18% of Consumers Can't Tell HD From SD 603
An anonymous reader writes "Thinking about upgrading to an HDTV this holiday season? The prices might be great, but some people won't be appreciating the technology as much as everyone else. A report by Leichtman Research Group is claiming that 18% of consumers who are watching standard definition channels on a HDTV think that the feed is in hi-def." (Here's the original story at PC World.)
Are they nuts? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm half blind, and SD makes me want to gouge my eyes out after watching HD.
Re:Are they nuts? (Score:5, Funny)
No, they just used Comcast "HD" for the tests.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a HDTV and can tell the difference but don't care. I am not willing to pay the price difference for HD tv shows. My HDTV isnt going to waste tho, I do use it for high def gaming.
Many variables (Score:5, Informative)
Including:
- type of screen - plasma vs LCD, SD would be more noticeable on the latter IMHO.
- 720p, 1080i or 1080p? All are technically "HD".
- distance from screen - it is well established that HD only improves your experience if you are close enough to overcome your eyes' limited ability to resolve that level of detail.
- quality of signal - I have seen "HD" signals which were so compressed and crappy they looked worse than well-encoded SD signals. Similarly, many "HD" broadcasts are just re-encoded from non-HD content.
My gf routinely has the SD, rather than HD, version of various TV channels on because evidently from her point of view there is no discernable difference. This is a 42" plasma from about 4 metres away.
In any event, this just highlights that, as with all audio-visual products, how it actually looks/sounds to you is far more important than its specs. IMHO you are much better off with a good 720p plasma (Pana or Pioneer) than a mediocre 1080p LCD, for example - you will get better colour, much less ghosting, and (if set up correctly) a more faithful reproduction of the source material rather than a sharpened, cartoon-y looking version like many LCDs produce.
In addition, your expected use is critical - movies and sport tend to suggest a plasma will suit your needs, whereas lots of normal broadcast TV/desktop-type computer use might be better suited to an LCD.
Re:Many variables (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell the difference, and I don't care too much about the quality improvement. The primary reason I like the digital channels is that they are true 16:9 widescreen. Opening up the edges of the scene makes a much bigger difference than the horizontal resolution, as far as I'm concerned.
Of course, that only applies to regular television shows. Camera operators have been trained for decades to keep the camera tight on the subjects. Thus the extra detail is not needed. If you're talking about a complex scene like sports, however, all bets are off. I don't usually watch football (save for the Superbowl), but even a blind man can tell that an HD picture shows you more of the action than an SD picture. :-)
BTW, one reason why many people can't tell the difference is that the LCD or Plasma screens are already WAY sharper than the CRTs people used to watch. In result, even an SD signal looks a lot better. (Unless you're playing video games. Then SD looks worse.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the LCD or Plasma screens are already WAY sharper than the CRTs people used to watch
Depends on how long ago.
Many LCDs and plasmas are not as good as latest generation CRTs.
The picture I get on my 100Hz widescreen SD CRT is still well ahead of many LCD or Plasma sets I've seen. The response time of the LCDs is one big difference - they don't deal with fast motion well. (A stationary shot of a sportsground is OK, but as soon as they pan the grass goes all blurry.) What many people might confuse is watching a
Re:Many variables (Score:5, Interesting)
I waited until this was consistently, noticeably no longer the case before buying a plasma. I still would not by an LCD, although the higher end Sony 1080p models are starting to look pretty amazing when set up with optimal source material.
I also had a decent Sony CRT, which I gave to my parents when I got a Panasonic plasma. Although I thought after a while that maybe the plasma wasn't *that* much better, I have since been and re-watched the Sony, and frankly the plasma blows it back into last century, where it belongs. You just cannot beat the clarity (not to mention size and response time) of plasmas IMHO.
Re:Many variables (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary reason I like the digital channels is that they are true 16:9 widescreen. Opening up the edges of the scene makes a much bigger difference than the horizontal resolution, as far as I'm concerned.
Except, frustratingly, they're often not.
Here's what usually happens: No one wants to put those vertical bars up. So when showing a 4:3 show on your 16:9 screen, they usually scale it -- which looks awful (squashed). This is true whether it's an SD feed scaled up, an HD version of a movie that was simply shot in 4:3, or even an SD clip in an otherwise widescreen show.
