When is standard cable going to be broadcast in widescreen?

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: Thraxen

Originally posted by: redgtxdi
My sister talked up her latest Bravia to me & just went on & on.....(I did confirm with her that I thought Bravia's did about the best job currently).........until I got to her house & SHOWED her how her SDTV looked like crap. She swore up & down to me that it's not normally like that.........(yeah right......I'm a guy who spent the last 5 years studying HD/WS/SD/ED/xxx/etc. etc.)..........I just smiled & walked away.

Not all SDTV looks like crap on an HDTV. Digital channels look just fine. Sure, they don't look as good as HDTV, but they don't look any worse on an HD set than a non-HDTV.

They do when the HDTV set is 60" and the SD set is a 27" CRT.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: redgtxdi

Originally posted by: BD2003

You keep on contradicting yourself. You say perception is reality. Then you go on to try to prove to us how your perception is superior, because you understand something about resizing that we all don't.

So make up your mind. Either:

1) Youre right, and anyone who doesnt know about it is wrong.
2) Everyone sees what they see, resizing approximations be damned.

Either way you lose, because you're either wrong in fact, or it doesnt matter.

So you've managed to figure out that Sony CRTs have good pictures. Then go get one, and instead of being such a negative nancy trying to convince everyone how bad everyone else's picture is, convince everyone about what theyre missing.

Which I might add has little to do with the OP. You've learned plasmas have a bad picture. It has a lot more to do with other factors than it does to do with resizing. Plasmas are not synonymous with HDTV, in my eyes, they're bottom of the barrel. Their draw isnt in the picture they display but the size and inobtrusiveness of the screen.

And the kind of person who cares about what their TV looks like when it's off probably isnt the same guy who cares what it looks like when its on.

You want quality, you are going to have to go with DLP, or CRT, and take up the extra space and weight. Don't let a psycho convince you all HDTVs are bad because he bought the wrong one for his needs.

Well, I don't know how else to explain it to you. The math doesn't lie, so in essence everybody (including you) who thinks they're seeing good SDTV on their HDTV panel is........well......yup.......WRONG!!!

SDTV doesn't look good on HDTV panels. Can we stop there?? (No, of course not, you're still under the delusion that SDTV looks fine on your HDTV so that obviously won't work).

So here's more to chew on..............

It also doesn't matter!! "Whoaaa, you say??" Yup, that too!

But here's the important part. Between here and avsforum, I've rec'd enough PM's & personal e-mails to warrant giving people a fair chance.

Case scenario.............

Someone walks into Costco and sees their favorite (let's say Panasonic 'cuz they're arguably good by most folks' standards. Wouldn't want to say Maxent 'cuz somebody might decide that THAT'S the reason the TV looks like crap, right??). Only problem is that at Costco, they'll ONLY ever see the HDTV feed.

They take the TV home & voila!! SDTV looks like crap!! So they switch from the NTSC tuner & put their line into the QAM tuner. Hmm.......now they got these neat little menus but still SDTV looks like crap. OK, so they call up their local cable company & get the latest/greatest Motrola STB. Guess what............still looks like crap. Now wait a minute. This isn't what it looked like in the Costco sittin' up on that thar pretty orange rack. What happened??

SDTV at 480i on a 720p native panel is what happened!!

Can we stop there?? No probably not. So I'll explain to you the conversation I had with my buddy who manages a local Costco here in Southern California..............

"Red.......Do you know what the majority of our HDTV returns are in regards to since we've started carryin' the damn things? (He's from North Carolina, thus the accent ).

"Why, no, what's that?"

"PQ, buddy, PQ! Everybody that returns 'em says the same thing. 'It looked horrible when we got it home!'"

These very words were quoted to me as I checked out with mine (which I seriously thought I could tune to perfection). One week later, I returned my set. And, yes, I knew what I was doing!


Lastly...............you can pick your favorite Pioneer plasma. Go to AVSforums and find the Pio thread & write down ALL the perfect settings for that particular television. Get the greatest STB known to man for your Sat,Cab, FIOS, whatever. Dial in everything exactly the way it should look its best. Now............show that picture to 100 people. Some of them will say it's fine. Some of them will say it looks like crap.

Who's right??

So regardless of how badly you want it to be black & white YOURSELF. Your points 1 & 2 propositions above just don't hold water. It's actually BOTH!! I just want to be sure people know what A LOT of us have experienced.....(whether that's MOST or SOME or FEW)......before they go spend $5K down at Costco, CC, BB, Fry's, whoever & end up wasting a whole weekend after they have to return the whole thing 'cuz looking at SDTV is a lesser experience than it was when they had their good old CRT.......(let's say RCA just to shake things up, eh?)

Sorry........dunno what else to tell ya'! :beer:

And you continue to do it. You go from:

Well, I don't know how else to explain it to you. The math doesn't lie, so in essence everybody (including you) who thinks they're seeing good SDTV on their HDTV panel is........well......yup.......WRONG!!!

and try to justify it in terms of objective math. And then go on to later say the opposite, that I want it to be black and white....

Now all that would be fine and lovely, if you were actually right about the math thing. But youre not. You might be right about some sets, about some set top boxes....hell maybe even *most* of them. But unless you know *how* it's upscaling, you're just generalizing and talking out your ass.

The reason why people return their sets likely has nothing to do with resizing. When they look at it in the store, their eye tends to find the brightest, most colorful screen from the dozens to choose from in the brightly lit store. When they bring it home, and see it in isolation, its rough and ugly to watch, because it is far from calibrated. More than likely, most of those returns are plain buyers remorse, and they just want their money back. A good deal of people I know still think buying an HDTV means that all your programs will be in high def, and make their SD programs look like HD, and that certainly isnt the case. It doesnt necessarily make them look worse, but not $3000 better.

The reason to buy a HDTV is for HD. Calibrate your set, calibrate your expectations, and calibrate your wallet, and youll love it.

 

[purbeast0]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
I must be among the relatively few who realized the majority of content was 4:3 - i.e. television broadcasts. So, I bought a 4:3 television

Yes, there are 40+ inch HDTV's with a 4:3 ratio; not all HDTV's are widescreen.
Now, when purchasing movies, I always buy the widescreen version so that I get the entire movie, not a cropped movie. I don't have a problem with the black bars on the top and bottom, because it's a big enough tv.

that's completely subjective. the majority of the stuff I watch is NOT in 4:3. Probably the ONLY thing I watch that is in 4:3 ratio are shows on FX or Seinfeld or The Simpsons (the re-runs).

everything else I watch is in HD (sports, primetime shows, discovery), is a DVD, or is my Xbox360. if one buys a 16:9 TV when most of the crap they watch is 4:3, then yes, that person is a fvcking idiot if they complain about the black bars on their 16:9 TV when displaying a 4:3 image.

i am just pretty much very surprised at the responses in this thread. on this techie forum I thought people understood more about the whole 16:9 and 4:3 thing, as well as HD and SD.

 

[davestar]

we certainly won't see widescreen while analog (NTSC) format cable is still the norm. (no one's mentioned this in 75+ posts?!?!) NTSC is by definition 4:3, and there's no chance that an analog format is going to be redefined and hardware changed. maybe a couple years after OTA broadcasts become digital and consumers are used to the concept of digital tuners, then we might see widescreen non-HD TV.

 

[redgtxdi]

Originally posted by: BD2003
calibrate your expectations

/thread