HDTV and Set-top Boxes

"L.A.T."

But watch out, the HD pic is often no better looking than the SD one - having been artificially up-converted from the SD one. Big con really

...... Phil

Yes, but on different channels. Each station has a dedicated HDTV channel. The HD channel upconverts SD material when HD material is not available, so HDTV sets can be constantly tuned to the HD channel.

Your SD STB can pick up the HD channels but you'll get a garbled image, so there is no point.

BTW, "HD" ain't always true HD, channel 7 is notorious for passing off SD images as HD. Channel 7 have also been known to drop their HD broadcast from time to time. I've heard that the stations have to transmit a certain percentage of HD material each month, and they have been known to cheat to meet that target.

Dave.

I can be indeed.

But I've found that sport looks heaps better on the HD channel compared with SD, virtually no MPEG artifacts during high speed motion. The artifacts on SD on the other hand can be atrocious, but it depends on the channel and the bandwidth the station chooses to use for that program.

Dave.

The HD demonstrations that are on 90% of the time look fantastic though...LOL

The lack of HD content is a very dissapointing in general and the ability to transmit DD 5.1 audio is very seldom used as well. I can only recall one movie that displayed DD 5.1 on the reciever, which was Terminator: Judgement day, on Ch10 I think. The video didn't look all that fantastic though and was probably upconverted as suggested.

It would be great to see a majority of sporting events in HD but it's not going to happen any time soon :(

James

Apart from upconversion being common to a lot of the channels, 7 recently started transmitting HD here in Perth using 1080i instead of the previous

In Perth, both SBS and the ABC are upconverting SD program material. ABC up converts to 720p whilst SBS up converts to 576p. Unfortunately the HD effort on SBS looks worse than the SD slot on my Sony Bravia 52" X series LCD. :-(

Cheers, Alan

On Jun 27, 10:08 pm, "Alan Rutlidge"

:-P I did replace my 76cm widescreen Thomson after only a few years, it was a case of really bad timing :-( When I was in the market for a new TV a few years back, Plasma were still only 480pixel (which I refused to buy), high def Plasma were insane in price, large screen LCD didn't exist, and rear-pros were crap quality. So 76cm CRT was the only choice in my price range, but even they were expensive with the top brands like Thomson going for $2500+, and the no-names were still $1500 or so. But I worked for a company who effectively owned Thomson, so I managed to get the staff discount which saved me around $1000.

Of course, 6-12 months later LCD became all the rage and CRTs plummeted in price in the following 12 months :-(

Only fairly recently have good brand 42" hi-def Plasma's dropped to reasonable price, so an upgrade it was. Had to sell the Thomson CRT for a fraction of what I paid for it :-(

The Sony's are really nice, good pick if you can afford it. My 32" S series is nice enough.

Dave.