UK: the 'HD Ready' fiasco

Jan B wrote:

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 23:40:25 +0100, Richard Lamont
wrote:

...

The 'HD Ready' spec sets such a low hurdle in terms of display
resolution it would be worthless even if con artists weren't using it
widely on SD kit.

If a display on has to have 720 lines vertical resolution, and we define
this as meaning that it has to have 720 pixels per horizontal line,
then the vertcial resolution (for square display pixels) would be:

9
720 x --
16

which just happens to work out at 405!

There you have it. As long as it has the requisite input sockets on the
back, the native resolution of an 'HD Ready' display can be as low as a
405-line TV.

I don't agree with your reasoning but I share your worries that it is
not the true resolution of the image that gets touted.

I suspect it's tongue-in-cheek "reductum ad absurdum" reasoning to
illustrate the way less than honest manufacturers/sellers have created
yet another opportunity to con the GBP.

--

Peter

In article ,
Peter Hayes wrote:
Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 08:45:59 +0200, Clive wrote:

The little "HD" stuff I've seen recently is nothing to write home
about. Very noticable compression artifacts, loads of motion
artifacts and no true colour shade graduations.

I saw first HD around 10 years ago and was blown away by it.

I first saw it at IBC in Brighton (probably early/mid 80's) and it was
very impressive. The stuff I've seen recently is rubbish by comparison,
it just doesn't have that "view through an open window" appearance.

Wasn't there an HD system round about that time that ran on three 1" C
format machines?

It wasn't so much the system ran on three 1" machines, but that three
mahines had been synched together so that the system could be recorded with
existing technology.

--
From KT24 - in drought-ridden Surrey

Using a RISC OS5 computer

In message , Peter
Hayes writes
Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 08:45:59 +0200, Clive wrote:

The little "HD" stuff I've seen recently is nothing to write home
about. Very noticable compression artifacts, loads of motion artifacts
and no true colour shade graduations.

I saw first HD around 10 years ago and was blown away by it.

I first saw it at IBC in Brighton (probably early/mid 80's) and it was
very impressive. The stuff I've seen recently is rubbish by comparison,
it just doesn't have that "view through an open window" appearance.

Wasn't there an HD system round about that time that ran on three 1" C
format machines?
Four D1s ISTR. It was one of the Eureka projects and was 1250/50. I can
remember editing in a truck at Kingswood(?) using a BVE9000 to drive the
machines.
We did 'Ginger Tree' in the Sony 1125/60 in 1988 (ish). This was
offlined on 525 U-matic - this was a 'by product' of the shoot - and
conformed using Sony HDD1000s. We 'built' a temporary edit suite in the
gallery of TC1 which was being refurbished.
All the effort was totally lost on transmission as the master HD was
downconverted to 525/60 and *then* upconverted to 625/50 for TX.
HD pix were amazing.
--
Chris Booth BBCVT 1963 to 1993

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 00:10:20 GMT, Jeff Rife wrote:

In the UK, and "HD-ready" display must have an HDMI input with HDCP
and there are *no* other rules. It does not need to have a minimum
resolution.

Not my understanding from the EICTA rules:

http://www.eicta.org/press.asp?level...05&do cid=398

Plus the Sharp set in question is not considered HD Ready by the UK
website at http://www.hdready.org.uk

--

JC wrote:

Yee gods. That panel is lower res than a standard definition TV.

No it isn't. The Sharp panels are some of the very, very few UK panels
that actually have a resolution matching PAL, rather than being 480 lines
or some HD resolution that requires up-conversion. The 540 comes from the
576 *visible* lines of PAL, with some deliberate (and relatively minimal,
compared to typical out-of-factory CRT settings) "hard-coded" overscan.
The 960 width is correct for square pixels at 16:9 aspect ratio.

These panels are rare in that they show PAL *without* trying to scale the
picture in the vertical domain. It's quite right to say that the "HD
Ready" advertising is misleading, because they're far too low resolution
to display even 720p without down-conversion. AFAICT Sharp don't have an
HD Ready logo on the sets, nor do Amazon include the official logo on
their site - but they're being very cheeky with "HD Ready" in the title.

