HDTV and YOU!

[MalDON]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

actually I do get 1080p from time warner. It's just compressed. That last post of yours proved that you don't know what you are talking about. Most if not all video games are upscaled. Game consoles are still not powerful enough to render out full 1080. Go do some research next time you try to argue a point.

[Afrobean]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

actually I do get 1080p from time warner. It's just compressed.

Jeez

How compressed is that ****? Must look like garbage for them to bring you so much information at the speed required... do they knock down the frame rate too? I was trying to watch an episode of The Office on hulu the other day at 480p, and they lowered the framerate on that so much that combined with the hard zooms, it was totally unwatchable.

But I digress. The point is that people who are interested in HD are interested in QUALITY. They don't want a 1080p signal streaming at 50 kb/s. They want a fully defined image with no artifacts. They don't want to be getting a framerate like 10 fps, they want the 24 fps that the film is natively recorded in.

That last post of yours proved that you don't know what you are talking about. Most if not all video games are upscaled. Game consoles are still not powerful enough to render out full 1080. Go do some research next time you try to argue a point.

wut

I said "SOME gaming". There are a handful of console titles that support it, and some computer games can support the resolutions as well. Most console games don't go above 720p, and Wii can only do 480p at best (but they don't even include component cables with the system), but the PS3 and Xbox 360 both have a slew of 1080p native games. I don't not know what I'm talking about, and in the cases that I do, I make sure the things I say are right. For example, I was only roughly familiar with a lot of the topics I touched on in the initial post, so I had wikipedia open the entire time I wrote as reference.

[MalDON]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

no. The video on the games are rendered sub hd then upscaled. There's a site with the real resolutions.

A compressed 1080p video at 30 fps is between 8-10 gigs. I can easily download that in the time the movie plays. Remember, tv doesn't have all the extra audio tracks like a disk would. Also, netflix is bringing hd streaming to the 360 in one day.

[Izzy]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

My plasma tv is 1080i, Don't know of many things that would even be 1080p

I can't even tell the difference on my xbox from setting it to 1080i over 720p

[Afrobean]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

no. The video on the games are rendered sub hd then upscaled. There's a site with the real resolutions.

What is this site? Because the site I identified named a handful of games that were tested and identified to be 1080p, as well as an even larger list of games that had not yet been tested, but were identified on the box as being 1080p native.

A compressed 1080p video at 30 fps is between 8-10 gigs. I can easily download that in the time the movie plays.

Sorry, I guess you can download 2 mb/s but I (and many others) definitely can't.

Furthermore, notice that you say "compressed". Most folks (that is, 1080p fans) would rather have UNCOMPRESSED, even if the quality of the compression is remarkably high.

Remember, tv doesn't have all the extra audio tracks like a disk would.

"If you like surround sound, lossless audio, or commentary tracks, you're gonna be in a world of pain WHEN DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION KILLS BLURAY LOL"

Also, netflix is bringing hd streaming to the 360 in one day.

Yeah, hi, read this:

"Basic formats are as follows: 480, 720, 1080. There are a few others, but they're largely forgettable or not worthy of looking at in this case. The skinny on it is: 480 is standard definition, 720 is high definition (HD), and 1080 is full HD."

HD means 720p, so to automatically assume 1080p when you see the word "HD" is wrong... 720p is not hard at all to stream (notice that all HD channels are 720p or 1080i), but 1080p requires 2.25 as many pixels displayed as 720p.

And finally, as far as whether or not Netflix's HD content is 1080p, all I'll say on the matter is that if they manage to deliver 1080p, the quality will not be up to snuff compared to BD's essentially perfect 1080p image. It might be better than a 720p signal, but if there are artifacts and **** like that, it's not worth it at all.

My plasma tv is 1080i, Don't know of many things that would even be 1080p

Like I said, the only thing that is would be Blu-ray and SOME games. All broadcast HD is 720p or 1080i.

I can't even tell the difference on my xbox from setting it to 1080i over 720p

That's because of two things.

