10 HDTV myths

[BART]

Just an article at MSN (http://tech.msn.com/howto/article_203-2.armx) for newbies.

[jeff671]

"These pricey TVs look so great out of the box that it's a waste to pay a small fortune to have a professional calibrate your set."

I have actually heard this from a so-called professional. I was told not to bother getting DVE or Avia.

[Ty]

[ QUOTE ]
JEFF671 said:
"These pricey TVs look so great out of the box that it's a waste to pay a small fortune to have a professional calibrate your set."

I have actually heard this from a so-called professional. I was told not to bother getting DVE or Avia.

[/ QUOTE ]

You were given some extremely crappy advice. Even given that the television has the basics down like accurate color decoding, it's not possible for it to be correctly calibrated since much of it depends upon the room it winds up in and how much ambient light is present. Proper white/black levels have to be obtained through test patterns using a disc like DVE.

[JeffDM]

[ QUOTE ]
JEFF671 said:
"These pricey TVs look so great out of the box that it's a waste to pay a small fortune to have a professional calibrate your set."

I have actually heard this from a so-called professional. I was told not to bother getting DVE or Avia.

[/ QUOTE ]

Getting an ISF tech and getting DVE/Avia are two separate things. I personally don't think an ISF tech is necessary but tweaking the settings a bit can improve the picture a lot.

As the article says, the out-of-box settings aren't necessarily near accurate, they are set to look best under the bright flourescents of the store floor when compared to other sets. That usually means they are set too bright and by extension, are often set to a higher color temperature than they should be.

Also, DVE and presumably Avia give information on how to get the best out of your sound system and a little info on how to arrange the room lights and so on.


I'm glad they address this myth:
[ QUOTE ]

"I'll have to toss all my current analog sets when the digital conversion kicks in."

Though this is not strictly an HDTV issue, it is a common misconception about the digital transition, which Congress seems bent on completing by 2008. At that point your old sets won't be able to snag over-the-air broadcasts without help, but you should still be able to use them by buying inexpensive digital-to-analog converters.

[/ QUOTE ]

The explaination is a bit off, but basically there should be digital tuners available, it is looking like it will possibly be subsidized by the sale of the recovered analog spectrum. And the video will look better because there's no ghosting or static, nevermind the limitations of the analog signals that reduce the color and detail.

[Skywise]

No ghosting and static, but instead we get overcompressed junk with digital artifacts galore /images/graemlins/tongue.gif. I've yet to be impressed by the picture quality of digital signals compared to an analog one with good reception. I'm sure digital will be nice for people who have had analog cable, but for those with say satellite dishes it's a bit of a step back as far as regular TV resolution material goes.

[JeffDM]

[ QUOTE ]
Skywise said:
No ghosting and static, but instead we get overcompressed junk with digital artifacts galore /images/graemlins/tongue.gif. I've yet to be impressed by the picture quality of digital signals compared to an analog one with good reception. I'm sure digital will be nice for people who have had analog cable, but for those with say satellite dishes it's a bit of a step back as far as regular TV resolution material goes.

[/ QUOTE ]

480i downscaled from 1080i seems to significantly reduce the number of artifacts, not that I was complaining about the 1080i broadcast. Even with a 480i digital broadcasts, the ones I've seen are still a lot better than analog broadcasts.

Your "good reception" caveat is very important here.

[TAS]

[ QUOTE ]
JeffDM said:
Even with a 480i digital broadcasts, the ones I've seen are still a lot better than analog broadcasts.

Your "good reception" caveat is very important here.

[/ QUOTE ]

A friend picked up a digital cable terminal (SD/480i) from Rogers when it first came out, and called me to help set it up. The "A" channels were ok, the "B" channels (independents and small specialty channels) sucked. they looked like a bootleg VCD. Much worse then analog cable, and that's not very good to start with. We took it back to Rogers (my friend was sure it must be a defective unit) and I thought I was trapped in the dead parrot skit.

-It's digital, it can't be bad. Look at the great colour!
There is macro blocking and other artifacts all over the place.
-But it's digital so there is no signal loss, it's perfect.
If you feed it a bad signal, you get a perfect bad signal out the other end.
-But it's digital, digital is better.

We left before the need to whip them to death with a length of coax became overpowering. /images/graemlins/happy.gif

[Skywise]

[ QUOTE ]
JeffDM said:
Your "good reception" caveat is very important here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes and no. With bad reception digital's going to look like crap as well with corrupt macro blocks etc. The only difference is that digital seems to be a bit more robust before that becomes an issue.

[JeffDM]

[ QUOTE ]
TAS said:
[ QUOTE ]
JeffDM said:
Even with a 480i digital broadcasts, the ones I've seen are still a lot better than analog broadcasts.

Your "good reception" caveat is very important here.

[/ QUOTE ]

A friend picked up a digital cable terminal (SD/480i) from Rogers when it first came out, and called me to help set it up.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really can't say that digital cable is necessarily comparable with ATSC broadcasts. My experiences with ATSC was that it was excellent for the most part, I didn't get significant artifact problems be it gibbs effects, dropouts and such.