HDTV For Dummies

[JoeyGee]

We have a widescreen HD TV. It's a couple years old, and we have not subscribed to any HD service for awhile. When we first got it, we had HD through our local cable company. I don't know if it was the TV or the service, but we were never happy with it. HD channels were limied and everything that was not an HD channel looked bad. It was explained to us that is common on HD TV's.

Anyway, we gave up on HD since we weren't watching much TV, and we used it mainly for DVD's and XBOX. We are considering moving it to where our main TV is and upgrading our Dish Network service to HD.

Any idea if non-HD signals will look any better? Will local channels be available in HD? I know nothing, please educate me...

[RAV2]

You need to understand what type of tuner is in the TV. To receive the next generation TV broadcasts, you will need an ATSC tuner. I have a new plasma TV and an amazed at the new channels I get over the air (with my standard TV aerial antenna) and the improvement of the picture for the digital versions of the existing channels I get. Believe it or not, over the air broadcast HDTV is better than provided by the cable companies - they often shrink the signal. Check out this article for reference:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...042900728.html

Start here for an introduction to the current technologies:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4351-12658_7-6544609.html

Enjoy and best of luck!

[Rand]

I have Dish Network HD with a DVR. I have it connected via component video cables to a Panasonic 720P HDTV.
HD Channels look awesome. It was worth the price of admission just to see Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel. I get all the local channels in HD except for PBS. I could hook up an antenna to either the TV or the Dish box to get the local air broadcasts but I don't need it.

Non HD channels look okay too. I have the Dish HD DVR and it upconverts the regular signal. The standard quality is acceptable. You can always tell the standard broadcasts because the aspect ratio is 4:3 just like an old style TV.

By far the best thing is the DVR - That's a digital video recorder similar to TIVO but completely integrated with the Dish Network. I simply record everything I want to watch then replay it at my convenience. It has a button the skips ahead 30 seconds so at every commercial break I hit the button a few times and I never have to watch commercials. It does a lot of other cool things like pause live tv, instant replay etc.

I have friends with Comcast cable and the DISH service is far superior in my opinion. Try it, you'll like it.

[cabinetman]

We're in a similar boat. We just got an HD LCD TV (32") and went through a learning curve trying to hook it up. We have Direct TV, and a VCR. Found out the only way to get a picture and sound was to use an S-video cable and the RCA cables for the audio. We haven't subscribed for HD, and don't know if our Hughes box or VCR is compatible.

But, the picture we do get is absolutely fantastic. We had a 27" Sony before, and we get digital. The difference between the two pictures is remarkable. So, we were thinking, how much better could HD be and if it's worth the expense.
.

[JoeyGee]

Thanks, Rand. I think that's the answer I am looking for, as far as the HD converter "uprating" the standard signal. We currently have Dish with the standard receiver and dual DVR, which I could not live without.

[LCHIEN]

I had AT&T Uverse which is IPTV and I had access to 30-some HD channels.
On a random Friday or saturday evening, I tuned to the 30-some channels and found that only 15 of them, accroding to the program guide were actually showing HD programs, which means that stad def programs were being upscaled to HD and broadcast but of course looked like Std def.

Of the remaining 15 or so that indicated in the program guide that they were high def, only half of them, about 7 or 8, had real high definition program material. The rest were just showing std def material upcomverted to hi def but liek the other 15 channels, looked like std def.

This was a couple of evenings at prime time like 8 or 9 PM on Sat and Sun, there was woefully little high def programming going on. I just have not found enough to make it worth my time.

[Kristofor]

There are an increasing number of high-def sources, but it's still a fairly small percentage of all content out there.

The picture quality of standard def signals on an HD display can be OK on sets with decent video processing (and terrible on some of the older ones with poor processing). I have yet to see a set where standard def content looks better on an HDTV than on a good standard definition set.

Unfortunately if you didn't like how standard definition looked before, it's probably not any better now. However, you may have much more HD (or at least SD digital) content available now from your local stations. In this (and most?) markets they are all broadcasting in digital now (required to turn off analog next year), and maybe 20-30% or so of the content is HD (more during primetime less, at other times).

DVD players with decent upscalers seem pretty prevalent these days, and in those cases I would say the image is actually quite good even though it's not really an HD source.

However, when you do have true HD content there is no comparison. HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, PS3, Xbox, or HD Television broadcasts look tremendously better than standard def.

For TV the aspect ratio isn't always a key for HD vs. SD though. The local news is broadcast in HD though they maintain the same 4x3 ratio so that the same picture is sent in SD but the detail is much higher in HD.

Edit: whoops, gone for a couple days and working through old posts. I see you already tried it and are enjoying the OTA HD content. Good deal!

[reddog552]

Hdtv

I have worked around the TV radio brodcast industry for years.Have installed thousands of brodcast antennas.Right now about 75% of your local TV is brodcasts are in digital.The rest are running out of time.Your reception from the new digital over the air will be fantastic.They sometimes (lets say) chop it up a little bit to brodcast it over cable.To save there almighty bandwith.

[Ed62]

We have Direct TV, and a VCR. Found out the only way to get a picture and sound was to use an S-video cable and the RCA cables for the audio. We haven't subscribed for HD, and don't know if our Hughes box or VCR is compatible.

My wife just talked to DirecTV yesterday. They will upgrade the box and dish for $100.00. The additional cost for HD is $10.00 per month. I'm pretty certain your Hughes box will need to be upgraded.

Ed