HD quite poor or SD upconversion too good?

I've finally bitten the bullet and gone for an LCD. As I have a V+ box I
thought it was about time, especially as the good old 28" panny CRT was
getting a bit long in the tooth. But I'm a bit miffed over the perceived
quality of HD. I've plumped for the Sony KDL32-W4000U, after all it does get
5* from What Hi fi and everyone else seems to rate it too. Having seen how
poor a scart picture looks from Sky on one of it's predecessors, I was a bit
worried, but HDMI seems great at 1080i, in fact all my worries about poor SD
pictures on LCDs seem unfounded, the odd noticeable interlacing issues close
up but no more than to be expected so far. So much so that I can hardly tell
the difference in the Olympic coverage between BBC ONE and BBC HD! Graphics
look slightly softer and detail is not as refined, but given the supposed
quality difference there should be between 576i and 1080i, the SD pictures
look great. Is this a case that the V+ box has such a good upconvertor or
that BBC HD isn't as good as it could be? Or just the fact that HD doesn't
make all that much difference at 32 inches, even with a full 1920x1080
display?

Now on to the Blu ray!

Mrs A Trellis wrote:
I've finally bitten the bullet and gone for an LCD. As I have a V+ box I
thought it was about time, especially as the good old 28" panny CRT was
getting a bit long in the tooth. But I'm a bit miffed over the perceived
quality of HD. I've plumped for the Sony KDL32-W4000U, after all it does get
5* from What Hi fi and everyone else seems to rate it too. Having seen how
poor a scart picture looks from Sky on one of it's predecessors, I was a bit
worried, but HDMI seems great at 1080i, in fact all my worries about poor SD
pictures on LCDs seem unfounded, the odd noticeable interlacing issues close
up but no more than to be expected so far. So much so that I can hardly tell
the difference in the Olympic coverage between BBC ONE and BBC HD! Graphics
look slightly softer and detail is not as refined, but given the supposed
quality difference there should be between 576i and 1080i, the SD pictures
look great. Is this a case that the V+ box has such a good upconvertor or
that BBC HD isn't as good as it could be? Or just the fact that HD doesn't
make all that much difference at 32 inches, even with a full 1920x1080
display?

By V+ do you mean Virgin Cable ?

If so, I've read elsewhere that Virgin use MPEG2 for BBC HD ? I assume this is
transcoded from the MPEG4 Astra feed, so if so I'd expect crap results. Never
seen it for myself though, and I'm not certain what I've read is true ?

Watching BBC HD and BBC SD on Astra using a Sky HD box there's a world of
difference.

Now on to the Blu ray!

Now, that should look good !


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

"Mrs A Trellis" wrote in message
...
worried, but HDMI seems great at 1080i, in fact all my worries about poor
SD pictures on LCDs seem unfounded, the odd noticeable interlacing issues
close up but no more than to be expected so far. So much so that I can
hardly tell the difference in the Olympic coverage between BBC ONE and BBC
HD! Graphics look slightly softer and detail is not as refined, but given
the supposed quality difference there should be between 576i and 1080i,
the SD pictures look great.

I've only seen a few minutes of the oympics on HD (720p, also from cable),
but it didn't look up to standard (seemed like a lower than normal bitrate).
For some of the best HD, look at Antiques Roadshow when it's on.

How far away are you from the screen? Apparently you have to sit about 4
feet away, for 32"/1080, according to one table I saw. Any further and extra
HD detail will blur.


--
Bartc

In article ,
Mark Carver wrote:
Watching BBC HD and BBC SD on Astra using a Sky HD box there's a world
of difference.

I only saw a bit of the swimming at 6 o'clock and it was ok - but not the
difference there was at Wimbledon. Some very strange fleshtones in the
studio stuff too.

--
*If all is not lost, where the hell is it?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Mark Carver wrote:
Watching BBC HD and BBC SD on Astra using a Sky HD box there's a world
of difference.

I only saw a bit of the swimming at 6 o'clock and it was ok - but not the
difference there was at Wimbledon. Some very strange fleshtones in the
studio stuff too.

No, the Wimbledon broadcasts still take some beating.

By the way, Arena OBs (not the Beeb/SIS) did the HD coverage at Centre Court
this year.

I wonder what quality/bit rate the links from Beijing, and between the venues
and IBC are ?



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

On 2008-08-09 17:26:08 +0100, "Mrs A Trellis" said:

Now on to the Blu ray!

I sat down to break my blu-ray virginity yesterday morning with a boxed
set of the BBC's Planet Earth, my son's PS3 player (or some similar
digits) and the new 42in Panny Viera plasma (with built-in FreeSat).

Plan was to watch one episode but I ended up watching the lot at one
sitting. A day later, I am still stunned by the photography and the
graphic detail in every scene. Even if you never watch nature
programmes, I urge you to watch this. Only the BBC could afford to make
a series of such scale and with such extrordinary production values --
and never was our licence money put to better use.

I noticed that the BBC HD channel was broadcasting one of the Planet
Earth programmes yesterday afternoon so I was able to compare the TV
and blu-ray versions side by side. Good as the HD-TV broadcast was, the
blu-ray version was a clear order of magnitude better (=sharper).

I have a few blu-ray movies to watch but I can't imagine that it is
possible to better the Planet Earth viewing experience.

Do, please, buy it.

Stan

On Aug 10, 11:05*am, Stan The Man wrote:
On 2008-08-09 17:26:08 +0100, "Mrs A Trellis" said:

Now on to the Blu ray!

I sat down to break my blu-ray virginity yesterday morning with a boxed
set of the BBC's Planet Earth, my son's PS3 player (or some similar
digits) and the new 42in Panny Viera plasma (with built-in FreeSat).

Plan was to watch one episode but I ended up watching the lot at one
sitting. A day later, I am still stunned by the photography and the
graphic detail in every scene. Even if you never watch nature
programmes, I urge you to watch this. Only the BBC could afford to make
a series of such scale and with such extrordinary production values --
and never was our licence money put to better use.

I noticed that the BBC HD channel was broadcasting one of the Planet
Earth programmes yesterday afternoon so I was able to compare the TV
and blu-ray versions side by side. Good as the HD-TV broadcast was, the
blu-ray version was a clear order of magnitude better (=sharper).

I have a few blu-ray movies to watch but I can't imagine that it is
possible to better the Planet Earth viewing experience.

Do, please, buy it.

Stan

Some interesting comments on Amazon on the mix of SD and HD in Planet
Earth and how much better it looks on Blu-ray than TV (apart from one
of the episodes which is a bit ropey!). This could have something to
do with the Beeb's use of HDCAM for delivery on HD channels. This uses
a pixel resolution of 1440x1080 at a pixel aspect ratio of 1.33:1.
Some new specs have been released now that the channel has gone full
time and has approval from the BBC Trust. Delivery should now be on
HDCamSR at full 1920x1080 for all programming from the Autumn.
I don't believe Virgin will be taking the off air satellite feed and
re-encoding it to Mpeg2, it would look really poor if they did and
every odd given that many of it's own channels are played out by
RedBee media from the same place they play out the BBC services in
White City!
Sitting close up to the TV the MPEG compression artifacts are quite
noticable on SD; which do go away on HD, but I was surprised how well
they disappear from view as you move away from the screen. I am quite
surprised though at the amount of noticeable noise on the HD picture
in the olympics, Lark Rise to Candleford and even to a certain extent
Planet Earth. Maybe i need to spend £150 on a top of the range HDMI
lead to improve the picture quality!!! ;-