A Guide To The Cryptic Labyrinth Of High Definition

[Freddie]

Introduction

Whilst shopping around looking for nice 37” LCD TV for my new flat, I was reading about all the different specifications for HD TV’s. By the end of it all I felt I had spent the afternoon listing to Star Treks Data on his theory on quantum relativity, in others words my mind had turned to clay. Now I consider myself to be fairly tech savvy and even I struggled to understand this subject, I feel sorry for the poor layman who has gone out and brought a HD TV because I know it will fall short of his/hers expectations at some point. You may be thinking at this point I know a think or two about HD and all the different formats but I can guarantee you by the end of this guide you will be close to tears. With this guide I hope to dispel dangerous myths about high definition and make people think about what there buying and what they need to look for.


Background Info

If you are old enough to remember when movies use to come on something called video cassettes, you may or may not be aware that there were two competing rivalries, VHS and Betamax. Sadly if you brought a Betamax (like my boss did) you were screwed since the movie studios dropped support for it fairly rapidly. To avoid confusion and frustration for the consumer the heads of big electronics firms got together and in future would agree on a standard on which media would be released on. In recent years however this co-operation (which has benefited the likes of you and me) has all but ended and we are back to having competing technologies fighting it out again which you may have experienced if you have been looking at HD TV’s recently.


What is High Definition/HD?

You may walk into your local electronics store and see TV’s with ‘HD Ready’ stamped all over them. All this means, is that it can display the minimum requirement for a HD display, this doesn’t mean it will run at the highest quality.

One other term you should be aware of whilst looking at HD TV’s is making sure that it is HDCP compatible. HDCP (high definition content protection) is software that has been developed by Intel to protect high definition content, such as that on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray videos. You may have a Blu-Ray player such as PS3 but that doesn’t mean you will be able to play Blu-Ray movies on your TV or PC. You need to make sure you TV is HDCP compliant and you are using a connector (DVI, HDMI etc) that can handle HDCP as well, if your not HDCP at all of these stages then you can’t play the protected media (I believe it will let your play it at normal DVD quality).

Connections

HDMI – Well if you running your TV of a HDMI connector you will be pleased to know HDMI is always compatible with HDCP. Like DVI and SCART, HDMI is an all in one video and audio interface and can handle uncompressed streams that can handle existing high-definition video formats (720p, 1080i, and even 1080p) as well as enhanced definition formats such as 480p.

DVI – A DVI is commonly found on PC monitors and video cards and can sometime work with HDCP, but DVI isn’t always HDCP compatible. If your reading this then most likely your video card isn’t HDCP compliant, although there are now video cards on the market with HDMI interfaces which are guaranteed to be compatible.


Field/Frame Rate

Before moving onto standards its important to understand that not everything is black and white or as it seems. A video signal is more complicated then 1080i or 720p or 1080p. A picture that is being shown at 1080p might have 50 fields per second which translates into about 25 frames a second (each field is half a frame). So 1080i/50 would mean we get 50 full 1920x1080 frames per second.


Display standards

HD standards are many, but the most common are; 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, 1440p. When buying a HD TV the one you should go for is 1080p, but even if a TV says its 1080p compliant that doesn’t tell you the whole story. We now have to worry about what we might or might not mean by describing a display as "1080p". Any HD transmission need has both an output (your TV) and an input (Sky dish or HD media player).

The output – Some panels such as those made by Toshiba use technology called ALIS, which means the picture is inherently interlaced which means is the picture is split into odd and even lines and rendered one by one. Basically this means the quality is poorer then that of a progressive rendered display, so avoid TV’s that use interlaced display. Interlaced is almost identical to how 3DFX worked its original SLI technology back in the 90’s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scan-Line_Interleave.

The input – Now we have to worry about the input. A screen that has a resolution lower than 1920x1080 might still be described as being "compatible with 1080i" or even "compatible with 1080p" if it is capable of accepting an input signal in 1080i or 1080p format and displaying an intelligible image derived from it. A lot of large size screens (mostly plasma screens have a maximum resolution of 1366x768. Most so-called high-definition 42" plasmas have a resolution of 1024x768. But they are still able to accept a 1080i signal at the input. That signal is de-interlaced and then downscaled to the resolution of the screen. In other words the transmission might be 1080p but your TV is reducing the quality to make it fit is screen resolution. Even if you r TV is fully 1080p you need to find out what signal frequencies it can deal with. These frequencies can vary from 1080p/100? 1080p/75, 1080p/72, 1080p/60, 1080p/50, 1080p/48, your new TV might be able to handle some of them but not all of them which is an issue when dealing with de-interlaced.

