, but I am in no way compromising on DRM by having a plasma TV.
Having a credit card does open up the possibility of invalid charges, which is why there are policies and regulations limiting your liability for those charges. The government and the banks have taken steps to minimize that risk; they’re on your side in that battle. If they weren’t, credit cards would be a lot less attractive.
However, the government, the hardware manufacturers, and the content industries are fighting against you when it comes to DRM. HDTV, therefore, is a lot less attractive than it could be.
In Canada? Check this site for advice on what your sat. company offers on HD and if it seems worth it to you. If you like sports, keep in mind that a lot of the Sportsnet/TSN content on the HD channels is not HD yet. Sweet fuck all of CBC’s content is HD.
In short:
Check your cable/satellite company offerings for what channels they offer in HD
Do you watch these channels now?
I have Shaw, and effective January their basic HD tier will be ABC/NBC/PBS/CBC/CTV/CBS; their ‘pay an extra $10’ tier will be Sportsnet/TSN/CTVEast/Discovery/A&E/National Geographic. I watch the regular networks, but not the sports/geese fucking/CSI:Toledo channels so I’ll skip tier 2 when they start charging.
Say what? There’s nothing “sooper-sekrit” about HDMI. The HDMI cables are hanging right there in Circuit City and Best Buy in full view. The HDMI output is clearly marked on the back of DVD players and the HDMI input similarly labeled on the back of the HD TVs. As far as getting access to the HD signal, it comes from the cable company for a monthly fee just like non-HD television. Either that or from an antenna.
DMR stands for Digital Rights Management and, as I understand it, applies to content downloaded via your computer. It has nothing to do with High Def television.
I suppose that term applies better to HDCP, the encryption scheme, than to HDMI, the connector. In any case, the goal is to keep the information being transmitted secret from you, the consumer.
Au contraire. The encryption on DVDs is a DRM scheme as well: when you buy a DVD, you get a chunk of encrypted video along with the keys to decrypt it, and your DVD player decrypts it while enforcing certain restrictions on your use (region coding, Macrovision, unskippable notices and ads, etc.).
HD-DVD and BluRay take it one step further: the video stays encrypted all the way to your TV as it travels over an HDMI connection. If you don’t have an HDMI connection, the player may degrade the quality of your video intentionally - not because component cables can’t carry the same resolution (they can) but because the hardware manufacturers and content industries are collaborating to keep you from accessing the data you paid for.
The specs for this DRM scheme also include the ability to shut off specific models remotely by revoking their keys. If someone across the country manages to hack into his Philips HD1234 set to gain access to the decrypted full-resolution video, you might find that after you play a new HD-DVD disc you rent a few months later, you can’t watch full-resolution movies on your Philips HD1234 anymore, because your player has been instructed (via code on the disc you just played) not to talk to your “vulnerable” model of TV. Hope you can still return it!
If you buy HDTV, you buy into this whole scheme. If you don’t, you can point out the reasons you haven’t bought one and demand that manufacturers support you instead of the other way around.
If you only use it to watch cable or broadcast TV, rather than movies, I suppose it’s not so bad. But you’re still increasing the installed base of sets that support this insidious scheme, making it more likely that future generations of technology will only work with encrypted connections.
