[opendtv] Re: BBC Demonstrates HDTV Broadcasts over SD Channels
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 07:48:47 -0400
At 9:22 AM -0400 6/21/05, John Golitsis wrote:
>I guess you also don't want to listen to music in anything more then
>AM radio quality, or your phone conversations to sound any better
>then through tin cans and string, or that you don't care if you need
>corrective lenses because everything looks fine to you as it is, or
>why bother seeing a live play or concert when you can watch it on TV.
>
>Ya still don't get it!
Perhaps you don't get it.
I don't watch local news. And I don't watch the Network evening
newscasts either. There is almost nothing in these programs worth the
effort to watch. Offering them in HD is not going to change that.
To be honest, I do keep up with the news via those five minute radio
newscasts, and I do follow major stories on the Internet, Fox News
Channel, and I occasionally read our local newspaper.
The reality is that very little that has anything to do with news
today is visual, unless you want to talk about the overpaid anchors,
the reporters who stand in front of the cameras because there is
nothing visual to show in the B-roll, and all of the graphics that
clutter the screen.
Once in a great while a story comes along that IS visual. I suppose
the planes hitting the World Trade Center and the resulting collapse
would have been more detailed in HD. I doubt seriously that those
images in HD would have had more impact.
The only thing I have heard thus far per my request about HD news
that makes sense is that the larger 16:9 screen format could be
useful for news presentations. But there are several issue related to
this:
1. If you use the full 16:9 aperture, what happens to those watching
on smaller 4:3 displays?
2. If you use the full resolution of HD to present more detailed
graphics and/or additional info (crawls, info boxes etc), who will be
able to read this stuff on a standard definition set?
The one possible benefit of shooting news is HD may be the ability to
have the sense of being there. I have not seen any of the programs,
but HDNet has been doing some news programs from Iraq and other
venues. Remember, we all watched much less than NTSC quality video
coming out of Iraq from the embedded reporters during the invasion.
And some of the most newsworthy video seems to be shot by amateurs
with cheap camcorders.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the anchors are fearing
HD and talking to their plastic surgeons...
As for the desire for higher quality...
I have an iPOD and some good Bose speakers that I take out to job
sites so I can listen to high quality music without commercials.
I don't listen to music on AM. Even the talk station I listen to is on FM.
The quality of telephone lines is more than adequate for the purpose,
however, the quality of cell phone service often leaves much to be
desired; this has more to do with RF levels than the bandwidth of the
service...
I can't resist the following comparison: HD images are useless when
the RF system carrying them is inadequate to provide a reliable
signal.
HD has its proper applications, and over time the general level of
video quality improves across the board. But the notion that EVERY
application benefits from HD is absurd.
Regards
Craig
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