One odd note I found out what that even if your TV can only handle 1080i (for transmission, such as Sky HD), if your TV isn’t fully 1080p compliant you can’t watch it without a loss in detail.


Contrast Ratios

Sellers seem to make a big deal out of a LCD’s TV contrast ratio 800:1, 1000:1 I’ve seen advertised. This seems to be capitalising on a myth that means the greater the ratio the blacker the blacks will be which is all wrong and misleading. All this means is that the finer detail that is in black will be displayed, some times referred to as misty areas, you can adjust the back light to correct it, however this means the whites are dimmer.

Conclusions

It is certainly worth doing your home work on high definition before buying a TV that might not do the job you want. If you want the best then 1080p is the way to go but even if see something advertised at 1080p compatible, it might mean the picture is received at 1080p then scaled down to match the TV’s resolution. Make sure it can accept 1080p input and not just 1080i, it can accept 1080p over a digital input that supports HDCP and what frequencies it can deal with.

Remember the best picture of an LCD TV goes beyond whether its 1080p or not, you need information on its contrast ratio and response times (practically important). Sadly most stores don’t have this information to hand, so online research at the manufactures website is essential, try to look past all the marketing, it's not what there telling you its what there NOT telling you which is important.

(above: Yep you really need Data with you when buying a HD TV)

[mrmouth]

I just bought this 60" Sony XBR http://reviews.cnet.com/projection-t...=pdtl-img&ar=o and Im really quite happy with it. It was on sale, down from $4000, thats why I grabbed it. I also bought it from a very reputable store so they sent a guy over to tweak it.

I was watching golf last weekend in full 1080 on a satellite dish and I almost started to cry.

nice guide, it echoes a lot of what I was told.

[Freddie]

I just bought this 60" Sony XBR http://reviews.cnet.com/projection-t...=pdtl-img&ar=o and Im really quite happy with it. It was on sale, down from $4000, thats why I grabbed it. I also bought it from a very reputable store so they sent a guy over to tweak it.

I was watching golf last weekend in full 1080 on a satellite dish and I almost started to cry.

nice guide, it echoes a lot of what I was told.

Unfortunately your TV is a prime example of what I was talking about, it may be able to accept 1080i signals but it shows them on screen as 720p quality. I found this on the Cnet review link you posted above,

Features of Sony KDF-60XBR950
The Sony KDF-60XBR950 has exactly what you'd expect from an HDTV at this price point: everything. Its 1,386x788 native resolution is identical to that of less-expensive Sonys such as the KF-60WE610, and that's enough pixels to show every detail of 720p HDTV.

What this means is that the broadcast is going out in 1080 resolution but your TV is having to scale it down when it receives it to make it fit. So when your TV says its 1080i all that means is that it can handle 1080i but it can’t display at 1080i.

To get a true 1080i picture your HD TV needs to have resolution of no less then 1920x1080 and must be able handle 1080p (and not just 1080i).

[mrmouth]

Well actually I have a different model, that is its the '06 version, and it says full 1080 on the front, this one doesn't. I cant find a review of the current version.

I specifically asked the salesman at the Sony store in ABT if it was true 1080 and I was told it was, maybe he lied? The guy they sent over from the Sony store also said what we were seeing was true 1080.

it has a native resolution of 1,920x1,080, thats from the manual.

SXRD™ Panels

SXRD technology is a new display technology developed by the legendary television engineers at Sony to meet and exceed the demands of a High Definition image at its full 1080 line resolution. Digitally transmitted High Definition signals can contain over 2 million individual detail points that need to be displayed accurately and rapidly. SXRD displays those 2 million detail points per SXRD panel accurately since the 3 SXRD panels actually contain enough pixels to fully display a 1080 line picture without interlacing it. SXRD has the speed to create a smooth, film like image. The SXRD panels have a blistering 2.5ms response time (total rise and fall time), which exceeds the demands of even the most rapidly moving High Definition images. And SXRD creates highly accurate, natural colors because the 3-panel design displays all the colors, all the time.

