Why do people with small to average size

[Mr Phoebus]

The street lights are not up an running yet but they won't need them as the street was lit up by three of them having huge plasmas on their walls in living rooms.

I thought it was hilarious. Is this some sort of show of wealth to the neighbours?

It's so the TV-licence detector Gestapo don't have to bother getting out of their vans.

 

[twowheelsgood]

So am I. I'm happy that you seem happy with your jumbo TV. This is a chat forum for opinions. We don't need to keep telling each other how happy we are with everyone else's opinions you know.

As a very experienced TV football watcher in pubs and at home I know I wouldn't waste a penny on a large TV for my living room. If my 1989 20 inch Toshiba ever pegs out I expect that 20 inch flat TVs will be about £29.99 and I'll get one of them if the superior picture quality CRT ones are no longer available by then. Certain sections of the population have always set great store by the size of their TV screen and the availability of reasonably priced large flat TVs has overexcited them. What surprised me about this enthusiasm was that the new flat TVs originally had an appalling, smudgy picture quality and even now they aren't as sharp as a CRT TV.

Simon, you really don't understand what you are talking about. The problem you talk about occurs for precisely the opposite reason to that you state. It's because an LCD or plasma TV is so sharp that you notice the fact your picture is crap. Most modern LCD tvs can compensate this by using noise reduction techology that effectively blurs the noisey edges. A modern LCD TV can display 1920*1080 lines. A CRT displays about 525 (less overscan) by somewhere around 480 lines equivalent wide. In other words, a HD set over 8 times as "sharp" for the same area. Oh and given that TV is interlaced (i.e. it broadcasts only half the ppicture at a time), it's effectively 16 times as sharp when 1080p come on stream.

Also your TV is tiny. Ever look at a video cpatured on a cameraphone? Looks OK on a 2 inch phone screen, but ghastly on a computer monitor.

You have to understand that an analogue TV "works so well" because the TV and transmission technology were designed to complement each other. This is now coming to a very rapid end. We currently have an inbetween situation whereby you have to send the picture in a crappy, compromised, interlaced format, only for the digital box to convert it into an analogue form again for a standard TV and then for an LCD, it has to be rebuilt into a digital form again.

That's why it looks crap. GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.

I use an LCD TV for the simple reason you can connect a computer to it. Most of my watching comes from the net. There is lots of HD US TV available and even if it's been compressed down or shrunk to normal TV resolutions, it looks a hell of a lot better than what I get through my aerial.

 

[simoncc]

Simon, you really don't understand what you are talking about. The problem you talk about occurs for precisely the opposite reason to that you state. It's because an LCD or plasma TV is so sharp that you notice the fact your picture is crap. Most modern LCD tvs can compensate this by using noise reduction techology that effectively blurs the noisey edges. A modern LCD TV can display 1920*1080 lines. A CRT displays about 525 (less overscan) by somewhere around 480 lines equivalent wide. In other words, a HD set over 8 times as "sharp" for the same area. Oh and given that TV is interlaced (i.e. it broadcasts only half the ppicture at a time), it's effectively 16 times as sharp when 1080p come on stream.

Also your TV is tiny. Ever look at a video cpatured on a cameraphone? Looks OK on a 2 inch phone screen, but ghastly on a computer monitor.

You have to understand that an analogue TV "works so well" because the TV and transmission technology were designed to complement each other. This is now coming to a very rapid end. We currently have an inbetween situation whereby you have to send the picture in a crappy, compromised, interlaced format, only for the digital box to convert it into an analogue form again for a standard TV and then for an LCD, it has to be rebuilt into a digital form again.

That's why it looks crap. GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.

I use an LCD TV for the simple reason you can connect a computer to it. Most of my watching comes from the net. There is lots of HD US TV available and even if it's been compressed down or shrunk to normal TV resolutions, it looks a hell of a lot better than what I get through my aerial.

I'm sure all your technical details are correct. When I judge a TV picture I use my eyes. Flat screen TVs were originally rubbish. Now they are just about usuable. CRT pictures are still better on the small screen most suited to my average size living room.

As I've already said, large screen TVs are OK for pubs when you are sitting a long way from the screen. I'm sure that in a few years 15 foot wide TVs with superb picture quality will be affordable to Mr and Mrs Semi-detached. And some such people will actually buy them and tell us how wonderful they are.

The large TV buying classes often have another trait. They have a penchant for noise. They dedicate their whole living room to the TV, not just the large screen but on booming, multiple speakers too, including ones hidden behind the couch! Their whole room becomes a shrine to TV watching and absolutely nothing else.

 

[Greedo]

Who do you think you are replying to me like that ya tosser? I was only pointing out an observation. You're obviously one of these people

I'm baffled why anyone would even express an opinion on this - what the f**k's it got to do with you what size tv someone puts on their wall?

bc

What you only started watching football in the last 10 years then on telly. Aye right!

I couldn't for the life of me watch a game of football on a 20 inch screen. If you're happy to do so, please continue.

bc

 

[sheddy]

Almost predicted 40 yrs ago "TV screens cover an entire wall in most homes and show most subjects other than straight text matter in color and three dimensions" - from the what will life be like in 2008 thread

 

[Eat MY Dust]

Twowheelsgood, I think you'll find that HD is broadcast in 1080i, as in interlaced.

