HD ready or not

[Ray Maher]

An article in the Mail today says that nearly all the sets being sold as HD ready can only receive a maximum of 720 lines not the 1080 that HD will be broadcast in.

Currently there is only one set widely offered in the UK that offers 1080 lines, the 37" Philips
37PF9830 at £2800(ouch)

Is this true.

[steve]

All 'HD-Ready' screens will accept 720p or 1080i video.
According to Alan Roberts, 37 inch is about the size that the 720 or 768 lines vertical resolution becomes visible at a practical viewing distance. Besides, most LCD/Plasma TV sets seem to underscan, so even if the screen does have the exact native resolution, the scaler will still spread 80% of the picture over the whole screen!

Steve

[David L Lewis]

I think the question isnt so much about "HD ready" but "at what resolution."

I thought I would look at a new Sony Bravia Tv to eventualy show footage shot on my new Z1E and like Ray was astounded that they currently only sell TVs in the UK with 768 lines of resolution KDLV series However I understand that they are about to relaese an X series which will go up to 1080 lines

See Here

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/03/06/sony_beefs_up_bravia/

[steve]

Sony aren't the first. Sharp had a 45inch LCD last year with 1920x1080 native resolution, but the smaller sizes were all something like 1280x720 or 1366x768. The problem seems to be that most users will sit at a distance too far to see the difference an anything smaller than 40inch-ish.

[Ray Maher]

All 'HD-Ready' screens will accept 720p or 1080i video.
According to Alan Roberts, 37 inch is about the size that the 720 or 768 lines vertical resolution becomes visible at a practical viewing distance. Besides, most LCD/Plasma TV sets seem to underscan, so even if the screen does have the exact native resolution, the scaler will still spread 80% of the picture over the whole screen!

Steve

So is the article in the Mail wrong about HD ready sets having a maximum of 720 lines with 1280 pixels per line,giving a total of 921,600 against HD broadcasts of 1080 lines with 1920 pixels giving a total of 2,073,600.

[Alan Roberts]

Yep, that's right. If you view a 37" from 3 metres, you don't need more than 720. 1080i can only deliver content resolution of about 720 anyway, so a 1080 display is a bit pointless unless you're watching 1080p. The only way you get that is when the source material was shot film-style, with the camera in psf mode. Fortunately, that covers all real film, all drama, a lot of newly shot light-entertainment and so on. The only material that seems stc=uck in 1080i is sport and news, where the smooth motion's important.

Having said all that, the horizontal count matters as well. HDV, 1080i, is a very good match to the 1366x768 panels, and is quite a bit better than's needed for 720p in any of it's forms (HDV is 1280 wide, DVCProHD-shot material is 960 wide) so you should be able to tell the difference even on a 768 panel.

There are many in the industry who don't agree with me on this, but the numbers all stack up this way, as does straightforward personal observation. Most of the personal opinions are based on a subset of combinations, like ignoring horizontal resolution, or ignoring the effects of the scalers in the panels, or setting cameras into modes that no sensible programme-maker would ever consider using just to make sharp pictures.

[Alan Roberts]

The Mail is wrong, badly.

All the HD panels will accept, as input signals, both 720p and 1080i. They will all rescale the signal to fit the panel, including overscan. Many of them are dire at doing this, the more expensive ones can be quite good. The very expensive ones are pretty good. I saw a new 50" Panasonic (1366x768) panel yesterday doing a fair job of showing my A1 pictures, for about £2.5k. Frontniche's 37" (same res) does a really good job but costs £8.5k.

You get what you pay for, but they'll all show the pictures, whether 1080 or 720. You should ignore anyone who tells you otherwise, including, especially including, salesmen in Dixons.

[infocus]

An article in the Mail today says that nearly all the sets being sold as HD ready can only receive a maximum of 720 lines not the 1080 that HD will be broadcast in.
If they are sold as "HDready" they will receive forthcoming broadcasts, or at least allow a receiver to be plugged in. The no of lines is only relevant to the spec in that to carry the badge they have to display a MINIMUM of 720 lines, but the spec defines much more - HDMI input, able to handle HDCP copy protection etc. See http://www.ebu.ch/en/technical/trev/trev_301-editorial.html - last few paragraphs.

