XPost: rec.music.gdead, sci.electronics.design   
   From: trevor@home.net   
      
   "Arny Krueger"  wrote in message   
   news:nIudnTZosrPxJ-vQnZ2dnUVZ_v2dnZ2d@giganews.com...   
   > Your "no better than analog" claim has to be true if someone goes off the   
   > deep end, but in practice, nobody seems to be going there.   
      
   They certainly are here unfortunately.   
      
   >> We have just swapped noise for pixelation.   
   >   
   > Thats not how it works.  With scalers and transcoding the distinctions are   
   > blurred.   
      
   As is the picture at very low bit rates!   
      
   >The two 16:9 services on our PBS outlet show a clear hierarchy of quality,   
   >but it is non trivial for me to characterize the difference. I think they   
   >are both the same number of vertical pixels, but one has a clearer more   
   >dynamic picture than the other. The Blu Ray palayer, the cable box and DLP   
   >TV have scalers, so the display is always painted @ 1080i.   
      
   Whilst you may get whatever scale your box outputs and/or your TV accepts,   
   the way compression systems work is that the lower the bit rate, the bigger   
   average block size. Some systems can interpolate and reduce the block size   
   sure, but they cannot increase the resolution back to what a higher bit rate   
   would give. Hence we now get 1960's TV show re-runs broadcast on OTA Hi-Def   
   channels that actually have lower resolution than what good analog TV was   
   capable of. Truly sad given what the technology can really manage.   
   You are indeed lucky if that does not happen in the USA.   
      
      
   > Just because there are pixels on the screen doesn't mean that they get the   
   > data that is required to make them strut their stuff.   
      
   Exactly.   
      
   > Ca. 1960 movies might have content that taxes even modern HD. Cinerama and   
   > the high end Cinemascope releases come to mind.   
      
   I was talking about 1960's TV shows, but unfortunately not all old movie   
   transfers are done well either, even if the original prints might still be   
   capable of it. A lot of the old movies broadcast here are simply taken from   
   DVD, even when broadcast on the so called Hi-Def channels, and there are   
   plenty of appalling examples of bad digital transfer IME. Simply upscaling   
   that video to Hi-Def scan rates does NOT make the picture "High Definition"   
   IMO. It simply allows them to advertise it as such.   
      
      
   >>  What a waste of all those new big screen HiDef TV's people   
   >> have bought! Obviously a ploy to force people onto pay TV   
   >> channels. Is it as bad in the USA?   
   >   
   > YMMV. Things are pretty good here in the city, but I've spent some time   
   > upstate  and its mixed bag.   
      
   Well I'm in a major city, and things are pretty diabolical at the moment.   
   They were far better when they first started digital TV broadcasting, but   
   things have gotten progressivley worse, except for the number of channels.   
      
      
   >Down here the cable services are now 100%   
      
   Right, it seems to be a ploy to force you onto cable, whether you want to   
   pay it or not.   
      
   > And then there are the satellite services, both TV and radio...   
      
   Right, I don't want or need those either.   
      
   Trevor.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)