Worse are the widescreen shows broadcast as 4:3 SD -- then you've got a little widescreen box right in the middle of your bigger widescreen TV.
It's maddening.
I'm going to say that, once again, broadcast TV fails. Why would I want to watch the show all censored, with ads every 5 minutes (and some in the middle of the show), compressed to hell, and now they even fuck up the aspect ratio, when I can just head over to my nearest torrent site^W^WNetflix queue and get a much higher quality version that just works on my computer?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What country do YOU live in!?
I've been watching digital TV exclusively for years, and have yet to see ANYTHING that was not broadcast in its Original Aspect Ratio.
Reruns of shows from before 16:9 was common always throws up the black bars.
Even relatively high-res shows like NBC's "Poker After Dark" gets a 4:3 picture with network logos on the sides. Nobody EVER stretches the screen out.
If you're watching the same broadcasts I am, I think you might have the settings on your TV misconfigured to fit images to
Re:Many variables (Score:5, Informative)
The primary reason I like the digital channels is that they are true 16:9 widescreen.
That's an American thing, where the broadcasters decided not to standardise on 16:9 or DVB until they could bundle it with HD.
In the UK (an probably the rest of Europe - not sure) 16:9 SD DVB-T has been broadcast since 1998, all new sets (for some years hence) can receive it.
The difference between a SD DVD and a HD-DVD is striking at first, but within 5 minutes of a film starting, I stop caring.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between a SD DVD and a HD-DVD is striking at first, but within 5 minutes of a film starting, I stop caring.
A hugely important point. I still watch VHS movies on my CRT TV and still find them amazingly immersive. So long as you can make out the images and sound without too many distracting artifacts, then all that matters is that you enjoy the movie. That's why BluRay and HDTV haven't become 'must-have' tech. I saw the BluRay remastered version of 2001 at a friend's house a couple of weeks ago and it was truly stunning - you could see every hair on each character's head. At the same time, though, I'm just as hap
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Many variables (Score:4, Interesting)
Last I heard the only things actually broadcast in HD are the World series and the Super Bowl, so yeah, I'd say that if you're watching a lot of broadcast TV but not much sports, you're just as well off getting a 720p anyway.
Incidentally, I spend a lot of time answering questions about TVs, selling them is part of my job. Funny thing though, all of our display model HDTVs are playing a looped DVD over split coax that isn't even terminated on the unused outlets... people will stand there oohing and ahhing over how great the picture is despite the fact that it is absolutely not HD in any way shape or form. Makes it pretty hard to convince people Sony sets are worth more than Olevia ones, too.
This headline comes as so little a surprise to me that I have trouble believing anyone even doubts it.
Yep (Score:3, Interesting)
It's strange, but I work with stereoscopic video and have noticed that even 640X480 in stereo 3D looks a lot sharper than 1920X1080 mono.
It is a psycho-visual effect, for sure. But it is real.
IMHO - forget about HD and use the bandwidth for 3D.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though the 1080i x30fps has about 3 times more pixels than 480p x60fps, the addition of depth perception provides far more information to the human brain. Which would you rather watch? - A flat video of the Victoria Secret fashion show? - A "deep" video where the curves stand-out and look touchable?
I know not what course others may take, but as for me, Give Me 3D.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Funny)
The previous message was brought to you by the National Cyclops Council.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The DLP rainbow is only perceptible to some people. Sounds like you're one of the unlucky few.
I don't see it, but I don't buy DLP sets because I like having people over frequently to watch TV, and some of my guests might be sensitive to the effect.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
$10-20/mo for cable/satellite, or $50-100 for a set of HD "rabbit ears" or a building mounted HD antenna for OTA.
Re:Are they nuts? (Score:5, Informative)
There's no such thing as HD rabbit ears, or a HD antenna*. Antenna manufacturers like to pretend that you need special equipment, but US DTV is broadcast on a subset of the frequencies used for OTA NTSC. Any existing antenna will work fine.
* You might handle multipath differently, and the UHF range is a little smaller, but that's about it.
Re:Are they nuts? (Score:5, Informative)
High Definition TV != Digital TV mandated throughout the US although it becomes possible to transmit DHTV over the air when the switch is made. This too is often a common misunderstanding.
Re:Are they nuts? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Only if you have more than one TV.