--
TTFN, Andrew Hodgkinson
Find some electronic music at: All sorts of other bits and pieces at:
http://www.ampcast.com/pond http://pond.org.uk/

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 23:39:23 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

I can remember using tube cameras on location and all I can say is
thank gawd for chips. ;-)

I quite liked the enforced T breaks as the engineers tinkered with the
cameras. Or the early "switch on" go for breakfast while the kit warmed
up and stabilised. B-)

There is something statisfying about switching on a studio watching the
PPM come back from the RH end stop and going for a coffee. Then coming
back 20mins later to do the replay/record line up from all tape machines
through the desk.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

I'm new to all this HD stuff, but I really want to see a better picture
quality - after suffering the World Cup games from standard Sky TV
output. The grass looked like the weed at the bottom of a stream, all
blurred and wavy. Nothing sharp or crisp through my good old sky box.
Is HD better quality so you can see the difference, or do you still
have to put up with the same compression that makes the picture look so
furry? I took a quick look at some hd tv sites on google like
www.hdtvexpert.co.uk. They reckon HD is 4 times better than like Sky,
but I probably won't be able to afford that for a while. The box costs
so much, and even if it is better, am I going to be wasting (beer)
money if the picture is so compressed that it looks like a poster?

Angus Rae wrote:
tg wrote:
My
question is: Do any new TV's have inbuilt native HD reception or do all current new TV's have to use a HD set-top box?
I thought that HD Ready meant it was ready to receive HDTV through the aerial socket and I'm a biut embarrassed to find it actaully
needs a set top box for HD.

Currently there are _no_ official broadcasts of any HD material that
could be picked up by an aerial. There is a BBC test going on from one
London transmitter using an HDTV form of Digital Terrestrial, but that
is only a test.

There is not sufficient bandwidth available to allow HDTV grade video to
be broadcast for aerial reception at the current time, and this is not
likely to change until analogue switch-off occurs - the last regions
should be finished in 2012. That means it's likely to be six years until
a UK wide HDTV over digital terrestrial service is rolled out. So
there's no reason for any manufacturer to add any kind of HDTV over
digital terrestrial decoder to a TV - it's going to be an extra
manufacturing cost which will be useless for six years, and by the time
there is a use for it things will have moved on and it may not work very
well.

Your current choices for UK HDTV would be; SkyHD, a satellite receiver
capable of decoding MPEG4 HD signals (for the BBC free-to-air HD trials)
or Telewest/NTL. That's it.

"HD Ready" means only two things;

1) The TV can handle 1080i and 720p format video inputs and the display
has a native resolution of at least 720 lines vertically
2) It has either an HDMI or DVI connection which is protected by HDCP,
and can also accept component video

Google for "HD Ready". The first link that comes up (which is from the
Digital TV Group) states quite clearly "Consumers should note that HD
displays will only display an HD picture when connected to an HD
receiver." Just because you thought "HD Ready" meant something different
to what it actually does mean doesn't mean it is a "fiasco", IMHO.

--
Angus G Rae Science & Engineering Support Team
Computing Services
University of Edinburgh
The above opinions are mine, and Edinburgh University can't have them

tg wrote:
last week my mum bought a new television set - a Phillips from Currys - the new flat panel type Model 26PF5521D. While shopping
with her I was specific about getting a HD Ready TV but I now discover this is a minefield for the street punter. Having got the
set home and set up the manual says I will need a set top box to receive the HD signal when it is (eventually) broadcast. The new
TV has a couple of HDMI ports for HD input but I feel I may have been conned by Currys with their 'HD Ready' sign on the TV. My
question is: Do any new TV's have inbuilt native HD reception or do all current new TV's have to use a HD set-top box?
I thought that HD Ready meant it was ready to receive HDTV through the aerial socket and I'm a biut embarrassed to find it actaully
needs a set top box for HD.
Thanks for any advice.


DOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH !