Darren New wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> the compression artifacts are so pronounced when you stand that close to
>> these big TVs. 
> 
> You know, I used to think that.  I used to work on compression 
> algorithms, so I got really good at seeing the kind of artifacts that 
> jpeg and mpeg produce. Every time I went in the store and looked at the 
> HDTV, I saw all the compression artifacts in the background and thought 
> 'wow, that sucks.'
> 
> Then my TV died, so we bought a big-screen LCD TV. The difference 
> between the SD channels on cable and the HD channels on cable is 
> stunning. Stadium crowds that used to look like a Monet painting now all 
> have faces and stuff even in the background. You can see grass blades. Etc.
> 
> Yes, the compression artifacts are still there, but they're *still* 
> smaller than the analog blurring and color drift artifacts on a TV set 
> that size. :-)

Well, let me see now.

On my mum's old CRT TV, there was really no noticable difference between 
analogue and digital. Both looked equally fuzzy.

(I once plugged my laptop into the TV, and even if I set the resolution 
absurdly low and made all the fonts huge, they were unreadable.)

Now my mum has this shiny new LCD TV. And suddenly digital looks 
*awful*! As soon as anything moves faster than 2 MPH, it's blocky and 
unrecognisible. Although... it seems to vary by channel somewhat.

(And that of course is the other undesirable thing about digital TV. 
There used to be, like, 5 channels, 4 of them containing high quality 
programming. Now there's 500 channels and they're *all* showing utter 
crap that nobody would ever want to watch...)

I've only seen HD stuff in shops, but from what I can tell, there's no 
visible difference between HD and SD. If I ever get time to set up my 
mum's new BluRay player, maybe I can test for myself. But seriously, 
everybody's going on like it fundamentally transforms your viewing 
experience. But it's only 4x the resolution. Not 40x or 400x, just 4x. 
And, from what I've seen, this equals to a slight increase in constrast, 
and not much else.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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