HDTVs.

Bibin

Bibin

Frequent Poster
Anyone know when we'll get anything actually interesting out of them? All that seems to be offered at the moment is awkward frame rates for movies, signal processing lag, poor interpretation of low-res signals, and JPEG-like artifacts even over the nicest of HDMI tuner boxes.

Let's sum this up:

hdtv.png


For a panel that size, for one grand, I want my 4096x3072, or maybe 3200x1800 for all you 16:9 ladies.

3D is kinda cool I suppose, but those glasses are awkward. What if you have friends over? They seemed to have worked around this with tiny prisms, we'll see how well that works.

Thoughts?
 
I see your hands moving, but all I read is blog, blog, blog :S

I really couldn't care if I'm watching my 94 CRT, 76 CRT or our 09 HDTV.
 
I guess it baffles me why people think SD is equatable to HD.

If you don't think there's that big a difference, then clearly you don't need an HDTV. At all.

Yes, there's problems with artifacts when upscaling standard resolution. See, that makes sense, because you're stretching a picture. Doesn't work very well. However, most people who are getting HDTVs can also afford the toys you need to go along with the TV - bluray players/PS3, digital HD cable/satellite, etc. See, Bluray's great because you can fit huge amounts of data on them - like 1920x1080 resolution movies, which don't fit on standard DVDs too great unless you want crappy audio... which you don't.

Unless you just don't care.

Also, text on SD vs HD. 'Nuff said.
 
Image stretching all depends on how well it's done by both the TV and whatever's providing the signal. Case in point: Tomb Raider. Playing the game on my PS2 through component cables is horrendous. The very low resolution (320 x 240 according to my TV) in conjunction with the sharp video signal makes all the imperfections stand out, everything is jagged and gross, and the image being stretched to fit the screen brings out all sorts of icky artifacts on the screen. However, playing the same game on my PS3 with everything properly upscaled makes everything look wonderful. A beautiful, clear image with straight, clean lines and pure colors, no artifacts... overall, it's gorgeous.

As for the 3DTVs, I think they have a ways to go yet in terms of usability. Having to use glasses to view 3D content is very uncomfortable -- the unit I tried out last time I was at Best Buy (a Panasonic, I think) had the most uncomfortable Dang glasses I've ever had the displeasure of using. I had to hold them on my head the whole time because there was no way they'd stay on by themselves, and they were too awkwardly shaped to be comfortable for, say, a whole movie, even if they did stay on your head. Those glasses aren't cheap, either, something like $100 a pair. o_O
 
Wasn't saying SD is superior or equatable. I'm saying HD is not good enough to be justified for those prices.

Blu-ray and HD signals still suffer the same JPEG-style compression artifacts - except now they are SUPER SHARP and so visible. No matter how good of a box you get, the signal's bandwidth isn't high enough to give you a clean image. Look at the score displays when watching sports to see what I mean.

buying the "toys" for an HDTV doesn't suddenly make all my game consoles look good. my Famicom looks very clean on my regular CRT through composite. Composite on most HDTVs looks horrendous, with pixel crawl, poor colors, and noticable lag, a whole extra world of issues.
 
Flat screen CRTs with S-Video input is the way to go. I have a TV with a very flat screen but also a CRT that was very good for 3D games but not so good for 2D games. I recently acquired a way bigger CRT from 2003 but the thing has a giant curve, and Super Mario Sunshine doesn't look so good. It does have 2 S-Video inputs however, but I have yet to see how much better S-Video is. Sega Genesis and Sega Saturn(!) look great on it with composite, which is odd.

2nd - 5th generation = CRT

Post-6th generation = HD LCD
 
Wow. All I need say is wow.

Okay, yes, an HDTV looks like crap with certain sources. But upscaling has gotten better, and it works pretty well for the most part. But a real HD signal is where it really shows off its stuff. When we (my family) first got an HDTV, it was good for movies (upscaling DVD player actually works) but sucked for TV (RF from an outdated DCT). Then we got an HD terminal. Wow. Discovery HD is AMAZING! It's too bad the shows mostly suck. Sadly we don't have any new enough consoles to game on it with, but I DID hook up the Dreamcast with VGA and it was beautiful. Eventually I'll get a component cable for my XBOX and try that.

Also, my computer monitor is 1650X1080, 20". I do most of my gaming on that. That's about all my videocard can handle unfortunately. I doubt it could do full HD with high settings on new games.

The 27" TV for all my retro stuff is an absolute piece of flax when it comes to image quality. Plenty sharp, plenty bright, good colours, but has SERIOUSLY BAD SCANLINE ISSUES. Like, way more pronounced than any other TV I've ever viewed.
 
I've never encountered any issues with tuner boxes being crap because I watch plain ol' over-the-air on my TV. TV still looks a lot better than on my old TV.

My 1080p monitor is just incredible. Everything I play on it looks beautiful. :D
 
My family has a 48" 1080i 3-CRT rear projection HDTV that is about 7 years old. No HDMI, component is the best connection it has. I have yet to see an LCD or plasma HDTV that looked noticeably better using any input, than our TV displaying a DVD at 480p through component. I've seen some with a super crisp picture, but they seemed choppy (like the frame rate was low). In my opinion, compression kills any advantage of HD. I would rather watch a good quality SD video than a low quality HD video. I don't see much difference between HD with Comcast through component compared to SD Dish through composite. Comcast compresses the crap out of their signal.
 
Bibin said:
Blu-ray and HD signals still suffer the same JPEG-style compression artifacts
Click to expand...

