CRT TVs

So you focus on one promised benefit and neglect myriad costs?

Oooooops. You just invited all manner of disagreement.

Damned if I know how you can claim "everyone is better off in the end".

Correct me if I'm wrong. You are not 100% in touch with:

What digital eqpt. will be offered and at what price.

Exactly what dig. transmissions will be offered and when.

What the overall cost/benefit relationship will look like.

Etc, etc.

The whole thing is driven by the Fedral Gummint and the dreaded "Entertainment Industry", both of which are primarily concerned with extracting more $ from your pocketbook and mine.

I was considering purchase of a new tv and had little idea which way to jump (HD, etc), so I asked a career cable tv friend. He advised to do nothing, buy nothing, as the proverbial shit is *bound* to hit the fan around 2009, and noone can much predict how it will all shake out.

I expect a hideous, hideous mess and a massive, behemoth boondoggle.

Cheers, Puddin'

"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens!" -Friedrich Schiller

Reply to
Puddin' Man
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Yes, some will be worse off, but not by much. There is a small minority that receive NTSC today over the air and don't accept the value proposition of having an HD picture that puts to shame what they are watching now, or simply can't afford a new TV. They will have to buy a converter. The cost is estimated at a whopping $50 to $100. And the fed govt has already announced a program to give any household that requests it, 2 rebate coupons for $40 each. That means you could still use your 2 existing TV's for a cost of ~$70.

The digital eqpt is already being offered in just about all new tv's. There was an ATSC phase in schedule started couple years ago, first for big screen tv's, then working down in size. Today the overwhelming number of tv's actually being bought have atsc.

It's offered right now in most of the US.

The overall cost/benefit of the whole deal right now is overwhelming. Are you saying most people would rather continue to watch a crappy picture, invented in the 50's/60's, instead of HD? Good grief, take a look in the stores at what's flying off the shelves. Now, you could argue about the cost benefit of doing it differently, like not turning off NTSC and resellling the spectrum. But for a program as a whole deal, the cost/benefit is fantastic.

Yes, but the vast majority, who value a superb picture, are now able to get it and enjoy it.

With all due respect,.your friend is an idiot. In most areas, you have a wide variety of HD programming available via Cable, Sat, or OTA. And it's increasing all the time. Millions of HD sets have been sold, they are flying off the shelves. The transmitters for ATSC are built and running. Places like Costco have no focus on regular TVs anymore, because fewer and fewer are buying them. Do you really think it's all going to be undone? Sure, they may push out the NTSC turn off, or increase the rebate. But what does that have to do with buying a new TV today?

Reply to
trader4

Wrong on both counts. NTSC is NTSC regardless of delivery method (air, cable, DVD). You can't put a NTSC DVD into a DVD player for PAL tv's and expect it to work - it won't. The two standards are incompatible.

Reply to
Bob M.

What is NTSC DVD? I thought DVD player can have either PAL or NTSC output. There is such thing as region code on DVD playing.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

DVDs store audio/video digitally. NTSC and PAL (and SECAM) are analog standards, and DVDs data is NEVER stored that way (it's always digital). However, the data on the DVD is stored is a particular way (bit rate, number of lines, etc...) that can easily be converted to that analog video standard. Data is stored interlaced.

BTW, I'm in the US and find that most DVD players can play PAL-format disks (those without region-code blocking). The video output appears to be PAL and won't display correctly on most TVs. I do have a video projector that will work with either.

Reply to
Mark Lloyd
[snip]

Strangely, I find the difference (HD resolution compared to 480 lines) to be nearly insignificant. There is a considerable difference, but most of that is in ATSC, rather than HD.

Of course, these people will still need a converter for 480-line ATSC broadcasts.

[snip]
Reply to
Mark Lloyd

This was an important part of my point. There are many (myself included) who are 100% happy with good current-generation analog reception, and view the "Great Upheaval" (the "digital" changeover) mandated by the gov't as just another terminal insanity dictated by the Vested Interests and not likely to be in the interest of the public at large.

I dunno why I bother to respond to stuff like this. You, kind sir, have bought into what they've told you (as did Mr. Trent). But, you, kind sir, are -not- in a position to be aware of all the problems that might well materialize when "the deed is done". If you continue to believe all that they tell you, then I know of a piece of real estate that you're truly gonna love: located right on the scenic, scenic 38th Parallel.

P

"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens!" -Friedrich Schiller

Reply to
Puddin' Man

Have you two guys even seen an HDTV with a HD source? Have you looked at a sporting event, for example? It is very strange for someone to think that a decent size screen HDTV doesn't look significantly better than a plain old TV. In a side by side comparison, the difference is huge. Many people describe HD as if they were looking at the real event through a window.. If most people saw no difference, why are they flying off the store shelves, when they cost more?

