HDTV – Page 5 – Devices View

HDTV and Plastic Surgery

June 14, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I maintain that the worst thing to hit to our "national pastime" (officially still baseball) is not steroid abuse, but HDTV. In high resolution closeups, players spitting chewing tobacco and "adjusting themselves" is far more offensive than Super Bowl halftime shows or Desperate Housewives previews. In a high def world, certain things have to change: performance enhancing drugs are fine – until they kill the athletes, they make their muscles look nice and ripped. But chaw, and polyester pants that gather in the crotch? Those have to go.

It’s not that HDTV has so much resolution that you can see every pock mark and wrinkle on someone’s face; it’s that the camera zooms in much closer than you’d ever get in real life. OnHD.com has long maintained a snarky list of which celebs look better or worse in HD, and Hollywood makeup artists have been altering their technique to airbrush on makeup rather than simply apply it in swatches.

The New York Times Magazine finally picked up on the story, with a twist (free registration required) – younger celebs are now opting for plastic surgery. Conversely, for older celebs, surgery is counterproductive, because its so obvious. The Times also points out something most others miss – it’s not just the higher resolution that points out very human flaws, but also that HDTV supports a richer color palette. However, the article makes it sound like there was some sort of ban on specific color shades, rather than a simple technical limitation. You can wear subtle red lipstick on standard NTSC TV, it just won’t appear quite the same shade.

Let’s not forget the most important thing we’ve learned about HDTV: some celebs actually look better in HD. Penelope Cruz shows up as #10 on OnHD’s list (she was on Leno in HD recently, and I have to concur). It’s not just the women, either: George Clooney is #7, and Jay Leno himself gets an honorable mention – I’m sure Jay would have something to say about that.

-avi

Yes, it was a live demo… also a misleading one

June 12, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Back in February I wrote about Microsoft’s Lightspeed IPTV demo at CES and linked to BusinessWeek’s skeptical coverage. Well, the magazine was just biding its time and this week they completely skewer the initiative (subscription required), highlighting the endless delays in commercializing it. It seems the impressive demo I saw at CES was real. The problem is that the technology doesn’t work for millions of users at once, which is kind of important for the operators who want to broadly deploy it. Live and learn.

Still, TV over IP seems somewhat inevitable. Japan and Korea have DSL service 10x faster than what U.S. operators provide and at lower prices. I’d think that deploying dramatically faster DSL would both solve many of the technical problems with IPTV and at the same time provide the service justification for consumers to upgrade to broadband (or even switch from cable modems).

-avi

Displays / HDTV

Internet Persistence and Current TV Trends

March 30, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Home Theater View grew out of business weblogs at JupiterResearch and AskAvi columns written over several years at a personal site, http://www.greengart.com. Thanks to the persistence of the Internet — web pages never really die as long as they’re in Google’s index — one of those old AskAvi columns is now generating a lot of feedback. It seems someone queried Google to find advice choosing a TV, found Column 10, and posted it to a newsgroup. They did this without ever looking at the column’s date (which is on the page, though perhaps not as prominent as it could be).

Column 10 was provocatively titled, "Why HDTV Doesn’t Matter," and it covered whether to buy a 4:3 (square) TV or a 16:9 (widescreen, rectangular) shaped TV. At the time, there was precious little HDTV content being broadcast and even fewer ways to get that content using cable or satellite. There were also several 4:3 TVs on the market with a true 16:9 squeeze mode – in other words, you could buy a square TV without giving up the higher resolution of widescreen programming (though you’d have black bars on top and bottom of your image).

The advice was good for its time: it was written in 2001, before the advent of relatively affordable DLP-based sets and Dell HDTV plasmas. (And I noted that the price of HDTVs would come down in time for something to watch on them). But to correct any misconceptions, this is not the advice I would give today.

First of all, there’s a lot more widescreen programming available now, even for those watching standard definition ("regular" TV, as opposed to HDTV). Even video games are being created for widescreen playback. Second, 4:3 sets with 16:9 squeeze mode have largely disappeared from the marketplace, having been replaced by less expensive widescreen HDTV-ready models. No, today the issue isn’t whether to go widescreen or not, but which widescreen technology to go with: traditional CRT? New, narrow depth CRT? CRT rear projection? Plasma flat panel? LCD flat panel? LCD rear projection? DLP rear projection? LCOS rear projection? Wait for SED flat panel?