A couple of months ago I was looking in a shop of a very upmarket electronics company (ie "posh", - no names), the make priced probably double that of comparable Sony, Panasonic gear and mainly due to it's exterior styling. The salesman approached, "do you want any help, sir", and I asked if the flatscreens were HDready. "Oh, they are HD COMPATIBLE, sir", in a tone that said "that's all you need to worry about". I couldn't resist digging deeper, and it turned out that "compatible" meant that to actually display high-def on them would mean an upgrade of £200+! When he said that "it will be unlikely that you'll be able to view HD in the lifetime of the set anyway" I had to bring up the BBC trials this year.

Just because something is dearer (MUCH dearer here), doesn't necessarily mean it's better........

[Alan Roberts]

Quite so, but when I say you get what you pay for, I mean once you've shopped around. Clearly, if one shop sells a specific product significantly cheaper than another one does, and it provides adequate after-sales cover, then you'd be daft to go to the expensive one (or you might be a poser).

[Ray Maher]

The Mail is wrong, badly.

All the HD panels will accept, as input signals, both 720p and 1080i. They will all rescale the signal to fit the panel, including overscan. Many of them are dire at doing this, the more expensive ones can be quite good. The very expensive ones are pretty good. I saw a new 50" Panasonic (1366x768) panel yesterday doing a fair job of showing my A1 pictures, for about £2.5k. Frontniche's 37" (same res) does a really good job but costs £8.5k.

You get what you pay for, but they'll all show the pictures, whether 1080 or 720. You should ignore anyone who tells you otherwise, including, especially including, salesmen in Dixons.

You get what you pay for is right so my 26" set will show as good a picture as the one I saw on the demo set in Dixons using the same make as mine sourced from a hard disc.

What made me buy a HD ready set was the picture quality.

[SimonMW]

I was lucky. I got my 32" JVC CRT widescreen set because it displayed an amazing picture. It was only when I got it back home that I found out it could display high def through component (or 900i mode as it is described). Cost me 550 quid! It displays the correct horizontal freq for 1080i, and the magazines seemed to confirm that it does indeed display a true HD signal.

So I highly recommend any of the JVC DIST sets 32" and above. They display a true progressive mode too. After I've played DVD's that I've created I never want to watch them on any other set because it looks so good. So good in fact that in many circumstances I'm not sure what I would gain from true high def. Although it will be nice trying it out. Here's hoping that Sony keep to their promise of releasing the first Blu-Ray titles without encryption so that I can try them out!

Sorry, that all sounded a bit gushing didn't it? ;)

[infocus]

Quite so, but when I say you get what you pay for, I mean once you've shopped around.
Sorry - my remark wasn't directly referring to your comment, but rather to this one particular make (the only one this shop sell). Compared to the acknowledged brand leaders such as Panasonic and Sony, they "justify" their high price on the grounds of "trendy styling". That's fair enough, but here you seem to be paying far more than the main players, and whilst the products may well look very stylish, they are inferior in substance - they can't cope with HD without an upgrade for one.

The lesson before you buy must be to ask "is it HDready?" Any answer other than a straightforward "yes" and move on - especially "well, it's HD compatible, and........".

To Rays last question the answer must be "yes" - though with the qualification that we don't know fully what bit rate etc most broadcasts will be at, and it may differ from cable to satellite to terrestial. (Neither do we know what system/bitrate the Dixons box was replaying at.)

[ClaireTall]

Does anyone get the feeling that HD won't catch on and will end up like SVHS for the home consumer?

I can't imagine Mr and Mrs Average bothering with it unless they have no choice.

Long live SD DVD of which I bought three films yesterday for £19.

