Why are there still standard definition channels?*

I just saw a stack of $200 HD sets at Costco a couple of days ago. Since when is a $199 TV set elitist? Those people be crazy.

 

Welcome to the backwards nation of Australia where the wants and needs of the broadcast networks come way before those of the viewer of their product.

 

I think there is mounting momentum against the merger as we speak (as streaming gains momentum over cable)...

 

Heard yesterday on a Philly news station that the Comcast/Time Warner deal was dead.

As for HD vs SD and what's available to whom, to use a well-worn phrase, "it's complicated." Witness that this discussion is full of mistaken notions simply because it IS so complicated.

I live in the Central Florida region and we get a very basic cable service that only gives us over-the-air television stations. In this service, we get each of the main network signals in both HD and SD. The stations themselves are not broadcasting anything in SD anymore. They might have some SD commercials, but it's all upconverted to the HD signal. Looks bad, but that's what they do.

The SD channels, as someone said upthread, really don't look that terrible. Some of them are letterbox, some of them lop off the right and left sides. Some of them are letterboxed when on the network and lopped off on the sides when local. Some are letterboxed local and lopped off on the sides when on the network. It's crazy.

Now add to that individual TVs that do different things and it REALLY muddies the waters. We have a few subchannels that rightfully should be 4:3. But somehow the local station is sending out a flag that it's really 16:9. The result is that on one TV that I own, the signal stays stretched all the time, regardless of setting the picture size to "Normal". On other TVs, that same channel can be reduced to 4:3 when using the "Normal" screen size. Just crazy.

In addition, two, nearly identical Sony TVs handle screen sizes differently. One will see a letterboxed 4:3 image on some channels and automatically zoom it to fill the screen. The other will not - even when all settings are the same.

So you've got all of these manufacturers out there doing all kinds of things with signals. And you've got all of these cable/satellite/broadcast signals doing all kinds of OTHER things. Then throw in the remaining folks out there with their 4:3 CRTs and old rear projection sets, with cable boxes or digital converters and you've got a recipe for disaster - as far as picture sizes on TV goes.

I don't know what the ultimate answer is, but frankly it IS a complicated set of variables with which to try to make sense.

Harry

 

You're in LA. Go out into the boonies in the southeast where I am some time. Lots of people with CRT here still.

 

The problem with my cable provider is that the SD channels *do* look horrible. As in, worse than the SD cable I had with my old CRT 27-inch TV in the 90s. Making things worse, a bunch of the SD channels are indeed either sourced from an HD signal or feature programming shot in HD. So I get a letterboxed 16x9 (or wider) picture inside a 4x3 pillarboxed frame. I can zoom in on my HD display, but then it looks *even worse*.

I’ve always wondered if there was any way they could deliver 16x9 SD channels (sourced from an HD signal) anamorphically, so I at least don’t have to zoom in on a letterboxed image. I would imagine that would just confuse things, and people who *are* watching those SD channels on a 4x3 TV would then get a super-squeezed image.

I end up preferring HD stuff on my cable less out of a snobby, videophile motive, and more to simply avoid how awful the SD channels look. It got better last year, when my cable company finally switched the system over to all-digital and were able to free up bandwidth to add many more HD channels. I finally got a huge hunk of channels in HD whereas before I was only getting a lot of the big, core channels in HD like AMC, Discovery, etc. Now there are only a few cases where they oddly only offer an SD version (ABC Family for some reason for instance).

 

We have a 16:9 HD CRT Toshiba in our bedroom. The picture is still better than most LCDs I've seen lately. Great blacks. Of course, it is very big and the screen is small in today's context but it still works and looks great.

 

I don't own a digital TV; I have 3 CRT tvs. My SD concert DVDs (over 1300) look like sh@it on everything else, no matter what amount of upconversion I might apply, and I've tried it all.

Plus,in Argentina even with the top of the premium cable TV packages you only get a meagre 27 HD channels and they are only 720p. And ¨HD¨ is 3 times the price they charge for SD. To think they're pushing 4K TVs now, what a laugh !! So my 27¨CRT Samsung will have to do till the situation improves or the TV dies. Living room is only 12X12 so size is OK.

 

You don't know me of course. But I do not own a flat panel tv neither LCD nor plasma.

 

What do you got ? CRT like me ? Or maybe you don't watch TV at all ?

 

Yep - CRT. I have thought about replacing it, but never seem to get much further than just thinking about it.

 

Because so the TV-stations can raise an extra fee for the HD-feature! Here in Germany, almost every station does so...

 

I refuse to pay extra for HD. When the majority of cannels are HD and don't charge extra, I'll get HD. I know; maybe not in my lifetime ?

 

That's not quite correct. All the public funded stations broadcast free OTA. Only the private stations charge for HD.

 

You have to pay a monthly fee for those stations, so I don't recall the HD Feature free. It's part of this monthly fee...

 

I still have my 36" Sony Wega CRT TV in the basement and I've considered hooking it up in the bedroom to watch SD sources, though I'd probably have to hire someone to help me get it up the stairs and onto the stand.

I paid almost $2K for it in 1997 and they're practically giving them away on eBay if you come and pick them up yourself.

 

Probably ? Unless you're the Incredible Hulk you will need 1-3 people to help you out. You got it in the basement. Is it working ? Those TVs have the habit of accumulating humidity on their circuit boards, so when you hit the power button they go kaput.

 

But the don't charge extra for HD. Your claim was that they "raise an extra fee for the HD-feature".

 

It hasn't been plugged in in almost ten years so I really don't know. It's dry and I've used other electronics that are stored there, so hopefully it still works.

I did manage to get it on the stand once by myself but I wouldn't attempt it today. 2-3 people would be optimal to lift it.

 

If you guys were watching CRT's in the forest, with no one to see you, would it count?

Anyway, you don't need an SD broadcast when the cable box would send it out on an RCA jack(s). Of course you'd get letter boxing, but my assertion was that I can't believe cable/sat companies give a damn about you at all. I guess the SD is just a come-on to charge extra for HD.

 

Exactly. With digital TV (SD or HD) the old CRT sets with NTSC tuners in them need a converter to display a picture. In that case, the box converts everything to SD for such a television. The cable companies rely on the ignorance of people who don't understand the difference to charge extra for HD, and they are purposely limiting bandwidth of many channels in order to offer a larger number of channels. But that's only a counting game. If you have the Hallmark channel on two different channels, with one being SD and the other HD, that's still just one channel in my book. (Kudos to Hallmark for showing shows like "The Golden Girls" and "Murder, She Wrote" in their correct aspect ratios.)

 

You don't have to pay a fee for several HD channels if you live in, or near a bigger city. You can get an HD antenna, and pick up plenty of HD channels that way.

 

And if there isn't a lot of interference, the picture has the potential to look much better than cable.

 

One of the weirder things on Time Warner Cable here in Austin:

On the digital cable system, Sundance is in standard def. However, on the TWC app, Sundance is in high def. So, if I want to watch Sundance in HD, I have to watch it on my Roku, not the cable box.

I believe this is the case.

They have shown blocks of That Metal Show on Palladia in HD, so it has been shot that way for the past few seasons. It's just that VH1 Classic is still not broadcasting in HD.