Short answer: budget and screen size dictate the technology. Past Home Theater View columns have covered LCD vs. plasma, the introduction of SED, DLP’s suitability for gaming, DLP vs. LCOS, and the announcement of narrow depth CRT.

-avi

DVD / HDTV

Product Review: LG LST3510A HDTV tuner/DVD player

March 11, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 4 Comments.

New connectivity options often drive product design, and DVI/HDMI is no exception. DVI and HDMI are interfaces that allow you to keep the signal in the digital domain throughout their journey, making hookup simpler, and providing a noticeably sharper picture when viewing digital content (such as DVD or HDTV) on digital displays (like plasma, LCD, DLP, or LCOS), as the signal is never converted back and forth to analog at all.

I’ve already written about how computer-like interfaces open up the A/V cable market to new entrants, but every product in the A/V chain may need to change as well. There are already DVD players with DVI outputs from Samsung, V, and others – some at prices barely above non-DVI equipped models. Most current HDTV tuners and set top boxes have DVI or HDMI outputs. TVs and front projectors have embraced the interface, but only partially – most offer just a single DVI or HDMI input. So how do you hook up two things to one interface?

While specialized switching gear exists, it’s not usually cost effective, so A/V switching is a classic task for a receiver (along with audio processing and amplification). For the moment, the only receiver or processor that I know of that switches DVI for you is Sony’s ES STR-DA9000ES flagship… a $3,000 behemoth. Outlaw Audio has announced a more affordable receiver due out… eventually (after botching the 950’s product launch they’ve gotten a lot more conservative with their release date announcements).

LG has an interesting solution – combine the two most likely sources into a single component. The LST3510A combines an upconverting DVD player with an ATSC (over the air) HDTV tuner, and a single DVI output for both sources. It works extremely well… when it works. The manual is terrible, offering little actual information about either the DVD functionality or HDTV tuning. The on screen user interface is excellent – but it doesn’t control output format (a variety of choices including 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i). For that, you need to use two switches on the front, which toggle back and forth between selection and change. While relatively simple, I found this maddening and have never successfully changed settings on the first or second try. It also precludes easily programming different resolutions for different displays or source material into a universal remote control. It’s own remote control is pretty good – no backlighting, but buttons are differentiated by size and shape, and overall layout is reasonably intelligent.

HDTV tuner performance is exceptional, which was not surprising given Zenith’s long history with the standard (LG owns what’s left of Zenith, including their HD patent portfolio). The LG LST3510A locked in on some unamplified signals, indoors, in my basement, using a simple UHF loop antenna, when the signal meter read almost zero, and with a lot of multipath distortion (signals bouncing around off of obstacles – my house is not in an ideal HDTV location). This equals or bests any other HD tuner I’ve seen.

The channel guide did not reliably work, but that may be dependant on the broadcasters, so I’m not sure whether to fault LG here. The tuner is ATSC-only. No NTSC (regular TV), no analog or digital cable, no satellite. So even if the guide were to work, you’d be limited to seeing HDTV programming. There’s also no digital output such as IEEE1394 (Firewire) suitable for copying the HDTV signal to DVHS tape or to a hard drive like a ReplayTV or TiVo unit. Sure, over the air HDTV is incredibly detailed, but being forced to watch commercial television on the network’s schedule with no control over commercials is cruel.

DVD upsampling performance is also exceptional. I noticed no artifacts, excellent 3-2 pulldown, and there was noticeably more detail in upsampled 720p images over DVI than in 480i playback over component video from my "reference" Panasonic and Sony DVD players. Sure, those are budget decks, but then the LG isn’t all that expensive either once you consider the cost of standalone HDTV tuners. The point is, if you go with an all digital signal path, you want there to be a difference, and in my experience, that difference is clearly noticeable. Not earth shattering, mind you, but clearly noticeable nonetheless.

