Is all HDTV Programming The Same?

[muk]

http://www.geardigest.com/2007/08/22/is_all_hdtv_programming_the_same/index.html

High definition programming comes in all shapes and sizes, leaving an easily forgotten question - is all HD programming really equal? There are some obvious and some not-so-obvious reasons that can affect the way one TV show stacks up against another.

 

[mheyman]

Using DirectTiVo (which does both satellite and terrestrial HD) shows DirectTV HD to be poor quality compared to the exact same show in broadcast TV. This is apparently due to DirectTV way over compressing the show.

A "bit-rate" specification for HD, similar to what you get for audio like MPEG and AAC would be a nice thing to see...

 

[punditguy]

Slight disagreement regarding old TV shows. If they were shot on videotape, like most sitcoms from the 70s and 80s, they'll look like crap upconverted to HD. (How good would you want Diff'rent Strokes to look, anyway?) However, anything shot on film can look amazing in HD, since film has a higher resolution than even 1080p can resolve. Wait until you see Star Trek TOS on HD DVD this winter, or even check out what Hogan's Heroes looks like now in HD.

 

[rsud]

Author again misses much (history per this author's earlier articles on hd tvs).

TV shows (and TV movies) of the past shot on film have the potential to look amazing when converted to high def if the original film stock is used. In the 70's began the movement to analog video tape and this is where the quailty will be quite bad since the analog video bandwidth was quite limited and the video tape is prone to fade.

The "remastered" high-def star trek looks quite good, as an example of film (of the past) being used to convert to high def. As film has "infinite" resolution its easy to color correct film (once high-def digitized) for that nice "saturated color" modern look .

 

[Luscious]

This author has again misled the readers with his "opinion" rather than presenting fact.

Footage shot on film has a horizontal resolution of over 4000 pixels, any show or movie captured on film, regardless of "when" it was filmed, will look consistently better in HD, if remastered using the film footage.

I am getting sick and tired of reading this 6th-grade-level crap all the time from Mark Raby and constantly having to correct his mistakes. The number of forum posts negatively criticizing his earlier articles should have been enough reason for Toms to shut this guy up once and for all, or fire him outright.

 

[sydneyw]

Lets get a few things straight here. As this author seems a bit nieve.

1. ABC and Fox are currently using 720P. Part of the reason for this decision is that the P part of the 720P makes sports action look better. The other is that in over the air signals, a 720P signal takes less Bits/Sec, and this allows them to split the channel to DT-1, DT-2 and DT-3. Then they can sell space and time on their affiliates for the additional signals. A 702P signal does limit the bandwidth allocated to DT-2 and DT-3, however, vs an SD signal on DT-1.

In general ABC O&O's (owned and operated) stations are programiing a news channel as DT-2 and a weather channel as DT-3. Note that DT-2 is an SD channel and DT-3 is a less than SD quality channel.

NBC and CBS are 1080i. This means that when they are in HD mode over the DT channel, they cannot program DT-2 or DT-3 (those would be off the air, when they are sending SD programming over DT-1, they can have DT-2 and DT-3. Generally PBS does this with their stations.

Cable takes their feeds directly from the stations, now a days, and not over the air, so can have DT-1,2,3 all the time for use on the cable channels. Comcast often enters into cross promotion ideas with the network affiliates for promoting their DT-2,3 signals on Digital cable channels.

I agree, most dramatic TV shows were produced in film. Sit-coms are often shot in tape via the 3-cam method perfected by I Love Lucy.

Film TV shows may have been edited on 35mm (4000 pixel equivalent resolution) or 16mm or super 16. Most were distributed in 16mm or super 16. Some were even shot in super 16. Super 16 does not have the same resolution, but scales well to at least 720 if not 1080. The i/p difference for Film is moot as most HD-TV's detect 2/3 film pull down, as that is a featuer of the DT stream to better use the MPEG bandwidth. Almost all TV shows on film are 24fps.

Having said all that, I am surprised how little research this columnist did for his article. He didn't even check with the engineering departments of the networks for what signal spec they are using.