As for the argument that there are many who are 100% happy with what they have today and don't want a "digital upheaval", well that argument could be applied to any advancement. I'm sure some were upset when they stopped making LPs, and 8 tracks too. Now granted, most other changes like this are driven by market forces, not a govt deadline. But this case is a bit different. Here you would have a small minority of people ie, those who view via OTA instead of cable or sat and who don't want to move up to HD, buy a new set, continuing to use a valuable public resource (the NTSC bandwidth), that could be put to better use. And for an outlay of $25 to $50 for an ATSC tuner, those people will still be able to continue use their existing NTSC TVs indefinitely. And I would not be surprised to see the shutdown date for NTSC pushed out again, or for the govt rebate of $80 per household to be increased. Doesn't sound so bad to me.

I'd say I'm more aware of what's going on than you are. Faced with a decision of buying a TV, I prefer to find out the facts, which are readily available and actually look at an HDTV compared to a regular one. The facts are, ATSC broadcasting is up and running. The 85%+ who have cable or sat have HD available. Network prime time is in HD. NYC even has HD livecam from news helicopters. The first HD DVDs and players are appearing. All new TVs sold in the US now have a built-in ATSC tuner. The prices for HDTVs have dropped dramatically. And 16 million HDTVs will be sold this year.

You instead ask your buddy, the cable guy, who predicts that something very bad is going to happen and the changeover to ASTC is gonna turn to chaos, so you shouldn't do anything about your TV that needs replacement He's proably one of those cable guys we heard about who show up to install cable and can't figure out how to correctly hook the new digital box component video outputs up to the HDTV.

Reply to
trader4

Because everyone seems to confuse what is happening. The only requirement is that analog OTA must be turned off and then all OTA can only be *digital*. There is no requirement that OTA digital must be HD.

Reply to
George

You may not have read all of what I wrote. I did see a huge difference. It was just that the majority of it was with something other than spatial resolution.

BTW, I have seen real HD. Actually saw the Super Bowl in HD once (on a

65-inch screen).

Yes, that is to be expected. Things like this are seldom done at the time promised.

Reply to
Mark Lloyd

Industry hype.

I've seen 'em. In the store (a somewhat artificial environment), they look better. But not -that- much better.

'Tis the cost/benefit curve, as applied to the public at large, that you fail to comprehend. Possibly because you're just not interested in what effects others.

Hey, it's OK to get abusive. It's obvious that you lack info about both my circumstances and my friend (who, 'tho retired, knows vastly more about the industry than either of us).

They pump up the hype in preparation for shoving the unproven technology down the consumers throats. You seem to accept it all at face value. You are their "Perfect Consumer". Or perhaps an industry employee. Eh?

I'll have the real estate agent from Seoul give you a call ... :-)

P

"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens!" -Friedrich Schiller

Reply to
Puddin' Man

Yes, it's true that with ATSC there is no mandatory reqt that it be HD. But there is plenty of HD programming available today. Much of network prime time is HD. Sports are in HD. There is plenty of HD available on cable channels too. And the main point of moving to ATSC was to get HD. So, when someone says the difference between HD and regular TV is significant, one assumes they are talking about viewing material on an HDTV that is HD. And how anyone can look at that and call it an insignificant improvement, is beyond me.

Reply to
trader4

I read it and here it is. I stated that an HD picture puts to shame regular NTSC:

And you responded with:

"Strangely, I find the difference (HD resolution compared to 480 lines) to be nearly insignificant. There is a considerable difference, but most of that is in ATSC, rather than HD. "

Which perhaps you could explain? Certainly if you look at an HD image, the image detail is far superior. If you look at a flower, on std TV there is no detail, on HD, you can see the pollen and small hair like plant material. . And that is directly attributable to the fact that it is either 720P or 1080i, both of which have more lines of resolution. That was why they went to higher resolution in the first place. No different than looking at a picture on a VGA computer screen vs XGA, where you also saw a big improvement in detail.

At least it appears we agree on one thing, and that is that HD is a big improvement over std TV.

Reply to
trader4

Look, there is plenty of info available today about HDTV from a variety of resources, many of which are not connected to some evil industry conspiracy. You obviously won't even look at it, yet you go around telling people calamity is ahead. You can stick you head in the sand, while the rest of us move ahead.

And do you know what you were looking at? Just because it's an HDTV doesn't mean the program that happened to be on at the moment was HD. In stores, I've seen all kinds of material being shown and at times, it wasn't HD at all. It's gotten better in the last couple years, but before that in many stores that I've seen it was pretty bad. But if you have an HDTV with and HD source, and a regular TV next to it, the difference is huge.