What? I've never noticed such things. Ever. There should be no issues with artifacts on a TV properly set up to use an HD signal. If you've hooked up your Bluray player up through composite... then yeah. Not gonna look good. Through HDMI or component? Beautiful. The difference is amazing.

buying the "toys" for an HDTV doesn't suddenly make all my game consoles look good.
Click to expand...

Nope, not at all, that's not what HDTVs are for, unfortunately. They're more made to use HD signals, funnily enough. :lol: If cost vs. practicality is your argument, then by basic principle the argument is invalid - there is NOTHING practical about an HDTV. At all. Unless you play something like Prince of Persia or Hard Rain on an SD TV before and had no *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ing clue what you were doing because you couldn't read the text. Then there is all sorts of practicality to using an HDTV - you can actually read the text.

We get HDTVs because, Dang it, we want to see our movies and games in high res, which it does wonderfully... IF YOUR MOVIE AND GAMES ARE IN HIGH RES. If they're not, and if that's all you care about, then don't get an HDTV, because it's not for you.

If you want some obnoxious resolution beyond 1920x1080, keep in mind that bigger isn't necessarily better - try cranking up your PC's monitor to max resolution and see if you can still read the icons on your desktop - I can't. But then, I'm old. To be honest, on my TV, I don't notice a huge difference between 1920x1080 vs whatever the 780p resolution is (1600x780? Don't remember.) About the only thing I could say is that 1080 looks a bit crisper.

The concept's pretty basic. If you can look at a PS3 on an SD TV, and then compare it to an HDTV, and still say that the difference doesn't warrant the extra cost, then like I said before, HDTV just isn't for you.

But, I will say this - I'd venture to say that the cost of a decent non-HDTV (or are we arguing CRT vs LCD?) would be awfully close to what a decent HDTV would cost. My 40 incher cost me just a tad over $600, and I'm incredibly happy with it. The PS3 I already had, and I didn't even know what I was missing until I hooked up the LCD - I was just blown away by how much better it looked.

I have not noticed framerate problems at all, though I understand some people are more sensitive to these things. I will say that I notice more of a problem with it on computer monitors where, for instance, numbers that change rapidly ghost. I've noticed no ghosting problems on my LCD TV.
 
My dad has a 40" Viso HDTV and sometimes the JPEG artifacts are horrible and very distracting, even when watching HD movies connected via an HDMI cable. Playing Wii on that thing looks like you're playing a Sega Saturn. Oddly, Nintendo 64 rocks on that thing.
 
I have a 32" HDTV in my room and everything is crystal clear.

Got a 53" in our living room and everything is just fine.
 
it's not hooked up through composite, I'm no idiot. I'm talking about HDMI. Artifacts to the max. Most people don't notice it; they're super absorbed with their new purchase and flaxting themselves over sub-par quality advertised as wonderful HD.
 
Bibin said:
it's not hooked up through composite, I'm no idiot. I'm talking about HDMI. Artifacts to the max. Most people don't notice it; they're super absorbed with their new purchase and flaxting themselves over sub-par quality advertised as wonderful HD.
Click to expand...

No, now you're backpedaling. Your complaint was with composite signals:

Bibin said:
Composite on most HDTVs looks horrendous, with pixel crawl, poor colors, and noticable lag, a whole extra world of issues.
Click to expand...

Give me a specific issue with an HD-quality video and I"ll do a comparison on my own TV, but to be quite frank, you can't have that much experience with HD TVs - right now I only have standard cable, and it looks like flax compared to my Bluray movies. But there's a reason for that... my cable signal's getting upscaled.

Edit: Where's that "Hater's gonna hate" animated pic...
 
robm said:
Bibin said:
it's not hooked up through composite, I'm no idiot. I'm talking about HDMI. Artifacts to the max. Most people don't notice it; they're super absorbed with their new purchase and flaxting themselves over sub-par quality advertised as wonderful HD.
Click to expand...

No, now you're backpedaling. Your complaint was with composite signals:

Bibin said:
Composite on most HDTVs looks horrendous, with pixel crawl, poor colors, and noticable lag, a whole extra world of issues.
Click to expand...

Give me a specific issue with an HD-quality video and I"ll do a comparison on my own TV, but to be quite frank, you can't have that much experience with HD TVs - right now I only have standard cable, and it looks like flax compared to my Bluray movies. But there's a reason for that... my cable signal's getting upscaled.

Edit: Where's that "Hater's gonna hate" animated pic...
Click to expand...

That's one complaint.

The JPEG artifacts was with HDMI, on the TV in general, with any signal.

Get an HDTV air tuner, cable tuner, or even FiOS tuner, and hook it up with HDMI. Set it to 1080p. Notice the compression artifacts all over the place, specifically on score displays in sports or similar. With a HDMI-based game system or Blu-ray you won't see this so much, as the game systems are rendering in realtime so network bandwidth isn't the issue, and blu-ray has usually enough storage space to not be so compressed. Real-time transmission, however, takes up so much bandwidth that it will suffer compression artifacts no matter how "good" your TV is.
 
I have a PS3 hooked up via HDMI, and a Megadrive hooked up via RGB. Looks fine to me, some people are too hard to impress.
 
I don't think that blu rays are really compressed at all, 1080p quality with some nice sound. The largest file I've found is a 14 gig mkv for the dark knight which I decompressed to a 36 gig mpeg4.
 
Bibin said:
The JPEG artifacts was with HDMI, on the TV in general, with any signal.
Click to expand...

False. What you are complaining about is a content issue, not a TV issue. If you are inputting a good 1080p content source via HDMI to a good 1080p TV, it is going to look great.

The artifacts are from scaling. That simple.
 
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