 

[Tetedelacourse]

mmm, yes quaff quaff

 

[Eat MY Dust]

Well I find myself in somewhat of a strange uncomfortable place where I actually agree with Simoncc. (Words I thought I never thought I'd say/type). I also feel that if someone is going to (try) give some one a technical masterclass, that they should maybe get their information correct in the first place.

 

[Tetedelacourse]

That's disturbing. I did likewise in the ante-natal thread (to some extent) and I'm still experiencing a dream-like haze.

 

[twowheelsgood]

Twowheelsgood, I think you'll find that HD is broadcast in 1080i, as in interlaced.

Well I find myself in somewhat of a strange uncomfortable place where I actually agree with Simoncc. (Words I thought I never thought I'd say/type). I also feel that if someone is going to (try) give some one a technical masterclass, that they should maybe get their information correct in the first place.

Currently yes, I didn't claim otherwise. But many, if not most HD sets are capable of 1080p. 1080p broadcast support is also part of DVB and ATSC standards. It would also be a bit sad for your PC if it didn't.

No lectures about getting my facts right until you are sure of yours, if you please.

 

[Eat MY Dust]

I've not heard that it's going to change and I supply masters, both HD and SD to all of the major broadcasters.

 

[twowheelsgood]

you're are talking broadcast, I'm talking hardware.

Bluray players for example will output in 1080p. The disk itself may or may not have 1080p content and that content may or may not have been from a 1080p source. Even so the fact remains the HD TV you buy in the high street will most likely support 1080p. Therefore how do you describe such a tv set as anything other than 1080p?

What I don't understand is why HD STILL supports overscan, meaning your nice 1080i or whatever won't necessarily map 1:1 to the pixels on your screen. It really isn't necessary these days and is a throwback to when the electricity grid voltage would sag under load and therefore your TV picture would get smaller!

 

[Eat MY Dust]

Therefore how do you describe such a tv set as anything other than 1080p?

I tend to refer to the TV as to what people are watching on it. I've seen and heard a lot of people talking about their new "HD" TV when they are still watching a SD signal. To me that's just a SD TV that's been sold to someone who is slightly soft.

I for one will not be giving up my CRT until the majority of broadcasters are HD. TBH I don't see any attraction in HD really. I've not seen anything that's blown my socks off and think it's all a bit of a scam.

 

[Mr Pig]

Well you know what? I don't give a s*** what the boffins tell us about how super HD is. These same people told us that CD was 'pure perfect sound' back in 1983 and they were talking crap then. It took those of us who trusted our ears about three seconds to figure that out, and other boffins about two decates to figure out why. They could have saved themselves as lot of work if they'd just listened to the blasted things! But hey, if the numbers say it's better then it must be, right?

We don't have digital ears, or eyes, and our analogue ears and eyes can pick up nuances that the lab coats haven't even figured out how to measure yet.

The other week we were in HMV or Zavi in Glasgow and they had a display promoting HD. A big Sony HD flat-screen on a stand with an HD player feeding it the Transformers movie. Great film, we've watched it loads of times, and it was obvious to all of us that it didn't look as good as in does on our old Trinitron CRT from plain vanilla DVD. Sure, it was bright, sharp and whatever other technobable adjectives you want to use, but it was wrong. Just as CD sounds wrong, if you light it up with enough resolution, so do LCD televisions. The colours look wrong, the contrast looks wrong, the movement looks wrong. They make life look like a cartoon.

Last night we were at a concert/tutorial by a drummer called Dave Weckl and to help the audience see what he was doing there were two huge LCD TVs either side of the stage with cameras looking from above and to the side of him. Even he said that the pictures drove him mad! There was a delay, so that the pictures were out of time with his drumming, and the stick movements looked wrong. A bit like watching football on most LCD TV sets, the movement dosn't flow properly and it looks unatural. He apologised and said he'd asked the tech guy but couldn't be fixed. If it had been an analogue system it would've worked. Progress?

In Currys on Saturday they had another HD display. They had a big TV showing parts of films and nature programs that had a white line down the middle with normal TV/DVD on one side and HD on the other. My son said to me about the normal side "I've never seen TV that blurred before". It looked like it had been doctored to look worse and even at that the differences were all but invisible from eight-feet away.

People will buy anything if you hype it enough.

 

[marinyork]

I've not heard that it's going to change and I supply masters, both HD and SD to all of the major broadcasters.

The targets about HD content are anyone's guess. It seems highly unlikely that the BBC will output everything in HD by 2010 as things currently stand. The people that run BBC HD have moaned that they are behind schedule with that channel as they aren't getting the content and brand new series like Merlin are still having to go through the process of considering being made in HD and then deciding no. The BBC has had several HD targets in the past and they have all pretty much been missed and rolled back. In Ofcom's paytv consultation they have a more realistic view of when HD will be produced in various tv genres. ITV are busy kitting out studios for HD. Channel 4 have just started filming flagship new documentaries in HD. Things won't change significantly until freeview HD and freesat HD takes off. Blu-ray might see some big growth in 2009 as content will finally be coming out e.g. LOTR blu-ray.