Converting High-def to low-def, does it work

Converting High-def to low-def, does it work?

I live alone, and I had planned, rather than buy several high def tv's in 2009, to buy one converter which I will put where my VCR is, and use it to pipe low-def signals to all the tv's in the house.**

I have been told that the converters which will be offered for sale in

2009 will output low-def tv signals that are not as good as what we have today, that the picture will look worse than it does now, or that it won't fill the screen, or both, or worse.

Can you fill me in on the facts?

Thanks.

**(I do that now with video tapes or VCR tuner output. I have a couple amplifiers, basically for every second splitter in a row, I have an amplifier, and everything works fine)

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Reply to
mm
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A converter is a tuner and only tunes one channel at a time. Your idea would work in theory, but you'd only get one channel converted at a time (no multiple TVs/VCRs watching different channels) and you'd need some way to control it remotely so you could change channels. It doesn't sound very practical to me - the remote control setup would probably cost as much as multiple tuners.

I suggest you wait until 2009. The switchover date may get pushed back again, and if not, you don't want to buy until everyone is buying and the price drops due to the mass production and volume sales. IIRC, the government will be providing some subsidies for these converters.

Reply to
T o d d P a t t i s t

Tht's a good idea, but I'm told by a guy who seems to know something about this stuff that the decision is already made and the kind of converters they will be selling even then will have the defects in quality and picture size and shape that I mentioned.

Have you heard anything about that?

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Reply to
mm

You can already buy converters which will output both HD and standard NTSC signals (although not always at the same time). A HD signal converted to SD should look excellent (better than digital cable, or satellite). Any artifacts in visible in the HD signal will be shrunk down to the point of being almost invisible on an NTSC TV.

As far as filling the screen, the HDTV receivers I've used all allow you to pick how you want a wide screen image to be displayed. You can choose letter box, zoomed in to fill the screen, or stretched to fill the screen.

The converters planned for 2009 are meant to be a low cost solution for people with NTSC TVs. They will only output NTSC (no HD). The picture would look worse on a HDTV, but they aren't meant for use with HDTVs. The picture should look as good, or better than a DVD on your NTSC TVs. Andy Cuffe

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Reply to
Andy Cuffe

Maybe this accounts for what I read, but it's silly for someone to complain about what it looks like on HDTV. I guess if I had some HD and some SD on the set of wires (co-ax) running through my house, it might come up, and eventually I will start finding HD tvs at rummage sales or in the trash so that could happen some day, but probably not for a decade or so. And when it does, I'll just run a second co-ax for HD.

Thanks. This is reassuring, such a product is totally fine with me. I'm not crazy about having all my tuning go through one location, but I have a remote that works in the basement and first floor, that will change stations for me. (I really don't need HD, especially if it will cost me money. :) )

Sorry I didn't see your post earlier

P&M

Doesn't putting your email address in your sig generate lots of spam for you? Spambots and all that?

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mm

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