Keep in mind that a signal amplifier amplifies the noise just as much (sometimes more) as the signal you're interested in. You don't really need one if you're not splitting the signal downstream.
That's a little too broad of a statement, and is of course not true in many situations. You also need one if you don't live near the transmitter. I have a good antenna (I forget the brand and model) and a good masthead amplifier. The signal is so weak I get about 2/3 of the channels that I know are out there, even with the amplifier. I have a Samsung DTB-H260F receiver, which is a reasonably good unit. I have all RG6 quad shield cable. It's still not good enough. The picture drops out a lot on some o
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Amplifiers worked great with NTSC because it made the "sync" signal stronger and allowed the TV's tuner to lock into the station. While this process also added noise, the human brain has millions of years of development that allows it to "see through" the noise and extract an image. (For example I was watching CSI - it was a blurry image, but my brain could still see the hot blonde in the white noise.)
Digital receivers don't like noise, so adding the amp often makes things worse. A computer, unlike our b
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We're talking the difference between 4 stations and 16 stations.
12 stations ?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mine does, with Shaw Cable, and I have the Shaw HD PVR box. Half a dozen HD channels or so are included with the package, and by subscribing to moviecentral or superchannel I qualify for the HD feeds on those.
But there are SEVERAL channels I currently get in SD... like A&E, TSN, etc that I would have to subscribe to an extra package upgrade to get the HD version of it, which I think is pure money grabbing B.S.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Are they nuts? (Score:5, Interesting)
Time Warner in Charlotte, NC advertises "Free HD, for only $9.95 more a month, while out competitors (satellite) charge more than $100 a year for the same service".
Being that my brain hurts whenever I get close to figuring out how $9.95 a month is "free", and being that my soul hurts for paying the fools that would be proud of $9.95 a month compared to $100 per year, I'm not amicable to explanations as to why I should consider $9.95 a month to mean "free".
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Of all of that... Nova is the only thing I can think of that's worth
the HD treatment. Even then, the niftiness of Nova is limited to
broadcast where you can be assured that the original absurdly high
bitrate is reaching your TV set.
The rest are more than adequately displayed in 480p widescreen.
Dr Who isn't even something they want to produce in HD. They're
worried the detail resolution will show everyone how crappy their
props are.
HD is a fix for an artificial problem: Namely crappy SD digital broadcasts.
Beatin
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope. in fact I highly suspect their findings as too low. MOST people that buy a HDTV and have my company install it cant tell the difference between a SD broadcast and a HD broadcast, because they sit 15 feet away from that 50" plasma above their fireplace.
you need to sit 6-8 feet from a 42-50" display to really see the difference, more than that and your eyes cant see the resolution.
It's even worse if your HD signal is a crappy signal like Comcast. The Comcast local PBS Hd QAM channel looks like hell
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
you need to sit 6-8 feet from a 42-50" display to really see the difference, more than that and your eyes cant see the resolution.
Oh, my, you must be blind.
I sit over 10 feet away from my 38" TV (an honest-to-goodness picture tube set), and everyone who has seen the TV can tell the difference. It's measured resolution is about 1400x900, so most all HD is at or close to full resolution.
Meanwhile, SD is at most 720x480, and usually a lot less than that. It's easy to tell the difference.
Now, the difference between 1920x1080 and 1280x720 is something that you can't really tell without a large display with the ability to fully resolve 19
Frame rate (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps even more irritating than this, is how some people can't distinguish between 30 and 60 FPS (or at least don't care), when of course there is a massive difference. The latter is much smoother for all kinds of programmes and games. 120 FPS of course would be even better...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Frame rate (Score:4, Interesting)
In a very roundabout way, yes.
If a graphics card can barely average 60 FPS (or whatever your monitor's refresh rate is - my ThinkPad runs its LCD at 50 Hz,) then it's going to have dips well below 60 FPS.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Also gamers compare FPS instead of comparing penis size. Surely that's a good thing, even if both are reasonably pointless?
Motion blur (Score:5, Informative)
Does any framerate greater than your monitor's refresh rate matter?
Yes. If your engine can render at 120 fps, it can render the scene twice and combine the two images to add motion blur. This makes fast motions, such as projectile motions and the constant quick pans of any first-person game, look more realistic. It's also why film looks acceptable despite 24 fps.
