3. Benefits and Gotchas

For an impartial explanation of the benefits, we visited Wikipedia and found that the advantages in non-engineering terms leave a lot to be desired. Of course the video resolution graphics made everything clear ... as mud !

Figure 4 illustrates the horizontal and vertical picture resolution of common standard and HD TV broadcast standards. It does not accurately reflect the screen shape (aspect ratio) of these formats, which is always stretched or squeezed to fit 4:3 (standard) or 16:9 (HDTV) screens.

Figure 4: Broadcast TV formats and resolutions (from Wikipedia)

The table assumes an average vertical detail loss of .75x due to interlace. The actual loss is variable due to content, motion, opinion on acceptable levels of flicker, and possible success of deinterlacing. 1920 × 1080i is not included because all common use of 1080i is filtered to 1440 or less.

And you wonder why Nicholson volunteered to cooperate with the doctors in the hospital?

What the HDTV set and home entertainment network folks won't tell you is that the beautiful video entertainment vision is still a cloudy dream. Much of it is still outside of their control no matter what they do to deliver devices and solutions.

While they understand and support the consumers' desire for unobtrusive digital rights management - being able to move audio/video around the house, to your mobile device and do it effortlessly - the reality is still a work in progress: (Figure 5)

 

Figure 5: Opposing forces

Sure you can view TV shows - such as they are. You just have to figure out whether the TV you're eyeing really does have an HD tuner built in. And if you plan on getting HD content from your cable provider, you'll need to ask a whole other set of questions! Of course, you can always try getting your HDTV OTA (Off the Air), if your local stations are transmitting HD content yet. You might be able to use your (new) HD PVR to timeshift, but that's still up for grabs since Tellywood is pushing hard to take that off your wish list. Archive or back up content on your hard drive? Ah ... maybe. Move it to your smartphone/portable device? Tellywood and cable companies aren't so hot on that either.

So what's stopping you from taking the plunge? HighDef movie availability?

Give Tellywood a year or two to work out the post-production kinks because most of the stuff right now is just reprocessed in HighDef. It will take them at least a year to learn how to take advantage of all of the HD post production tools they have to actually produce content in HighDef.

By 2009, the content and interactive capabilities will be so phenomenal that you'll wonder why you ever bought that copy of Ultra Violet (you did really?) And by then the prices of HighDef disc players, recorders and media will be down to "reasonable" prices.

And yes, you can still enjoy today's DVD favorites, which can look great on an HD set with good upscaling circuitry and even better with an upscaling DVD player.

The price for high quality plasma and LCD sets have come down quite a bit since you didn't buy one like you were supposed to for the World Cup. By this holiday season they should be extremely reasonable (we still miss our second born).

Most important is the fact that the big box sales people may be able to explain the HDTV difference so you can make an intelligent buying decision for your home and your viewing habits.

That's right, Mr. Martini. There is an Easter Bunny!

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