#1: Most 360 games are not 1080p native, so there is not additional clarity from using a 1080p screen compared to 720.

#2: 1080p is visually only a little better than 720p. It's technically a LOT better, but the human eye cannot tell the difference so easily.

[Tps222]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

I'm on a fiber campus, and I've reached 7.6mb/s on a download, and I can upload around 5.5mb/s if I need to. I can stream 720p without a problem.

Also, laser teleivions according to wikipedia

Advantages
One major claim of laser advocates is the ability to produce undiluted, perfect colors allowing precise hue mixing. Advocates claim that 90% of the perceptible color gamut can potentially be reproduced.[18] Other improvements that laser advocates claim are bulbs that will never blow out, and increased efficiency by using two-thirds less power than traditional rear projection televisions.[17] Historically, however, lasers have been too bulky and expensive for widespread adoption.
The laser technology advocates claim that the technology will allow displays with a richer, more vibrant color palette than the conventional plasma, LCD or CRT displays.[17]
They also claim the displays will:[19]
be half the weight and cost of Plasma or LCD displays
require around 25% of the power required by Plasma or LCD displays
be very thin like Plasma and LCD displays are today
have a very wide colour gamut. Twice the color of today's HDTVs.
have a 50,000 hour life
maintain full power output for the lifespan of the laser, resulting in a picture that doesn't progressively degrade over time, such as with plasma, LCD and CRT technology

Like I said, 90% of the color gamut as opposed to 40%.

[Afrobean]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

I like that it sounds like a better format, but I really don't buy the color malarkey.

To me, it kinda sounds like LCD's relationship to Plasma. Like, yeah, it'll be king in the future, but the picture difference isn't really like night and day. It'll beat out the other kinds of TVs, I'd bet, but it'll win on it's efficiency and energy merits rather than it's possible visual advantage.

ps regarding what you said about being able to dl at 7.6 mb/s, that's great and all, but most of us can't, no company would want to deliver that much data to many users at once, oh and BD bitrates are actually often 10+ mb/s.

[x After Dawn x]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

no. The video on the games are rendered sub hd then upscaled. There's a site with the real resolutions.

No. About 95-98 % of Xbox 360 games are 720p native and then upscaled to 1080p, but there are some games that are programmed natively in 1080p and you can actually play them in native 1080p. Trust me on this, Afrobean knows what he's talking about and I am 100 % sure of this. An example of such a game could be Virtua Tennis 3...if I remember correctly, it runs in native 1080p.

[OrganisM]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

I know I'm going to regret getting into this, but here we go:

I call a blu-ray player "specialized equipment", mainly because it's equipment required specifically for the purpose of playing blu-ray discs. Getting less than a 42" is almost always a complete waste at 1080p. I have a 56" 1080p HDTV, and spend most of my time watching upscaled DVDs. Only at this level does the difference truly become remarkable.

I can now buy a 1TB HDD for just over $100. Just 6 months ago it would have cost $250. Things are getting cheaper fast. Download speeds are going to increase soon with the demand for on-demand content. And here's the kicker: when you download a movie, you don't need any specialized equipment to play it, since you already can use something like an HTPC for so many other things, and a PC will not ever become obsolete, at least during our lifetimes. You can make back-up copies. You can transfer it to another drive. With blu-ray, you're still bound to a proprietary format using physical copies. Plus if blu-ray really did take off, I could just slap a $150 blu-ray drive in my system and I'd have a very powerful computer that could play blu-ray discs as well.

I love the clarity of HD, but I'm more interested in downloadable on-demand content and freedom from format restrictions. I'm tired of format wars and constraints, and see no reason why we should all sell our collective souls to Sony.

PS - I play games in 1080p, and it's not even half as amazing as people peg it to be. As powerful as consoles are, they can't compare with what my PC can do in terms of level of detail.

