HD

[ehowton]

We're finally High-Definition, and I'm in love. I mean, its amazing. We got DirectTV's HD DVR package and its everything I hoped it would be. The DirecTV app on my Touch is so convenient it's silly - programming your shows without a remote? I love it!

Went outside to take a picture of the dish for this post, and caught this instead -

Comments

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

So I've heard! However, I only bought a 720p television at the time (assuming it would be awhile until I got Full HD and saving several hundred dollars in the interim) so will be just as excited when its time to put this one into the living room when I'm ready to purchase 1080p. BTW - few of the PPV channels offer "Full HD 1080p" and I hear more will be going that way. Still, with that amount of downstream data there's got to be some sort of compression somewhere...

I've been recording old shows I own on DVD in HD just watch them in High Def!

[swashbuckler332.livejournal.com]

You are correct. All broadcast HD signals, whether 720p/1080i or 1080p are subject to both visual and aural compression in order to keep the signal economical, so the superiority (quality-wise) of the Blu-ray format over broadcast will not be changing anytime soon. I was actually shocked when I first saw some of what passes for "high definition" out there, some of which looked worse than an SD DVD what with all of the picture noise and compression artifacts. And, of course, the 384 kb/s Dolby Digital sound that is the standard isn't even up to the usual 448 kb/s bit rate of DVDs, much less the uncompressed or losslessly compressed audio on a Blu-ray, which at long last restores the sonic bandwidth for that full, rich sound that laserdiscs had but DVD could never quite muster.

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me - my 2.1 is no longer adequate. I missed parts of Spock's swirling surround-sound monologue. Time to upgrade audio as well.

[swashbuckler332.livejournal.com]

2.1!?! It's almost 2010, man! You need to pony up and get out of the 80s!!!