 

[utnorris]

Once again, we have someone throwing their opinion around like it is fact. If you are going to say that item A is better than item B then you should at least explain why using facts not opinion and even show side by side comparisons. For example, if you state that Universal HD shows the most upconverted or lack luster HD content, you should count the number of upconverted shows over a given week along with total shows and present that as the reason for your statement, not "Its lineup is almost exclusively vintage content that just can't compete with the technology used in today's programming". Seriously, every article that Tom's Hardware posts on the internet for HDTV whether it is hardware or programming seems to have more holes than swiss cheese. But I digress because my favorite line of the entire article was this "Premium HD movie channels (HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc) are without a doubt the best options for over-the-air movies". Hey everyone, lets go put our antennas up and get HBO, Showtime and all the other premium movie channels. Seriously, does Mark Raby even own a HDTV? For the love of humanity, quit writing moronic, uniformed, biased, idiotic, stupid, etc. articles about HDTV hardware and programming until you learn to do some research first.

Utnorris

 

[nitchvideo]

Quality of the end product at your HDTV is basicly a two step question.
What is the source material. Old video-Bad, HD video-Good to Great, Film 16mm-Good, Film 35 and 70mm-Great to excelent.
What is the deliver system. Satelite-bad to good, OTA-Good to Great,
HD disc-good to excelent.
The result at the TV will never be better than the worst of its source and delivery.

 

[joex444]

Holy crap kid. Mark is teh suck.

 

[ben72227]

Why on earth is Mark Raby still allowed to write about HDTV?

Every article he writes is dumbed down and filled with opinion. There's no need for it; this is a technology website - most of the readers here know a lot more than Raby gives them credit for. Instead of saying that "older tv shows will look terrible in HD" he should have given a technical explanation, such as "older tv shows shot on video tape will look terrible in HD, while older tv shows shot with film should look great, since 35mm analog film resolution is much higher than the current digital tv resolutions (i.e. in the range of about 3000-3400 compared to HDTV's current maximum of 1080).

 

[autoboy]

Mark, go back to Best Buy and misinform the general public and leave the technical articles to people who are technical.

Not even one mention of what good or bad means? HDTV is good, analog TV is bad...is that all you got? No mention about h264, mpeg2, bitrates, macroblocking, interlacing on sports, 2/3 pulldown, cable vs satelite vs OTA? What the hell?

On a side note, I really enjoy reading these articles just to see how bad they can get. I've been in every discussion about HD so far.

 

[ThePatriot]

I think the HD content provided by tv companies is still very poor in quantity and genre. So, I take the newsserver way: UseNet, Giganews and a 256 bit secure SSL tunnel download. I watch HD content with my PC when I want and what I want. I even get to watch on my 42" plasma screen without HDCP. Kind like a tivo but not quit the same.
Oh, to make this legal, make sure you live in a EU country where this is aloud. MCPA? Not in my backyard.
LOL

 

[slapshot]

Would be nice if we (DVT) had 1080p but right now we dont broadcast anything in 1080p IDK maybe someone else dose? Anyway if we are talking in terms most people can understand then the biggest difference in picture quality will be your TV. Plasma TV’s have the best picture quality but then I don’t feel like dropping 4000 on a TV that might last 8 years but probably will die in 4 to 5 so then the next step down is LCD or a expensive projector, all DIRECTV HD programming is broadcast to your TV in either 1080i or 720p atm and I know there are competitors out there but I just don’t know enough about there spec’s to bust out education about there broadcasting so assuming they have the same spec’s (or close) then what will make the difference in picture would have to be the TV itself in a nutshell.

 

[rammedstein]

they should ave 2 articles, 1 above the other, one just says the article name "Is all HDTV Programming The Same?" then a simple 1 word answer, "yes", then next says the title "Is all HDTV Programming The Same?" and "just kidding" followed by the content, or somethign similar to that effect, for comical purposes

 

[lonechicken]

Isn't it a little bit of bad timing to release an article like this? We're about a month away from the huge bump up in the number of HD channels on DirecTV. Which will eventually trickle to other systems. Who knows, ESPNNews-HD might be the best looking HD channel around. Not that anyone would care about that channel or anything, but...

It's like releasing a "Best movies of 2007" article in April of 2007 or something.

 

[chrisnetwork]

Within the last year DISH Network has introduced HD free for life. Not to mention the fact that DISH has more HD channels than any other provider. More for less, who wouldn't love that? Especially these days, every penny counts. If anyone ever wants more info regarding DISH or the promotions you can also get it at dish.com/200hd.

–Christopher DeHerrera/DISH Network LLC