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WOW! Last night I had the opportunity to watch a series of different Pixar
shorts in bluray format (I just checked on Amazon and you can buy the disc
with them all on).
I had watched most of these before as they come on the DVDs of the proper
films.
But Oh My God, the picture quality was amazing. I still love "for the
birds" the best, and never before had I seen so much detail, it was like
watching a series of photos rather than a film. There was just so much more
visible compared to the DVD version, you could see scratches on every little
bird's beak, the texture on the feathers was visible, it was just incredible
compared to the blur you get on DVD in the same areas.
Even my gf who is very anti-any-improvement-over-her-21-inch-CRT-TV demanded
that I buy a bluray player!!
Taking a screen-cap somehow wouldn't do it justice, to see that much detail
in motion is just beautiful - you really just have to see it.
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That's interesting. I was in some shop the other day, and they had a
huge LCD with "HD Ready" splashed all over it, and huge cardboard signs
saying "WOW! LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE!" And I remember thinking "...I
can't see any difference."
I mean, let's face it, HD is only 4x the imagine resolution. If you
compare the two side by side you'd probably notice. But if you just look
at an HD TV, there really isn't much to notice. The picture is very
slightly more crisp, but that's about it.
Certainly it hardly seems worth paying £7,000 just for a very slightly
more crisp picture. I could buy a *car* for that amount of money! Hell,
I could almost buy a copy of *Oracle* for that!
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Invisible wrote:
> Certainly it hardly seems worth paying £7,000 just for a very slightly
> more crisp picture.
That's a slight exaggeration. You can buy an HD1080 TV with a suitable
bluray player for about £1000. In fact, if the player is also a PS3 it
won't be more than £1200.
I had to buy a new TV recently. I didn't really want to, because I don't
yet have any HD sources, but it seemed easiest just to cave in and get a
nice shiny one that will cope with it when I get around to it...
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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Certainly it hardly seems worth paying £7,000 just for a very slightly
>> more crisp picture.
>
> That's a slight exaggeration. You can buy an HD1080 TV with a suitable
> bluray player for about £1000. In fact, if the player is also a PS3 it
> won't be more than £1200.
Ah, so the shop was overpriced too? :-D
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> That's interesting. I was in some shop the other day, and they had a huge
> LCD with "HD Ready" splashed all over it, and huge cardboard signs saying
> "WOW! LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE!" And I remember thinking "...I can't see any
> difference."
They were probably feeding in some crappy HD or worse even SD material...
NExt time take along a copy of the pixar shorts on blu-ray and ask them to
play that on a 1080p TV. It will knock you out!
> I mean, let's face it, HD is only 4x the imagine resolution.
"only". What resolution do run your desktop in? Now imagine dividing that
by 4. It wouldn't be pretty...
> Certainly it hardly seems worth paying £7,000
You mean getting one of these:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-HD-E1-High-Definition-Player/dp/B000I7IHHI
and one of these:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-37LF66-Widescreen-1080P-Freeview/dp/B000TLW0TE
Total cost £825.
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scott wrote:
>> That's interesting. I was in some shop the other day, and they had a
>> huge LCD with "HD Ready" splashed all over it, and huge cardboard
>> signs saying "WOW! LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE!" And I remember thinking
>> "...I can't see any difference."
>
> They were probably feeding in some crappy HD or worse even SD
> material... NExt time take along a copy of the pixar shorts on blu-ray
> and ask them to play that on a 1080p TV. It will knock you out!
They were running National Geographic HD. (Doesn't mean they had an HD
decoder of course...) Lots of long short of mountains, jungles, big
savanas and stuff that's clearly meant to make you go "wow". It honestly
didn't look much different to what I get on my 7 year old TV at home.
They also had a huge widescreen round the corner playing Star Wars III.
(It is unclear whether or not that was meant to be HD.) It was
unimpressive. In so many ways... ;-)
>> I mean, let's face it, HD is only 4x the imagine resolution.
>
> "only". What resolution do run your desktop in? Now imagine dividing
> that by 4. It wouldn't be pretty...
As far as I know, a normal TV operates at something like 300x200 or so.
That means that 4x would only be 600x400 - still extremely low.
(I remember I once plugged my laptop into the TV because we didn't own a
DVD player. The Windows desktop was... unreadable. Literally, you just
couldn't read *any* of the writing! But then, I guess usually you sit 12
feet from your TV screen, so they're not going to bother making it able
to display tiny writing like that...)