Link for Motion Blur etc. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Link for Motion Blur etc. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also why film looks acceptable despite 24 fps.
I'm sorry, what? Granted, I'm only using a very expensive very large LCD instead of the plasma everybody here seems delirious about, and my eyes aren't 20/20. However, if you are watching any recent movie with even minor action in it in 24 fps on a sufficiently large screen (lets say starting at somewhere around 40", from not too far away) and you are not completely annoyed with the low fps when the image is panning, you definitely need to get your eyes checked out (or perhaps it's your brain can't handle t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
24 fps is the standard used in movie theaters, I think that's what the GP was talking about.
Re:Motion blur (Score:5, Informative)
Games don't do motion blur by just bluring two frames over each other (which would be rather awful), but by recording the velocity vector of a pixel and bluring that pixel with it as post processing effect, i.e. you need only a single frame and a bit more GPU power for the effect. Not all new games do that, but quite a few.
However there are TVs that interpolate inbetween frames, like Sony's 200Hz Motionflow, which takes a regular 25Hz input signal and then calculates the inbetweens to fill it up to 200Hz. There is similar stuff from other companies too.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Frame rate (Score:5, Informative)
They always shoot (or at least play) films at 25/30fps, and that irritates me no end. They basically look quite jerky when you know what to look for.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Clearly the person who put the video together needs to work on their marketing skills however. When trying to convince people at agree wit
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're quite right that the 60fps version had a few glitches in it (thanks to bad video quality). It's surprisingly hard to get smooth and fast video on the PC for various reasons, unless you know what exact codecs to use.
An earlier post mentioned this comparison which is probably better:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1069482 [avsforum.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I totally agree. The linked video was useless as a comparison, because the video itself was running at 24fps. I did notice a difference on the bouncing ball (the 2nd ball is relevant, the first is just camera technique and you could make it look similarly blurry at 60fps if you wanted), but I could not see any difference in the ut2k4 side by side. N
Re:Frame rate (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Frame rate (Score:5, Insightful)
There is even better evidence that the HD providers are compressing the channels and the HD streams they are watching aren't actually HD quality representations of the original content.
I don't have cable tv myself but a friend who does remarked at how sharp my TV was when watching a Blueray DVD. Even the over the air TV stations were coming in more clear then his Cable HD was on most channels. I took the DVD over to his house and we hooked it up, the comparisons where amazingly different. The HD channels he had (some basic HD package with his cable provider) looked like watching older DivX standard videos with a 340 size or something. All the blacks and fields of the same color were blotchy and blocky, there was a considerable lag between scenes and so on. When we connected the Blueray and watched Narnia or something stupid like that. The picture was every bit as sharp as mine even though we had separate TVs.
Gamers and so on might be able to tell the difference in a lot of this but I think that most cable/satellite HD content isn't actually HD in it's delivery so most people also haven't experienced real HD long enough to know the difference.
Re:Frame rate (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder why the people who complain about 75 Hz CRT monitors being flickery are perfectly willing to work in 50/60 Hz lamp flicker.
1) They aren't staring at the lamp for 8 hour a day.
2) Incandescant bulbs don't actually flicker on/off, they just deviate a little. Think about how it works, when the current changes direction, and the power drops off, yes the light emitting filament starts to cool down but it stays glowing plenty long enough to still be glowing at nearly full brightness when the power comes back up the other side. So instead of '100%-0%-100%-0%' its more a slightly wiggling 100%-95%-100%-95% and few humans can see this slight brightness wobble.
3) As for flourescents, the older ones actually WERE horrible, and people OFTEN complained of headaches after working under them. Modern flourescents though, with modern ballast technology, cycle much faster, and are much less of a problem for people.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Lamp flicker is at 100/120 Hz (two power "boosts" during each sinus cycle doubles the frequency).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
AC power is almost universally a sine wave (or close) with a frequency of 50 or 60 Hz (i.e. cycles per second). Each cycle contains two peaks, one negative and one positive. As a light bulb works equally well irrespective of the direction of current, you get a 100 or 120 Hz cycle in the power output.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We just bought a new tv not too long ago (Sony Bravia) with the option af setting the refresh rate to 120Hz, makes an amazing difference watching sports or anything with fast motion, but makes regular tv shows very eerie - almost cheap looking. I don't know how anyone could not tell the difference with fast motion, maybe if you were watching the fireplace channel...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That may have something to do with how LCD displays have a bad response time (causing blurring - a separate issue from frame rate). Alternatively, perhaps the programmes you view were shot at 30 or 60fps, so they weren't meant for 120fps TVs anyway.
