DemoCoder said:
Passable? What are you talking about?
"Passable" as in reasonable for what is expected for a clean, sharp HD image. It's by no means pushing the technical envelope for what the "taken for granted" resolution specs suggest, and it is sure as hell not devoid of blemish if you
really take some time to look into the picture.
OTA HDTV is superior to DVD,...
In technical resolution, yes. In keeping down compression artifacts, no. Disc formats seem to hold the standard so far, in passing instances of proper encoding. It doesn't matter if it is SD or HD (i.e, being "HD" doesn't magically imbibe you with superior encoding result). I'm sure not having to be encoded in realtime has a lot to do with it, but there you are. That you fail to bother in making any distinctions or qualifications for this when making your comparison speaks volumes for how attentive you really are in determining PQ.
...and Cable/Satellite HD transmissions.
No argument there. It was cited as such in my post.
OTA HDTV has significantly less artifacting than either DVD, DirectTV HD, and Comcast HD. The same applies to OTA SDTV vs SDTV on Satellite/Cable.
...not so on the DVD comparison. It simply doesn't work out that way.
SD ends up highly variable whether or not it is OTA, satellite, or cable. What seems to be quite universal is that digital SD in any of the "broadcast" incarnations looks pretty bad, even for optimal analog SD standards. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but SD has really been abused quite heinously by the digital age. The standard should be where the best example of analog SD was, when its use began to fade. Digital SD has been just a poor, poor, poor facsimile of where analog SD left it (audio follows the much same trends, as well). That's why it is soooo easy to point out how HD looks sooooo much better than the germanely available digital SD. How could it not (aside from the obvious resolution advantage)??? Digital SD has been dumbed down so badly in current days, it looks just plain bad to begin with- far more than it should be given what SD is actually capable of.
Why should this matter since SD is on the way out, anyway? It matters bigtime, actually. When you see how badly digital SD was compromised in use, you better be damned concerned that they don't pull the same crap with digital HD. As it is now, there does not seem to be anyone worried. Hence there is no one to call "them" on it, when they slowly, subtly taper back quality levels because it suits the bottom dollar some where in the chain. Be vigilant, people. Don't think for a second they won't do this as far as they can get away with, w/o it being obvious how fubarred they have made the feed.
There is a simple reason why. Comcast and DirectTV own hundreds of channels. They tune their compression codecs to permit more channels, instead of a fewer number of higher quality channels. That's why the DirectTV Spaceway satellites which are going to offer over 1,000 HD channels are most likely, crappy quality just like their SDTV channels. Cable and Satellite are interested in maximizing the number of channels they have available.
At least you are able to acknowledge this threat. Now imagine all the people who think what they shovel out looks absolutely stellar on their brand new HDTV simply because it ends up looking better than what they had before on average... People just fail to recognize a crap signal as soon as it has an HD label slapped on it.
In contrast, local OTA broadcast stations own a single frequency alotment for their station broadcasts. They are denied by law/FCC regulations from subdividing those frequencies for other uses. Thus, if your local NBC/ABC/CBS affiliate is switching to HDTV, they have no incentive not to utilize the complete bandwidth they have alotted, since they can't resell extra bandwidth if they opted for a crappier compression codec.
Wonderful they have this check in balance, yet they still only achieve "passable". It tells you something. Hopefully, you are right that the actual
transmission is solid, and the occasional flurry of artifacts is simply from young-generation HD camera and broadcast equipment adding their own layer of new-age "noise". Suffice to say there are *a LOT* of links in this chain, and just being "HD" isn't going to magically disappear the impacts of just a few bad links. It's more reasonable to expect that the times where
everything is working at peak performance to give you what HD is really spec'd to deliver will actually be quite rare.
The difference between HD and SD broadcasts is more than some minor sharpness improvement. If you watch HD broadcasts on a daily basis, and then switch to SD, the difference is striking. SD looks shitty. Blurry as hell.
Your test makes no bother to rigidly control SD as a reference (it's like making a comparison of HD to VHS- well what exactly did you expect? VHS was never the paragon for even SD delivery). As explained earlier,
digital SD does look quite bad, perhaps even by design and purpose. It certainly is no measure of the best that SD as a format was capable of (but since no one is delivering "full-out" SD anymore, who cares, right?). I'm not saying it could ever be confused for HD, but if you took a real reference, you would most certainly realize what a short step forward HD is delivering
at this moment. You put anything on a big enough screen, it's going to get "blurry". Blurry isn't the issue, here. It's already known that blurry is an inherent consequence of dpi. What most people fail to realize or acknowledge are the artifacts and loss of detail under movement. These are significant and relevant measures to PQ, as well. You don't forgive everything else, just because
one component in the "larger picture" has made a step forward.
I've been watching the Lost DVD Season 1 on my HDTV to catch up. Tonite, I watched the OTA HDTV broadcast. *Vastly* superior to upconverted DVD 480p. (and please, don't start this ignorant nonsense about upconversion again. The same result can be had by watching on a CRT).
Once again, if you blow anything up on a big enough picture, it's going to get blurry. Adding more pixels is certainly going to help, but ignoring other "troubles" that seemingly have come along with it hardly makes the determination of "vastly" meaningful. It looks better in some ways, not so good in others, I'd gather. This is hardly an overture for SD to live on. What this is, is a conscious push for HD that can be all that it can be. What we have
now is "passable" in its best state, and downright embarrassing at its worst. Simplistic generalizations of "vast" improvements is just plainly not seeing the forest for the tree.
You make a habit in these forums of being an HDTV denier. I suggest you get your eyes checked.
That you are unable to see the artifacts suggests that it is really
you that needs your eyes checked (or at least take the rose-colored glasses off for once). Things are not as simple as labeling somebody a "denier" and using that to establish the genuinity of your own position (it does the complete opposite, actually). You seem to feel comfortable with the belief that HD is all roses, but you don't realize how that has affected your ability to really "see" it critically and objectively. HD has a green light, but that doesn't mean that all lights are green. That's all I'm trying to say. Stamping out awareness of quality standards may serve your ego, but it most certainly will not put the industry on a favorable future. You can bet on that.
