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GAF ready for the HD era??

Wow. "HD era", huh? I don't even know what that means.
And if being ready for it means you have to buy a tv like the ones you've posted, then NO-
I am most definately not ready. And I probably won't be in the next ten years either.
 
The last couple days of threads have proved Nintendo is very good at brainwashing. MS did not invent HD, its been around for a long time. The FCC first passed their switch over to digital TV years ago and its getting more newspress now because we are creeping up on the deadline, which they have actually moved up a bit even. Regardless if you believe Nintendo you are going to be in for a big freaking surprise if you keep on ignoring it and wake up one day too find your analog TV signal gone. Though if you buy any TV, especially after 2006 you will have a digital TV like it or not regardless how hardcore nintendo fan you are trying to be.

And I would think European people would be all over this shit wanting to make importing games or movies a hell of a lot easier.
 
rusty said:
Judging by some of the posts here, you would think MS invented HDTV or something as a ploy to sell HDTVs and 360s.
Click to expand...

Well to be fair, this is a gaming forum and there are probably a decent number of people who don't watch TV. So up until now there hasn't been any reason to get an HDTV, with X360 and PS3 coming now there's finally something worth getting a TV for.
 
Prine said:
I have DVI and Componant
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OK, here's my recommendation, or I should say Secrets of Home Theater and HiFi's recommendation: Oppo Digital 971H.

It took me a while to find it. ;)

This is an upconverting player. IOW, it will take a standard 480i signal and upconvert it to 480p, 720p, or 1080i. For these features, and it's performance in the Secret's test regime, it's a freaking steal. Please note that you'll have to use theDVI input on your TV to reap the benefits of this player.

Here's the text of the review and a summary chart of the performance of quite a few other DVD players:
Link: DVD Benchmark

Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity said:
The 971H is the premier DVD player from a brand new company here in the US: Oppo Digital. The company is a spring off from the electronics giant, BBK Electronics. BBK has been in the business for a long time and is a world leader in the electronics field with total manufacturing output matching Sony and Matsushita. If the 971H is any indication, we have a lot to look forward to from Oppo Digital.

As you can see from the Benchmark scores, the 971H is an outstanding budget DVD player. But I must advise you that the scores only pertain to the DVI output. This playerÂ’s component outputs do not support progressive playback, only 480i, so we were not able to plot a video frequency response curve. I was quite surprised, because IÂ’ve never seen this before. The DVI video board in the player houses the Genesis FLI-2310 video processing chip, so the component video connections cannot take advantage of it.

This is the second union of the FLI-2310 and a Mediatek MPEG decoder. Ever since I first tested the Mediatek chips, IÂ’ve been hoping for their fusion with a high line de-interlacing solution. The first player that I tested with this was the Toshiba 593 DVD/VCR combo. Unfortunately, that player had inconsistent performance from player to player, and the implementations of the chips were not what they should have been. I left feedback with Toshiba on this, but they didnÂ’t take advantage of the suggestions. When Oppo originally sent me their player, I found some problems that needed to be addressed, I let them know, and they fixed them. I must say I was extremely impressed with how Oppo handled the issues I brought up, as well as the issues that IÂ’ve seen raised on some of the Internet A/V forums. Their fixes led to a score of 94 in our benchmark, which is only second to the Denon DVD-5910. Not bad for a sub-$200 player!

This player offers the standard upscaling resolutions of 480p, 720p and 1080i. The DVI output is not HDCP compliant, so consumers with older DVI monitors that donÂ’t support HDCP are in luck! The Faroudja chip seems to be set up appropriately, though it lacks a mode for 2-2 cadences. Oppo informed me that this is a feature that will be implemented on their next player. The Genesis chip has the same limitations as every other player using it. This includes somewhat sluggish transitions between film and video material and the unfortunate macroblocking issue. When I used my standard A Bug's Life test, the player did show signs of the macroblocking bug but it isnÂ’t as bad as some other players such as the Teac Esoteric UX-1 or Samsung HD-1000.

The Mediatek chip is utilized to its fullest potential here. The player breezed through our chroma tests with no signs of banding or jaggies at all. The chip is also extremely fast with menu navigation and supports a seamless layer change.

