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

[Raphael Pooser]

Steven Adeff wrote:
> On 6/27/07, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
>   
>> 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).
>>     
>
> I found that SD digitial cable channels look quite good even on my
> friends 65" 1080p set. It's the analog SD that looks horrible, and of
> course the initial quality of the station matters. Basically the
> cleaner the original signal the better it will look scaled.
>
>   

Actually I second that. I was skeptical of digital until I got it and 
saw the picture. On some SD channels there is a big difference in 
picture quality (not just the cable provided version of digital OTA, 
which also looks very good on my TV). That's the whole reason I'm trying 
to use firewire capture as much as possible for the nonencrypted SD 
channels, and Svideo capture only when I have to.
Cheers,
Raphael