Selecting an HDTV

Tam wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:27:22 -0400 Beeno
wrote:
"Tam" wrote in message
. ..
Best Buy near my house has the TVs connected to an OTA
cable.

now that I'd like to see.

Based on his NNTP-Posting-Host header, he is somewhere
in New Jersey. Maybe
he'll help narrow it down to the exact store.

Best Buy of Holmdel NJ. SR35 near Parkway exit 114.
Pushing the channel up/down button gave me channel
numbers like 2.1, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1. I think that implies
OTA.

My recollection is that those could be unencoded QAM channels from a cable
system.

I scanned my Comcast cable system and came up with 333 QAM channels, about
18 of which were watchable. My recollection was that every channel had a
point one. That was a while ago, so my recollection of the channel numbers
is a bit fuzzy, but I seem to recall that they all ended with a point one.

Numbers like 2.2 (decimal fraction not 1) imply OTA as cable channels
generally have no subchannels past the first one.

WGD wrote:

BTW, would someone clearup my feeble brain regarding next year, an HDTV
Class 101 question. I understand that analog will be shelved, digital being
the only format (in most cases, referring to some of the smaller stations
who will continue piping out analog signals). Analog or digital, 4:3
material will still abound. Yes? Or is the to digital conversion going to
result in 16:9 imagery only?? In our area, we have very little in the way
of OTA material - Comcast dominates the landscape.

Best,
Wayne


There's a lot of existing 4:3 material still floating around, some
analog, some digital, some HD, and I don't expect it's going anywhere
soon. It's always going to depend on the source material, and what the
local OTA broadcaster does with it.

I've seen OTA digital broadcasters send everything between "it is what
it is - good luck widdat" to always framing 4:3 in a 16:9 signal,
uprezzing if necessary, and putting their station logo in the side bars.
I prefer the latter.

--
jer
email reply - I am not a 'ten'

Unfortunately or not, digital broadcasting does not mean 16:9 nor
HD.

wrote in message
...
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:12:20 -0400 Tam wrote:

| Best Buy of Holmdel NJ. SR35 near Parkway exit 114. Pushing the channel
| up/down button gave me channel numbers like 2.1, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1. I think
| that implies OTA.

That sure seems like OTA TV to me. I assume their antenna pointed to NYC,
so you couldn't test the Philly channels as easily.

There is an antenna about 25 feet over their roof. Didn't notice if it had a
rotator. NYC stations are less than 25 miles away, on an almost entirely
over water path.

Tam
--
|WARNING: Due to extreme spam, I no longer see any articles originating
from |
| Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by more
readers |
| you will need to find a different place to post on Usenet.
|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (email for humans: first name in lower case at
ipal.net) |

"WGD" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
Well - a lot in the way of useful replies to my original post. BTW, the
notion of viewing stretched, "Justified" as Panasonic calls it, applies
most often to daily broadcasts. Stretched is only done to fill up the
available space.

This afternoon I visited a Best Buy (down the road from Circuit City).
Recall, the Circuit City chap said that no means was provided in their
store to demonstrate 4:3 TV imagery. The Best Buy rep immediately
switched a 50" to their store's "low-res" source. Crummy. He said that
it was not the right kind of signal, and so forth. It was noisy and
unflattering. He unsolicitedly told me that they experience many returns
after Mabel and Harry bring home their new hi-res toy only to find that
the majority of their viewing looked awfull. And as was with Circuit
City, many TVs come back.

BTW, would someone clearup my feeble brain regarding next year, an HDTV
Class 101 question. I understand that analog will be shelved, digital
being the only format (in most cases, referring to some of the smaller
stations who will continue piping out analog signals). Analog or digital,
4:3 material will still abound. Yes? Or is the to digital conversion
going to result in 16:9 imagery only?? In our area, we have very little
in the way of OTA material - Comcast dominates the landscape.

Best,
Wayne


For what it's worth, I just looked at the local NBC secondary DT channel. It
is 480P 4:3.

Tam



"WGD" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
I visited Circuit City's store here in Sarasota this afternoon - serious
interest in a 46" display (cause that is what the cavity will
accommodate).

ALL displays were "tuned" to an HD channel piped down COMCAST's cable.

NONE of the displays could be switched to a standard 4:3 NTSC image.

As you all know (just repeating to clarify my thoughts) good TVs have
means to stretch a 4:3 to 16:9 as does our Panasonic 32". The stretch
is not linear - circle in the center is round, circles at right and left
will be slightly "egg" shaped. Thus center of the screen faces look
good. Pasnasonic calls this their Justify mode. Thus viewing 4:3 TV
programming is not hard to accept.

Back to Circuit City. I am not about to plop down $1,800 - $2,500 for a
46" display without first seeing how the mnfr handles upconversion, let
alone fitting a 4:3 in a 16:9 space.

Am I wrong? And/or is Circuit City not thinking clearly? Or are they
purposely staying away from showing a 4:3?

Yes, they and probably likewise for Best Buy down the street, are pushing
Comcast. For this writer, I see little advantage to HDTV programming -
do I really want, need to watch WFLA, channel 10 news in HD? - when Good
DVDs (NOT Blu-Ray) are available and keep my screen popping for a fair
number of evening and weekend hours.

BTW, the salesman told me that a fair number of TVs come back 'cause once
home, they do not look like what they did in the store. LOL NO one
should be surprised at this.

Pls, where has my thinking gone astray? Tear the above apart - open to
thinking outside of the rock I may be under.

