Is HD overrated?

[MPwannadecentincome]

Everytime I've looked in the shops most of them look naff to me in comparison to my trusty old Sony CRT 24" screen. The only exception to that are high end Sony LCD screens, which I will go buy one day.

There is some truth in this - the only reason we got a 42 inch Sony Bravia LCD was 'cos the Sony 32 inch CRT packed in.

Actually in the early days of LCD PC monitors, I bought one and returned it as the picture was not as good as my 17 inch NEC FE700 which I still use today (shame there isn't much room for anything else on my desk).

[orac]

Hd

Sky is 1080i i.e. interlaced not progressive. The best picture I have seen is pioneer plasma 50". You need Bluray, ps3 is good with a good amp for sound. You are talking 10-20K for a good setup.

[voodooflux]

It seems to be a popular myth that Sky is only broadcasting in 720 ish. It's not true, everybody adopted 1080i in the end.

I think this stems from rumours that circulated before Sky launched their HD service that they were planning to broadcast some of their programming (particularly sport) in 720p.

I've not got HD. Everytime I've looked in the shops most of them look naff to me in comparison to my trusty old Sony CRT 24" screen. The only exception to that are high end Sony LCD screens, which I will go buy one day.

Have you had the opportunity to look at any Pioneer plasma panels? If you haven't then they are well worth seeking out - but you might want to leave your wallet at home.

[Amiga500]

Sky is 1080i i.e. interlaced not progressive. The best picture I have seen is pioneer plasma 50". You need Bluray, ps3 is good with a good amp for sound. You are talking 10-20K for a good setup.

Correct about Sky. OLED screens look set to overtake LCD and plasma screens in the near future though.

[VectraMan]

It's that digital mediocrity again. They do have motion blur and digital artifacts/giant pixelling (I have a Bravia and it does too). You get used to it, like you get used to MP3s lack of Fi, and digital pics pixellation (not to mention abject failure to follow Kodachrome's colour reproduction).

The irony is that SD TV could be an awful lot better than it is, but frequently looks terrible because of the amount of compression used. Blow that up to 50" and upscaled to a different resolution and you really highlight the terribleness of digital TV. HD then looks like a big improvement, but partly because they're using less (and better) compression.

It seems to me the biggest reason for HD is not to get better quality, it's to go bigger without the loss of quality.

Somebody has developed a new LCD TV using 5 (or maybe 6) colours, which means they can produce 95% of the visible colour spectrum rather than 60% ish that the best TVs manage now. Of course that's completely incompatible with all existing systems and broadcasts, so expect to have to buy everything all over again in a couple of years.

[VectraMan]

I think this stems from rumours that circulated before Sky launched their HD service that they were planning to broadcast some of their programming (particularly sport) in 720p.

In theory that would have been better, but I think they decided to cut corners by just using the one standard throughout.

Have you had the opportunity to look at any Pioneer plasma panels? If you haven't then they are well worth seeking out - but you might want to leave your wallet at home.

So I've heard, but you don't get plasmas in sensible sizes (and anything bigger than 32" is just for chavs).

[voodooflux]

So I've heard, but you don't get plasmas in sensible sizes (and anything bigger than 32" is just for chavs).

I have a 50" Pioneer

[MPwannadecentincome]

It seems to me the biggest reason for HD is not to get better quality, it's to go bigger without the loss of quality.

WHS

[MPwannadecentincome]

So I've heard, but you don't get plasmas in sensible sizes (and anything bigger than 32" is just for chavs).

Lets see what your view is on that when you get something bigger than 32 inch.

Come on - I paid about £300 less for a 42 inch Sony Bravia than the 32 inch Sony CRT about 8 years ago!

[BoredBloke]

I have HD and I love it - i can't stand watching football on non HD channels now. I aslo use the PS3 as a dvd player and blu-ray does look good.

I was told that motion blur tends only to be noticeable on big screens if you are standing too close. It's worth remembering that when you buy your 50 inch screen the chances are you will not be sat as close to it as you would with say your monitor. The chances are a huge telly is going intoa huge room and you will be a certain distance away from it.

Our telly is a 42 inch Sharp one that is knocking on a little - the technology has improved a lot over the past 2 years but I still think the picture on ours looks good when it has the right feed into it.

i was in selfridges at the weekend and they had some of those oled tv's - they look really good.