You make these sweeping statements with out elaboration. The cost to the public at large? If you have 2 tv's and buy 2 ATSC tuners, you'd be out about $50. Is that so bad? When the local or state govt decides to buy open land or make a new park and your tax bill goes up that much for something you personally never will use, do you get all upset too? And further, for the public at large, the fed govt is gonna get billions when they sell the bandwith previously used by NTSC. That sounds like a lot of money they can piss away instead of instead of taking it from taxes. So, where exactly is this big cost/ benefit problem that I fail to comprehend.

Yeah, I tend to get that way when someone who dismisses readily available info from a wide variety of sources and obviously knows less than zero about HD, tries to tell me I'm some kind of mindless dummy that's bought into a bunch of hype.

What exactly is "unproven"? About a third of US homes now has an HDTV. ATSC broadcasting has been up for years. Every TV set sold now has an ATSC tuner. Geez, I notice for all the facts and statistics I cite in an attempt to have a reasonable discussion, you counter with what? No facts. Just personal feelings, and the opinion of your buddy the cable guy, that HD/ATSC is unproven stuff, heading for calamity. Now thats what I call hype.

BTW, I'm not an industry empoyee, though I am an electrical engineer, so perhaps I know a little more about technology than you or your cable guy.

Reply to
trader4

Yes, That I said that most of the difference is in getting away from NTSC rather than HD itself. I did NOT contradict you.

The problem with that is that you omitted the reference. Comparison is between TWO different things.

I did not say there was no difference. I said the difference was small compared to something else (the way a cow is a lot larger than an ant but is a SMALL animal compared to a whale).

BTW, do you know how many lines a NTSC picture actually has? It's LESS than 480.

Yes. The problem seems to be in the omitted middle. To help explain, I will mention three things here:

  1. NTSC. Ordinary analog video as we've had since World War II.
  2. 480-line video, as with a DVD player connected with a YUV or HDMI output. Still not HD.
  3. HD: 720p / 1080i or greater.

You said that #3 was much better than #1.

I DID NOT DISAGREE.

I said that most of this difference was between #2 and #1, rather than between #3 and #2.

You may continue to disagree with me, but please try to understand what it is you're claiming to disagree with. Since this point of disagreement involves #2 above, it should not be ignored.

Reply to
Mark Lloyd

That's happening a lot. There's a lot of (wrong) claims that NTSC won't exist after 2009. I expect an eventual lack of NTSC, but it will take a lot longer than that.

People seem to want to ignore that. A lot of these digital (ATSC) stations will be broadcasting 480 lines (not HD but still a lot better than NTSC). You probably won't see ANY difference (between 480 and 720 lines) unless you have a big screen.

Reply to
Mark Lloyd

I was accused of saying that but did not . Someone didn't read what I wrote (I just put more information in another post).

Reply to
Mark Lloyd

OK, I see what you;'re point is now. I'm not sure I agree that the diff btwn ntsc and 480 is much greater than between 480 and HD. But I agree that it is arguable. Sorry for the confusion.

Reply to
trader4

sure I agree that the

pn smaller sets certinally anything under 13 inch the difference between them cant be seen, and 19 inch is a wash, now 30+ inch screens its noticeable.

bt high def and digital have over 30 standards, of picture quality.

local broadcasters can either provide a wonderful picture or send 5 programs at the same time, or information of some kind.

they will do whats economicaly best for profits, no more no less

Reply to
hallerb

What do you think the number is?

All NTSC signals have at least 480 scan lines no matter what the source. The useful *vertical* resolution is about 70% of that due to something called the Kell factor, again pretty much without regard to the source.

On the other hand, different NTSC sources have different *horizontal* resolution figures, which are quoted in terms of "lines per picture height" that can be resolved. Here, resolution is proportional to analog bandwidth, and can be as low as 250 lpph for VHS, up to about 550 lpph for professional gear. But the horizontal resolution has no direct connection to the "480 lines" of the format which is a vertical measure.

There is a huge range in quality depending on the source (VHS, over the air, laserdisc, DVD). These are all 480-line format, but horizontal resolution varies. There's also a large difference in the colour resolution between composite and component connections.

This is a specialized subset of #1, with the image stored digitally at

704x480 pixels, and fed to the monitor either digitally or in analog component form. It's still 480-line format, but horizontal resolution is about 500 lines per picture height (for 4:3, less for widescreen).

Now you're getting greater horizontal *and* vertical resolution, and possibly better temporal resolution too (in the case of progressive scan).

This is sort of meaningless since #1 is a bucket that contains such a huge range of quality. If your #1 source is a VHS tape running at SLP speed, any DVD will be much better. If your #1 source is a laserdisc, it's going to be pretty close to the DVD in quality despite being composite analog.

To make a comparison that everyone might be able to agree with, you'll need to be more specific about what kind of analog video you're comparing against as #1.

Dave

Reply to
Dave Martindale

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