>> Certainly it hardly seems worth paying £7,000
>
> You mean getting one of these:
>
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-HD-E1-High-Definition-Player/dp/B000I7IHHI
>
> and one of these:
>
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-37LF66-Widescreen-1080P-Freeview/dp/B000TLW0TE
>
> Total cost £825.
I think we've established that the shop was overpriced. ;-)
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>> "only". What resolution do run your desktop in? Now imagine dividing
>> that by 4. It wouldn't be pretty...
>
> As far as I know, a normal TV operates at something like 300x200 or so.
> That means that 4x would only be 600x400 - still extremely low.
The shorts I watched last night were 1920x1080 resolution...
> (I remember I once plugged my laptop into the TV because we didn't own a
> DVD player. The Windows desktop was... unreadable. Literally, you just
> couldn't read *any* of the writing! But then, I guess usually you sit 12
> feet from your TV screen, so they're not going to bother making it able to
> display tiny writing like that...)
If you buy a 1080p TV though, that means that it is 1920x1080 resolution.
If you plug your PC into it (either by DVI->HDMI or analog VGA) and set your
PC to a 1920x1080 screen mode it will look perfect.
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scott wrote:
>>> "only". What resolution do run your desktop in? Now imagine
>>> dividing that by 4. It wouldn't be pretty...
>>
>> As far as I know, a normal TV operates at something like 300x200 or
>> so. That means that 4x would only be 600x400 - still extremely low.
>
> The shorts I watched last night were 1920x1080 resolution...
Interesting. My PC monitor doesn't go that high. (!)
Must take some serious MPEG compression to fit that onto a disk - even a
bluray disk has only finite storage capacity.
>> (I remember I once plugged my laptop into the TV because we didn't own
>> a DVD player. The Windows desktop was... unreadable.)
>
> If you buy a 1080p TV though, that means that it is 1920x1080
> resolution. If you plug your PC into it (either by DVI->HDMI or analog
> VGA) and set your PC to a 1920x1080 screen mode it will look perfect.
My laptop doesn't go that high. ;-)
(Also, it has only VGA and S-Video output. I managed to find an S-Video
to SCART converter, which allows me to connect to the TV.)
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Invisible wrote:
>>> I mean, let's face it, HD is only 4x the imagine resolution.
>>
>> "only". What resolution do run your desktop in? Now imagine dividing
>> that by 4. It wouldn't be pretty...
>
> As far as I know, a normal TV operates at something like 300x200 or so.
> That means that 4x would only be 600x400 - still extremely low.
I think the PAL standard is 576 lines. The digital SDTV standard is
640x480, the same vertical resolution as the NTSC standard (wikipedia is
telling me all this). The 1080p image is therefore 3 times wider, but
only 2.5 times taller because of the different aspect ratio. I guess
that's 7.5 times the area.
If the images you saw were mountains and lakes and so forth then they
probably weren't showing off the picture properly. You often see CG
movies like Ice Age used as demos in shops because the picture is much
sharper than a corresponding live-action movie (one of the many reasons
CG stands out so much).
I think the difference is a bit like upgrading to power-assisted
steering from an older car to a newer car. At first you think "well,
yes, it's a bit easier, but non-power steering is hardly that
difficult", and then if you ever go back to driving an older car you
think "bloody hell this is hard work".
:)
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> Interesting. My PC monitor doesn't go that high. (!)
>
> Must take some serious MPEG compression to fit that onto a disk - even a
> bluray disk has only finite storage capacity.
50 GB max IIRC.
>>> (I remember I once plugged my laptop into the TV because we didn't own a
>>> DVD player. The Windows desktop was... unreadable.)
>>
>> If you buy a 1080p TV though, that means that it is 1920x1080 resolution.
>> If you plug your PC into it (either by DVI->HDMI or analog VGA) and set
>> your PC to a 1920x1080 screen mode it will look perfect.
>
> My laptop doesn't go that high. ;-)
You mean the VGA output or the LCD? If you connected the external output to
a LCD that was capable of 1920x1080 then it might work.
> (Also, it has only VGA and S-Video output. I managed to find an S-Video to
> SCART converter, which allows me to connect to the TV.)
Yuk :-) you need VGA, component or DVI/HDMI for HD resolutions...
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scott wrote:
>> Must take some serious MPEG compression to fit that onto a disk - even
>> a bluray disk has only finite storage capacity.
>
> 50 GB max IIRC.
Well, let me see...