I did find a few additional problems with the player and hope to see Oppo resolve them with a future firmware change. The cross color suppressor function of the Faroudja processing is defaulted to ON with no way of turning it off. We saw this same issue with the Panasonic RP-62 a while back, and it can cause some abnormalities with chroma performance, including slight flickering. I played animation material, including Toy Story, A BugÂ’s Life, The Incredibles, and Finding Nemo (think IÂ’m a Pixar fan??) and didnÂ’t see any issues at all. But I did notice a big drop off in vertical chroma resolution using the test patterns from Avia Pro.

Some of the bonus features of this player include excellent PAL support with PAL to NTSC conversion. On top of that, the player is region free out of the box making it an excellent choice for fans of foreign cinema or foreign market DVDs. The player also supports DiVX and MPEG-4 files. On the audio side, youÂ’ll find an internal Dolby Pro Logic II decoder that can be used with the analog audio outputs. There is also full DVD-Audio support with bass management and time alignment.

If you are in the market for a budget DVD player, with DVI output, and which has exceptional video performance, the 971H definitely meets those criteria. This player passes below-black, has no pixel cropping, and there are no signs of Y/C delay. I personally canÂ’t wait to see what Oppo has in store for us next.
Click to expand...


If you're tweakably inclined, I also recommend trying your PC's DVD player in league with Zoom Player and FFDshow to watch your DVD's. It gives awesome performance, but the hardware requirements are fairly steep.

Here's a link to a thread which shows screen captures of DVD's with FFDshow and without:

Ffdshow vs. No Ffdshow! Real 1:1 Screen Captures included!
 
F.Be@PSG said:
I'm not ready for HD era. I'm ready for a Revolution.
Click to expand...
Congratulations! You've just earned ONE POINT towards a free* download of the original Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Revolution! Only 499 more points to go!












* + $20 shipping and handling fee
 
-jinx- said:
Congratulations! You've just earned ONE POINT towards a free* download of the original Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Revolution! Only 499 more points to go!












* + $20 shipping and handling fee
Click to expand...
Shipping and handling fee on a download. :lol

Seriously though. We all want a Revolution. We all want something that just blows our minds and make games much more fun to play.
 
Ponn01 said:
The last couple days of threads have proved Nintendo is very good at brainwashing. MS did not invent HD, its been around for a long time. The FCC first passed their switch over to digital TV years ago and its getting more newspress now because we are creeping up on the deadline, which they have actually moved up a bit even. Regardless if you believe Nintendo you are going to be in for a big freaking surprise if you keep on ignoring it and wake up one day too find your analog TV signal gone. Though if you buy any TV, especially after 2006 you will have a digital TV like it or not regardless how hardcore nintendo fan you are trying to be.

And I would think European people would be all over this shit wanting to make importing games or movies a hell of a lot easier.
Click to expand...
Digital TV != High Definition

People in Europe know this better than Americans who seem to bung together widescreen, digital tv, analogue switch-off and HDTV all the time.

The UK has the highest penetration of widescreen TVs and the largest proportion of homes with "digital tv" in the world but the number of HDTVs may not even be in five figures and those who have watched the one obscure provider of HD content on Astra perhaps in the hundreds.

[/brainwashed Nintendo minion]
 
cja said:
Digital TV != High Definition

People in Europe know this better than Americans who seem to bung together widescreen, digital tv, analogue switch-off and HDTV all the time.

The UK has the highest penetration of widescreen TVs and the largest proportion of homes with "digital tv" in the world but the number of HDTVs may not even be in five figures and those who have watched the one obscure provider of HD content on Astra perhaps in the hundreds.

[/brainwashed Nintendo minion]
Click to expand...


I blame the manufacturers for helping to foster the buying public's ignorance. ;)

Really though, this stuff can be quite confusing.
 
cja said:
Digital TV != High Definition

People in Europe know this better than Americans who seem to bung together widescreen, digital tv, analogue switch-off and HDTV all the time.

The UK has the highest penetration of widescreen TVs and the largest proportion of homes with "digital tv" in the world but the number of HDTVs may not even be in five figures and those who have watched the one obscure provider of HD content on Astra perhaps in the hundreds.

[/brainwashed Nintendo minion]
Click to expand...