[steve]

I imagine that HD will follow the classic 'S' curve of new technology market penetration:
That is, a few early adopters will rush to respond to the Sky push in the World Cup and Christmas sales drives.
Then there will be a lull when prices of both HD sets and sat/cable contracts fall back to reasonable levels. During this period, there will be steady growth, fuelled largely by PVR and CRT TV replacements. It will be difficult to buy anything other than an HD-Ready large TV from next year once the con-men have shifted the 'not really' HD sets.
The final phase will be determined by the DTT response to HD. If a reasonable number of channels are available on Freeview, then set top box receivers will probaby embody HD on all but the cheapest models, (maybe all DTT PVRs). This phase is probably more dependant on political will, as much as commercial manipulation of the UK TV distribution chain.

Just my thoughts

Steve

[Alan Roberts]

The US is the model for HD. See my thread (http://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=14229) carrying Mark Schubin's reports for details. Takeup is following more or less the same trend as video recorders did, or cd players, or dvd players. Slow but steady.

[StevenBagley]

Does anyone get the feeling that HD won't catch on and will end up like SVHS for the home consumer?

I can't imagine Mr and Mrs Average bothering with it unless they have no choice..

It's already started thought -- sales of flat panel screens are already rocketing rapidly and most of the modern sets are HD ready. Indeed, walking to John Lewis, or Currys now and you'd be hard pushed to buy a TV that was HD ready. So they don't really have any choice now. As people refresh their TVs (that happens every 8 years apparently, mainly due to boredom) they will almost certainly end up with HD models.

The UK TV market is fascinating in many ways, when I bought my first TV as a student in 1997 the majority of sets on sale were 4:3 CRT and about 25". Now the vast majority of TVs on sale are 16:9 HD flat panels ranging in sizes that start at 25" and go up to 60"... Interestingly, the cost hasn't changed much though you just get a lot more for your money (e.g. my Sony 28" WS CRT cost me £850 in 97, that would now fetch me a 32" HD capable LCD...)

The difference between HD and SD is something that even the lay person can see in store on a 60" TV and that's exactly what the manufacturers are doing by providing HD playback stuff for the stores to show...

Steven

[infocus]

Does anyone get the feeling that HD won't catch on and will end up like SVHS for the home consumer?
I had that feeling 10 or so years ago when the Eureka project got dropped, but now think the scene is very different, and it's not a matter of "if" HD will catch on, but how long it will take. (And I see a mixed future, with HD, SD and low-res for handhelds etc co-existing.)

What's changed? I saw a very early demo of HD, and like others thought "wow, that's good!", but never really considered the economics deeply. With hindsight it's obvious - ten, fifteen years ago HD was hugely expensive, and remember TV was still then predominantly analogue. And the cost differentials were throughout the chain - cameras right through to TVs. At the display end the CRT had little opposition, limiting screen size to 32-36" for practical purposes, so the full benefits wouldn't really be seen anyway.

Everything has changed now. Soon it will be difficult to buy SD only broadcast cameras, and HD models are becoming cheaper than SD models were. Same at the other end - and I fully agree with what Steven Bagley says - for most sizes non-HD ready sets are becoming "end-of-range". Soon everybody who needs a new TV will be buying an HD capable set - you won't be able to do anything else! And when the broadcasters have HD at the front end, and a substantial percentage have HD screens then it becomes silly not to transmit it - there may still be a cost implication here, but small compared to 10 years ago.

Another thing that's changed is the desire for it. For consumers, it's not just broadcast TV, but the screens are finding a raft of other applications which are/will make use of their resolution - such as computer games and digital still slideshows. For broadcasters, it was a huge expense fifteen years ago - for what? Now such as Sky see it as an affordable way to show clear water between them and the competition, and gain a market advantage. And following Skys announcement, the terrestial broadcasters seem to be showing desperate keeness not to be left too far behind.

The final change is on the part of the retailers, who see it as a way of selling more high end product. I was in a shop when one "Mr and Mrs Average" came in to buy one make of TV and went out buying another - that manufacturer had provided a hard drive to make sure his screens looked at their best, and boy, did the pictures in the shop look better than the standard feed being displayed on the set they'd intended to buy. Yes, we all know, and Mr and Mrs Average didn't, but the other point is that this couple were able to fully appreciate the quality difference, even if they didn't know what to put it down to.

