hdtv - worth the effort?

[steve threlfall]

Its going to look better though isnt it. Its a huge boost to the pciture quality imo. I had an extensive look at a HDTV LCD in Dixons yesterday and i was blown away. The main problem i can see is the prices which will come down given time.

[starbuck]

Just checked out the windows site for the demos(but haven't checked out the demos yet). Just looked at the suggested specs and their optimum specs suggest you need 1920 x 1440 screen resolution. Are there existing (good quality) monitors(approx 19") that support this resolution properly and whay sort of price range are you looking at(as thinking of getting a tft screen to use as a second screen anyway but if I can get one for my pc which will be able to show good quality hdtv then all the better).

[Rave]

Just looked at the suggested specs and their optimum specs suggest you need 1920 x 1440 screen resolution.

The vids on the site are all (IIRC) either 720p or 1080p. 720p video is 1280x720 resolution (16:9 aspect ratio) so any screen with that resoultion or higher will be fine; a 1280x1024 17" TFT will just show it with fairly large black bars top and bottom. 1080p is 1920x1080 resolution (again 16:9); that's a bit harder to find but the Dell 2405 (1920x1200, which is 16:10) will show it pixel perfect again with very thin black lines top and bottom. I suppose the 1920x1440 reccomendation comes about because they assume everyone is still using 4:3 aspect ratio screens- at the higher resolutions though, I reckon most people won't be. Anyway, the point is, don;t be put off, if your screen just has enough pixels for the 720p video download that, I reckon you'll still be blown away by the quality.

FWIW, I experimented by increasing my screen resolution to 1360x1024 so the player would be forced to scale up the 720p video a bit, and in my (admittedly unscientific) testing I couldn't see any difference in picture quality, nor did it cause any slowdowns on my 9700/2.2GHz Tbred system.

[TooNice]

TV? HDTV? What are those?

I've never owned a TV in my life lol.

[5lab]

i dont think 1080i will be used much. the extra bandwidth and lower interval quality - additionally, how many people will get a 1080 screen when 90% of shows will look no different.. the extra res is there, but on a tv it will only be highly noticable when you ramp up above 40", something that most homes wont have for quite a while..