1,920 pixels x 1,080 pixels = 2,073,600 pixels / frame
3 bytes / pixel x 2,073,600 pixels / frame = 6,220,800 bytes / frame
25 frames / second x 6,220,800 bytes / frame = 155,520,000 bytes / second
Approx 148.31 MB / second. (Woah, that's some transfer rate!)
8.69 GB / minute.
512.40 GB / hour. So only 10x bigger than the disk. ;-)
>> My laptop doesn't go that high. ;-)
>
> You mean the VGA output or the LCD?
Both. They don't bother putting a video card in a laptop that can do
1600x1200 if the LCD itself is only 1024x768. (In fact, it seems my
laptop has only 3 resolutions, 3 colours depths and 1 scan rate.)
>> (Also, it has only VGA and S-Video output. I managed to find an
>> S-Video to SCART converter, which allows me to connect to the TV.)
>
> Yuk :-) you need VGA, component or DVI/HDMI for HD resolutions...
Yeah. The converter was priced at £50. (Not that *I* paid that much for it.)
That's the other thing - HD seems to involve a whole zoo of different
connectors. For normal analogue video signals it's much simpler.
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> 512.40 GB / hour. So only 10x bigger than the disk. ;-)
So even if each frame was compressed using normal JPEG compression (with no
knowledge of previous frames) the result would probably look pretty good...
Given that the video codecs make use of huge amounts of info from the
previous frames, it seems that the video quality will be pretty good.
Actually I didn't notice any form of compression artifact while watching,
and I was looking pretty closely. Mind you, as these were "shorts", they
might have compressed them less than they would a feature-film, I don't know
if that is technically possible or not...
> Both. They don't bother putting a video card in a laptop that can do
> 1600x1200 if the LCD itself is only 1024x768. (In fact, it seems my laptop
> has only 3 resolutions, 3 colours depths and 1 scan rate.)
Oh ok, most laptops I've seen allow you to choose a higher resolution than
the screen itself, and then you can scroll about the laptop screen, or plug
in an external monitor. I know a lot of people here have those tiny Dells
with 1024x768 screens, but use a 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 monitor on their
desk.
> That's the other thing - HD seems to involve a whole zoo of different
> connectors. For normal analogue video signals it's much simpler.
Hmmm, digital HD you have the HDMI plug (looks a bit like a USB plug) or if
you want to include computers you have DVI too (both are electrically
compatible, so converters are cheap).
For analogue you have: component, composite, s-video and SCART, and if you
want to include computers, VGA too. VGA is not compatible with any of the
previous ones, so if you want to connect a computer to a TV you need
something more expensive.
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scott wrote:
>> 512.40 GB / hour. So only 10x bigger than the disk. ;-)
>
> So even if each frame was compressed using normal JPEG compression (with
> no knowledge of previous frames) the result would probably look pretty
> good... Given that the video codecs make use of huge amounts of info
> from the previous frames, it seems that the video quality will be pretty
> good. Actually I didn't notice any form of compression artifact while
> watching, and I was looking pretty closely. Mind you, as these were
> "shorts", they might have compressed them less than they would a
> feature-film, I don't know if that is technically possible or not...
The disk will have a maximum transfer rate. As long as the codec doesn't
exceed that it should be fine. (I have no idea what codec they actually
use and whether it places additional restrictions on the parameters.)
My point is just that you'll need some fairly serious compression to
make the data fit, that's all. I didn't say it's impossible. ;-)
> Oh ok, most laptops I've seen allow you to choose a higher resolution
> than the screen itself, and then you can scroll about the laptop screen,
> or plug in an external monitor. I know a lot of people here have those
> tiny Dells with 1024x768 screens, but use a 1280x1024 or 1600x1200
> monitor on their desk.
It's a cheap laptop.
>> That's the other thing - HD seems to involve a whole zoo of different
>> connectors. For normal analogue video signals it's much simpler.
>
> Hmmm, digital HD you have the HDMI plug (looks a bit like a USB plug) or
> if you want to include computers you have DVI too (both are electrically
> compatible, so converters are cheap).
And then there's the other thing. How can you fit 148 GB/sec down a 3
meter cable? Heck, they haven't worked out how to fit 148 GB/sec between
the CPU and the RAM yet, never mind between a player and a TV...!
> For analogue you have: component, composite, s-video and SCART, and if
> you want to include computers, VGA too. VGA is not compatible with any
> of the previous ones, so if you want to connect a computer to a TV you
> need something more expensive.
On the other hand, all analogue equipment known to man only provides
RF-modulated and possibly SCART. ;-)
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> As far as I know, a normal TV operates at something like 300x200 or so.