And just wait until Mr and Mrs Average go round to their friends (Mr and Mrs Early Adopter) and see how much better the pictures on their identical screen look. "Oh, it's because of that box you have under the screen......."

[Alan Roberts]

Many of us who worked on Eureka knew full well that the project was dead at the start. We knerw that an analogue system was doomed because we were just tooling up to do digits in SD and it would be only a matter of time.

But, Japan had already been broadcasting HD in analogue for some yeras, so we needed to understand the technology, ready for the day when it could be done in digits. So, we got a lot of experience in production technology and had a ball playing with the kit (at least I did). The US held back in the late 80s, and jumped straight into HD and widescreen and digits all in one go. We jumped for digits and widescreen a little later. The US had much more to gain because the NTSC 480-line pictures are all 4:3 and look very naff on a big display, whereas we've been doing 16:9 576-line pictures for over a decade and so our only gain for HD is the resolution. But the shoppers are now telling us that the time's right because they're buying the new, big affordable displays.

And that's why Sky's starting soon, and why the Beeb is running its trials.

[SimonMW]

Why is it that Japan always manages to make these things work. but the rest of the world takes forever? Surely the logistical problems that they face are the same?

[Alan Roberts]

Not really. Japan works as Japan Inc. So the government can instruct NHK to work on a project, and require it to buy Japanese. The catalyst was the Royal Wedding (Norihito seems to come to mind), NHK were instructed to cover it in HD, and to buy 300 HD cameras equally from Sony, Panasonic, Ikegami. Their analogue HD systekm was crude and very expensive, the consumer decoders would have cost about £5k each in today's prices. In commercialo terms, this was a total disaster, after 10 yeras there were still only a few thousand decoders sold, but channels broadcasting HD. It took the work in Europe on analogue HD followed by the wordwide work on digital transmission to get it off the ground in the US.

Commercially, HD has been a disaster in Japan, only once they ditched MUSE a year or so ago did sales take off, about the same time as in Korea and Australia. Now we're all singing from the same hymn sheet, it should work well anywhere.

[infocus]

Commercially, HD has been a disaster in Japan, .............
Hmmm, economists could debate this until the cows come home, and in the simple sense you're obviously right, in so far as the income from analogue HD hasn't compensated for the costs of doing it in the past decade or so. But I wonder if the long term view will see things differently, that the work on analogue systems can be more properly seen as "research", with the spin offs bearing fruit in all sorts of ways.

I've heard it said that one reason for the success of Japanese industry has been their ability to take a long term view, whereas in the West there seems much less patience with any expenditure that doesn't bear fruit on the next years balance sheet. This may be one example of that, and that much HD equipment will be coming from Japan may be an indication of the merit to their approach.

[Alan Roberts]

That's exactly what I meant. HD was funded early and heavily to get it started, but only in Japan. The broadcast system they started (MUSE) was doomed because the decoders were horrendously expensive, but the process led to hardware and production (rememberThe Ginger Tree). For around 10 years, HD production happened in Japan using 1" tubed cameras and big analogue open-reel vtrs. It wasn't 'til 1988 that we started digital recording of HD (at BBC R&D), and that was uncompressed. Compressed digital HD didn't start until about 1992 when BTS launched a compressor, Sony came along a bit later with HDCAM which we all regarded as a News/ENG format (I still do).

The industry has a lot to thank Japan for, without that government intervention it wouldn't have happened at all. And the Japanese government wouldn't have pushed had NHK not done the early research in the mid 1970s.

[Ray Maher]

All 'HD-Ready' screens will accept 720p or 1080i video.
According to Alan Roberts, 37 inch is about the size that the 720 or 768 lines vertical resolution becomes visible at a practical viewing distance. Besides, most LCD/Plasma TV sets seem to underscan, so even if the screen does have the exact native resolution, the scaler will still spread 80% of the picture over the whole screen!

Steve

I have just looked up the spec for my Samsung 26" lcd HD ready TV and it says it will receive 720p only.