[Freddie]

Well actually I have a different model, that is its the '06 version, and it says full 1080 on the front, this one doesn't. I cant find a review of the current version.

I specifically asked the salesman at the Sony store in ABT if it was true 1080 and I was told it was, maybe he lied? The guy they sent over from the Sony store also said what we were seeing was true 1080.

it has a native resolution of 1,920x1,080, thats from the manual.

SXRD™ Panels

SXRD technology is a new display technology developed by the legendary television engineers at Sony to meet and exceed the demands of a High Definition image at its full 1080 line resolution. Digitally transmitted High Definition signals can contain over 2 million individual detail points that need to be displayed accurately and rapidly. SXRD displays those 2 million detail points per SXRD panel accurately since the 3 SXRD panels actually contain enough pixels to fully display a 1080 line picture without interlacing it. SXRD has the speed to create a smooth, film like image. The SXRD panels have a blistering 2.5ms response time (total rise and fall time), which exceeds the demands of even the most rapidly moving High Definition images. And SXRD creates highly accurate, natural colors because the 3-panel design displays all the colors, all the time.

Oh good if your TV can display that resoultion then it can handle 1080i and 1080p. This does not, of course, mean that all 1920x1080 displays will automatically look better than all lower-resolution screens - there is a lot more to picture quality than just resolution.

[mrmouth]

Oh good if your TV can display that resoultion then it can handle 1080i and 1080p. This does not, of course, mean that all 1920x1080 displays will automatically look better than all lower-resolution screens - there is a lot more to picture quality than just resolution.

Yeah, you were starting to scare me there man, thought I spent $3800 on a lemon.

I'm going to soak up as much as I can about this stuff, so next TV I buy I can go in with guns blazing. Although Im sure by then everything will have changed.

[UnderdawgIV]

Introduction

Whilst shopping around looking for nice 37” LCD TV for my new flat, I was reading about all the different specifications for HD TV’s. By the end of it all I felt I had spent the afternoon listing to Star Treks Data on his theory on quantum relativity, in others words my mind had turned to clay. Now I consider myself to be fairly tech savvy and even I struggled to understand this subject, I feel sorry for the poor layman who has gone out and brought a HD TV because I know it will fall short of his/hers expectations at some point. You may be thinking at this point I know a think or two about HD and all the different formats but I can guarantee you by the end of this guide you will be close to tears. With this guide I hope to dispel dangerous myths about high definition and make people think about what there buying and what they need to look for.


Background Info

If you are old enough to remember when movies use to come on something called video cassettes, you may or may not be aware that there were two competing rivalries, VHS and Betamax. Sadly if you brought a Betamax (like my boss did) you were screwed since the movie studios dropped support for it fairly rapidly. To avoid confusion and frustration for the consumer the heads of big electronics firms got together and in future would agree on a standard on which media would be released on. In recent years however this co-operation (which has benefited the likes of you and me) has all but ended and we are back to having competing technologies fighting it out again which you may have experienced if you have been looking at HD TV’s recently.


What is High Definition/HD?

You may walk into your local electronics store and see TV’s with ‘HD Ready’ stamped all over them. All this means, is that it can display the minimum requirement for a HD display, this doesn’t mean it will run at the highest quality.

One other term you should be aware of whilst looking at HD TV’s is making sure that it is HDCP compatible. HDCP (high definition content protection) is software that has been developed by Intel to protect high definition content, such as that on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray videos. You may have a Blu-Ray player such as PS3 but that doesn’t mean you will be able to play Blu-Ray movies on your TV or PC. You need to make sure you TV is HDCP compliant and you are using a connector (DVI, HDMI etc) that can handle HDCP as well, if your not HDCP at all of these stages then you can’t play the protected media (I believe it will let your play it at normal DVD quality).

Connections

HDMI – Well if you running your TV of a HDMI connector you will be pleased to know HDMI is always compatible with HDCP. Like DVI and SCART, HDMI is an all in one video and audio interface and can handle uncompressed streams that can handle existing high-definition video formats (720p, 1080i, and even 1080p) as well as enhanced definition formats such as 480p.

DVI – A DVI is commonly found on PC monitors and video cards and can sometime work with HDCP, but DVI isn’t always HDCP compatible. If your reading this then most likely your video card isn’t HDCP compliant, although there are now video cards on the market with HDMI interfaces which are guaranteed to be compatible.