Not true. PAL has 625 vertical scanlines (which, assuming square pixels
on a 4:3 TV means 833x625 pixels). HDTV doubles that, which means something
like 1670x1250.
--
- Warp
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scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> But Oh My God, the picture quality was amazing.
Yeah, assuming the bluray player/drive doesn't decide that your 1-year-old
TV/monitor (or if you are using a computer, almost anything in it, more
prominently your 1-year-old top-of-the-line graphics card) is an illegal
ripping machine and thus decides to give you a low-resolution blurred
version of the image.
--
- Warp
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> And then there's the other thing. How can you fit 148 GB/sec down a 3
> meter cable?
You mean MB per second?
> Heck, they haven't worked out how to fit 148 GB/sec between the CPU and
> the RAM yet, never mind between a player and a TV...!
Even single-channel DVI (an old standard) can handle 1920x1080x60fps,
anything higher and you need dual-channel DVI. The specs for HDMI supports
10 Gbit/s, which is enough for something stupid like 3840x2160x50fps, or
slightly lower and a stupid number of digital audio channels.
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Invisible nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/22 04:15:
> That's interesting. I was in some shop the other day, and they had a
> huge LCD with "HD Ready" splashed all over it, and huge cardboard signs
> saying "WOW! LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE!" And I remember thinking "...I
> can't see any difference."
>
> I mean, let's face it, HD is only 4x the imagine resolution. If you
> compare the two side by side you'd probably notice. But if you just look
> at an HD TV, there really isn't much to notice. The picture is very
> slightly more crisp, but that's about it.
Do you mean 4x the total numbet of pixels, or 4x the number of LINES?
4x the pixels == double the pixels per lines and double the lines.
4x the lines is more like 16x the resolution!
>
> Certainly it hardly seems worth paying £7,000 just for a very slightly
> more crisp picture. I could buy a *car* for that amount of money! Hell,
> I could almost buy a copy of *Oracle* for that!
You are slightly outdated! HD prices have come down a LOT in just 2 years.
--
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when you look at waterfalls, dust,
rain, snow, etc, and think: "If only I had a fractalized, vector based
particle-system modeler with collision detection!"
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Invisible nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/22 07:55:
> scott wrote:
>>> Must take some serious MPEG compression to fit that onto a disk -
>>> even a bluray disk has only finite storage capacity.
>>
>> 50 GB max IIRC.
>
> Well, let me see...
>
> 1,920 pixels x 1,080 pixels = 2,073,600 pixels / frame
>
> 3 bytes / pixel x 2,073,600 pixels / frame = 6,220,800 bytes / frame
>
> 25 frames / second x 6,220,800 bytes / frame = 155,520,000 bytes / second
>
> Approx 148.31 MB / second. (Woah, that's some transfer rate!)
>
> 8.69 GB / minute.
>
> 512.40 GB / hour. So only 10x bigger than the disk. ;-)
>
Now, each non-key frame only contains the difference from the preceding one.
Normaly, every frame is compressed. The end result is that you have compression
ratio well over 10, it can get in the 20 to 50 time.
They probably use MPEG2, it gives you about twice the compression of regular
MPEG (MPEG1), with a slightly beter quality.
--
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when you think it's a failing of the
universe that the large software companies like Corel or Fractal Design do NOT
export to POV primitives.
George Erhard
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Alain wrote:
> They probably use MPEG2, it gives you about twice the compression of
I believe they do. At least for standard def DVD.
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And lo on Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:50:12 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
spake, saying:
> scott wrote:
>>> That's interesting. I was in some shop the other day, and they had a
>>> huge LCD with "HD Ready" splashed all over it, and huge cardboard
>>> signs saying "WOW! LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE!" And I remember thinking
>>> "...I can't see any difference."
>> They were probably feeding in some crappy HD or worse even SD
>> material... NExt time take along a copy of the pixar shorts on blu-ray
>> and ask them to play that on a 1080p TV. It will knock you out!
>
> They were running National Geographic HD. (Doesn't mean they had an HD
> decoder of course...) Lots of long short of mountains, jungles, big
> savanas and stuff that's clearly meant to make you go "wow". It honestly
> didn't look much different to what I get on my 7 year old TV at home.
Remembering that all the training they've had in electronics is to
remember to ask "So you want the extended warranty on that?". It's scary
at times watching HD televisions being fed an input via an unshielded
multifeed or from an HD Box via a SCART connector.
>>> I mean, let's face it, HD is only 4x the imagine resolution.
