HD Ready & full HD - whats the diference?

evergreen

Can someone explain the difference please. If we had an HD box from Sky would both types work?

We just ordered a TV which is HD ready- so does that mean we can get HD?

Thanks in advance.

BexTech

You'll be able to watch HD on both.

HD Ready just means it accepts the HD input and scales it to it's resolution, though often does meet the required spec of minimum of 720 lines.

HD ready sets aren't the correct HD format resolutions, so the TV will either have to upsample or downsample the picture to fit.

Full HD, means the TV is at a correct HD resolution.

HD spec is either 1280 x 720 pixals or 1920 x 1080 pixels, Full HD TVs are usually 1920 x 1080 pixels.

HD ready TVs are usually 1336 x 768 or the poorer ones 1024 x 768 or 1024 x 10244, so these have to resample, means you don't quite get as good a picture, but until the cost of Full HD comes down, for many is an OK compromise.

moonrakerz

I was in a large branch of Currys the other day looking at a huge display of flat screen HD TVs. I have to say I was really impressed with the picture quality all of them - £600 up to £2500 ish.
It then took me ages talking to an "assistant" that discover that all the TVs (as I thought) were fed from an HD DVD player. I asked if any of them could be switched to "normal" SD TV - confusion ! Eventually they found one TV which was being fed from a live Sky HD channel which they eventually agreed to switch back to SD Sky - what a disappointment. The picture quality was poor - far worse than my trusty old 6 year old CRT JVC at home.
I had read that many of the HD TVs do not perform as well with SD as non HD TVs - until there is a lot more (free) HD around I'm sticking where I am !

DaveHemmerman

Moonrakerz - I am in same boat did like you did and was dissapointed with picture quality, guess i will be sticking with my Sony Triniton 32" Wide Screen, there is nothing wrong with it as its only 4 1/2 years old. I like my Sonys maybe go for a Bravia 37" next time what do you reckon?

Regards

Dave

Conor_3

WHAT YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE IT HAS is HDCP support on the HDMI connector. In future, HDCP support is going to be a requirement of copy protection.

xycom1

I have a Toshiba 1080P TV with Sky HD. IMO full HD is 1080P resolution - SkyHD only outputs maximum 1080i though, so unless you have a high definition video player which is outputting 1080P there is no additional benefit to having one at the moment.

I find that SD are almost as good as HD... Perhaps just my poor eyesight.

Mr_Mister

moonrakerz wrote: »

I was in a large branch of Currys the other day looking at a huge display of flat screen HD TVs. I have to say I was really impressed with the picture quality all of them - £600 up to £2500 ish.
It then took me ages talking to an "assistant" that discover that all the TVs (as I thought) were fed from an HD DVD player. I asked if any of them could be switched to "normal" SD TV - confusion ! Eventually they found one TV which was being fed from a live Sky HD channel which they eventually agreed to switch back to SD Sky - what a disappointment. The picture quality was poor - far worse than my trusty old 6 year old CRT JVC at home.
I had read that many of the HD TVs do not perform as well with SD as non HD TVs - until there is a lot more (free) HD around I'm sticking where I am !

Yes stores will feed the HD content on the TVs on display to impress and get customers to buy them. Most people who dont do their research will be left disappointed when they take their TV home and put on standard Sky or Freeview.
My advice is to go for Panasonic & Samsung TVs with 100Hz displays. This improves the picture considerably and you will get less 'motion blur' which you get on standard broadcasts. I bought a Panasonic 32" LXD70 recently and the picture quality on Freeview and Standard Sky is impressive.

But if you going to be using a SKY HD box, any good HD TV will do.

missile

moonrakerz wrote: »

Eventually they found one TV which was being fed from a live Sky HD channel which they eventually agreed to switch back to SD Sky - what a disappointment.

Also bear in mind that the Standard signal in TV shops can be a lot worse than your signal at home where you may actually get a better picture

BenL

and some channels on freeview are poor quality compared to others.

ITV4 for instance has very little bandwidth available to it so looks back on larger tv's.

Ben