HDTV in the UK

Analoguesat

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Ok theres a lot of discussion about HDTV coming to the 28E platform early next year. Some speculation says the subs will be 50 UKP a month.

Are you a technobod who loves new toys, and sod the cost, or are you more cautious and leave it a year. Or like me, you are content with the current picture quality, so you wont be transferring over.


As usual. if you want an option adding DONT vote, put a request here and one of the mods will add it in for you.
 

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I've voted 'no chance'. Reason is I have an excellent Philips 32" widescreen CRT TV with pixel plus and 100 hertz below that. I believe that pixel plus simulates around 700 lines and have to say the picture (IMO) beats anything on the market now. HD would have to be a significant improvement and/or offer something completely different before I change. And I'm a gadget freak.

PS I think the 'sky' options are misplaced because of people's dislike of Sky it doesn't indicate their views of HD TV.:)

PPS. Lots of anonymous votes in the poll.
 

Llew

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i see the BBC are considering trickling a slow HDTV data download on a spare DTT channel(?) onto a dedicated STB/PVR overnight for next day viewing.There was a demonstration at Mediacast I believe.

_www.dtg.org.uk/dtg/press_releases/050510_dtg_hd_mediacast.pdf

Llew
 

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I think the 'sky' options are misplaced because of people's dislike of Sky it doesn't indicate their views of HD TV.

Hopefully that's taken care of any potential bias. I must admit I voted that way originally.


L.
 

Analoguesat

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Should we change the "Cant get Sky so I dont care about this stupid poll" to "Cant get 28E....." before the poll gets too many votes on it?
 

Analoguesat

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Im a HDTV marketing sales-droids nightmare - all my receivers are cross wired using rf cables and passive splitters! & Im quite happy with the picture quality (even when watching cheap Italian shopping channels) on my Panny 28" telly :D
 

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the BBC scheme is ridiculous, obviously it can't work in real time (excluding most sport), so they must be considering pop concerts, etc. A non starter.

As I keep pointing out, very few tv sets will display even the current 600 line picture. Panasonic's biggest Plasma only just shows 1000 lines, most just show about 700 lines, which is no better than PAL resoloution.

The only decent available HD screen I've seen (recently) is a top of range Sony Vega, costing about £8000.

It's a shame manufacturers are not currently promoting 1050 line crt sets, which are cheaper and give a brilliant picture. Unfortunately, Plasmas have all sorts of problems.

(if anyone's interested, Television magazine is running a 3 part guide to plasma screens, covering technologies, faults, etc. Available from newsagents, and many public libraries).
 

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Good idea AS removes all inferred bias then

L.:)
 

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This is what I have had for the last four years. It was one of the best tv's at the time apparently and there aren't many about that I have seen with as good a picture quality.

So I voted "happy with what I've got."
 

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Similar to mine in many respects kleefarr. Great picture. I was never really happy with my wireless speakers though so I run it through a 5.1 system now for movies and music.
 

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jimbo said:
Similar to mine in many respects kleefarr. Great picture. I was never really happy with my wireless speakers though so I run it through a 5.1 system now for movies and music.

Very happy with the performance of the (edit) eight speaker set up on mine (7.1 I guess).
I have recently noticed that with scrolling text across the screen, ie program credits, blur intermittently. All other text scrolling vertically is fine. Do you have any problems with that kind of thing? Any ideas?

Kevin
 

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Have you tried switching off the digital scan if that's possible.
 

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jimbo said:
Have you tried switching off the digital scan if that's possible.

It was already set on "Natural motion" so have changed to "Digital scan" to see if it makes any difference. Will report findings later. ;)
 

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I have a Philips 32PW9618 TV, almost the same as yours Kleefar but 32", and I get exactly the same problem with left to right (or is it right to left?) text scrolling. It will sometimes sort itself out after a few seconds.

I put it down to the 100Hz scanning sometimes confusing the natural motion software. I also get a related effect when someone walks in front of some shrubbery or a brick wall. The trailing edge of the person causes the background at that edge to behave "strangely". I imagine that if I watched any moving sport such as football that it would annoy me intensely, but I don't so it doesn't!

PaulR
 

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PaulR said:
I have a Philips 32PW9618 TV, almost the same as yours Kleefar but 32", and I get exactly the same problem with left to right (or is it right to left?) text scrolling. It will sometimes sort itself out after a few seconds.

I put it down to the 100Hz scanning sometimes confusing the natural motion software. I also get a related effect when someone walks in front of some shrubbery or a brick wall. The trailing edge of the person causes the background at that edge to behave "strangely". I imagine that if I watched any moving sport such as football that it would annoy me intensely, but I don't so it doesn't!

PaulR

Yep, sounds like the same problem. It is a rare problem, but when it happens it annoys me. :rolleyes:
I have been getting it while the setting "natural motion" is switched on. As I posted above I have changed that to "Digital scan" but as of yet haven't seen the problem. Haven't really had a program on that has the scrolling across screen yet, that will be the test.
Nice tvs.
 

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Unfortunately, many kinds of "ailiasing" effects are possible, depending on scan modes in both camera and receiver, digitising and transmission coding schemes used, etc. The only way to complely avoid this would be by giving an enormous "mode menu" in every tv set, user selectable, but manufacturers don't want to do this.
 

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@ Spiney,

I'm curious - any chance you could expand on 'Aliasing' and what this problem might look like visually.

Mark.
 

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Have had "digital scan" on for a while now, no noticable problems so far. Scrolling text across the screen has been okay so far. Definately a marked improvement. I'm sure though, I tried digital scan before. Anyway, will leave as is for the moment.
 

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ailiasing is unwanted patterns produced by digital sampling of analogue signals.

Manifest in sound as distortion (buzzing and hissing), and on moving pictures as various rhythmic patterning effects.
 

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spiney said:
ailiasing is unwanted patterns produced by digital sampling of analogue signals.
Yes very undesirable in any application involving sampling just a bit more visual with video signals. In order to minimise aliasing it is necessary to sample the signal a minimum number of times. The Nyquist sampling theorem provides us with the answer. The theroem states that if a continuous bandwidth limited signal contains no frequency componants higher than Fm, then the original signal can be recovered without distortion if it is sampled at at a sampling rate (Fs) of at least 2Fm samples per second. i.e. the minimum rate is Fs = 2Fm (where Fs is the sampling frequency). This is sometimes referred to the Nyquist Rate. In practice however one uses Fs > 2FM this then provides us with a guardband.

Dedicated to Eugene who probably knew this but doesn't know what to do at a party :-doh!
 
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