>> "only". What resolution do run your desktop in? Now imagine dividing
>> that by 4. It wouldn't be pretty...
>
> As far as I know, a normal TV operates at something like 300x200 or so.
> That means that 4x would only be 600x400 - still extremely low.
As has already been mentioned PAL has 625 lines with normally only 576
active lines.
>> Total cost £825.
>
> I think we've established that the shop was overpriced. ;-)
You seem to have a few of those :-)
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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>> They probably use MPEG2, it gives you about twice the compression of
>
> I believe they do. At least for standard def DVD.
The bluray standard allows MPEG2, h264 or VC-1 to be used.
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scott wrote:
>>> They probably use MPEG2, it gives you about twice the compression of
>>
>> I believe they do. At least for standard def DVD.
>
> The bluray standard allows MPEG2, h264 or VC-1 to be used.
Had to look them up. Cool.
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scott wrote:
> The bluray standard allows MPEG2, h264 or VC-1 to be used.
h264 is pretty impressive, even if it does require a Cray to run at
realtime speeds. my own attempt to rip a VHS tape to an AVI resulted in
an initially 22-GB file (6.25 hours @ 640x480x24fps), and I was able to
use h264 to compress it to ~3 GB with almost no noticeable reduction in
quality (not that the quality was terribly great to begin with...)
--
Tim Cook
http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-empyrean
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Alain wrote:
> Invisible nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/22 04:15:
>> I mean, let's face it, HD is only 4x the imagine resolution. If you
>> compare the two side by side you'd probably notice. But if you just
>> look at an HD TV, there really isn't much to notice. The picture is
>> very slightly more crisp, but that's about it.
> Do you mean 4x the total numbet of pixels, or 4x the number of LINES?
> 4x the pixels == double the pixels per lines and double the lines.
> 4x the lines is more like 16x the resolution!
I mean 4x the number of pixels (2x lines + 2x columns).
>> Certainly it hardly seems worth paying £7,000 just for a very slightly
>> more crisp picture. I could buy a *car* for that amount of money!
>> Hell, I could almost buy a copy of *Oracle* for that!
> You are slightly outdated! HD prices have come down a LOT in just 2 years.
Yeah, but the shop isn't going to draw you eye to the *cheap* models,
are they? ;-)
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> I mean 4x the number of pixels (2x lines + 2x columns).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Common_Video_Resolutions.svg
I was looking for that before but couldn't find it...
Also I found a few screen-caps:
This is from normal digital terrestial TV:
http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/images/0604DoraCreds2b-x.jpg
This is from some US HD channel:
http://www.bur.st/~anthony/dba/160206/stateoftheunion_1.jpg
Now, if you can't tell the difference...
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scott wrote:
>> I mean 4x the number of pixels (2x lines + 2x columns).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Common_Video_Resolutions.svg
>
> I was looking for that before but couldn't find it...
Ah yes, it's coming back to me now... Some "HD" TVs only actually
support the lowest HD resolution, and some support higher ones. (I
wonder if the same goes for "HD" transmissions and "HD" disks?)
> Also I found a few screen-caps:
>
> http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/images/0604DoraCreds2b-x.jpg
> http://www.bur.st/~anthony/dba/160206/stateoftheunion_1.jpg
>
> Now, if you can't tell the difference...
These images look different to me. (I notice one is photographic and the
other isn't...)
All I said was I was in a shop looking at one of their fantastic HD TVs
and there was little if any apparent difference. Yeah, the picture was a
little bit sharper, but nothing to get excited about.
I see three possibilities:
1. The TV they were proudly displaying was actually rubbish.
2. The signal they were feeding it with was naff.
3. There's little actual difference between HD and SD.
These possibilities do not appear to be muturally exclusive.
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And lo on Thu, 22 Nov 2007 15:32:10 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did
spake, saying:
>> I mean 4x the number of pixels (2x lines + 2x columns).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Common_Video_Resolutions.svg
>
> I was looking for that before but couldn't find it...
>
> Also I found a few screen-caps:
>
> This is from normal digital terrestial TV:
>
> http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/images/0604DoraCreds2b-x.jpg
>
> This is from some US HD channel:
>
> http://www.bur.st/~anthony/dba/160206/stateoftheunion_1.jpg
>
> Now, if you can't tell the difference...
Dora looks more alert? Bush looks less blue in HD?
[Waits for Warp to criticise ;-)]
--
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 wrote:
> Dora looks more alert? Bush looks less blue in HD?
http://www.bash.org/?475920
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And lo on Thu, 22 Nov 2007 15:47:53 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
spake, saying:
> scott wrote:
>>> I mean 4x the number of pixels (2x lines + 2x columns).