[Alan Roberts]

That's interesting, are you sure that the words are exactly right? Perhaps the manufacturers are taking the spec. very literally, and assuming that the decoder boxes will have a menu setting to define the box output standard. Now that's an interesting development that I hadn't expected.

Ray, can you tell us the model number please, and I'll pass that on to people who're supposed to know much more about this than I do?

[Ray Maher]

That's interesting, are you sure that the words are exactly right? Perhaps the manufacturers are taking the spec. very literally, and assuming that the decoder boxes will have a menu setting to define the box output standard. Now that's an interesting development that I hadn't expected.

Ray, can you tell us the model number please, and I'll pass that on to people who're supposed to know much more about this than I do?

Alan ,

Model no. is LE26R51BD.

[Alan Roberts]

Info duly passed on. I'll report what I hear.

[Ray Maher]

This is part of the EICTA requirement for the HD ready logo on televisions.


Requirements for the label “HD ready???
A display device has to cover the following requirements to be awarded the label “HD ready???:

1. Display, display engine

· The minimum native resolution of the display (e.g. LCD, PDP) or display
engine (e.g. DLP) is 720 physical lines in wide aspect ratio.

2. Video Interfaces

· The display device accepts HD input via:
o Analogue YPbPr*, and
o DVI or HDMI

· HD capable inputs accept the following HD video formats:
o 1280x720 @ 50 and 60Hz progressive (“720p???), and
o 1920x1080 @ 50 and 60Hz interlaced (“1080i???)

· The DVI or HDMI input supports content protection (HDCP)

* “HD ready??? display devices support analogue YPbPr (component) as a HD input format to allow full compatibility with today's HD video sources in the market. Support of the YPbPr signal should be through common industry standard connectors directly on the “HD ready??? display device or through an adaptor easily accessible to the consumer.

[Alan Roberts]

· HD capable inputs accept the following HD video formats:
o 1280x720 @ 50 and 60Hz progressive (“720p???), and
o 1920x1080 @ 50 and 60Hz interlaced (“1080i???)


And the vital word is the "and" that follows (720p).

[Ray Maher]

And the vital word is the "and" that follows (720p).

My thoughts also.

I await the results of your enquiries.

[Ray Maher]

Info duly passed on. I'll report what I hear.

Alan,

Any news yet.

[Alan Roberts]

Nothing yet, I'll post what I get.

[popper]

hi Alan and the reast of you guys/girls.

im rather new at this HD tech and am starting to understand many things with your posts to guide me, however i dont feel confident to tackle the thread over on http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=65336 with the corect terms and relationships to each generation of Mpeg such as mpeg part2, part10 AVC etc or their tech flaws and strenths never mind the Pro Hardware tech setting you might use to get the best for PAL HD content.

so i ask that if your so inclined, to take a look and put the facts straight for the readers there that will come to read the thread and assume those
posts are correct and valid, it just makes me cringe reading their assumptions and apparently trying to pass of junk as facts, they also seem to be US based so it so far and PAL doesnt even get a mention yet so that needs putting right.

now i dont want to be unkind to the guys there, and perhaps they really beleave what their posting is right, its just is not, unless iv totally missed the point of DVB HD posts here, and doom9.

for example:
"H264 is simply the part of the MPEG4 AVC standard that relates to the video encoding of HD content. Its the specification for encoding - which x264 is trying to implement."

and i always thought AVC stands for Advanced Video Codec, i guess seeing as he kind of gives credit the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264
by linking there then that too need some serious editing to show the correct information incase the unwary venture there.

[Alan Roberts]

I don't like getting tangled up in others' arguments, but I might pop in for a look.

MPEG has many variants, MPEG1 was a frame-based compression system that ignored motion, effectivel a stream of JPEG compressed frames. MPEG2 looks for motion, and can reduce data content by predicting motion to the decoder. MPEG4 looks for moving objects, not just moving blocks. H.264 is one implementation within MPEG4 (there are several others). And there are other flavours of MPEG (like 7 and 11, but I don't know much about them yet, not my scene).

MPEG4 and H.264 are nothing to do with HD per se, but they do come into play with HD because they can compress data far harder before the artefacts get visible.