Still no comparison
 

Although I'm amazed by the clarity of HDTV, to me it still doesn't hold a candle to seeing color tv back in the 50's. It almost seems now like something out of place in the era. Programs in color! when most of the world was just getting used to B & W.

Sorry I guess it still brings back a very magical time for me.

if you look closely at any hdtv signal on a quality set it still looks like crap. there are digital artifacts everywhere in the picture. what was wrong with the analog system we are using now. the government had no business whatsoever sticking their stupid noses into the tv business as far as analog signal goes. hell fire what about the starving kids we have here and the government is going to issue $40.oo coupouns toward the purchace of hdtv to analog converters. hell they ought to have to furnish everyone with a new quality {ha,ha,ha,} hdtv set. steve

Good luck if you live in a fringe area and are stuck with ATSC tv. Plus, its great having the black bars take up half the screen on everything you watch due to the fact that HD programming in 16:9 has to be resized to fit on a 4:3 screen.

The issue of leaving analog and moving to all digital is purely about the issue of bandwidth and picture quality. The airwaves are a very very valuable and finite comodity. The bandwidth must be used for many many many different purposes. The most economical way to do that is to use the latest technology to transmit the information in an encripted digital manner, and be able to send 10 or more times the information in the same bandwidth.

(BTW the government has every right to tell the public how the airwaves must be used. The FCC has been doing that since it was established. The airwaves are the property of the government. Every government has the right to control the airwaves over it own airspace. The various frequencies allocated to various things such as Television and Radio are only "licensed" to the TV and radio stations and if the stations do not comply with the mandates of the FCC the license to use a given frequency can be revoked.)

As for the $40 coupon the government will be issuing, I figure I pay taxes, and the money is mine to begin with. But the fact is that those coupons will be used mostly by poor people who can not afford to buy a new TV with a digital tuner.

AS for picture quality... I live within the shadow (less then 1/4 mile) of no less than 6, 1000+ foot tall tv transmission towers in Milwaukee. I emphasize the word SHADOW. I have lived here since 1951 and have had problems with signal overload, ghosting, and cross chanel interference since the beginning because I am so close and the transmissions either overload my tv sets or the signal is blocked because I am to close to the base of the towers.

I recently purchased a Phillips 42" LCD HDTV with ATSC digital tuning. I now, for the 1st time in over 50 years, can receive PERFECT picture quality on every station that is broadcasting in digital format. The same station's analog signals continue to give me very shitty picture quality.

AS far as artifacts on a digital tv, that is due to either a much to highly compressed signal (one with less information than needed to fill a given screen size) or a very crapy digital tv that does a poor job of processing the digital information. A good digital transmission containing a sufficient amount of picture information, shown on a quality digital TV will run rings around the clarity and sharpness of any analog tv you can produce.

I get most of my program material from the master broadcast signals via a digital C-band satelite dish. (not the highly compressed and shitty Direct TV pizza dish... I am talking about the Big 10 foot type dish). I get both High definition and Standard Definition program material from more than 20 satelites in the Clarke belt. I can assure you that there is nothing that compares to a true High Definition broadcast shown on a quality HDTV receiver.

I enjoy my collection of old tv sets. I even enjoy watching them for the sake of nostalgia. But I will be the first to admit that their picture quality can not hold a candle to todays technology.

With reapect to fringe area broadcasts, you should be able to pick up digital broadcasts with a basic UHF roof top antenna up to 50 miles away from most digital transmitters without any degradation in picture quality. (no degradation in picture quality is the big plus of digital transmissions)

AS for the black bars on the sides of your screen, If you have a HDTV like my Phillips, there is a feature that automatically sizes the incomming signal to fit the entire screen regardless of the transmited picture format. I have no black bars on any picture I watch. The picture is automatically resized to fit the full screen

Thank you, thank you, thank you ohohyodafarted. It is good to read "notes of wisdom" from someone who can make honest, balanced opinions after having seen both sides of an issue, rather than just bash new technology because it is new. (How ironic is the concept of complaining about the new TV standards and government involvement, in a forum specifically dedicated to enjoying and preserving what was at the time a new TV standard that owed its availability to the government??) :rolleyes:

What most people do not realize yet is that digital TV signals almost always are much lower power than the same station's analog signal. When the analog stuff gets turned off in 2009, finally, the stations should be boosting their digital signals up to "normal" power levels. Fringe reception will then be a non-issue for many people, and remember, the signal they receive will be flawless, ghost- and snow-free.

