Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

tony sayer wrote:

In article , Peter
Hayes scribeth thus
tony sayer wrote:

One part of the digital chain that needs improvement is the quality of
most receivers. Freeview quality can be excellent, especially
downconverted HD, but Judging by what I see in the likes of Curry's the
receivers the public are buying are complete rubbish.


I should give what you wrote there some more thought;!...

Freeview quality can be excellent, see the Reporting Scotland thread,
but if some content, "flashing lights, fast movement, detail and smooth
gradients on screen at the same time etc.", to quote the OP, fails, then
there's room for improvement.

That doesn't excuse manufacturers selling receivers that are, frankly,
junk.


Now where and why are the receivers junk?

Have you actually SEEN what's on offer in your local TV superstore?

The vast majority of receivers (not STBs) are horrendous, massive jpeg
artifacts shimmering away nicely around fine detail, bad smearing on
movement, you name it, etc. Some are ok, the larger Samsungs seem to be
reasonable. None can compete with my MacMini and a decent LCD monitor.

when the real problem with freeview as implemented is bit rates that are
too low most all of the time.. these are the cause of when you have
outlined above....

There's two separate problems, as I see it. One is the inability of the
current freeview transmission format to cope with the kind of content
the OP complains of, the other is the junk receivers on offer, unless
you buy a large LCD or a plasma.

When you consider of the rates used in studios and for transmission
distribution!...


Peter

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

"Mortimer" wrote in message
...


if freeview had a bitrate for each channel of up to 10mbit per second -
as dvd does, which is also mpeg2, it could look every bit as good as
that.

Mind you, I've seen some god-awful DVDs :-( I bought a boxed set of The
Sweeney and they've tried to squeeze four hours (four episodes) onto some
DVDs - with consequent blocky pictures on some of the more action-packed
episodes. The actual action scenes look as if they have been specially
processed to give them increased bit rate (according to the figures
reported by Power DVD) but some of the other scenes with a lot of movement
are atrocious - bit rates down to less than 2 Mbps and blocks the size of
footballs.



true - there's always someone trying to stuff too much onto one disc.
with broadcast however we wouldnt have that problem - there's no finite size
like with a 5/9gb dvd.
if the bandwidth was available, it could be maxed throughout the tv show.


--
Gareth.

That fly... is your magic wand.
http://www.last.fm/user/dsbmusic/

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

On 30 Aug, 17:36, (Peter Hayes) wrote:
tony sayer wrote:

Now where and why are the receivers junk?

Have you actually SEEN what's on offer in your local TV superstore?

The vast majority of receivers (not STBs) are horrendous

Hold on a sec Peter - I thought you meant STBs. What you actually mean
is TVs, which may or may not have integrated digital tuners (a fact
that is almost irrelevant to this discussion).

Yes, most modern flat panel TVs look terrible with digital SD content.
No argument.

The best LCDs are OK. The best plasmas are quite good. CRTs show up
the least flaws (but have other issues - not least their disappearence
from the top end of the market).

There's two separate problems, as I see it. One is the inability of the
current freeview transmission format to cope with the kind of content
the OP complains of, the other is the junk receivers on offer, unless
you buy a large LCD or a plasma.

Many of the viewing public are "upgrading" to a ~£500 flat pannel
display, and getting horrible picture quality. I'm sticking with my
CRT for now, though would love HD in the living room if funds allowed.

My original point was that, even on the most forgiving of dispays, and
the most accurate of displays (£500 LCDs are neither!) these
broadcasts don't look good. Of course they look awful on £500 LCDs.

Cheers,
David.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

wrote in message
ps.com...
On 30 Aug, 17:36, (Peter Hayes) wrote:
tony sayer wrote:

The best LCDs are OK. The best plasmas are quite good. CRTs show up
the least flaws (but have other issues - not least their disappearence
from the top end of the market).

There's two separate problems, as I see it. One is the inability of the
current freeview transmission format to cope with the kind of content
the OP complains of, the other is the junk receivers on offer, unless
you buy a large LCD or a plasma.