Field/Frame Rate

Before moving onto standards its important to understand that not everything is black and white or as it seems. A video signal is more complicated then 1080i or 720p or 1080p. A picture that is being shown at 1080p might have 50 fields per second which translates into about 25 frames a second (each field is half a frame). So 1080i/50 would mean we get 50 full 1920x1080 frames per second.


Display standards

HD standards are many, but the most common are; 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, 1440p. When buying a HD TV the one you should go for is 1080p, but even if a TV says its 1080p compliant that doesn’t tell you the whole story. We now have to worry about what we might or might not mean by describing a display as "1080p". Any HD transmission need has both an output (your TV) and an input (Sky dish or HD media player).

The output – Some panels such as those made by Toshiba use technology called ALIS, which means the picture is inherently interlaced which means is the picture is split into odd and even lines and rendered one by one. Basically this means the quality is poorer then that of a progressive rendered display, so avoid TV’s that use interlaced display. Interlaced is almost identical to how 3DFX worked its original SLI technology back in the 90’s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scan-Line_Interleave.

The input – Now we have to worry about the input. A screen that has a resolution lower than 1920x1080 might still be described as being "compatible with 1080i" or even "compatible with 1080p" if it is capable of accepting an input signal in 1080i or 1080p format and displaying an intelligible image derived from it. A lot of large size screens (mostly plasma screens have a maximum resolution of 1366x768. Most so-called high-definition 42" plasmas have a resolution of 1024x768. But they are still able to accept a 1080i signal at the input. That signal is de-interlaced and then downscaled to the resolution of the screen. In other words the transmission might be 1080p but your TV is reducing the quality to make it fit is screen resolution. Even if you r TV is fully 1080p you need to find out what signal frequencies it can deal with. These frequencies can vary from 1080p/100? 1080p/75, 1080p/72, 1080p/60, 1080p/50, 1080p/48, your new TV might be able to handle some of them but not all of them which is an issue when dealing with de-interlaced.

One odd note I found out what that even if your TV can only handle 1080i (for transmission, such as Sky HD), if your TV isn’t fully 1080p compliant you can’t watch it without a loss in detail.


Contrast Ratios

Sellers seem to make a big deal out of a LCD’s TV contrast ratio 800:1, 1000:1 I’ve seen advertised. This seems to be capitalising on a myth that means the greater the ratio the blacker the blacks will be which is all wrong and misleading. All this means is that the finer detail that is in black will be displayed, some times referred to as misty areas, you can adjust the back light to correct it, however this means the whites are dimmer.

Conclusions

It is certainly worth doing your home work on high definition before buying a TV that might not do the job you want. If you want the best then 1080p is the way to go but even if see something advertised at 1080p compatible, it might mean the picture is received at 1080p then scaled down to match the TV’s resolution. Make sure it can accept 1080p input and not just 1080i, it can accept 1080p over a digital input that supports HDCP and what frequencies it can deal with.

Remember the best picture of an LCD TV goes beyond whether its 1080p or not, you need information on its contrast ratio and response times (practically important). Sadly most stores don’t have this information to hand, so online research at the manufactures website is essential, try to look past all the marketing, it's not what there telling you its what there NOT telling you which is important.

(above: Yep you really need Data with you when buying a HD TV)

Man, you kinda scared me at first, thought I missed something in my research I did before helping my father buy an HDTV, with your "I know a thing or two about HDTV, but..."

Nothing new to me, but this is a great guide for the masses looking to buy an HDTV. I am bookmarking it so that I may simply post it in a reply in any thread on the forums I frequent.

I think the AVS forums (forums for TV's, sound systems, media players) has a guide like this. HDTV's and surround sound systems are talked about there like it is a hardware forum! All this new language and such and such. Just check it out if you're curious.

[Quex]

My dad spent years waiting for the right HDTV. He researched it, read lots of reviews, customer complaints, in-store viewing, and the likes before finally deciding on one. Can't say he's a impulse buyer.

It certainly is a difficult field, and you have to get everything down to get the most bang for your buck.

[mrmouth]

I finally found a review of my TV, on the website of the store I bought it from.

http://www.abtelectronics.com/product/25023.html

They dropped the price again in anticipation of the '08 models and since it was just a 2 weeks ago the I bought it they are going to cut me a check for the difference. Best electronics store in the Chicago area. Nearly $1,000 back in my pocket!