High Def - is it worth it? (just got Virgin HD)

PaulJM

Here's an interesting one, and I'd really appreciate views on this...

I've got an HD Sony TV in our living room, which has been using its inbuilt freeview tuner for a while.
My aerial is good - I had a new one and got the house re-cabled last year.
But as the TV is 40 inch, the picture has always been a bit pixilated close up, but I can accept that on Standard Def, that will happen.
When I've connected an XBOX on thew HDMI, I've found the high def quite startlingly good - definately an amazing picture.

So I thought I'd add another Virgin box to the one we have on another TV in another room, and thought that now would be a good time to get an HD box and get the TV going the way it was designed. I got an amazing deal too.
Thing is though, I'm disapointed in the picture quality on the HD channels.
I've connected the HDMI, used a different cable, changed the ports a few times on the TV, and checked settings on the box and the TV - and I reckon it's only slightly better than freeview.

So what does everyone think? How do you quantify how good HD is? Maybe I'm being fussy, but the motion still looks a bit blocky, it looks like there is a very sheer cover over the screen. I expected crystal clearness...maybe I shouldn't.

It's worth noting that I've had 'artifacts' and sound glitches on the screen on this new box on ITV SD, and sometimes on HD, and tonight I've seen it very infrequently on BBC HD, which should never do that.
Logged to Virgin by the way...who's 1st line call centres are absolutely awful, and seem interested in fobbing me off...:mad:

sickofusernames

I believe HD channels are only broadcast in 720p and having recently seen a few HD channels on my sister's Virginmedia box it's nothing to get excited about.

As far as normal SD channels are concerned, i've recently noticed that the picture quality on the main channels (BBC1/Itv/c4) seems to have degraded somewhat - maybe some tradeoff of bitrates to compensate for the HD channels? Could someone enlighten me...

CoolHotCold

Yea, its broadcast in 720p or upscaled to 1080i and the quality is DEFIANTLY not like watching a blu ray or HD stuff through Xbox, don't get me wrong its still miles better then the SD stuff, And I Can NOT wait till the Formula 1 season gets started in March as its all HD so BBC HD here I come.

But yea due to the limited bandwidth or bitrate they can pump you do notice a quality issue between Native HD and broadcast HD.

aliEnRIK

HD channels are actually broadcast at 1080i. The box can downscale to 720P if so desired (Though I cant think of any decent reason as to why anyone would, unless they have a HD ready tv and a VERY poor deinterlacer in their tv perhaps)

thor

As far as I am concerned there is nothing lacking with SD qualitywise(even on big screens).
I have seen HD tv and SD tv side by side and find it difficult to disptinguish them from one another and definitely not worth the extra expense despite what the manufacters want us to believe.

CoolHotCold

Perhaps its the fact that Sport and fast moving action or anything requiring fast response from the tv on a i setting gets choppy.

Also why the European Broadcasting Union argued against going for a i setting and pushing for a 720p with a aim to move forward to 1080p
Also Yves Faroudja the pretty much de facto expert on de interlacing stated
"I am amazed that anybody would consider launching new services based on interlace. I have spent all of my life working on conversion from interlace to progressive. Now that I have sold my successful company, I can tell you the truth: interlace to progressive does not work!"
There are some things a deinterlacer can do to combat the issues with a 20th century problem, but there are just some things it can't do.

Besides very few people will notice a difference between a 720 and a 1080 unless they have a particularly large screen and sit close enough to it.

For a 40" TV you could sit at 8 feet and not know/see any difference between a 1080 or a 720, change that to 5 feet and you will.

Inactive

thor wrote: »

As far as I am concerned there is nothing lacking with SD qualitywise(even on big screens).
I have seen HD tv and SD tv side by side and find it difficult to disptinguish them from one another and definitely not worth the extra expense despite what the manufacters want us to believe.

Agreed, it is just that, hype.

I have been told on another thread on here that I need to sit closer to my TV to see the benefits of HD, well I don't want to rearrange my living room so that I can witness the miniscule difference between SD and HD.

Of course there are some that like to believe the hype.

aliEnRIK

If anyone here is suggesting there is no discernable difference between SD and HD then theyre watching the wrong material

The very 1st HD video I watched was a HD trailer of DIRT on the PS3. My jaw dropped (Its still very impressive to watch even now)

Id happily switch between that and downscaling to SD to see if they still believe theres no difference

[Deleted User]

You'd probably be wise to turn off all of the picture enhancing settings in the tvs menu and spend some time with a calibration disc like Digital Video Essentials to get a massively improved picture. If you can't tell the difference, something isn't right. Gotta fix it yourself.

missile

I went a slightly different route. I bought a HD PVR which also upscales SD. I notice a marked improvement, the picture (and sound) quality on SD is much better and HD is simply the best.

OK_Sauce

I can choose to listen to a CD, I can choose to listen to an MP3. On the surface they may sound about the same. Listen through a boombox you probably couldn't tell the difference. Listen through a reasonable hi-fi the difference may become more obvious. Listen through a reference pair of headphones the difference is astounding. I choose to buy a CD over an MP3 because I want the best quality that is available. My kids will download an MP3 because that's how they prefer to download music. I've told them they would get better quality through the purchase of a CD, they still choose the MP3.

After careful consideration, not buying into 'hype' as has been suggested, I did my research and bought an HD TV. I set my new tv up to get the best out of it. The picture is stunning, the tv scales the SD sources very well, the HD is crystal clear. If your tv or HD box does it's job well then it will scale up the SD pictures to fill the HD screen, and you will have a very watchable picture. Different tvs will achieve this to varying degrees. The tv is at the mercy of the tv channel and the bit-rate it pumps out as to how that will look to the viewer. Some tv stations will offer an HD version of their channel offering a greater bitrate, higher resolution picture via the platform you view on, Sky, Freeview, etc. On some tvs, from some viewing distances, you may not notice a lot of difference between the two, with other combinations the difference could be astounding.

It is a sweeping generalisation to say it's all hype because everyone's circumstances are different.