Read

ATSC is pretty broad, but so is HD. It would be possible to watch ATSC with an EDTV which would be tops 480p, which would be progressive. If EDtv is as ingrained in Europe as you say then well, hey you can still enjoy progressive scan and you will at least be able to take a HD signal and downgrade it to 480p. The same thing it will be doing with ATSC. Thankfully America has skipped over EDTV pretty well and is just embracing HDTV. Which makes much more sense.
 
Blimblim said:
It will depend on the developers I guess. AFAIK MS won't force the devs to have both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, but I'm sure most will remember that the vast majority still owns a 4:3 TV.
Click to expand...

I sure hope you're right BlimBlim
 
Ponn01 said:
Read

ATSC is pretty broad, but so is HD. It would be possible to watch ATSC with an EDTV which would be tops 480p, which would be progressive. If EDtv is as ingrained in Europe as you say then well, hey you can still enjoy progressive scan and you will at least be ablve to take an HD signal and downgrade it too 480p. The same thing it will be doing with ATSC. Thankfully America has skipped over EDTV pretty well and is just embracing HDTV. Which makes much more sense.
Click to expand...
The chart at the top of that piece lists standard NTSC resolutions as part of the ATSC spec. I don't see what this has to do with my point Digital TV != HDTV. Not my fault the FCC is causing confusion ;) . America probably does have the better solution by just making the one big jump in numerous related technologies. With so many buying low resolution widescreen TVs in western Europe recently this could be the reason for the resistance you see from some Europeans on this forum to the HD era stuff.

We don't have EDTV btw. EDTV = 480P. PAL digital broadcasts = 576i (specifically 720x576 with anamorphic squeeze used for true 16:9). That piece also goes on about MPEG-2 being used for HDTV, its going to be MPEG-4 here and FCC mandates are meaningless outside the US. The UK will see analogue switch-off start in 2008 but almost everyone is still going to be using standard resolution TVs.
 
HD is part of Digital TV, that's the point. NTSC is it's own standard, that's what the chart shows. Digital TV (ATSC) encompasses all those formats shown under the umbrella. If you have a digital Tv tuner built in too a TV it will take whatever digital signal you recieve (which depends on the broadcast, ranging from the top HD to bottom SD) and displays it at whatever your TV does. No I am not so up on Europe TV's and from the sounds of it you over there are just getting royally screwed. Here you walk in, and you got analog tvs or you get EDTV's(which are getting phased out) or HDTV's. Since the lowest setting for ATSC is SD (standard def) at non-widescreen 480i at a horizontal resolution of 704 lines. NTSC is the same but at a horizontal resolution of 450 lines. Americans and the TV companies have already figured out that hey, if i'm going to have to buy a TV that does ATSC why in the freaking world would I spend the money on one that only does the lowest of SD and converts all the other ATSC signals including HD down to that crappy resolution and just get a HD-capable or ready TV.
 
Ponn01 said:
Thankfully America has skipped over EDTV pretty well and is just embracing HDTV. Which makes much more sense.
Click to expand...

Not hardly. Walk into any consumer electronics store (Best Buy, Circuit City, Good Guys, Sears, Costco, etc,etc) and you'll find that less than 5% of TV's listed as HDTV actually support 720p (and essentially none @ 1080p).

It's going to be real ugly as many people think they're buying HDTV's, but are ending up with 480p/1080i sets with most not even having an HDMI or DVI interface. It's actually scary how many of the TV's out there are mixes and matches of compatability.
 
sonycowboy said:
Not hardly. Walk into any consumer electronics store (Best Buy, Circuit City, Good Guys, Sears, Costco, etc,etc) and you'll find that less than 5% of TV's listed as HDTV actually support 720p (and essentially none @ 1080p).

It's going to be real ugly as many people think they're buying HDTV's, but are ending up with 480p/1080i sets with most not even having an HDMI or DVI interface. It's actually scary how many of the TV's out there are mixes and matches of compatability.
Click to expand...


I've seen quite a few people who buy the EDTV displays- mostly plasmas. The local WallyWorld has two EDTV plasmas on the floor. A lot of the EDTV's will accept an HD signal input, but obviously, they won't display anything more than ED.
 
Just one more question.

You think i can hook up my Dell XPS system to my TV and play DVDs in HD through it? Im using Ati Radeon X850XT with a DVI out. Id assume i could. Would i need to adjust the screen size and rez on the computer or tv??