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Common_Video_Resolutions.svg
>> I was looking for that before but couldn't find it...
>
> Ah yes, it's coming back to me now... Some "HD" TVs only actually
> support the lowest HD resolution,
720i/p
> and some support higher ones.
1080i/p
> (I wonder if the same goes for "HD" transmissions and "HD" disks?)
Good question. I don't think there's anything stopping transmission in 720
instead of 1080. I believe Sky's own channels are 1080i but some of the
non-Sky HD stuff is 720p. As for discs If they're going to the bother I
don't see why they'd only use 720 over 1080. For games, I note some for
the PS3 only go as high as 720. A decent decoder will up/down scale
according to the TVs abilities, but obviously the more data the better.
>> Also I found a few screen-caps:
>> http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/images/0604DoraCreds2b-x.jpg
>> http://www.bur.st/~anthony/dba/160206/stateoftheunion_1.jpg
>> Now, if you can't tell the difference...
>
> These images look different to me. (I notice one is photographic and the
> other isn't...)
Well one is live the other cartoon (feel free to guess which is which),
you should also rezoom them so they have the same apparent height (if the
browser hasn't), and I believe Dora is NTSC which uses less lines then PAL.
> All I said was I was in a shop looking at one of their fantastic HD TVs
> and there was little if any apparent difference. Yeah, the picture was a
> little bit sharper, but nothing to get excited about.
>
> I see three possibilities:
>
> 1. The TV they were proudly displaying was actually rubbish.
Possibly
> 2. The signal they were feeding it with was naff.
Probably
> 3. There's little actual difference between HD and SD.
Nope.
> These possibilities do not appear to be muturally exclusive.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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Invisible wrote:
> That's interesting. I was in some shop the other day, and they had a
> huge LCD with "HD Ready" splashed all over it, and huge cardboard signs
> saying "WOW! LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE!" And I remember thinking "...I
> can't see any difference."
There's a big difference - the folks in the shop probably had not set
it up correctly, or something.
What I've disliked about big HDTV's is that regular channels, DVDs, etc
can tend to look quite poor on them. This is _not_ in comparison to
looking at HDTV feeds. Probably just because the TV's I saw were quite
big (in inches), so you could easily see all the flaws of regular TV
shows...
--
"Honey, answer the phone." "Okay. BaRRING! BRRNG! BaRR"
/\ /\ /\ /
/ \/ \ u e e n / \/ a w a z
>>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
anl
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news:
4745a4aa$1@news.povray.org...
> I see three possibilities:
> 1. The TV they were proudly displaying was actually rubbish.
> 2. The signal they were feeding it with was naff.
> 3. There's little actual difference between HD and SD.
4. You need to see an ophtalmologist?
G.
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scott escribió:
> http://www.bur.st/~anthony/dba/160206/stateoftheunion_1.jpg
>
> Now, if you can't tell the difference...
>
I see interlacing artifacts >_< Progressive video ftw.
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Phil Cook escribió:
> Well one is live the other cartoon (feel free to guess which is which)
lol :D The HD one?
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Invisible wrote:
>
> They were running National Geographic HD. (Doesn't mean they had an HD
> decoder of course...) Lots of long short of mountains, jungles, big
> savanas and stuff that's clearly meant to make you go "wow". It honestly
> didn't look much different to what I get on my 7 year old TV at home.
It was either National Geographic HD or Discovery HD which I saw at the
store here in Finland (Verkkokauppa.com is the store) from multiple
HD-screens at once. I couldn't figure out if the resolutions seemd to be
good or bad, 'cause I almost got a headache from the infernally bad
MPEG-encoding! Seriously, I'd take old-fashion analog-RF rather than
such crap, while the analog problems are easier for brains to filter.
> (I remember I once plugged my laptop into the TV because we didn't own a
> DVD player. The Windows desktop was... unreadable. Literally, you just
> couldn't read *any* of the writing! But then, I guess usually you sit 12
> feet from your TV screen, so they're not going to bother making it able
> to display tiny writing like that...)
That's a sign of bad TV or bad TV-out. I had 25" Finlux (some
basic-model, but good picture quality) and Matrox G550 connected via
S-video: Windows desktop was usable (no, not clear, but useable) even
with 1280x960. It was unbelievably clear with 800x600 (didn't outperfom
a monitor, but I was really surprised that a TV could do that).