OLED technology should fix both issues in the future, as they have incredible response times, and probably excellent frame rate potential.
Re:Frame rate (Score:5, Interesting)
Some displays will also use interpolation to "create" frames rather than simply repeating each frame for a set period of time. This technology, IMHO, isn't quite up to snuff and gives films/shows a somewhat odd synthetic appearance. Keep in mind that this tech is separate from the 5:5 pulldown described above.
Its worth noting (Score:5, Insightful)
The links don't say that 18% can't tell the Difference
Just that 18% can't tell if what their seeing is HD
An analogy would be playing mp3's, and asking people if it was 320kbps, or 64kbps.
Most people won't be able to tell the encoding rate just by hearing it, but if you play two different versions side by side they should be able to pick out the difference.
They probably can tell the difference, but they can't spot HD just by looking at it.
Give them an HD Content for a month and they'll quickly learn however.
Re:Its worth noting (Score:5, Interesting)
It is still important. I can most definately tell if what I'm watching is from a crappy VHS or from a DVD. That was obvious the first time I ever saw a movie on DVD. Walked in a room, saw people watching a DVD movie, and was like "Wow....so thats a DVD movie eh?". An HD source vs an SD source (to be fair, I'm talking about a movie or TV show... other kinds of content will be easier) gets a lot trickier.
I remember last time I brought my Xbox 360 to a family member's place. All of their TV's HDMI connectors were taken (which is what I normally use), so I brought the component cables (which can do 720p just fine). Since I had never used component, the console went back to default: 4:3, 480 lines. After playing a few hours, I started noticing something weird.... the ratio (the game i was playing didn't make it totally obvious like most would). So I went in the config to set it back to 16:9, when I noticed... 480 resolution? The hell? Switched it back up to 720p... There was a difference, but it wasn't all that obvious (no, it wasn't one of those 520p games that they upscale).
I'm sure I'm not the majority and that most people would have been able to tell much faster, but point still stands though: for a large amount of people its fairly irrelevent if you give them HD for a month or a year. As long as there's no artefact in the picture (like VHS), how many pixels you pump in Sex in the City won't matter.
Re:Its worth noting (Score:4, Funny)
Sex and the City
If you're not going to call it "Sluts in New York", at least get the name right.
Re: (Score:3)
lol, sorry fag, we'll try to spell your favourite movie right next time..
Re: (Score:2)
Into this seemingly complex insight is also the dynamic variable of eyesight. If your eyes are so bad you always see in SD it doesn't matter if you have HD. ;)
Having said that I think us nerds need to be mindful that not everyone pays attention to minute details. We are inherently trained to pickup details down to the pixel because a difference of a period (.) and a comma (,) can be the difference between a syntax error and a successful compile.
It would be more interesting if... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be more interested in a comparison between upscaled SD and HD. That is, an upscaled DVD (even the Xbox 360 upscale would do...no need to go fancy), vs a 720p source. I bet that 18% would become much, much higher... I have 2 TV of exactly the same size and resolution, and I tried putting them side by side... aside for the annoying 4:3 ratio that most DVDs are in, Its freakishly hard to tell the difference on anything below 40-45 inches (at a reasonable distance... of course its easy if you have your face in the TV).
The biggest reason SD "looks so awful about seeing HD" is because the built in upscalers of most HDTV is completly horrible, and make SD sources look faaaaaar worse than they should.
Re:It would be more interesting if... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It would be more interesting if... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a DVD player with an Realta HQV video processor and it really does a great job. In order to visually benefit from something like BluRay over a top notch scaler you have to have a pristine master and a high quality large screen (1080p at least 50"). It is difficult to get that good a master from older film or most video. That is great news since the vast majority of my current DVD collection will remain satisfactory for a long time.
But - new films mastered in HBR sound formats and 1080p on a good screen are enough better in both sound and appearance that I have stopped buying DVDs. I am renting until an acceptable BD player becomes available at which time I will start buying BluRay disks.