This high performance convergence does come at the cost of audiophile friendliness – neither high resolution multi-channel music format is supported. I suppose truly serious audiophiles may simply add a dedicated DVD-Audio and/or SACD player to the rack – analog connections should be fine for the limited video content on those discs. Everyone else will continue studiously ignoring both formats.

Overcoming Initial Flakiness

As great as I found the HDTV and DVD performance to be, the unit as a whole didn’t always work at first, and I couldn’t begin to tell you why, as I haven’t been able to replicate the problems. Most of the time, the unit started right up, the TV locked onto the signal, and everyone was happy. However, for the first two months I had the unit, once in a while it would start up in whatever mode you left it in (tuner or DVD), but if you subsequently switched modes, the TV wouldn’t pick up the signal. Sometimes the audio signal sent to the receiver was out, too. And sometimes, the unit started up and neither audio or video were working.

Any number of things seem to reset the machine – or not. Turning the unit on/off, cycling through display output resolutions, switching modes, removing/inserting a DVD. I have heard numerous problems with DVI input/output incompatibilities, and HDCP copy protection on top of them, so my experience is likely not unique. While the video sync could be a problem interacting with my TV (lately, a 50" JVC D-ILA), the occasional audio sync problems suggest problems with the unit itself. Perhaps it was just getting used to its new environment – the gremlins seem to have completely disappeared.

Another problem I have with the unit is not it’s own fault, but can be blamed on the dual-use nature: Logitech’s Harmony remotes, which magically program themselves over the Internet, choke on the LST3510A. The big problem is determining whether the LG should be considered a DVD player or an HDTV tuner. It’s both, but the Logitech software treats the unit differently depending on how you classify it. Logitech tech support assures me that they’re working on the problem, and when I updated the remote to account for a new receiver several new commands for the LG showed up as well. Progress! In the meantime, I could simply program the Harmony remote manually, but if I’m going to do that, I could just use my Philips Pronto – if I had time to program that…

Conclusion

Until reasonably priced receivers with DVI and HDMI switching are common (and we’ve all been compelled to upgrade our existing gear), it makes a tremendous amount of sense to add an upsampling DVD player to an HDTV tuner in a single box with DVI or HDMI outputs. In addition to its sensibility, LG’s LST3510A is a bargain at only $399 – some less capable HDTV tuners cost more, making the DVD playback essentially free. However, there were clearly some glitches in my setup where the TV, receiver, and LG unit were not communicating properly with each other at first. I’m keeping my unit, but as much as the raw performance and value push me to recommend this product, I cannot do so unconditionally. Buy one, but make sure the retailer will take it back if your TV won’t play nice with it.

-avi

HDTV / PC Convergence

I Want My IP TV

February 1, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

The current issue of BusinessWeek has a nice overview of Microsoft’s efforts in IP TV (sending television feeds to a set top box over a broadband connection). It’s a bit skeptical, and focuses on how Microsoft has bent over backwards to address the needs of partners. For example, Microsoft’s brand does not appear on the set top box, and the boxes don’t even need to run a Microsoft operating system.

I saw a demo of the system at CES, and BusinessWeek leaves out an important element of the story: it’s really, really cool. I suppose cable operators adopting this system could simply force their customers to upgrade, but new entrants such as phone companies and alternative broadband providers will need to provide consumers with a reason to move; simple pricing bundles will only go so far.

Microsoft was running a live demo off to the side of their main consumer booth – I literally stumbled into it on the way to a different meeting. What most impressed me about the system was not the alternative angles, more interactive VOD, or even the concept of moving the DVR from your living room back to the service provider. What impressed me about the demo was that it didn’t feel like much of a demo at all: image quality was spectacular, and reactions to user input was instantaneous – far faster than changing channels on a satellite STB or HDTV tuner. The main window contained what appeared to be full HDTV, with alternative feeds around it. The user interface was refined, all onscreen graphics were in high resolution, and the EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) appeared simple enough for anyone to use. Feeds switched from one to the other with smooth transitions.

OK, one feature did stand out: easy to use PIP (Picture in Picture) without need for multiple tuners. Nobody actually uses PIP in the real world because setting it up is too complicated. But with "Microsoft TV IPTV Edition" (seriously, who comes up with these horrible names?) you can use PIP to keep an eye on multiple sports games in progress at once. If Microsoft solves the naming problem, they’ve got a real winner here.

