Whats happening with HDTV?

Hi, now that we are in the exciting digital age, when is HDTV coming along?
Maybe we are simply wasting money on new widescreen tv's based on antiquated
CRT technology and 256 colours from our digital boxes. I stopped using 256
(8 bit depth)colours on my computer in 1995. Wouldn't it be great if we had
16 bit colour depth from the digital system.

"Robert Horton" wrote in message
...
Hi, now that we are in the exciting digital age, when is HDTV coming
along?
Maybe we are simply wasting money on new widescreen tv's based on
antiquated
CRT technology and 256 colours from our digital boxes. I stopped using 256
(8 bit depth)colours on my computer in 1995. Wouldn't it be great if we
had
16 bit colour depth from the digital system.


The government is having a hard time just to get people to pay £99 for
Freeview. Some how the idea of pursuading people to buy new TV's, PVR's etc
for HDTV might not go down well in Whitehall.
Someone did post that the EU where beginning experiments. Perhaps this is
the right approach to share the costs for introducing a HDTV system which
only a minority might take up initially , a kind of EuroTV rather than
Eurofighter. I can't say I would look forward to watching french TV with
subtitles!

"Robert Horton" wrote in message
...
Hi, now that we are in the exciting digital age, when is HDTV coming along?

A single HD service would require equivalent bandwidth to a single analogue
channel, and since the whole idea is to clear the spectrum this didn't happen,
nor is planned, as it stands there isn't even enough bandwidth to provide a
decent SD picture. However, euro1080.tv is launching on DSat next year so any
progress will be made there, DTT is unlikely to change to any great extent for
decades.


Maybe we are simply wasting money on new widescreen tv's based on antiquated
CRT technology and 256 colours from our digital boxes. I stopped using 256
(8 bit depth)colours on my computer in 1995. Wouldn't it be great if we had
16 bit colour depth from the digital system.

That's only for OSD. If you're seeing banding and colour gradients then it's
simply down to the lack of bandwidth (Newsnight is about the worst for this).

Az.

"John Russell" wrote in message
news:[email protected]

Someone did post that the EU where beginning experiments. Perhaps this is
the right approach to share the costs for introducing a HDTV system which
only a minority might take up initially , a kind of EuroTV rather than
Eurofighter. I can't say I would look forward to watching french TV with
subtitles!

It was called Eureka-95 HDTV and was getting off the ground around a decade ago,
some of the Barcelona '92 Olympics was produced in HD for demonstration. But
ultimately it died on its arse along with D2Mac, the then new DVB consortium and
various European governments' seemed to learn a lot from this.

Az.

"John Russell" wrote in message
...

"Robert Horton" wrote in message
...
Hi, now that we are in the exciting digital age, when is HDTV coming
along?
Maybe we are simply wasting money on new widescreen tv's based on
antiquated
CRT technology and 256 colours from our digital boxes. I stopped using 256
(8 bit depth)colours on my computer in 1995. Wouldn't it be great if we
had
16 bit colour depth from the digital system.


The government is having a hard time just to get people to pay £99 for
Freeview. Some how the idea of pursuading people to buy new TV's, PVR's etc
for HDTV might not go down well in Whitehall.
Someone did post that the EU where beginning experiments. Perhaps this is
the right approach to share the costs for introducing a HDTV system which
only a minority might take up initially , a kind of EuroTV rather than
Eurofighter. I can't say I would look forward to watching french TV with
subtitles!

why do you think it would be subtitled. Surely there would be multiple
audio tracks just like there is on DVDs (and Eurosport on satellite)

Tim

hg writes
Only one of the reasons that HDTV is not happening soon is as somebody
said earlier that HDTV sets and boxes are too expensive at the moment
and one idea that's floating around is that HDTV will be broadcast
widely when sets are cheap enough for everyone to afford. This will
happen when plasma and other non CRT technology will be as cheap as
normal TVs are today. So basically the broadcasters are waiting for the
technology to be financially viable and then it'll happen. In the US
and Japan they're doing the opposite they're broadcasting now and the
pain of upgrading is with the consumer right now.

The Australian Government have recently set a requirement for each
network to broadcast a minimum number of hours of HDTV programmes (I
think it's 20 hours per week to start with).

--
Dave

"tim" wrote in message
...

"John Russell" wrote in message
...

"Robert Horton" wrote in message
...
Hi, now that we are in the exciting digital age, when is HDTV coming
along?
Maybe we are simply wasting money on new widescreen tv's based on
antiquated
CRT technology and 256 colours from our digital boxes. I stopped using
256
(8 bit depth)colours on my computer in 1995. Wouldn't it be great if
we
had
16 bit colour depth from the digital system.


The government is having a hard time just to get people to pay £99 for
Freeview. Some how the idea of pursuading people to buy new TV's, PVR's
etc
for HDTV might not go down well in Whitehall.
Someone did post that the EU where beginning experiments. Perhaps this
is
the right approach to share the costs for introducing a HDTV system
which
only a minority might take up initially , a kind of EuroTV rather than
Eurofighter. I can't say I would look forward to watching french TV with
subtitles!

why do you think it would be subtitled. Surely there would be multiple
audio tracks just like there is on DVDs (and Eurosport on satellite)

Tim




I suppose the real point I was making was the US is a single country with a
single language which is a single market in terms of TV. The EU may be a
similer size as a market, but it certainly isn't "single" when it comes to
TV. We don't want to watch French (or german or italien etc) programms be
they subtitled or dubbed.

John Russell wrote:
I can't say I would look forward to watching french TV with
subtitles!
Why would you need subtitles for French TV ;-)

"John Russell" wrote in message
news:[email protected]

I suppose the real point I was making was the US is a single country with a
single language which is a single market in terms of TV. The EU may be a
similer size as a market, but it certainly isn't "single" when it comes to
TV. We don't want to watch French (or german or italien etc) programms be
they subtitled or dubbed.

Not to mention HD in the US has been far from a runaway success with only 250k
units shipped over 5 years, obviously the tuner mandate will change that but
it's hardly a spontaneous thing.

Az.

"Robert Horton" wrote in message
...
Hi, now that we are in the exciting digital age, when is HDTV coming
along?
Maybe we are simply wasting money on new widescreen tv's based on
antiquated
CRT technology and 256 colours from our digital boxes. I stopped using 256
(8 bit depth)colours on my computer in 1995. Wouldn't it be great if we
had
16 bit colour depth from the digital system.


I'm all for HDTV, BUT without bigger TV screens to take advantage of it
instead of the bog standard 28"/32" little will be gained, IMO.

Mart