You're really not making a case for HD. Obviously we're going to have bigger HDDs, more powerful CPUs and GPUs, higher resolutions, and bigger screens. 1080p isn't even that high of a resolution. In a few years, 1080p will be on the low end. Spend a few hours at CES (or 20, like I did) and you'll have a good idea of things. 1080p is not the be-all and end-all of anything. It's just another step on the ladder, and soon enough we'll be talking about gaming and movie-watching 2560x1600 as a standard res. And we'll be taking 20 megapixel shots and storing them on our 100gb SD cards and then our 5TB HDDs. And then years after that, we'll have bigger, shinier, and prettier things to move on to. Nobody gives a flying mother**** about Sony and their stupid ****ing format.

[Squeek]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

Organism: http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...7&postcount=19

1080p is at the threshold of human vision limitations. 720p is just about the best you can see.

The reason is because we can only see 60 lines per degree arc. 720p is pretty close to 60. 1080p is way over 60.

And you're here talking about something higher than 1080p. I'm here to tell you unless you intend to drop tens of thousands of dollars on specialized equipment and housing space, you will never, ever care about anything higher than 1080p. Hell, as I said before, most stuff out today makes it impossible to distinguish between 1080p and 720p. You have to have at least a certain size television and sit a certain distance away from it.

I have no problem saying that hard drive capacity and resolutions will continue to improve, but there's a limitation on things involving human body functions. Sight is one of our worst features. We're slow, have low range, and can barely see any colors or depth. At least compared to some other species. But that's the tradeoff we made.

As I wrote before, there are two ways around human sight limitations. First is to change the human sight limitation by physically augmenting human vision. Don't expect to see this anytime soon. I highly doubt the first human augmentation will be to vision, and I highly doubt the first human augmentation will take place in this century. The second way around this problem is to change what it means to watch something. That's why I mentioned 3D television.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-PMN3aK8g

And then you have to consider holographic television as well. And interactive television.

[OrganisM]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

Have you been to CES? Have you been watching what's been happening? Prototypes for higher resolution TVs have been in the works for years now, and CES has been displaying them. 150 inches and more, as well. Higher res content, higher res screens, higher quality, and cheaper storage space. That's the way it's going. Just watch.

Being in the industry has its perks...

PS - and unless you write thousands and thousands of lines of code, you'll never need more than 640k, right?

and remember size of screen and viewing distance.

once more note: it really says something about a technology when one of its main proponents which manufactures blu-ray and is a major player in the industry says that the technology is half-dead already and will be practically obsolete by 2012. That would be Samsung.

[Vendetta21]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

The reason I am going to say no to this is because I think the blu-ray format will be shortlived, and I think that it is an intermediary format between DVD and flash-based memory devices.

There's a 27000p screen in Japan that is 62" and can display things at a quality where anything higher would be intdistinguishable to the human eye, and the only way to fit the space required for the movies is with hard-drives. But if they can continue to double the amount of space they can fit on an SD card every two years then they'll be able to do it with a flash-chip. And probably not as far off as one would think. I'm going to wait for a new format and higher resolutions first.

[OrganisM]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

You're not alone in that thinking. It's wise to follow that reasoning: it's what all the top technology companies are talking about and what everybody in the industry is thinking.

[Afrobean]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

I know I'm going to regret getting into this, but here we go:

I call a blu-ray player "specialized equipment", mainly because it's equipment required specifically for the purpose of playing blu-ray discs. Getting less than a 42" is almost always a complete waste at 1080p. I have a 56" 1080p HDTV, and spend most of my time watching upscaled DVDs. Only at this level does the difference truly become remarkable.

I agree and disagree at the same time.

1080p at smaller sizes really doesn't do much at all. Even on my 42 inch screen, I have trouble definitively deciding the difference between an upscaled 720 and a native 1080.

But at the same time, you are wrong. Upscaled DVD looks terrible in many cases (often moreso due to being natively interlaced), and even the BEST of upconverted DVD does not even come close to native 1080p content. Even bad quality 1080p native commercial material will always look better than upconverted DVD. If you don't think so, you shouldn't be wasting your money on home theatre equipment because the part of your brain devoted to that sort of thing is clearly underdeveloped if you think an upconverted 480i image is as good as a 1080p native.