Wayne

On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:45:20 -0400 Tam wrote:

| There is an antenna about 25 feet over their roof. Didn't notice if it had a
| rotator. NYC stations are less than 25 miles away, on an almost entirely
| over water path.

Holmdel is in a good position for NYC TV, within grade B, possibly in grade A.
But they are close to the grade B of Philly, and should be able to get some
of them with an antenna in that direction (it's mostly fairly flat land).

--
|WARNING: Due to extreme spam, I no longer see any articles originating from |
| Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by more readers |
| you will need to find a different place to post on Usenet. |
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (email for humans: first name in lower case at ipal.net) |

On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:26:43 -0400 Arny Krueger wrote:

| I scanned my Comcast cable system and came up with 333 QAM channels, about
| 18 of which were watchable. My recollection was that every channel had a
| point one. That was a while ago, so my recollection of the channel numbers
| is a bit fuzzy, but I seem to recall that they all ended with a point one.

They have a different numbering scheme. Here, the .2 and .3 could be received
over Comcast and were the same as the OTA, until Comcast decided to encrypt
all digital channels. Now all that is not encrypted is analog.


| Numbers like 2.2 (decimal fraction not 1) imply OTA as cable channels
| generally have no subchannels past the first one.

They CAN do this. They probably decided long ago that such schemes were not
as clear to users as simple numbers. In a way they are right. But I also
hate to have to punch in some 3 digit number just to get the local NBC in HD.
OTA it's 9.1 ... still 3 buttons to press, but at least one of them is the
familiar number.

--
|WARNING: Due to extreme spam, I no longer see any articles originating from |
| Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by more readers |
| you will need to find a different place to post on Usenet. |
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (email for humans: first name in lower case at ipal.net) |

WGD wrote:

This afternoon I visited a Best Buy (down the road from Circuit City). Recall, the Circuit City chap said that no
means was provided in their
store to demonstrate 4:3 TV imagery. The Best Buy rep immediately
switched a 50" to their store's "low-res" source. Crummy. He said that
it was not the right kind of signal, and so forth. It was noisy and
unflattering.

Was that being stretched or justified? Did you try it on a Sony XBR4 or XBR5?
Those models supposedly have a better scaling engine, but you pay a premium.
On my Sharp LC52D-82U, the stretched or justified looks terrible. I found that
I prefer it not stretched with the pillar bars. That gives me 4:3 at 42" diagonal,
which is just fine with me. At first, I was upset with the stretching, but it really
doesn't look good stretched, anyway.

A guy I work with bought an LCD about five years ago and he's already having
fluorescent backlighting problems. Purple near the edges, he says. It makes
me think these things may not have the lifespan of which we are accustomed
with CRTs.

In article ,
wrote:

I've seen it called "Panoramic". I hate it. I would much rather put 4:3
in pillarbox and get the right aspect ratio everywhere. Different people
like different things. I just hope a TV station/network never turns a 4:3
program into such a think in HD transmission as that would be hard to undo.

I have a secondary weather channel here (24-2 in Austin, TX) which is
being displayed in wide mode. Except that the original picture isnt, as
I can tell by switching my tuner to its rarely used "wide that ain't"
anamorphic display mode, and filling my 4:3 CRT with what is clearly the
correct aspect ratio. (Especially during the E/I dump right now.) I
don't have any tuners which tell the exact mode being sent, but I think
they could switch to the correct mode if they cared.

This is particularly annoying because all my local HD stations broadcast
4:3 content windowboxed and upconverted to their usual HD resolution, so
I often leave my tuner in zoom mode. This causes the weather subchannel
to get cropped at both sides. It's even more annoying on the bedroom
TVs, because I adjusted my living room TV for minimum overscan, so more
of the edges get cropped.

If the stream was sent as 4:3 SD, everyone's tuner could configurably do
the "right" thing depending on the aspect ratio of what it was connected
to. Right now there probably aren't a lot of 4:3 ATSC sets in actual
use, but with all the converter boxes out there, just wait until next
year.

Bruce Tomlin wrote in
:

In article ,
wrote:

I've seen it called "Panoramic". I hate it. I would much rather put
4:3 in pillarbox and get the right aspect ratio everywhere.
Different people like different things. I just hope a TV
station/network never turns a 4:3 program into such a think in HD
transmission as that would be hard to undo.

I have a secondary weather channel here (24-2 in Austin, TX) which is
being displayed in wide mode. Except that the original picture isnt,
as I can tell by switching my tuner to its rarely used "wide that
ain't" anamorphic display mode, and filling my 4:3 CRT with what is
clearly the correct aspect ratio. (Especially during the E/I dump
right now.) I don't have any tuners which tell the exact mode being
sent, but I think they could switch to the correct mode if they cared.

This is particularly annoying because all my local HD stations
broadcast 4:3 content windowboxed and upconverted to their usual HD
resolution, so I often leave my tuner in zoom mode. This causes the
weather subchannel to get cropped at both sides. It's even more
annoying on the bedroom TVs, because I adjusted my living room TV for
minimum overscan, so more of the edges get cropped.

If the stream was sent as 4:3 SD, everyone's tuner could configurably
do the "right" thing depending on the aspect ratio of what it was
connected to. Right now there probably aren't a lot of 4:3 ATSC sets
in actual use, but with all the converter boxes out there, just wait
until next year.


Suggest the new Toshiba Razan (sp) series best picutre out there.