Closer to 75% in my experience (Score:5, Informative)
There's an ongoing battle in my family between keying in the "standard definition" version of channels and the "high definition". They all think I'm this weird limey geek (I'm the only English person in the family) who's obsessed with it. They're right of course. You should've seen the argument when I blocked the SD channels *grin*.
The fact is, most people really don't care so long as the TV is reasonably sharp and the sound is reasonably good. Standard definition is perfectly watchable to the average user, HDTV is still seen as just another buzz word. The majority of people with newer HDTVs are watching them with the coaxial cable stuffed into the antenna port in SD, and they're none the wiser.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Closer to 75% in my experience (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they are less concerned with the quality difference between the SD and HD stations than they are with how much slower their channel surfing is with the HD versions.
Age makes a difference (Score:5, Insightful)
20 year old eyes are much better than 50 year old eyes. I wonder how many of the 18% are older folks? I'm 55 and I'm hard-pressed to distinguish between SD and HD.
This means 82% can (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the psychology of words will make you believe this is horrible, when in fact, 82% can tell the difference!
Then, like said elsewhere, a properly upscaled good-resolution SD is very potent. What is crap is the digital signals we're being fed.
A story that happened to me. I used to listen to Paramount channel for ST:V a few years ago (god I'm old), and this was the only digital channel I used to have. Sometimes, I couldn't listen to some shows immediately, so I time-shifted them on a VHS, in EP (that's the 8 hours per cassette mode, young folks ;) ), and even then, with quality degraded, I could still see the digital scans when scenes were changed, or during space-blacks! Now that my boobtube provider is putting approximately 3 times the amount of channels into the same QAM, quality is even worse than before.
Difference between SD and HD? (Score:2, Funny)
That's depressing. I mean, how hard is it really? One's as big as a postage stamp and goes in your camera, and the other goes in your computer ... oh, wait ...
UsersAreMorons is an inappropriate tag (Score:4, Interesting)
Please use usersAreBlind instead ;-)
In all seriousness though, blaming people for being unable to tell the difference between SD and HD isn't a positive thing. The irony being that if they can't tell the difference they get to save themselves a whole lot of money. Thoguh personally I'd rather have decent eyesight and make the choice of SD vs HD based on whether I think it's worth it. I can tell the difference and I'll be sticking with SD until HD is much cheaper by the way.
Content Quality versus Visual Quality (Score:5, Interesting)
Humans are often easily distracted creatures, as demonstrated by numerous examples of highly successful ad campaigns over the years. As long as you present the audience with enough interesting or flashy content, the quality of the medium becomes less relevant.
The solution to speeding up HD adoption, is to make the content itself less interesting. The viewers will have no choice but to start taking notice of external annoyances like picture quality.
$1000 Better... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is HD better than SD, yes. Is it worth the $1000 extra you have to spend on everything to get HD? IMHO, no, but I know others feel differently.
18% of Everything is Crud (Score:3)
I'm impressed that the 18% number isn't higher. I mean, come on. The bottom 18% of your high school class were "F" students. And that was when someone was regularly feeding them info, telling them how to tell what was going on, regularly testing them. These people are morons. 82% noticing it's HD is pretty impressive.
Statistically speaking... (Score:3, Interesting)
Meh, consumers (Score:5, Funny)
Of course I've pulled these numbers out of my ass, where I pull 63% of all statistics I post on Slashdot.
Not suprising, and it doesn't prove any point... (Score:4, Insightful)
These factors would account for a good fraction of the statistic the being rest of the would be accounted for by the Idiot Factor - or to be fair, that many people have slightly off eyesight, or may be just sitting too far away.
I can't see a difference ... (Score:5, Interesting)
18% Can't tell the difference (Score:5, Insightful)
And in other news: 82% of people CAN tell the difference between SD and HD.
www.cowclops.net/resolutionchart1.png
You want your optimal viewing distance to be on the line for whichever format you watch the most of, which is about where you'd notice the quality difference between that and the next worst format. If you have a TV smaller than 42" or so or you're sitting very far away for whatever screen size you have, you won't be able to tell the difference.
And yes, I'm going too post this on every "Stupid people can't tell SD from HD" story until people stop asserting that HD isn't that much of an improvement over SD. I use a 720p projector on a 65" screen that I sit 10 feet away from and Transformers on HD-DVD looks CONSIDERABLY better than Transformers on DVD.