> I think we've established that the shop was overpriced. ;-)
Certainly ;).
And yes, SD-picture seems soft when watched with 93" picture from 5
meters away. I think that (really a big picture with home theatre
enthustians) is a real winner-goal for HD. 768x576 vs. 1920x1080 makes
pretty big difference, once you can see the pixels of the first one.
--
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
http://www.zbxt.net
aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:474548a9$1@news.povray.org...
> Certainly it hardly seems worth paying £7,000 just for a very slightly
> more crisp picture. I could buy a *car* for that amount of money! Hell,
> I could almost buy a copy of *Oracle* for that!
Where the hell are you shopping? I priced LCD HD TVs last weekend, and I
could get a good one for R7000. (that's somewhere around 450 pounds, if you
convert)
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47456cf5@news.povray.org...
> (I remember I once plugged my laptop into the TV because we didn't own a
> DVD player. The Windows desktop was... unreadable. Literally, you just
> couldn't read *any* of the writing! But then, I guess usually you sit 12
> feet from your TV screen, so they're not going to bother making it able
> to display tiny writing like that...)
Odd. I often plug my laptop into my 6 year old TV, since I also don't have a
DVD player. At 800*600, the desktop is easily visible and the text readable.
It's not as clear as on the laptop screen, but then I wouldn't expect it to
be.
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Warp wrote:
> scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
>> But Oh My God, the picture quality was amazing.
>
> Yeah, assuming the bluray player/drive doesn't decide that your 1-year-old
> TV/monitor (or if you are using a computer, almost anything in it, more
> prominently your 1-year-old top-of-the-line graphics card) is an illegal
> ripping machine and thus decides to give you a low-resolution blurred
> version of the image.
...this part worries me...
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> I see interlacing artifacts >_< Progressive video ftw.
Yeh, I found it pretty hard to find any 1080p screen-caps on the net, I
guess that's because most broadcasters use 1080i max at the moment.
There are some 720p and 1080p clips here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx
They look pretty impressive even on a 1280x1024 monitor.
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Gail Shaw wrote:
> Where the hell are you shopping?
The wrong place, clearly. ;-)
> I priced LCD HD TVs last weekend, and I
> could get a good one for R7000. (that's somewhere around 450 pounds, if you
> convert)
Doesn't mean it's possible to buy it in this country for that price.
(For example, Adobe Acrobat costs £400 in the UK, and costs $400 in the
USA. Notice that $400 /= £400 by any stretch of the imagination...)
(For another example, the guy in HQ was shocked that we were being asked
to pay £6,000 a year for our Internet access. Apparently one of the
sites in the USA is paying [what equates to] £600 for the same thing.)
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Invisible wrote:
> savanas and stuff that's clearly meant to make you go "wow".
Myself, I find the compression artifacts tremendously distracting.
> As far as I know, a normal TV operates at something like 300x200 or so.
> That means that 4x would only be 600x400 - still extremely low.
640x480, actually, for NTSC disregarding overscan.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
It's not feature creep if you put it
at the end and adjust the release date.
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Darren New wrote:
> Myself, I find the compression artifacts tremendously distracting.
You know what I find amusing?
You sit and watch a DVD on your normal TV, and it looks just like normal
TV. (Except a bit clearer.) Then you go watch the same DVD on your PC,
and it looks *horrible*! There's black noise, there's big pixel blocks,
there's bits of background moving at 2 frames per second... and then you
realis just how lame your TV is.
I once put together a DVD where one animation was at half resolution.
When you watch it on TV, you can't actually tell the difference... (!)
>> As far as I know, a normal TV operates at something like 300x200 or
>> so. That means that 4x would only be 600x400 - still extremely low.
>
> 640x480, actually, for NTSC disregarding overscan.
Mmm, OK.
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>
> > Myself, I find the compression artifacts tremendously distracting.
>
> You know what I find amusing?
>
> You sit and watch a DVD on your normal TV, and it looks just like normal
> TV. (Except a bit clearer.) Then you go watch the same DVD on your PC,
> and it looks *horrible*! There's black noise, there's big pixel blocks,
> there's bits of background moving at 2 frames per second... and then you
> realis just how lame your TV is.
Hmm... something that takes a crappy signal, and makes it look identical to a
good signal... I'd say that that makes yours a GOOD TV, wouldn't you? :)
Anyway, the every step in the video process has the potential to degrade picture
quality, so CG is always going to benefit most from HD, while live movies rely
much more on goo dacting than on good film quality.
....Chambers
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47469bee@news.povray.org...
