[mythtv-users] FW:HD TV's Slow Addoption

[Michael T. Dean]

On 06/27/2007 11:36 AM, Jim Scott wrote:
>
> An HD television is not going to make my DVD library look any better.

If, by that, you mean that the shelf full of DVD's next to your TV won't
look any better, I completely agree.  If, instead, you mean that
playback of your DVD's on an HDTV set won't look any better than
playback of your DVD's on a SDTV set, I disagree wholeheartedly.

Playback of DVD's with a good quality progressive-scan DVD player (i.e.
a DVD-ROM in a Myth box) on an HDTV set is /very/ good quality.  And,
with DVD's, if your TV's built-in scaler is bad, you can get a good
upscaling converter so you can bypass the TV scaler.  If I were to try
to play back a commercial anamorphic widescreen progressive-scan DVD in
my machine using xine or the internal player or something, I'm sure the
quality would be significantly better than that I'd get playing it on a
SDTV.  (Of course I wouldn't know because doing so would almost
definitely involve circumventing CSS.)

> I still have VHS tapes I pull out once in a while.

Those will be limited by NTSC (or PAL), which means that they'll be
approximately the same on either TV (assuming the HDTV has a good scaler
and your VCR has a good output, such as S-Video or better).

> Why spend a fortune
> on a big TV that will, in effect, make some of my content look a lot
> worse?

I'll agree that some content--i.e. anything that ever goes NTSC--will
probably look worse.  Therefore, any OTA (non-digital) SDTV (whether
captured with the PVR-x50's/etc. or connected directly to the TV) or VHS
recordings are likely to be worse.

DVD's however--as long as they never go NTSC--won't look worse, and will
likely look significantly better.  The same may hold true of digital
SDTV (whether OTA or from a cable/satellite service)--but only if it
doesn't go NTSC (i.e. using Component/DVI/HDMI connection from an STB to
the HDTV, or--for Myth--using ATSC or firewire capture).

Mike