> It just puzzles me that if they were going to make everything incompatible 
> so they could up the resolution, why didn't they up it to something really 
> high? You know, so you can *see* a difference?

If you can't tell the difference between SD and HD (because your TV is too 
small and/or you're too far away from it) then you *certainly* are not going 
to notice any difference with an even higher resolution.

Currently I doubt many people would want a large enough TV, or sit close 
enough to it, to warrant much higher than 1920x1080.

What would be an improvement is to start recording at a higher frame rate, 
120 Hz would do nicely (I have very fond memories of playing some games at 
120 Hz on my old CRT, the smoothness was awesome).

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Neeum Zawan wrote:

> 	What movie? If it's more than 5 years old, don't expect too much of a
> difference.

Demons & Angels. Came in the box with the player.

I also started watching the last Harry Potter film.

>> Now I've got Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The box contains
>> the exact same film on BD and DVD, so I can actually compare like for
>> like. But I haven't done so yet.
> 
> 	That should show it.

I've watched at least half the film in HD. Haven't tried it in SD yet.

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scott wrote:

> What would be an improvement is to start recording at a higher frame 
> rate.

Yeah, that too. Wasn't 24 FPS chosen because it's the *minimum* frame 
rate that yields a believable illusion of motion?

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>> What would be an improvement is to start recording at a higher frame 
>> rate.
>
> Yeah, that too. Wasn't 24 FPS chosen because it's the *minimum* frame rate 
> that yields a believable illusion of motion?

Yup, IIRC the maximum (ie above that you don't really notice any difference) 
is somewhere around 100 Hz.

I wonder how long before LCD makers start marketing their high framerate TV 
technology in computer monitors?  The hard core gamers should like it.

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And lo On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:31:50 -0000, UncleHoot
<jer### [at] mutualdatacom> did spake thusly:

> "Neeum Zawan" <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote in message  
> news:4b9297f6$1@news.povray.org...
>> On 03/06/10 02:24, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> Woah! There's a *big* difference in quality. Try playing 1080p content
>> if your TV can handle it. If not, even 720p should be noticeable. Many
>> stores I've been to just show trash.
>
> Agreed.  The stores suck.    And the difference in quality is huge.   
> Anyone who doesn’t see the difference should switch back to a 640x480  
> interlaced analog monitor.  ;-)

Unless it's a dedicated stand I've yet to see an HD television receive an
HD signal in-store. They're either using a splitter through the standard
aerial port or composite cables, or they're broadcasting the over-the-air
Freeview channels which are all SD.

Just to go off-topic here-in lies another joyous thing in the UK - 'We're
switching off the analogue broadcasts you'll need a digital receiver'. So
off everyone goes to buy either a new television or set-top box. Now it's
- 'We're cutting some of the Freeview channels down to be able to
broadcast HD' Fair enough - 'We'll be using mpeg4 rather than mpeg2 so
pretty much none of the set-top boxes/digital televisions you've bought
will work with it; go and buy a new one'.

Okay back on-topic, the settings on the television also make a difference.
On mine I had to turn the sharpening off with SD broadcasts; terrible  
fringing.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Phil Cook v2 wrote:

> Just to go off-topic here-in lies another joyous thing in the UK - 'We're
> switching off the analogue broadcasts you'll need a digital receiver'. So
> off everyone goes to buy either a new television or set-top box. Now it's
> - 'We're cutting some of the Freeview channels down to be able to
> broadcast HD' Fair enough - 'We'll be using mpeg4 rather than mpeg2 so
> pretty much none of the set-top boxes/digital televisions you've bought
> will work with it; go and buy a new one'.

Wait... what? That's news! o_O

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And lo On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:05:13 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake thusly:

> Neeum Zawan wrote:
>
>> 	What movie? If it's more than 5 years old, don't expect too much of a
>> difference.
>
> Demons & Angels. Came in the box with the player.
>
> I also started watching the last Harry Potter film.
>
>>> Now I've got Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The box contains
>>> the exact same film on BD and DVD, so I can actually compare like for
>>> like. But I haven't done so yet.
>>  	That should show it.
>
> I've watched at least half the film in HD. Haven't tried it in SD yet.

I've watched both the Harry Potter and Batman Begins in both DVD and HD.  
In fact I slotted in BB DVD into my PS3 while running BB Blu-ray on my  
dedicated player. Skipped through to Bruce Wayne picking the flower,  
paused it and jumped between inputs. You could tell easily which was  
which. Likewise in some of the darker sections, much less noise on the  
Blu-ray version.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> (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...)
> 
> That has nothing to do with digital TV. It's just the drop of quality 
> programming happened at the same time. Correlation != causation.

The increase in available channels isn't related to the decrease in 
signal bandwidth per channel due to being digital?

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

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And lo On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:52:29 -0000, Nicolas Alvarez  
<nic### [at] gmailcom> did spake thusly:

> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> (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...)
>
> That has nothing to do with digital TV. It's just the drop of quality
> programming happened at the same time. Correlation != causation.

'Digital television is great it will allow many more channels to be  
broadcast within the same frequency range' = money to be split between  
four channels rather than just the one = the government scrabbling to get  
more broadcasters to fill all these channels = really cheap television.

Oo four Shopping Channels, how did I ever cope before "Russia Today", and  
where would I lose money if not for "SuperCasino" or "The Big Deal"?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

>> (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...)
>
> That has nothing to do with digital TV. It's just the drop of quality
> programming happened at the same time. Correlation != causation.

If we were still limited by analogue bandwidth to only 4 or 5 channels, I 
fail to see how 99% of the rubbish channels that there are now would even 
exist.  The fact that digital allowed a couple orders of magnitude more 
channels to be available IMO caused the average quality of progamming 
available to drop massively.

Do what I do, simply program in the best channels, ignore the other 99% of 
channels, and suddenly you can be back to almost a reasonable average 
quality level.

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