[mythtv-users] DTV: It Has Begun

[Allen Edwards]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 2:17 AM, Jon Bishop <jon.the.wise.gdrive at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> On Sep 8, 2008, at 7:26 PM, David Brodbeck wrote:
> > Aside from cost issues, digital portable TVs represent an interesting
> > marketing problem.  The public has been conditioned to think that
> > digital TV means HDTV.  But supporting 1080i on a 10" diagonal display
> > would make no sense whatsoever.
>
> This has been something that has bothered me. When they mandated a
> digital signal, why didn't that mandate the specifications of that
> signal? DTV could be 720i/p or 1080i/p and there is a big difference.
>
> ~Jon


The standard actually allows 480i as well.  They just opened it up and left
it to the broadcasters to do what they wanted.  So, they can broadcast one
nice fat 1080i signal, or 5 480i signals in the same bandwidth. Let the
market decide.  This has probably been a good thing because the video
compression algorithms have gotten much better so that most stations
can broadcast both a HDTV signal and another SD signal.  This was not
thought possible when they set the specification.  In fact, you may recall
one of the first uses of digital video was in the Olympics a few years ago.
 The compression would actually remove the hockey puck so  you couldn't
really follow the game.  It would just disappear from the screen.  That kind
of stuff doesn't happen now.

Allen


Allen
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