1080p smoke and mirrors?

[Sxotty]

http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages_b/reality.html

First off, there is no 1080p HDTV transmission format. There is a 1080p/24 production format in wide use for prime time TV shows and some feature films. But these programs must be converted to 1080i/30 (that’s interlaced, not progressive scan) before airing on any terrestrial, satellite, or cable TV network...
What about live HDTV? That is captured, edited, and broadcast as 1080i/30. No exceptions. At present, there are no off-the-shelf broadcast cameras that can handle 1080p/60...
But that’s not all. To show a 1080i signal, many consumer HDTVs do the conversion from interlaced to progressive scan using an economical, “quickie†approach that throws away half the vertical resolution in the 1080i image. The resulting 540p image is fine for CRT HDTV sets, which can’t show all that much detail to begin with. And 540p is not too difficult to scale up to 720p.

But a 540p signal played back on a 1080p display doesn’t cut the mustard. You will quickly see the loss in resolution, not to mention motion and interline picture artifacts. Add to that other garbage such as mosquito noise and macroblocking, and you’ve got a pretty sorry-looking signal on your new big screen 1080p TV....
To summarize: There are no fast refresh (30Hz or 60Hz) 1080p production or transmission formats in use, nor are there any looming in the near future — even on the new HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats.

Is all this stuff true? That seems pretty craptastic, the only gem there is it says that if you happen to be using a PC to play your media you could make it actually work

 

[booomups]

hmm... any problem to using a pc as main media center? I guess not ;-)

as long as the free citiciens of USA fight for theire freedom on a personal level
nono, really, no reason not to use a small shuttle next to the 30 inch lcd.

 

[Geo]

"many consumer HDTVs" doesn't cut it for me. I want actual examples. As an owner of two 720p fixed-pixel TVs, 1080i signals are clearly much better than SDTV and noticeably better than DVD on our TVs.

There may be some truth in there, but given so generically it looks very alarmist to me without providing any way to pursue just how alarmed you really ought to be --classic formula for FUD. Not a single company name is named. Not a single quote from anyone is offered in support. No external supporting links are pointed at.

Edit:

What about live HDTV? That is captured, edited, and broadcast as 1080i/30. No exceptions.

Simply not true. ABC broadcasts 720p. http://abc.go.com/site/hdtvfaq.html

EditII: Not terribly relevant, but I found it interesting anyway --wife's NBC TV station just bought HD cameras for the studio, as the local news is going HD in April. A cool $60k/each.

 

[booomups]

60k for a camera... seems so.. much

 

[Geo]

Well, these are broadcast quality HDTV studio cameras, and capable of being robotically controlled at that (tho frankly I don't know without asking the missus if the robot base had to replaced too)! But still, ~$500k total --multiply that by every local TV station in America. . .

 

[archie4oz]

There's quite a few innaccuracies in that article... 1080i signals broadcast at 60 fields per second (not 30), hence the proper notation would be 1080i/60 (also quite a bit of signals (e.g. cable/sat and even some OTA regions) are broadcasting 3/4 aspect pixels for 1080i (hence you're really getting 1440x1080i stretched to 1.78:1)). There is a 1080p transmission format as well, it's simply not used since it's quite susceptible to interference (as is 720p) which is why 1080i is the more popular broadcast format (although ABC, Fox and ESPN do push 720p for a lot of their sports broadcasts).

The notion of a 1080p broadcast spec is irrelevant as well since the main source of 1080p content would be from local playback devices (game systems, HD media players) and significant factor there is whether or not your TV's DVI or HDMI ports are 1080p compatible (a 1080p/60 signal is within the spec constraints of the current HDMI and DVI specs) however many TVs don't actually work with said input format (boooo!)...

 

[Geo]

Whoever has one of those "this thread is useless without pics" icons ought to put it here. . .

 

[BRiT]

 

[Martin Eddy]

This one?

 

[booomups]

pigs? where.. get that ham.

 

[Sxotty]

Simply not true. ABC broadcasts 720p. http://abc.go.com/site/hdtvfaq.html

EditII: Not terribly relevant, but I found it interesting anyway --wife's NBC TV station just bought HD cameras for the studio, as the local news is going HD in April. A cool $60k/each.

You misunderstod Geo, but it is understandable considering how it was phrased.