I can now buy a 1TB HDD for just over $100. Just 6 months ago it would have cost $250. Things are getting cheaper fast.

So are BD players. My first player I got for a couple hundred, but a got a deal on a 200 dollar model as a gift that only cost me 100. Not typical deal, but the NORMAL prices are dropping under 200 now, and they'll be even lower after the holiday season.

Download speeds are going to increase soon with the demand for on-demand content.

And yet, all I keep hearing about are ISPs putting bandwidth caps on so that people who use heftier bandwidth will end up paying for it in overages.

And here's the kicker: when you download a movie, you don't need any specialized equipment to play it, since you already can use something like an HTPC for so many other things, and a PC will not ever become obsolete, at least during our lifetimes.

Some people might not want to attach their computer explicitly to their TV, and others might not have a spare computer lying around that they can use entirely for TV usage.

You can make back-up copies. You can transfer it to another drive. With blu-ray, you're still bound to a proprietary format using physical copies.

This is a bad thing...? Why do people talk about using a physical medium like it is a fundamentally bad thing?

Plus if blu-ray really did take off, I could just slap a $150 blu-ray drive in my system and I'd have a very powerful computer that could play blu-ray discs as well.

This is actually a very smart option, but I would probably only do this with a secondary computer to use as a media center and nothing else.

Also: Blu-ray IS taking off. It's adoption rate is faster than DVD's in it's first 2 years, it's surpassed Laserdisc's peak market penetration, it has complete support of the film industry, and the numbers are growing every day. I read an article the other day that gave a bunch of stats on the matter (and I can try to find it again if you care), but if I recall, they said something like Blu-ray accounts for 10~30% of the amount of copies sold of high profile films. Unless I'm mistaken, DVD was at like 2% in it's first few years.

I love the clarity of HD, but I'm more interested in downloadable on-demand content and freedom from format restrictions. I'm tired of format wars and constraints, and see no reason why we should all sell our collective souls to Sony.

There will always be proprietary formats, it's just that a digital format is only precluded by software. In other words, a physical format war would require investment in an expensive player, but a digital format war would be entirely passable with software.

And anyway, the war is over, Blu-ray won. As a 1080p format, BD is what we have. What you're doing by refusing BD would be akin to getting mad when DVDs were replacing VHS and deciding to just get Satellite TV instead of changing to another superior format. That's not to say Satellite TV is bad (I frankly think it's quite good), but it wasn't the best choice at the time to do what you would want to do; presumably to watch movies at the highest quality.

PS - I play games in 1080p, and it's not even half as amazing as people peg it to be. As powerful as consoles are, they can't compare with what my PC can do in terms of level of detail.

Most games aren't 1080p native, and the ones that are, I doubt those are the ones you game exclusively on. It's mostly stupid **** like movie tie-ins and terrible sports games.

You're really not making a case for HD. Obviously we're going to have bigger HDDs, more powerful CPUs and GPUs, higher resolutions, and bigger screens. 1080p isn't even that high of a resolution. In a few years, 1080p will be on the low end.

1080p is already the upper end of the human sight limit on screens smaller than like 10 diagonal feet. It'll be a long time before we all have Imax size screens inside of our house.

Spend a few hours at CES (or 20, like I did) and you'll have a good idea of things. 1080p is not the be-all and end-all of anything. It's just another step on the ladder, and soon enough we'll be talking about gaming and movie-watching 2560x1600 as a standard res.

1080p compared to 720p is a hard enough sell, how do you expect anyone not building an expensive home theatre to invest in a screen just to put out even more pixels when it wouldn't look ANY different to the naked eye from a reasonable viewing distance?

And we'll be taking 20 megapixel shots and storing them on our 100gb SD cards and then our 5TB HDDs. And then years after that, we'll have bigger, shinier, and prettier things to move on to. Nobody gives a flying mother**** about Sony and their stupid ****ing format.