I just dont want to put the money down on a new DVD player atm, rather save the cash and use my Xbox360 or PS3 to play my DVDs in HD
 
Prine said:
Just one more question.

You think i can hook up my Dell XPS system to my TV and play DVDs in HD through it? Im using Ati Radeon X850XT with a DVI out. Id assume i could. Would i need to adjust the screen size and rez on the computer or tv??

I just dont want to put the money down on a new DVD player atm, rather save the cash and use my Xbox360 or PS3 to play my DVDs in HD
Click to expand...


Yes. Adjust on computer. If you have two outputs, use one for the TV and have its desktop set to the screen res (prolly 1280x720, 60Hz)
 
sonycowboy said:
Not hardly. Walk into any consumer electronics store (Best Buy, Circuit City, Good Guys, Sears, Costco, etc,etc) and you'll find that less than 5% of TV's listed as HDTV actually support 720p (and essentially none @ 1080p).

It's going to be real ugly as many people think they're buying HDTV's, but are ending up with 480p/1080i sets with most not even having an HDMI or DVI interface. It's actually scary how many of the TV's out there are mixes and matches of compatability.
Click to expand...

Since when is 1080i not HDTV? I thought that's what the great debate was...720p vs. 1080i, both the HDTV standards.
 
I'm in the UK, and so the better HDTV sets just arent around over here yet.

No disrespect to any Rear Projection HDTV owners here, but they aren't for me, i just don't like sweetspot problem. Yeah it looks great if i sit square-on, but from a wider viewing angle... things get a bit meh! (from my impressions on sets i have viewed over here)

Price is also an issue for me as it was only 2 years ago i bought my top-of-the-line 32" panasonic. So the WEGA sets over here are out of my price range.

So i'm going to be getting one of these Panasonic projectors... but thats not the best bit, that going to be linked to.. one of these.. linked up to any decent DD/DTS receiver, and i can't see you getting better HD for the price (at least over here anyways)

Now thats got my future consoles covered, and i can have any other source resolution scaled up to any resolution up to 1080P (although price determines i can only get a 720P 1080i projector) Think about that for a moment..

Deezel
 
I currently have a 27"~ 1080i(bought for about 300$~). I'm waiting for a flat panel 1080p+(at 60hz or more refresh) 27"+ tv/monitor with high contrast ratio and long lifespan for under $500. Until that's available I'll not buy another tv(maybe a 19" monitor upgrade for my pc).
 
etiolate said:
Fucking no.

Do you people do everything a corp tells you to do?
Click to expand...


I hate these type of posts. Some of us have been waiting, biding our time to upgrade until we feel the need to do so. Now is becoming the time.
 
etiolate said:
Fucking no.

Do you people do everything a corp tells you to do?
Click to expand...

Why, do you do the exact opposite, just to stick it to the man?

In which case I hope Sony asks you NOT to walk off a cliff.
 
Btw, does anyone know if those 19" 1920x1440(65Hz) pc monitors accept HDtv signals? I'm buying one for my next supah cheap pc rig. I'd imagine I'd have no trouble hooking up my ps3 to such, even if it somehow supported 1080px60fps.
 
Prine said:
So, whos gearing up for the HD era in november? After 6 months of researching me and my Dad went out last night and bought a 50 inch rear projection HD TV (and a new Dell PC). With Sony and MS pushing HD so hard, i thought it was the right time to invest. I was so close to buying a plasma back in January, glad i held off.

How many other GAFFERs preparing for the HD era?
Click to expand...
I wish my parents would go out and buy a giant HD TV.

...oh, wait, I don't live with my parents.

I think I'll deal. :)
 
2009. after the switch + New Year's Blowout Sales!

unless my current TV meets another dude offering a more plush living room and upon falling in love decides to leave me alone and broken in the dark heart of the night with nothing but a cold window pane pressed against my face to replace it.
 
I have had 57inch sony HDTV for a couple years.. and a Hitachi ED 800X600 LCD front projector (the screen pulls down in front of the HDTV. I want to get either a 32" flat panel LCD, or a 70" rear projection Lcos, lcd, DLp, whatever by the time the PS3 comes out...

I tend to multi-task so I am going to have more than one HDTV in my gameroom.

VR_wheel.JPG
 
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