In a similar test (Score:5, Funny)
So what... (Score:4, Insightful)
They can't tell, but I see a world of difference, and that's all that matters.
I Agree with Compro01 (Score:3, Informative)
video quality is really not that important (Score:5, Interesting)
In my experience, people tend to care more about things other than the video resolution when watching TV. Like, say, the plot, or the character development.
Watching hokey, on the other hand, I can understand why people would want to see the puck better, but in the general case I think no one gives a *** about resolution.
If it's a good movie I'll happily watch it at 320, blurry, at 15 FPS, if that's all I can get.
Frankly, when it comes down to it, the sound quality matters more than the video.
If you can't hear what the actors are saying you may as well turn it off, but if you can basically get the idea of what's going on, video isn't that critical.
Maybe I just have low standards.
One important detail (Score:5, Interesting)
There is something that they aren't accounting for. People (especially less tech savvy people) not realizing that they aren't watching HD, they just assume if it's on a newer plasma/lcd, then it's HD.
For example, I have a relative who was watching football today on my cousin's plasma. He of course tuned to the channel he gets at home (CBS), the non-HD version. Simply because he had no idea that verizon offers HD versions of pretty much all basic cable just by going to channels above 500 in my area.
At some point, it occurred to me that the picture didn't quite look up to snuff, so I asked him what channel he was on (since often SD os broadcast on HD channels because the original signal was SD), he said 7. I said "a-ha! you should switch to the HD version of this channel!".
He was confused, but told me to go for it. He was *amazed* at the difference in clarity. He said claimed it looked like he was down on the field.
Not being able to tell the difference is very difference from not knowing there is a difference available.
I would wager that if you put the 2 screen side by side, one showing the signal in true HD and the other in SD. Anyone without vision problems can tell the difference.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Who cares? Do you want to go out creating more videophiles? Does this world lack enough audiophiles for you? Side by side, I can tell the difference, but most content on television is not actually improved by increased bitrates or resolutions. Sitcoms and dramas, in particular -- you don't need to see the flaws of the actors' and actress'
18%? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who gives a shit? 18% of the people probably still think the world is flat. I bet a lot of those people said that because they're resisting buying a new TV.. or, like my Mom, who bought a new SD TV 4 years ago, and really doesn't want to buy a new one yet.
Where's this story: 82% of the people think that HD television is better than SD television. If that's not news worth, why is this?
Bad math (Score:3, Funny)
72% can.
Misleading facts and poor mathematics.
What this tells me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't that people are stupid, but that the HD content we currently have isn't exactly HD. Even the snazziest Blu-Ray displays in places like the Sony Store or any big electronics retailer seem to have really nice-looking visuals, but they also seem to have a big problem not only with interlacing(?! Isn't this 1080p?!), but also with video compression artifacts. In many cases, when I look at the TV's on display, I can't usually tell that what I'm looking at is HD, unless the video's been specifically tailored to show off the resolution. TV broadcasts (the few that are HD around here), Blu-Ray movies (especially live action), doesn't matter. It all looks quite muddy, and I'm distracted often by the block and ring artifacting, just as I was when DVD was first released.
I don't have an HDTV or an HD player, myself, so I'm not intimately familiar with how current movies are being compressed on the disc, but... Don't they have any room to turn up the bitrate a little? I mean, sure, it's not reasonable to expect an uncompressed image (though I'd really like it), but seriously, the video compression quality sucks.
You can have as high a resolution as you want, but when artifacts are large enough to casually notice, you've defeated the purpose of that resolution; I would have rathered a cleaner lower-definition source than that.
Eh, I can tell but so what? (Score:5, Interesting)
When we still had the SD DVR and I had to stretch Stargate Atlantis (meaning the effective resolution was sub-SD) to fill the screen, I got tweaked more than a little. But other than that (which doesn't happen anymore with the non-4:3-aware HD DVR), I can honestly say that I don't much care. Yeah, I can pause Law & Order and count the strands of Elizabeth Rohm's hair or stop Atlantis and count the stubble in John Sheperd's beard - but so what?