> Gail Shaw wrote:
>
> > I priced LCD HD TVs last weekend, and I
> > could get a good one for R7000. (that's somewhere around 450 pounds, if
you
> > convert)
>
> Doesn't mean it's possible to buy it in this country for that price.
SA is notoriously expensive for any form of electonics. I bought my laptop
in the US for $1800 (around R14000 at the time)
To buy it here I'd pay R24000 at least.
While I didn't go electronics shopping in the UK last time I visited, I did
notice that electronics are cheaper there than in SA, though not by as much
as the US is.
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Chambers wrote:
> while live movies rely much more on goo dacting than on good film quality.
Priceless! Thanks. :-D
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Gail Shaw wrote:
> SA is notoriously expensive for any form of electonics.
I'm not categorically saying you *can't* buy it for that price here, I'm
just noting that it doesn't *authomatically* follow, that's all. ;-)
> While I didn't go electronics shopping in the UK last time I visited, I did
> notice that electronics are cheaper there than in SA, though not by as much
> as the US is.
I wouldn't know. I've never been to the USA.
BTW, there's an old legend that in America all CDs cost (the equivilent
of) £5 each or less. Is there any shred of truth to this, or is it just
another wild exaggeration?
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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> BTW, there's an old legend that in America all CDs cost (the equivilent
> of) £5 each or less.
They cost online roughly what they cost in a store. Check amazon.
Nowadays they're $8-$12 USD for "normal" stuff.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
It's not feature creep if you put it
at the end and adjust the release date.
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> BTW, there's an old legend that in America all CDs cost (the equivilent
> of) £5 each or less. Is there any shred of truth to this, or is it just
> another wild exaggeration?
($10) I guess that's sort of true, you can find some stuff for that,
the worse your taste is, the cheaper. Though double that
is perty common for newer stuff. ($20)
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Tim Attwood wrote:
>> BTW, there's an old legend that in America all CDs cost (the equivilent
>> of) £5 each or less. Is there any shred of truth to this, or is it just
>> another wild exaggeration?
>
> ($10) I guess that's sort of true, you can find some stuff for that,
> the worse your taste is, the cheaper. Though double that
> is perty common for newer stuff. ($20)
Over here, £15 seems to be the standard price for a CD. (Unless it's
Pink Floyd - then you can *double* the price. Which is odd, considering
how unpopular Pink Floyd is...) More like £20 or £25 for a double CD,
and more still for big boxes of multiple disks - but nothing really
surprising about that.
Oh, but you can probably buy old trash that nobody wants for £7 or
something. ;-)
It's just that there's this often-repeated believe that everything is so
much cheaper in America, and the streets are paved with cheese. Myself I
rather doubt it. But I've never been there, so...
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Chambers wrote:
> Anyway, the every step in the video process has the potential to degrade picture
> quality, so CG is always going to benefit most from HD, while live movies rely
> much more on goo dacting than on good film quality.
Many live movies also rely on 'bad' film quality to give a look & feel.
Three Kings springs to mind, with the bleached-washed out look. It even
has a warning just before the film advising viewers not to adjust their
players or screens!
Michael Mann's recent films (Collateral and Miami Vice) use digital
cameras to get a more 'documentary' feel with slightly noisy images, and
to bring out the light of cities at night. He's on record saying that
you just can't get the same feel using a normal film camera.
The Illusionist uses very subtle darkening at the edges of the frame and
slight deadening of the colour in certain scenes to suggest a hint of
how Victorian films looks when played back now (this is when the film is
set).
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Invisible wrote:
> Over here, £15 seems to be the standard price for a CD.
£12-13 for most newly released CDs. Some move up to £15ish and stay
there, if they're in any way 'popular' they tend to end up between £5-10
for long swathes of time.
> Oh, but you can probably buy old trash that nobody wants for £7 or
> something. ;-)
It's usually 50-50 in that price range, I find. Mind you, one man's
Mozart is another man's Cheeky Girls...
DVDs are the same. £13 or so when they come out, but if you know what's
likely to be popular you're better off waiting 3 months and getting it
in the sales for £4-8. I've not bought a DVD for more than £8 for years
now. I can't believe people don't have the patience to save themselves a
tenner... Having said that, this seems to apply only to popular titles
with wildly fluctuating stocks. Rarer titles can be expensive. I
recently bought The Abyss (special edition). I was watching the price on
Play.com for ages - £18.99 - despite the regular edition being only a
fiver. Eventually I got it second-hand. For a fiver ;-)
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