HD and SD side-by-side

On Wed, 6 Aug 2008 08:18:20 +0100, Stan The Man wrote:

On 2008-08-06 00:48:08 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
said:

In article ,
Stan The Man wrote:
I then tried to evaluate the HD TV's handling of SD signals. These
channels were variable in quality but they were all a lot less
satisfying on an HD TV. They looked like what they we small images
digitally magnified to fit the larger space. If my SD TV gave me 95%
satisfaction then the HD TV reduced that to 65%. Bad enough to make me
put aside the new TV and keep the old one until more HD content is
available... or shell out for SkyHD with its significantly greater HD
content and leave the TV's built-in FreeSat receiver to die a lonely
death.

Sounds like something is making a poor job of upscaling.

Ignoring the test broadcasts much of the BBC HD output looks little
different to SD on my set. A prime example was Miss Potter on Sunday. It
looked fine - but then so does much decent SD. The only thing I've really
watched that was *obviously* HD was Wimbledon. Bonekickers also doesn't
really do the format justice.

The Wimbledon preview clips I saw last night were astoundingly good and
I can't wait to see more sport in HD. Desperate to immerse myself in HD
last night , I even sat through an hour of a very old man singing
really badly, just so that I could study his face in close-up to look
for any signs of the reduced colour palette posterisation which still
occasionally ruins a digital SD transmission. There was none. The
images were perfect. I watched Bonekickers too which had never appealed
before -- but when the pictures are so pure, almost any old rubbish
becomes watchable.

Stan

I have the 50" Freesat Panny, but I knew what to expect from Freesat
HD, knowing I could only get BBC HD and occasionally ITV HD (there has
been no ITV HD since I bought the telly except for Harley St, but I'm
out Thursday nights so that doesn't count). There is also Luxe TV in
HD which is available by tuning in 'Other Sat' stations. It's crap,
but it is in HD. As fot SD on my telly, it really varies from channel
to channel and even programme to programme. SD will look worse on
your 42" than your old 37" due to the low bitrates. It's evn worse on
my 50" but then I mainly bought it for watching Blu-Ray.

Marky P.

Marky P wrote:

I have the 50" Freesat Panny, but I knew what to expect from Freesat
HD, knowing I could only get BBC HD and occasionally ITV HD (there has
been no ITV HD since I bought the telly except for Harley St, but I'm
out Thursday nights so that doesn't count). There is also Luxe TV in
HD which is available by tuning in 'Other Sat' stations. It's crap,
but it is in HD. As fot SD on my telly, it really varies from channel
to channel and even programme to programme. SD will look worse on
your 42" than your old 37" due to the low bitrates. It's evn worse on
my 50" but then I mainly bought it for watching Blu-Ray.

That's the thing. With proper HD broadcasts and BluRay you can sit close to a
big screen and marvel at the detail. With SD you need to get so far back for
the artefacts to vanish, with that size screen in most homes, it requires
going outside and half way up the garden path.


--
Mark
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"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Mark Carver wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Sounds like something is making a poor job of upscaling.

Ignoring the test broadcasts much of the BBC HD output looks little
different to SD on my set. A prime example was Miss Potter on Sunday.
It looked fine - but then so does much decent SD. The only thing I've
really watched that was *obviously* HD was Wimbledon. Bonekickers also
doesn't really do the format justice.

I agree. A lot of drama on BBC HD suffers the same treatment as on SD.
Softened up images, gamma buggered around with, and field skipped.

Yup. It would never do to have 'unmessed' with pictures on drama - the
public simply wouldn't accept it. ;-)


Yes I sometimes can't help wondering if many of the average transmissions
actually stretch the SD system to anywhere near its limits.
In the BBC news yesterday there was a short item originating from China,
which drew my attention simply because of its impressive picture quality, I
couldn't help thinking well that's coming all the way from China so why
isn't the picture quality of the home generated stuff equally as good.

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...

That's the thing. With proper HD broadcasts and BluRay you can sit close
to a big screen and marvel at the detail. With SD you need to get so far
back for the artefacts to vanish, with that size screen in most homes, it
requires going outside and half way up the garden path.


I recently purchased a 37 inch Philips because I was so impressed by the
picture quality in an in store demonstration, however when I was looking
around the same store a few weeks later I noticed that a Sharp LCD TV in the
same position also had a really impressive picture quality on it, tracing
the source back I found it was connected to a Sony BluRay player.

All of the other demo models appeared to be connected (presumably by a kind
of composite loop) to a standard DVD player (displaying the usual suspect
cartoon film) and didn't look anywhere near as good in comparison, I think
this might be some kind of ruse they use when they have a large amount of a
certain model they wish to shift!

However suffice to say that from a viewing distance of around 9 feet and
connected to my Humax PVR via RGB SCART (which for some reason appears to
give a sharper picture than its own internal Freeview tuner, despite there
being no upscaling) I am more than pleased, and that's coming from someone
who put off purchasing an LCD simply because of the comparison when viewed
against a good CRT, which IMHO still stands, as 'none' of them look all that
good displaying SD when being examined from about a foot away!

In article , Ivan wrote:
Yes I sometimes can't help wondering if many of the average transmissions
actually stretch the SD system to anywhere near its limits.

They don't. Nowhere near. It makes HD seem pointless. HD *can* achieve
better performance than what SD *can* achieve, but in reality the best
performance of SD has not been achieved for many years.

