Not true. Hockey Night in Canada broadcast one of the two weekly games in HD every week last year (they had one HD truck, so had to pick). I beleive this year they will have a second truck, and most hockey should be HD.
Every CFL game I saw this year was HD. Mind you, I only saw 3 or 4 games, but it made me think HD is the norm.
And they broadcast all international HD content in HD.
I have Shaw as well, and their HD content sucks compared to the competition. Rogers has many more HD channels, as do both major satellite providers.
I’m really annoyed that they think they can charge extra for HD channels when even with all of them being free they still wouldn’t have as much HD content as their competitors, all of whom offer their HD content for free. Shaw sucks.
So, Leafs games, and whatever CFL games they can get the truck to?
They don’t have a lot of inter’l content (as compared to CTV & Global). When they get up to 50% HD prime time cotent I’ll think they have a lot of HD content.
If my building let me have a dish, I’d be getting one-whichever company it is that Shaw owns. Their customer service is pretty damn good, but the content-pthhhht. But now they have time shift CTV so I can watch the Daily Show at 8pm, so I’m happy.
Ok, reading between the lines here, you confused HDCP with HDMI and are doing damage control.
You can continue your one-man crusade against this perceived threat all you want, but in the meantime the HDTV innovation continues. Until my hardware blocks me from doing something I want to do (like um, watch a movie or watch TV), it’s not a big deal to me.
This is a sour grapes, way off-topic tangent to the OP. The OP asked if they should get HD satellite, to which I answer definitely yes if they want to get the best picture on their new TV, at least on the channels that are available in HD. The OP should also check out whether local stations are available over the air in HD, over a plain old antenna. I get NBC in HD and the widescreen HD shows (not all of them are) are beautiful.
Those sets aren’t allowed to play movies at full resolution because they don’t support HDCP, and they don’t support HDCP because they don’t have HDMI ports.
IOW, “I wasn’t using those rights anyway.” All right, best of luck to you. May your keys never be revoked, and may your kids never step on a disc that you were unable to back up.
:o
Can’t believe I missed that detail. My mistake. Yes, if you have an HDTV already, and you notice a quality difference with DVDs, then you may as well upgrade your satellite box to get an improvement from TV too.
(BTW, you might want to look up what “sour grapes” means. It doesn’t apply here.)
I disagree. Sports are great, but nature programs are where HDTV really shines and the Discovery Channel has the best picture quality of any of the HD channels I get. There is a 3-D quality to HD that is stunning.
Also, don’t forget that HD is more than just better picture quality-- you get a wider picture, too. The 16:9 aspect ratio beats std TV’s 4:3 any day of the week for sports, nature shows or just “CSI” or “Lost”. Even non-golf fans will sit in awe watching the Masters at Augusta in HD. It’s ubelievable. The clarity of picture, the wide angle and the depth of field is like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
Absolutely. HD has actually changed my viewing habits. My favorite shows are now things like ‘Great Museums’ on PBS. Man, getting a tour of the Louvre or the Smithsonian in high definition is just fantastic. Or archaological shows - getting to tour ancient ruins in HD is wonderful.
I also really enjoy watching shows that highlight paintings. In high definition, you can see the texture of the paint and the brush strokes - it really brings the paintings to life and lets you see them as they were intended to be seen. And the nature shows are spectacular.
And HD golf - I never miss an HD golf tournament. Not only can you see the ball much better, but the beauty of these great courses just leaps out at you. The Augusta golf course is just gorgeous, and I love watching people play there.
The 16 X 9 aspect ratio really improves most sports, because they are played on rectangular fields. Hockey in HD is a much better viewing experience, because you can a much larger piece of the ice. Watching hockey in a 4:3 box causes you to miss what’s going on with the defence, how the wingers are setting up, etc. And, it’s much easier to follow the puck, both because the resolution is higher and because there’s not as much panning required with the cameras. The game really comes alive in HD - you get a much great sense of the fluidity and speed of the game.
If you’re going HD, make sure your display is a full 1080p screen. That is, it has a resolution of 1920x1080. Then it can display broadcasts of 1080i and play DVDs of 1080p. 720p screens (1350x768) are just a stopgap, and so-called HD-ready screens (often 1024x768 like the one advertised at the bottom as I type this) even more so. I don’t know about the US, but here in the UK, such screens still cost a pretty penny - £3500 (US$7000) for a 46" Sony Bravia. And here in the UK, HD programming is limited and the availability of HD disks is very limited. I’m reckoning on going HD in 2008.
I got a 768p plasma for $1999 earlier this summer, I figured by the time 1080p is more standard the TVs will be cheaper anyway. A 768p TV will scale down a 1080i picture and most people won’t be able to tell the difference.
1080p TVs aren’t that expensive here, here’s a 42" 1080p LCD for $2331. It doesn’t have a TV tuner, but if you’re using a cable or sattelite box it’s not a big deal:
This 40" has a tuner and will be $2,200 when it is released:
Thanks for the input gang! I have decided to go with it and will be hooked up this Friday. I’m worried that suddenly I may find that my set wasn’t a good purchase… I’ll let you know when I watch my first HD show!
If you had a proper comparision of a show like CSI in HD and regular broadcasts, you should be able to see a big difference. For one thing, you see a lot more detail on the characters, you practically see every hair on their heads. You also see a wider view of the scene, on my 42" there’s another ~6" or so on the left and right sides.
I saw this morning they started doing (most) of the Today show in widescreen HD. The parts that aren’t widescreen have vertical “TODAY” logos on the left and right sides of the screen. I guess they’ll be all or almost all widescreen at most point.
A 1080i or 720p HD widescreen HDTV broadcast is better quality than DVD (which is 480p.) For those that don’t know, those numbers refer to the number of vertical pixels, more is better.
480, but standard TV is interlaced rather than progressive, so it takes two fields (1/30 of a second) to draw all 480 lines. A 4:3 DVD at 480i is basically the best possible reproduction of a standard TV signal.