Black bars are a good thing. The real travesty, still perpetrated by ignorant programmers such as HBO even in its HD version, is to mutilate movies to make them fill a 4:3 screen. Are there really people out there who would want every picture in an art gallery, every Picasso, Rembrandt, or da Vinci to have its top and bottom, or left and right sides, cut off so they all fit some matched-size frame? Do people not understand the concept is the same with motion visual programming? It is now the 21st Century... If you want to watch modern TV programming and have it fill your screen, get a wide-screen TV. Do not worry, no high-def TV programs will be produced in any aspect ratio other than the 16:9 that will fill all of your new screen with light, if that is so important. (Of course, all the "old" stuff will have black bars on the sides of the new TV; should we then complain about them not "fixing" those shows?) :)

I'm not disputing the advance in technology thru the years, only the initial impact of color vs hdtv.

Today with all the other distractions hdtv almost gets lost in the crowd

Back then tv was the thing, you didn't have cable, internet, video games and so on.

To add color back then was a pretty bold move and futuristic by any stretch of the imagination.

I hear you Oldtvman. I know what your are saying and I too feel no excitement with HDTV like I did when I got my first color set in the mid 60's. And when you think about what a grand engineering accomplishment the pioneers of early color had done, it is nothing short of miraculous. The state of technology at the time was very crude compared to what we have today. Jumping from a B&W tv to color and doing it in the same bandwidth with the crude circuitry that was available was a miracle of engineering. I guess we in this hobby of collecting and restoring these old sets all feel the same nostalgia for these old relics.

But time marches on and technological progress will not be stoped just because we long for the good old days.

In my short lifetime we have gone from the beginnings of tv in 1947 when a Dick Tracey wrist radio was a peice of science fiction, to a cellular telephone in everyones pocket that will take digital photographs and now also, watch live television on that palm sized device in nothing less than Living Color from NBC.

It's called MediaFlo and is available as we speek from Verizon in many major cities. And will be available in 2008 via Cingular (now AT&T wireless) It was invented by Qualcomm and will be in almost every city as soon as the tv stations vacate chanel 55 in the UHF spectrum. That will happen around February 2009 when all analog tv transmission is slated to shut down as mandated by the FCC. Unfortunately here in Milwaukee I will have to wait until the local chanel 55 station is forced to vacate it's spectrum, and give it over to MediaFlo.

I hate to poop on the parade, but I'm not all that impressed with most "new" innovations. Excepting the fields of nano-tech, DNA and other molecular level science, there isn't much out there now that didn't exist 20-30 years ago at a higher pricetag.

I laugh when the engineers I work with dismiss the technological feats of 20-30+ years ago as "crude". Half of them are out of their element when asked to do something out of thier comfort zone, (or do math without a calculator) let alone conceptualize an entirely new idea.

It's akin to shade-tree mechanics (on the other AK board) calling some kind of car "crap", but they're usually just mouthing what they've heard and can't back-up the "why".

You want to know what's crap? Ignoring the wants of the free-market to impose a system that will make the airwaves even more inaccesable to Joe Citizen. Putting a gun in my proverbial face and saying "Broadcast on analog and you will lose your freedom, because mega-corp X paid more to use it." Don't hand me the load of bull that says "We need the airwaves for police/fire/FBI/anti-boggieman" Since when have those organizations wanted to use the jammable open airwaves; 1935, when digital/sat. technology didn't exist?

This quote scares the crap otta me to think people actually think this way... Man our schools suck! The last two sentences should be followed by:

How many independant TV stations have become worthless because of the digital expense? Only the biggest handful of media monopolies can afford this tech + the FCC license. So long as I watch FOX or CBS, I should be getting both sides, hahaha!

The first time in 2009 a Tornado comes through and I have to turn on the old basement set but get nothing but static, I'll thank Sony, Hitachi, JVC and all the other foreign companies who lobbied my government to drop the "backwards compatible" FCC requirement for HDTV.

I'll make a point to do the same when landfills are overun with millions of TV sets made practicallyuseless overnight. Everytime a bird flies overhead and my OTA digital signal turns into a blue screen, I'll say "Thank God I didn't have to see some ghosting!" But then, I don't live under a TV tower, your reception may vary.

Seeing as how only the most epic of movies make use of a 16:9 aspect ratio, while most all camerawork ends up being facial close-ups, dumping a "square" ratio seems the height of stupidity for any visual medium. But at least newspeople won't be able to just get by with a pretty face now, seeing as how the camera will need to be way the hell back just to frame a shot.

I can't wait for TV to seem so real it feels like Fahrenheit 451

http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g2...enheit_451.jpg

Dam right, That was a good post. :yes:

In europe we're going to lose analog TV in 2012... but our digital TV will be basically just a digitized 4:3 PAL signal ,not a 16:9 HDTV signal

As far as i'm concerned, i'm going to watch TV as long as i'm able to do so with my 1976 Philips... i'm not going to spend a buck on any kind of Chinese made, SMD filled, robot assembled, disposable, stinkin' flat panel junk...