Oh, I see. You're not a misguided individual. You're a Sony hater. What would you be saying to me right now if it was HD-DVD that won the format war and it was HD-DVD I was gushing about? In fact, replace every instance of "BD" and "Blu-ray" with "HD-DVD" and see if you still disagree so heartily with all that I've said.

You make me sick. Get the **** out of here. You know why I support BD? Because it is the better format; there is not a consumer grade format better than it, and that includes considering digital distribution. I downloaded a 1080p trailer for the new Harry Potter flick the other day. Over 20 minutes to download, and the actual file is only a little under 2 minutes. You call that **** a good, reasonable alternative?

No, we do not have 2k films stored on holographic video discs. No, 2k resolution screens would not be worth it at the screen size I can afford. No, the producer cannot afford to give quality 1080p content through DD, and the typical consumer cannot afford it either.

Seriously talking about these CRAZY resolutions is akin to me telling a person they need to invest in a 15 inch 1080p screen. Why? An image on that small of a screen would be indistinguishable from 720p. So why then should I want a 2k res screen at 42 inches when I have a hard-ass time telling the difference between upscaled 720p and 1080p?

You are ****ing crazy, dude. "OH IM THE INDUSTRY SO I KNOW LOL". No. The typical consumer will not get behind a product that is technically better, but physically indistinguishable from what they have. The reason HD can take SD's market is because the average consumer can get a notable improvement in quality by getting a HDTV, even those who opt for a cheaper 720 model. Just because they CAN make a 2k res TV and charge 10k for a 20 inch TV doesn't mean anyone will buy it. That sort of resolution won't be of any use to the typical consumer. I'd bet that such a format will be made available at some point, both in hardware and software, but when that software format hits, it will be limited to niche... The average person can't tell the difference between 720 upscaled on a 1080 screen, why would they be able to tell the difference between a 1080 and 2k on a 2k screen?

Squeek is right. Beyond HDTV, the next step is greater immersion, not more resolution. You'll be able to get people to adapt to a new format only if it is better than what they already have... more pixels won't do it, but a 3D image "floating" out in front of the TV would.
______________

First is to change the human sight limitation by physically augmenting human vision. Don't expect to see this anytime soon.

I wouldn't be so sure. As far as modifications to the brain, I think this would be the first ones we'd be able to crack well. I saw on Ripley's Believe it or Not like 5 years ago they had a blind guy, and what they did is they managed to feed a basic image directly into his brain. It wasn't super color-sensitive high res, but he was able to see things through a camera that fed directly into his brain.

Frankly, I'd love to live to the day when Matrix-esque brain manipulation is possible, but that's a long ways off. I don't think we're so far off from basic steps in that direction though.

And then you have to consider holographic television as well. And interactive television.

I really hope they don't force interactive television down our throats. When I want to see a movie, I don't want to interact with it. I don't want the movie to pause and it to say "What should Calculon do next?"

EDIT: since some of you folks seem pretty on the ball here, I've got a question that I'm struggling with. I picked up the seventh season of Scrubs the other day. And the picture quality is really hit or miss... Some times there are ABSOLUTELY none of that pixel dancing that happens in an interlaced display, while others, everything is movin' around like crazy. It's especially noticeable in the freezeframe credits compared to live action motion. In addition, on like half of the cuts (as in, edit cuts), it seems to cut RIGHT on the frame where two fields are added together and look ****ed up.

Honestly, if I had to guess, it seems like the image is progressive sourced, and automatically interlaced before reaching my screen. But-- I'm running it on my BD player over a HDMI, so it can't be that the disc is progressive native and interlaced in my machine. This means that the only possible conclusion to draw is that the image is definitely interlaced on the disc, but then why? Why did ABC take a progressive cut and apply an automatic interlacing on it without considering cuts? Or could it possibly be that the editors on that season just don't know how to do their jobs and the original version of the cuts were all made at interlaced points?

I just don't get it. Do any of you have any insight?

[sonic-fast-fingers]

Re: HDTV and YOU!

I'm glad that this thread finally got some attention because at first Afrobean had posted this whole big thing and it had hardly any responses. I kind of felt bad.