He said what about Live HDTV (As in is that in 1080p) the answer is no it is in 1080i, 720p, or less that was the point, that there is no OTA content in 1080p to watch on your 1080p tele

Basically what I have seen from this thread is no one knows any different, but it makes you feel uncomfortable

From wikipedia

Due to bandwidth limitations of broadcast frequencies, the ATSC and DVB have standardized only the frame rates of 24, 25, and 30 frames per second (1080p24, 1080p25, 1080p30). 1080p30 is currently the most bandwidth-intensive video mode supported. If the standard MPEG-2 compression is used, higher-framerate versions such as 1080p50 and 1080p60 could only be sent over higher-bandwidth channels; to send these over normal-bandwidth channels, a more modern codec such as the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec must be used. Higher frame rates such as 1080p50 and 1080p60 are currently for private or internal use only, and are not part of the broadcasting standard.


Even though various television networks in the world broadcast HDTV programming in 1080i and 720p, no 1080p broadcasting actually exists at this time. Material that has been digitized from a 35-mm film source is basically 1080p24 though, fit into 1080i50 or i60 (progressive with segmented frames).

Doesn't sound too promising to me personally, makes one wonder why TV's seem to be so complicated when they should be no worse than a computer monitor.

 

[Geo]

Basically what I have seen from this thread is no one knows any different, but it makes you feel uncomfortable

What makes me uncomfortable is the utter lack of any support at all other than his own words, yet rather strong statements as to quality. And by not pointing at any popular brands as to which are bad and which good in this respect, a complete lack of ability to test the assertion being made.

I know what 720p-from-1080i looks like on our two sets.

 

[London Geezer]

Am i the only one around who realised that amongst the fixed res panels like plasma and LCD, only 1080p sets will be able to resolve the full resolution of 1080i? So, to get the full res of 1080i (1920x1080 interlaced), we'll need 1920x1080 panels.
Today's LCD's are all limited to 720p or have 1366x768 resolutions, and although they accept 1080i signals, they can't show them. Plasma's are even worse, the top of the range HD ones might have great IQ, but some of them have 1024x728 resolution (!).
Only 1080p panels will be able to show all resolution, from 720p to the "real" 1080i to the full 1080p.

Not sure why i'm writing this but i thought you guys couldn't be without this invaluable contribution to the discussion.



/sleeps

 

[Geo]

Well, what this guy seems to be asserting is that for "most" current 1080p sets they will show 1080i at worse quality than 720p sets show 1080i. I'm not buying it without more than he's shown us.

 

[London Geezer]

Well, what this guy seems to be asserting is that for "most" current 1080p sets they will show 1080i at worse quality than 720p sets show 1080i. I'm not buying it without more than he's shown us.

Absolute and utter nonsense. (i had kinda missed that part...er...)

 

[Moloch]

So how often do you get the full 1080 res with 1080i on typlical broadcast material?
IN that thread a guy was talking about how the pulldown makes it so you see more full frames

 

[Sxotty]

Absolute and utter nonsense. (i had kinda missed that part...er...)

I don't know, if the part he talked about where the set downsamples, them reupsamples is true, it is still a stupid strategy. The only place that 1080p seems to have a promise of actually coming to fruition at this point is on bluray and HDdvd. I don't have personal experience with this stuff, but at some point maybe next year I will get a hdtv and so I have started to read a bit.

I dislike how a lot of LCDs are some random resolution, that just seems silly to me, why aren't they exactly 1080, or 720 and not some in between resolution?

 

[caboosemoose]

Well, despite the innaccuracies of the initial post, it's definitely an interesting subject. I'd been wondering why they bother with interlaced resolutions at all, now I know: bandwidth. It's also interesting since the quality of the deinterlacing technology in your set is going to be pretty key to overall IQ when playing back 1080i broadcasts...

I have some good quality 1080i transport streams, and the best of them look pretty hot on my dell 3007. However, at normal viewing distances, a good 720p file isn't too far behind, but does lack the last dimension of sharpness of the 1080i stuff.

 

[Sxotty]

Well, despite the innaccuracies of the initial post, it's definitely an interesting subject.

Come now, it was the link that was full of inaccuracies not my post

 

[caboosemoose]

Oh, OK