Many of the viewing public are "upgrading" to a ~£500 flat pannel
display, and getting horrible picture quality. I'm sticking with my
CRT for now, though would love HD in the living room if funds allowed.

My original point was that, even on the most forgiving of dispays, and
the most accurate of displays (£500 LCDs are neither!) these
broadcasts don't look good. Of course they look awful on £500 LCDs.


===========


As a matter of interest, what would a £500 LCD make of a studio-bit-rate
signal (always assuming that it knew how to decode it) - would the picture
still look crap because of the differences between the tonal rendering of
LCD/plasma compared with CRT?

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

"Mortimer" wrote in message


[snip]

: : Many of the viewing public are "upgrading" to a ~£500
: : flat pannel display, and getting horrible picture
: : quality. I'm sticking with my
: : CRT for now, though would love HD in the living room if
: : funds allowed.

The best HD I've seen so far was on a Sony CRT in the States 3 years ago.
Not seen anything anywhere near as good over here.

Ivor

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

Mortimer wrote:

My original point was that, even on the most forgiving of dispays, and
the most accurate of displays (£500 LCDs are neither!) these
broadcasts don't look good. Of course they look awful on £500 LCDs.

Every working day I see 1.4 Gb/s HD digital video signals fed into
'professional' LCD displays. Still not as good as the same signals fed to a
professional CRT monitor, but getting better with each new model of LCD.

--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

In message , Mark Carver
writes
Mortimer wrote:

My original point was that, even on the most forgiving of dispays, and
the most accurate of displays (£500 LCDs are neither!) these
broadcasts don't look good. Of course they look awful on £500 LCDs.

Every working day I see 1.4 Gb/s HD digital video signals fed into
'professional' LCD displays. Still not as good as the same signals fed
to a professional CRT monitor, but getting better with each new model
of LCD.

Sounds entirely reasonable to me .... and I'm in total agreement

--
Microsoft has decided to rename 'Windows Vista' to 'Windows Diana', because it
is superficially atttractive, impossible to live with, consumes masses of
resources, then it crashes.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

In article , The dog from that film you saw
wrote:
if freeview had a bitrate for each channel of up to 10mbit per second - as*
dvd does, which is also mpeg2, it could look every bit as good as that.

Possibly, but you're not taking into account the fact that the bit rate
reduction for movie transfers to DVD doesn't have to be done in realtime, as
it does for broadcast. So maybe not.

Even if it had that advantage, a bit rate of less than 10Mb/s is nowhere near
the 270Mb/s of the original SDI signal, or the typically 50Mb/s at which a
broadcaster would have recorded it.

The best that it is now possible to see on a TV screen at home is a travesty
of what it is possible to produce from a standard 625/50 television camera,
and the sad thing is a lot of people think it's really rather good. Not only
that, but they think what is being flogged in the shops as "HD" is going to
make it better.

But never mind, they'll all be watching on laptops and mobile phones so it
won't matter, and the programmes on the internet will be better anyway.

Rod.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

On 30 Aug, 22:11, Roderick Stewart
wrote:
In article , The dog from that film you saw
wrote:

if freeview had a bitrate for each channel of up to 10mbit per second - as
dvd does, which is also mpeg2, it could look every bit as good as that.

Possibly, but you're not taking into account the fact that the bit rate
reduction for movie transfers to DVD doesn't have to be done in realtime, as
it does for broadcast. So maybe not.

Some of the best DVDs are sourced from uncompressed high resolution
digital film masters which are 24 (25) progressive frames per second.

Lots of TV programmes are still interlaced (thankfully!), come from SD
cameras, and have been through mild (or not so mild) compression
before the final MPEG-2 encoding.

So I wouldn't be surprised to find that even 10Mbps MPEG-2 from, say,
Dance X, didn't look "DVD quality" - but it would be better than what
we have now.

Of course the obvious argument is that if you're going to deliver
10Mbps+, you might as well deliver HD. I don't believe shows like
Dance X would be artefact-free if encoded to HD 1080i50 in real time
at 10Mbps, even with MPEG-4 / AVC, but I could be wrong.

Cheers,
David.