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[karasu]

Ok, I have a 30 inch GE 31GT659. It's an old standard television from the mid 90's. I just got a COX DVR last night and while going through the stations I surprisingly came across INHD, Universal HD, and all of the rest. I've done some reading that says if you turn to a HD station on your standard tv, you'll see white noise and dots and all of that shite, but I see a picture that looks far better than what my DVD Player puts out. I mean it looks incredible. Is this normal? If so, what's happening? Why am I noticing such a huge difference in PQ when I'm usuing the same standard TV I was using before? Before I got the DVR, I had a standard cox digital cable box. All of my other digital stations are still rather fugly/nice, but the HD stations are incredibly fine. Is it some kind of glitch in the system? I don't want to call Cox, they might take it away.

 

[human5892]

Get out of your house.

 

[Shogmaster]

I gues you don't have digital cable service? I'm confused too.

My TV only displays balck screen with sound only when I go to HD stations with ComCast.

 

[karasu]

yeah it's digital. I'm using the cox digital video recorder. Motorola 6412

 

[Shogmaster]

yeah it's digital. I'm using the cox digital video recorder. Motorola 6412

Oh that's why. Your recorder is tuning in and allowing you to see the digital high def signal. Even though your TV can only display 480i signal, it's rendering from a much higher quality source so indeed the picture will look better.

 

[karasu]

ahh I see. Wow, I can only imagine what the real thing looks like.

 

[Cooper]

Yeah, I had an over-the-air HD receiver hooked up to an NTSC-only TV, and the picture was better than DVD, for the reason Shog mentioned. You might want to check your bill though, as most providers charge extra for HD channels. Did you recently change your service?

And yes, once you get used to watching HD on an actual HDTV, there's no going back.

 

[GXAlan]

ahh I see. Wow, I can only imagine what the real thing looks like.

Think of it as supersampling anti-aliasing like the Dreamcast. It renders higher and then downsamples it to regular TV. A good DVD player should give you the same quality because the film source is high resolution -- so maybe it's time to upgrade that too!

 

[Cooper]

A good DVD player should give you the same quality because the film source is high resolution -- so maybe it's time to upgrade that too!

That's dependant on a few other factors, though. Most movies are film based, which generally doesn't have as much "punch" as native HD video. When I watch a live football game downsampled from HD to 480i, it looks cleaner than any DVD I've seen. Film-based shows like most network primetime dramas look about the same as a good DVD when downsampled though.

It's also a question of who did the better translation - the movie studio from high-resolution film to DVD, or the HD STB's scaler from HD to 480i. Some studios still make pretty lousy transfers. But you're right, the player might not be doing the best job in the world either.

 

[Nerevar]

Yeah, I had an over-the-air HD receiver hooked up to an NTSC-only TV, and the picture was better than DVD, for the reason Shog mentioned. You might want to check your bill though, as most providers charge extra for HD channels. Did you recently change your service?

Not true in my area. HD is free (included) with digital cable (only $5 more a month, and worth it for the OTA programming guide and general cleaner signal). All you need is a set top box capable of resolving the HDTV signal, which all of the DVR boxes are.

 

[GXAlan]

That's dependant on a few other factors, though. Most movies are film based, which generally doesn't have as much "punch" as native HD video. When I watch a live football game downsampled from HD to 480i, it looks cleaner than any DVD I've seen. Film-based shows like most network primetime dramas look about the same as a good DVD when downsampled though.

It's also a question of who did the better translation - the movie studio from high-resolution film to DVD, or the HD STB's scaler from HD to 480i. Some studios still make pretty lousy transfers. But you're right, the player might not be doing the best job in the world either.

Both are accurate statements. The "punch" is sort of interesting. Part of this punch is the lack of dynamic range (in photoshop, play with the autolevels) of HD-CCD based cameras. When watching football, notice how brilliant-white the uniforms are and how sometimes it's so bright that it takes on a color tint. With a good DVD player (and we're talking $200 range here, not $1k), big-budget movies which have a good transfer should look about as good as resampled HD.

The HD is still good because you're transferring basically ~20MBps of data, but a well mastered DVD should be able to easily produce 480i with half that rate.

 

[Cooper]

Not true in my area. HD is free (included) with digital cable (only $5 more a month, and worth it for the OTA programming guide and general cleaner signal). All you need is a set top box capable of resolving the HDTV signal, which all of the DVR boxes are.

Hence my qualification with "most."

 

[Nerevar]

Hence my qualification with "most."

I know, I was just giving a counter-example so that the original poster might not get confused into thinking he was paying more for these channels. It's really only major metropolitan areas (AFAIK) that get it this way anyway - the majority of the country really does have to get satellite to get HDTV.

 

[karasu]

K1 looks brilliant!