hdtv - worth the effort?

[starbuck]

Reading all the stuff about hdtv coming out in europe next year. At the moment I obviously use std tv, have cable and surround sound for dvd's etc. Pic always looks good to me. I know to get high def you have to have a tv capable of it.

My question is, will it really be worth the expense? What are the main diffs brtween this and std tv(apart from higher resolution). I have also seen things about different resolutions for hi-def and wondered if much diff.

[5lab]

the res and progressive scan are the only two real advances. most shows will also have dolby digital, but this is not > dvd quality anyways. it makes most of a difference on a large screen - on something like a 21" set its not worth it unless you're really really close..

go into your local LARGE curries and have a look - they have a wmv-hd disk playing in mine, which has obviously been chosen cos it shows off the sets, but it does look good..

[Zak33]

ONE YEAR.....

look this year...watch....be patient...
decide in 12 months.

Really. A good telly now will still be a good telly then, but a good HD telly now will be old and out of date in 12 months.

trust.....
12 months...

look ...get excited....but next year

[Dorza]

Its going to be worth it. HD will be the biggest boot up the arse broadcasting has had since colour TV was invented as far as im concerned. If you haven’t already seen a HDTV demonstration id make the effort to see one next time your strolling through your local comet, dixons, curries or other big name electrical store.

I was blown away when i saw a demo in comet a couple of months ago. On a good HDTV with a good signal looking at the TV will be like looking out a window of your house. The one i saw was showing on a big big screen as well. The picture really is that good. You just have to see it to believe how crisp, sharp, clean and clear the picture is. I can't wait for it to become the norm in broadcasting.

The audio will be Dolby Digital Plus. So this will allow the broadcaster to upgrade the audio service as they see fit. Think I read that on the Inquirer, but I cant find the link.

[Stoo]

18months -2 years tbh

This time next year Sky HD broadcasts will have had time to "bed in" but not really get the penetration, in a couple of years time prices should have dropped far enough to properly start replacing crt sets and with a bit of luck freeview might have grown enough to start sending hd broadcasts..

When is analogue due to be switched off?

[Decemoto]

I'd say it'll give console gaming the boot up the bum it's needed for a while. The advantage of PC gaming, even when brand new consoles have been out, is that they play games at a much higher resolution. With the new round of consoles, the resolution of 1280x720 is essentially just a letterbox version of what I play my games in now (1280x1024). It'll definitely bring things forward, and I may even skip the my next yearly upgrade and get an Xbox 360 instead if it's picked up enough steam by then!

[Nick F]

I can see HDTV taking off in 2006 for sure, just saw a news posting that 50,000 HD - Ready TV's are in the UK

Check out my site for up to date HDTV related news. As soon as I can afford one I will be getting a set and Sky HD for sure

[sooty]

Agree with DORZA completely you must see a demo to believe it I did and finished up buying a 46" TV cant wait for HDTV to start

[5lab]

i'm a bit cautios about the demos - i mean - they must be carefully selected to look good iykwim - they're not gonna use any old footage..

[TheAnimus]

i was in a local sony shop on saterday, and i saw a horrible sight, a 50" plasma, running of pal. It looked wrong, you could see this nasty 'fuzzing' around the heads of people.

The easyest way to explain it is a mate of mine's girl friend who insists on him turning his 1600*1200 laptop screen to 1280*1024. It just makes my eyes hurt. (so i told him how to use policy editor )

[Dooms]

If you have a big monitor and a decent spec PC go watch one of the HD trailers from the apple site and you will see how good it looks... the best quailty trailers on there want fit on this 20" iMAC and wont even play properly due to lack of power.

[Stringent]

The PS3 has HDTV outputs on it already. The reason why consoles run gaes better is the resolution of current TV's. With HDTV the quality will be better and therefore better hardware needed.

I'll probably get a PS3 when it comes out, as for HDTV, I think I will wait around for a while. I doubt analogue will get switched off yet. Maybe in my lifetime, but I can see it happening for at least 5 or so years.

[Nick F]

Go to the Windows website, there are some fantastic HD showcase videos. Each about 200MB in size.

[GizmoStu]

I found myself looking at a 37" HD LCD telly at lunchtime. Very, very nice indeed. My take on it is that it probably won't mean much to people who prefer a smaller telly, but it will make a big difference on anything over 28".

I'd say that the general consensus here is right though. It would be better to allow some time for the products to mature and, more importantly, drop in price a little.

[Stoo]

I still can't see much point adopting this early, even when sky start their HD broadcasts, it's still only going to be very limited.

I'd say wait until the second generation of HD screens become available, that way you'll have a lot more choice of what to watch, and you won't get hit for the price premium of being an early adopter..

[Rave]

i'm a bit cautios about the demos - i mean - they must be carefully selected to look good iykwim - they're not gonna use any old footage..

When I went in they were just showing the standard demos from the Microsoft website- in fact these aren't all that brilliant, the bitrate is low enough that there are some compression artifacts and some jerky motion where they've not used enough keyframes. Still pretty impressive though.

General comments: a lot of the current generation of HDTVs are fine in quality terms; the Sagem DLP sets I've seen look jaw-droppingly good as others have noted. If anyone has money to burn, then they could do a lot worse than to buy one and import a D-VHS player and a bundle of D-Theatre tapes to enjoy some HD movie goodness- or some big screen computer gaming. For everyone else though it makes much more sense to wait until HD source material is widely available; prices WILL drop over the next year, and as I understand it HDTVs available now aren't guaranteed to be compatible with High Definition Content Protection (HDCP), so early adopters could end up getting burned anyway.