Presumably this also applies to what is currently being broadcast as HD, and
for the same reasons, though I haven't seen any recent HD broadcasts so I
can only guess. Maybe they're taking a bit more trouble over HD because it's
new and they want people to buy it, but when it becomes routine I expect it
will go the same way as everything else.

We could have an enormous improvement in picture quality - i.e. back to what
was normal a couple of decades ago - simply by the proper use of what we've
already got.

Rod.
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In article en.co.uk,
Roderick Stewart wrote:
In article , Ivan wrote:
Yes I sometimes can't help wondering if many of the average
transmissions actually stretch the SD system to anywhere near its
limits.

They don't. Nowhere near. It makes HD seem pointless. HD *can* achieve
better performance than what SD *can* achieve, but in reality the best
performance of SD has not been achieved for many years.

Yup.

Presumably this also applies to what is currently being broadcast as HD,
and for the same reasons, though I haven't seen any recent HD
broadcasts so I can only guess. Maybe they're taking a bit more trouble
over HD because it's new and they want people to buy it, but when it
becomes routine I expect it will go the same way as everything else.

As I said I've not seen that much - but aside from *parts* of the test
broadcasts the only thing that impressed this BOF was Wimbledon. Now if I
weren't impressed by any of it I could put it down to my DLP set which
isn't full HD - or my aging eyes - but the fact that some is stunning and
some not means it's down to 'them' as always.

We could have an enormous improvement in picture quality - i.e. back to
what was normal a couple of decades ago - simply by the proper use of
what we've already got.

Yup again.

Rod.

--
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Dave Plowman London SW
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"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
Stan The Man wrote:

Firstly, I scrambled through the FreeSat menu looking for some HD
programmes (at 7pm on Tuesday). There was none. Not quite true because
the BBC HD Preview channel was transmitting sample clips of different
types of programme in HD and I could see that a couple of real HD
broadcasts were scheduled for later in the evening. But there was nothing
else HD anywhere to be seen. Perhaps someone would confirm this. But
based on my search, there is only disappointment awaiting anyone who buys
a FreeSat receiver hoping to see HD programmes on their new HD TV...

ITV HD broadcasts are as an interactive service. A 'Red Dot' prompt
appears on Ch 103 when an ITV-1 programme is available in HD, and pressing
Red should take you to the HD version.



I've heard of "plus 1" services but is "ITV-1" ITV but an hour ahead?

Just as a query, for what reason would they have to stop people with certain
postcodes watching hd content? And how would they know you were there
anyway, surely you could move about the country and still get the content.
Weird.

Brian

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"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
Stan The Man wrote:

Firstly, I scrambled through the FreeSat menu looking for some HD
programmes (at 7pm on Tuesday). There was none. Not quite true because
the BBC HD Preview channel was transmitting sample clips of different
types of programme in HD and I could see that a couple of real HD
broadcasts were scheduled for later in the evening. But there was nothing
else HD anywhere to be seen. Perhaps someone would confirm this. But
based on my search, there is only disappointment awaiting anyone who buys
a FreeSat receiver hoping to see HD programmes on their new HD TV...

ITV HD broadcasts are as an interactive service. A 'Red Dot' prompt
appears on Ch 103 when an ITV-1 programme is available in HD, and pressing
Red should take you to the HD version. However, the only regular HD
broadcast from ITV is the diabolical Thursday night series, 'Harley
Street'. Also be aware that owing to politics between ITV Ltd and STV and
UTV, no ITV HD programming is available to Freesat receivers on Scottish
or NI postcodes.

What I saw of the BBC HD preview clips was stunning. But there was all
too little of it. Is FreeSat going to offer more than this? As it stands,
it offers no competition at all to SkyHD... assuming that SkyHD matches
the quality of the BBC HD previews I was able to watch.

From this Friday, for two weeks BBC HD would seem to go 24/7 primarily
with Olympic coverage. Whether that momentum will be continued after the
games remains to be seen.


--
Mark
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Brian Gaff wrote:
Just as a query, for what reason would they have to stop people with certain
postcodes watching hd content? And how would they know you were there
anyway, surely you could move about the country and still get the content.
Weird.

The mapping of the correct BBC and ITV regions to the Freesat EPG relies on
the user entering their postcode during the initial set up of the box. (You
can change the postcode later at will). However the ITV HD service is provided
by ITV Ltd, who are really the resultant company from all the English and
Welsh ITV companies merging over the last 15 years. Scotland is now served by
STV (who gobbled up Grampian some time ago) and Northern Ireland by UTV. Both
STV and UTV are separate companies to ITV. As the red dot invites the viewer
to move away from his regular SD ITV channel, to the HD version, this means
that STV and UTV viewers would be directed away from their intended
advertisements. You can understand that STV and UTV wouldn't be very happy
about that. Therefore the red dot prompt does not appear on Scottish and NI
postcodes. Some Digital Spy posters have written to STV, and their party line
is that it's a branding issue, but IMHO the loss of advertising must be the
prime factor.

I spoke to a senior engineering chap from ITV last month, and he said the idea
of the Freesat system returning you to your ITV 1 SD region during ad breaks
was seriously considered as a solution to this, but experiments showed there
was an unacceptable level of 'crashing about' as the boxes changed transponder
and stream.

Of course, for savvy types in STV and UTV land, all they need to do to watch
ITV HD is change their postcode setting to an English or Welsh one.

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Mark
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