$2,187.35 to play GTA IV /sighFollow

Most of the TV broadcasts that you can get in HD, are set to 720p. But on the flip side, when you have any TV station that is broadcasting in HD but is broadcasting a show that wasn't originally filmed in HD, it is upcoverted to 480 from analog/digital.

A list of the shows on Network TV that I know of that are in true/upconverted(from network feed) HD nationally, are as follows:

Fox: Tries to air everything they broadcast nationally in true HD. The they are still broadcasting most of their Primetime/News shows in partially upconverted HD. 95% of their sports broadcasts are in true HD. From what I've seen these are in 720p.

ABC: Good Morning America, for East/West coast and Central timezones are in mostly true HD. Mountain timezone stations, unless they have a station that is running off of a HD delay server, are in completely upconverted HD. Only on the weekends will GMA be in mostly true HD, for the Mountain time zone.

Primetime for ABC is in HD for the Eastern/Central/Pacific time zones. And as said before, unless your Mountain timezone stations have an HD delay server, it will be upconverted on your MTN timezone station. Also Late night shows are also in HD as well for the Eastern/Central/Pacific timezones.

The View, has been in true HD for the past few months in all timezones.

This week w/George Stephenopolous(sp? lol) on Sunday mornings are now in true HD, as of 4/20/08 in every time zone. (720p) This program looked stunning on Sunday when I aired it, it might of been the rain in the background that gave it that edge, but damn it looked very good.

ABC/ESPN sports are in HD. Though from what I've seen so far, unless it is NBA Basketball, it is most likely upconverted HD. Even the racing events they have aired in the past 2 months have only been in true HD 50% of the time.

CBS: I wouldn't really know, as the group of stations I work for have not switched over to HD on our CBS station. But CBS has at least for the past 2 years been broadcasting it's sports in true HD. Though about 25% of the time their sports were needed to be upconverted. But I would imagine if you live in a more populated area, chances are that your station is broadcasting its CBS Primetime in HD.

CW In all honesty, this will most likely be the last network to go completely HD. As CBS is it's parent company, CBS barely cares enough about how it looks on air, I don't think they really care about CW yet.

NBC: I don't know. It's the only network I don't work with on a daily basis. I'd imagine they are on par with Fox and ABC though with their News/Primetime/Early morning shows.


From what I've seen so far, Fox's Primetime/Sports and This Week w/George Steph., are by far the best looking true HD programs so far on network TV.


Also:

I'd imagine so, I wouldn't go so far as a HUGE difference, but you'd be able to notice the difference better, when they are side-by-side. But when your TV only allows for one HD source on the screen at a time like mine, it makes it harder to notice the difference between 1080i and 480p. :P


When you have a digital source next to a 720p or even an upconverted-to-480p source, you can see the a massive difference. As the digital source looks so incredibly fussy next to the HD source. ;P

$400 for a box that you'll use for a few months, sounds like a steal to me!

I dont normally post in the "dreaded" asylum but after working for years selling TVs and other electronics what you said (Besides plasmas being crap) is untrue.

Anything under 45 inches or so you will not be able to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p from a normal veiwing distance unless you have super eyes. There is no "huge" difference to be seen between the 2 formats unless your going to a very large screen or you sit abnormally close to your television.

Besides the fact that for GTA4 its moot anyway since the game itself will likely be 720p like 99% of games out there.

All DVDs are 720.

No. Wrong number.

DVDs are 720 X 480. It's the height (the second number) that's the shorthand.

Normal US TV, (NTSC) is also 720 X 480.

A "720 set" would be capable of displaying 1280 X 720.


If you get the cheapest one for a given size, it's not going to step down to lower resolutions well.

While we're here, virtually no modern HDTV does this. They upconvert to 720 or 1080 using pixel adding algorithms.







Edited, Apr 24th 2008 6:31pm by Smasharoo

My few bits from what I know as facts/opinions about home theather

LCD power consumption is very rapidly catching up to plasma, no free lunches the XBR LCD I own puts out a lot of heat and uses much more electricity than the ones touted as power savers way back when their brightness and contrast was at best laughable

plasma contrast is still light years ahead of LCD

plasma handling of motion is still light years ahead of LCD

There is no 1080p content other than ps3 games and blue ray movies and you are not at any point in time from having to worry about 1080p over broadcast TV before its time to replace the TV again.

also, I <3 my HD Projector, bigger is better unless you can't control light on the screen
that is all

smash much better put then my posts above. 720p is not worth buying when for about the same cash you get s slightly smaller TV with 1080p quality and once you get over 30in it is easy to notice.

I was leaving the i and p bits out. Obviously, a progressive scan will always look better then an interlaced scan. Hence my statement that if you're going to go with a 1080 not to "go cheap". The problem is that 1080p sets are significantly more expensive then 1080i sets.

The additional problem is that many of the "cheap" 1080 sets *also* go cheap on the converter. At the end of the day, you can't really reduce the core cost of building the screen, so the only things to cut costs on are sound, scan, and resolution conversion. The difference between a $1.5k 1080i HDTV and a $5k 1080p HDTV is *huge*. Even the difference between a $1.5k 1080i and a $2.5k 1080i set will be very noticeable, especially when doing conversion.



My understanding is that the opposite is true. I don't claim to be a hardcore AV geek, but I do know a whole lot of them and do pay some attention when they talk about such things. When upconverting, the big risk is "blocking" (or artifacting), where you end up getting fills that don't look natural. You have to take a signal with less data then the screen you're filling, but you'll never loose anything. When downconverting, you're going to lose data. From a 1080 to 480, you're losing literally over half of the data in the source (that's just from the scan lines). Small details that may be present in the source can disappear, or "blink" in and out as they move. Imagine a narrow horizontal object on the screen. On the 1080 source, it may be just a pixel or two wide in some frames. On the 480 conversion, those lines may be erased of overwritten with surrounding detail. As said object moves, it may be picked up by the converter for display or cut out, somewhat randomly.

You may not notice this much, but that's largely because you're likely so used to viewing material at the lower resolution that you don't notice. It's also significant to note the original source. A whole lot of HD material out there wasn't filmed in HD. It was upconverted in the first place. Any semi-decent downconverter should simply remove the fills that were added in the first place, meaning you don't notice any difference. Watch something actually filmed in HD and you will notice a difference when viewing on a lower resolution.




Yeah. This I agree on. I may not have been super clear in my earlier post, but what I was basically saying was that if you don't have any specific need/desire to view HD stuff just yet, an EDTV (one of those cheap plasmas talked about earlier) will work just fine, and will arguably be best for viewing digital TV and DVD. If you want to use HD source stuff (like HD cable channels, or blu-ray disks, etc), but you don't have 5-10k to spend, buy a good quality 720p set. You wont get the full quality off an HD source, but as I pointed out, most stuff isn't true HD anyway, so you're probably not losing anything. Wait another 3-5 years and then look at the costs for 1080p sets. If money isn't an object and you want "the best", then buy a good quality 1080p set. But don't cheap on it. If you can't or wont pay top dollar for a 1080 set, don't. You'll end up with something no better then 720 (and in some cases worse).

Wait another 3-5 years and then look at the costs for 1080p sets. If money isn't an object and you want "the best", then buy a good quality 1080p set. But don't cheap on it. If you can't or wont pay top dollar for a 1080 set, don't. You'll end up with something no better then 720 (and in some cases worse).

Right, agree.