-avi

Displays / HDTV / Industry / PC Convergence

CES 2005: Trends

January 12, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I spent most of my time at CES focused on mobile devices, but did note a few overriding trends:

The story of the show was definitely flat panels, which were everywhere. LG showed off a particularly interesting integrated plasma/HDTV tuner/DVR, and Samsung showed off a plasma so big you couldn’t get it down the stairs and into my basement even if you took out a second mortgage to pay for it. On the opposite end of the pricing spectrum, there were countless Asian importers with booths at the show displaying large LCD and plasmas at much lower prices.
The other big deal at the show was that the focus of the computer industry is solidly on the living room – Microsoft, Intel, and HP all had huge booths dedicated to moving audio and video around the home. The problem with Media Centers for me has always been cost and form factor. HP’s new HD Media Center looks especially sweet because once you’re talking about HDTV the price jumps dramatically (the only standalone HD-DVR on the market costs $1,000), and the new horizontal cases look like they belong in your A/V rack, not your desk.
Conversely, there were barely any new portable media players introduced other than the Olympus m:robe (a strong iPod mini competitor which I have in for review, and which looks gorgeous). I take this as an indication that other than the video players (which have problems getting content unless you have a Media Center PC), Apple has this market completely locked up. Now that the iPod shuffle appears to be the Next Big Thing, watch for copycat products (not that copycats will succeed – when pricing is down to $99 to start with, how do you compete with cachet?).
In projectors, CEDIA was the land of $2,500 – $3,000 720p LCD boxes with automatic iris adjustment and great contrast from Panasonic and Sony. CES was the TI DLP team’s chance to strike back: BenQ showed me a great 720p DLP HD2+ projector for around $3,000 (the 7700). Several products debuted with TI’s new DarkChip such as BenQ’s 8720; pricing on those is above $10,000, but the HD2+ products were nearly as good. This looks like it will work out so that custom installers will recommend the higher end products while enthusiasts buying/installing on their own will gravitate towards the $3,000 products. …but we’re not done. A slew of sub-$2,000 DLP projectors with 480p or 576p resolution were also introduced. I didn’t see any of them at the show, but Evan Powell over at ProjectorCentral has a good recap.

My final trend is a question: could CES be getting too big to be relevant? It’s always been hard to get around the show, and the weather didn’t help (when it snows in Vegas it’s fair to say hell has frozen over). Next year CES kicks the Adult Video show out of the Sands and takes over that venue, too. But at the same time, CEDIA has been getting a lot of the big home theater announcements, the wireless device vendors are saving their news for CTIA, and the mobile media player market is all focused on MacWorld.

-avi

HDTV

Purpose-built HDTV antenna slightly better

December 6, 2004 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

In a completely unscientific test, Gemini/Zenith’s high tech HDTV antenna slightly beat out Jensen’s adjustable loop antenna in my basement. With proper windowsill placement, both can pick up seven over the air HDTV channels, and neither can pick up NBC no matter what I do. Neither of them get perfect reception: despite what you’ve heard about the "cliff effect" (the signal is either there or not there, as if dropping off a cliff), HDTV is not an all or nothing affair in my house. Perhaps it’s the grade of my street, the angle to the Empire State Building, or the fact that it’s in a basement, but both antennas suffer from audio dropouts and blocky digital artifacts. Both antennas perform better in clear weather.

The edge goes to the Zenith for three reasons:

While actual tuning performance is roughly the same, the signal stregnth meter generally reads higher on the Zenith than the Jensen. It would be nice if that translated to more consistently artifact-free reception, but it doesn’t.
It’s easier to adjust the Zenith. The Jensen tilts and rotates and has a variable gain control – a lot of adjustments, but it’s impossible to know whether they’re helping or hurting the signal and how they interrelate, so the extra features just add complexity. The Zenith can be oriented horizontally or vertically – that’s it.
The Zenith looks cool. Let’s face it, when you’ve got a nice big fancy silverish slim HDTV, loops and rabbit ears are visually out of place.

-avi