By the way, do people really need HDTV? (apart from teens techies) i don't think so... i still see a lot of very old sets and even B/W sets in regular use here...

Francesco

Actually Carmine if your are going to quote Karl Marx at least you could get the qoute correct.

Actually it goes like this

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

The basis of communism. To take from the haves and give to the have nots.

That is the exact philosophy of the liberal Democrats.

Anyhow I digress. Apparently you feel that the government should not have the right to control the airwaves. So lets extend your philosophy to the ultimate. Lets say that the US Government no longer regulates the airwaves (which according to you is the way it should be)

Now any Tom, Dick or Harry can transmit anything he wants at any power level on any frequency he chooses. Oh yes Carmine, that would be a wonderful way to use the airwaves. No more regulation, just a total bunch of chaos on the airwaves.

Please don't misunderstand me Carmine. I am not a proponent of big government. I happen to be an independent businessman and I lothe government interference. However there is a place for government regulation and the FCC is one of those areas that is necessary. Just as we need laws to prevent robery, murder, rape, and other types of social disorder.

Or would you have us go back the the 1950's-60's when cars didn't have a catlytic converter and spewed huge amounts of polution into the air we all breathe. I think we can all agree that clean air is a good thing and dirty car exhaust is not. Well.... there's another example of the government mandating an improvement that the private sector would not have taken upon themselves to impliment.

And the FCC decision to go digital with TV in order to open more chanels in the same amount of spectrum is a wise decission which efficiently uses the available bandwidth. And contrary to your postulation that it will eliminate many small marginal stations, the contrary is true. Going digital will allow a huge number of additional television licenses to be issued to many small marginal would-be broadcasters who would otherwise not have been able to afford the cost of a license because there wasn't enough bandwidth. I predict you will see a lot of new special interest group chanels such as public access which is only available now over cable. You need to open your mind to the possibility of having 10 times the number of chanels we now have under the analog system. All living in peaceful co-existance with each other, with no cross chanel interference. In essence, we will start to approach the kind of chanel diversity we can only have now over cable or satelite dish. With digital transmissions over the air subscription tv like HBO or Pay-Per-View will be possible. It wil open up more competition to the cable and satelite dish companies, fostering price competition and the elimination of the natural monopoly they now have. The future of digital television is bright and exciting.

I have said enough on this subject and strongly suspect that I will not be swaying anyones opinion. Therefore I am wasting my time trying to educate those who have a closed mind to this issue.

"10 times the number of channels" ? Yep, & they'll ALL be playin' that stupid "Head On ! Apply Directly to the Forehead !" commercial...Or have 10 stations playin' reuns of "Lawn Order" instead of 2.. Remember Bruce's spot-on song, "57 channels & nothin' on"..

Gosh Francesco,

Are you still riding from one village to another on horseback, getting your water from a well with a bucket, and craping in an outhouse overthere?

Do we "NEED" HDTV, probably not. the world would not come to an end if HDTV did not exist. But if you had it, you would not want to watch anything else. The picture detail is incredible.

To bad they chose not to do HD in your country Francesco. I guess you will just have to get a DVB (direct view broadcast) receiver and a dish to get your HD. Here in the USA our government made the "correct" decision and every American citizen will all have the opportunity to view the highest quality television picture that modern techonology can produce...over the airwaves and for FREE. I guess the EU will have to suffer with second rate quality television until your governments get with the program.

BTW I realy enjoy my
"SMD filled, robot assembled, disposable, stinkin' flat panel junk"
It has a better picture than your best euro-centric PAL tv set.

Don't get me wrong, I have a 37" Westinghouse LCD panel. I love watching HD programming on a set thats made for it, but i think this forced transition is going to cause alot of confusion. Not to mention the fact that most folks dont know what the difference between ATSC and NTSC in the first place. I've seen more people watching analog TV on an HD set, thinking its HD just because the label on the bezel says it is, than I ever wanted to. And to refine my previous post, I meant that everyone who will be using a coverter box on an older TV will have half of their screen taken up by black bars when watching 16:9 programming, heck, even the local news here is in 16:9 now. If we would just follow the british freeview DVB system and start with 4:3 digital, or simulcasts of both HD and standard format programs in digital, I think it would be a much easier transition.

:headscrat

Oh well on behalf of the US, I apologize for that.

As to the need for government regulation, I completely understand the need to regulate the airwaves. Digital & Analog have been peacfully co-existing for several years now.

Let the market decide. I'm sure any pro-capitalist would agree with that. :thmbsp: