beyond HDTV - next time let there be just one format

[Megadrive1988]

would you not agree that it would be better if there was just one format for a new television / video standard? Digital Television has something like 18 different formats of which 3 or 4 are HDTV formats. there are not really any sets out there that support all of these natively. there's hardly anything that does 1080p - this seems be one of many things that has hurt the adoption of HDTV, including the broadcast of HDTV content.

next time, when we go beyond HDTV to Ultra High Definition Video, or whatever, would it not be better if there was just one scan mode ( i.e. 4320p for UHDV ) and that gets pushed without all the confusion of 18-4 different scan modes ?

 

[davepermen]

don't tell this to the people using pc's since years.. there, all those i and p's never had any use anyways, and any device was just forced to be able to support any res. all these format-standards are stupid, and really useless. espencially the interlaced ones. in the digital age, they have definitely no use anymore.

and yes, i hoped with hdtv, we could finally get a one-fits-all solution. but no, they prefer to define another bunch of standards, to (i guess) sell as much middlesteps as possible, and thus making as much, and for as long money as possible..

well well.. the industry..


(p.s. this was just more or less a rant. i just got up, and it's monday morning.. so hey! what do you expect )

 

[Geo]

My wife the TV engineer at a local affiliate would be happy if they'd just get the broadcast equipment right for this generation. She says the audio hasn't been in sync ("by several frames!" she says in shocked disapproval) since they started.

 

[London Geezer]

You think that's the only problem?

Remember the old PAL/NTSC 50-60Hz issue? The one that could have been done away for good with the new HD standards? Well, it's still here!! In fact, we have 720p50 and so on... Most HDTVs here can accept and display both formats, but really, WHAT THE HELL!!!

At least before PAL had a resolution advantage while being slower. Now the resolutions are the same, and it's STILL slower!!!

Oh well. There are actually very good reasons why we kept the 50Hz, but for consumers it's a bit confusing.

 

[kyleb]

would you not agree that it would be better if there was just one format for a new television / video standard? Digital Television has something like 18 different formats of which 3 or 4 are HDTV formats. there are not really any sets out there that support all of these natively. there's hardly anything that does 1080p - this seems be one of many things that has hurt the adoption of HDTV, including the broadcast of HDTV content.

There are plenty of TVs that doesn't have the native resolution of any of those formats but the problem only comes when consumers fixate on that fact. HDTV standards basically come down to 720p and 1080i at the moment, which both have their pluses and minuses but use nearly the same amount of bandwidth at the same refresh rate. Then there are a bunch of refresh rates to match various standers such as the legacy PAL support LB mentioned, but that is simply required for cross-comparability with existing video and hardware. For the adoption of HDTV all that is needed is that the TVs in the stores can handle either resolution at whatever refresh rate effectively, and the industry is doing pretty good with that.

As for the next step, it seems we will slowly move to 1080p for everything when bandwidth concerns are delt with and that standard will hold solid for quite a while there. Getting rid of interlaceing just makes sense with most newer displays being natively progressive scan, but moving to higher resolutions would be mostly pointless. While displays with more than 1920x1080 pixels are bound to be coming soon, far more often than notpeople won't be sitting close enough with respect to the size of the display to fully resolve much more than a 1920x1080 image anyway. Whenever we move to VR-helmets or holodeck-TV or whatever, then yeah we are going to need higher resolution; but I'm betting the upcoming 1080p video will tide most people over for quite a while.

 

[KimB]

As for the next step, it seems we will slowly move to 1080p for everything when bandwidth concerns are delt with and that standard will hold solid for quite a while there. Getting rid of interlaceing just makes sense with most newer displays being natively progressive scan, but moving to higher resolutions would be mostly pointless. While displays with more than 1920x1080 pixels are bound to be coming soon, far more often than notpeople won't be sitting close enough with respect to the size of the display to fully resolve much more than a 1920x1080 image anyway. Whenever we move to VR-helmets or holodeck-TV or whatever, then yeah we are going to need higher resolution; but I'm betting the upcoming 1080p video will tide most people over for quite a while.

Yeah, the next step up would be to increase the framerate.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

What's the point?
It all looks the same.

 

[D3v0ur3r]

would you not agree that it would be better if there was just one format for a new television / video standard?

Sure.... Will we see it any time soon? I doubt it untill maybe governments get involved. You are talking about the corporate business world after all. It totally benefits them to flood the market with so many version that it generally confuses people & then they just pay top dollar for what they feel looks the best for what they can afford. The current ATI V-Card lines should prove that point nicely. How many different x800 lines are there?

 

[CMAN]

There are also different HDTV modulation standards in different countries, similar to NTFS and PAL.

 

[nobody]

i guess you mean NTSC and not NTFS

nevertheless both NTSC and PAL (as analogue video formats) use the same modulation standard (FM - frequency modulation) but different encoding standards.

 

[Simon F]

i guess you mean NTSC and not NTFS

Surely that rather depends on how much stuff he's aquired on his PC