I'm here to watch the criminals get caught or the Wraith be foiled again, not to stroke my e-penis to the thought of how awesome my screen's picture is. Unless the picture is suffering horrible abberations or the audio is like 64kbps mp3, those don't really impede the story.
In conclusion: It's absolutely astonishing how many details your brain can paint in or interpolate if you let it.
Worthless So-Called Science (Score:5, Informative)
How can anyone take a study seriously that supposedly examines visual perception by talking to people over the phone? They learned nothing except that some people answer questions over the phone a certain way. That study design leads to the error of forced responses, producing responses where none would have been forthcoming except for the question having been asked. Such answers have nothing to do with any perceptual ability, bias or preference.
Upscaling (Score:3)
I know I am way too late to enter this discussion, still I would like to mention that my Panasonic plasma tv does a beautiful upscaling. Frankly, when I was watching Casino Royale (BluRay) on the LCD TV of a friend of mine, I had a headache because the whole thing was too damn sharp, especially with fast movement. I just don't have that problem with upscaled DVDs.
And frankly, while a new release on DVD costs 22 Swiss Francs (about 18 US$) a BluRay is anywhere between 35 and 50 CHF (about 29 to 41 US$). I just don't see even ONE good reason to give the movie industry that kind of money.
Damned lies... (Score:3, Insightful)
Your Fanboy Uppitiness is Showing (Score:5, Insightful)
It's depressing that so many folks here are using this survey to blast people as morons. Depressing, but not terribly surprising.
Very, very, very few customers looking to buy a new TV are going to have a clue about things like FPS or pixels or whatever. There's no reaon why they should.
People will judge the quality of a TV's display by looking at it. It seems obvious that, given the variations in our eyesight, a lot of people aren't going to notice the difference between SD and HD, just as a lot of people can't notice the difference between sound reproduced on an audiophile's high-end dream and a $200 box.
It's not important and, frankly, most people don't care about HDTV. If the programming isn't worth watching, who cares about anything else?
Well (Score:4, Funny)
You have to wonder how this was done (Score:3, Interesting)
As stated, it implies that 18% of consumers can't distinguish SD from HD in a direct A/B comparison. I find this frankly unbelievable.
On the other hand, I would not be at all surprised if 18% of consumers, particularly those who don't normally watch HD, might be unable to recognize HD when either SD or HD is shown on an unfamiliar monitor without the opportunity to make a direct A/B comparison.
Another question is whether they were actually being asked to distinguish 480i SD from 720p or 1080i/p HD, or whether the "SD" was really 480p ED. On anything other than a very large-screen monitor, the distinction between ED and HD is fairly subtle. Actually, I expect the percentage of people unable to tell whether a picture is ED or HD would be considerably greater than 18%
Is it confusion about the signal or the TV? (Score:3, Interesting)
I run into a lot of non-tech people who have difficulty understanding the difference between an HD TV and an HD signal. Such people would probably answer the question they thought they were asked, by correctly identifying the TV as being high definition, without ever really understanding that an HD TV can display both HD and SD content.
Yes, the researchers probably explained the difference to the respondents during the course of the study, but many such people still don't understand the difference between HD & SD signals even after you explain it to them.
Alternate Headline: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Its "real easy" because most HDTVs make a total mess of SD signals, AND that SD signal often has noise in it. Get a good 480i signal (not a videogame though, that is much easier. Let say a movie) from a digital source, resized to 16:9 the way the Wii does it (since 480i/p isn't naturally widescreen), on a TV that doesn't trash low resolution signals (my cheap Toshiba handles em fine. My step-dad's couple of years old 60 inch panasonic is great too. I've seen some totally overpriced Sony TVs that still trash
It's not just HD vs SD (Score:5, Insightful)
Is HD really that much better than SD? Is a dual core really that much better than a single core? Is 100Mbits/sec really better than 20Mbits/s?Is a $5000 hifi really better than a $200 one?
Once people have something that is "good enough", they don't value an improvement. This is vexing for companies trying to psh consumers to the next level.
Re:so what? I'm surprised it's that low. (Score:4, Funny)
Coder artifact vs motion blur (Score:4, Insightful)
People are catching on to the "sample-and-hold" effect that even the fastest response-time LCDs produce loads of motion blur on account that they hold the image rather than scan-strobe it as a traditional video monitor. Google "LCD motion blur sample and hold" to see what people say on this.