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with all tv stations required by law to go digital
what is the future of my picture quality. (roof antenna)i do not have cable or anything other than free
television reception. i do not believe in paying for cable
just to watch more commercials, like regular tv.
if it was free of commercial interruptions.
i would have it. it is not.i own a laser disc player and hifi s-vcr
and my tv only has coax and s-video jack (standard stuff)
and an ac-3 ready surround receiver with pro logic in it.i am not up on the latest big word lingo that describes
what tv stations plan to use in the future.
so any help will be appreciated.thank you.
Follow Ups:
check the spec. sheet on your TV set. see how many horizontal lines it is capable of. since it has an S-video input it's probably capable of the ~500 lines of digital tvas i said below, the networks aren't going to be doing much High Definition--it's just too damned expensive. besides, they can broadcast 5 or 6 4:3 format digital stations on the same bandwidth used by just one HD signal, which means they can sell us more crap by sticking with low-res. digital. besides, all the tv show re-runs are in 4:3 format...that's where the real money is. I bet it will be 10 or twenty years before somebody does a sit com in HD.
here's article on the subject:
http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s%3D1500%26a%3D10276,00.asp
the broadcasters have already "missed" several deadlines that were required in the "deal" our government gave them. it amounts to a handout worth trillions of dollars.
in a democracy, you get the kind of government you deserve.
http://www.antennaweb.org
in the top left corner click on "choosing an antenna" then enter your address.you are going to need a "set-top box", a digital receiver/tuner/decoder that inputs the coax feed from your UHF antenna and outputs RF, composite video, S-video, component, VHS 15pin Dsub, and maybe RGB. The audio out will be L + R stereo on RCA and either a coax digital or optical digital or both. You can use the RF F-connector to downconvert to the NTSC standard and receive a perfect analog video and audio signal too--as if you had a perfect analog cable TV feed, which is an oxymoron. If you get a digital airwave signal it will be perfect, so converting it back to analog is cool too. Confused? Me too.
All the new TVs will have something to decode the airwave digital broadcasts, and probably a tuner for cable and Directv satellite. I don't know if you can get just an off-the-air digital receiver/decoder. Let us know if you find one.
the digital broadcasts are in Dolby Digital audio, but I don't like that decoding algorythm so I use one of the "movie" or "music" or even mono options on my audio preamp. Pro Logic doesn't seem to work at all--I get no dialog , at least on my rig, but maybe that's my problem.
as for video, the networks are sending something around 500 lines of resolution in 4:3 format most of the time. If there's something very special, like Jay Lenno (please) or the Olympics they will send it in High Definition, a sub-catagory of digital tv that has it's own standards.
High Definition means 16:9 format and at least 720 progressive lines of resolution or 1080 interlaced lines of resolution (540 of every other line is shown, followed by the 540 "missing" lines). {That's the reason that a 42" plasma TV is not, by definition, High Definition. the current generation of 42" plasmas can only do 480 horizontal lines of 854 pixells ( 854x480 ), which is not enough, but close.}
When looking at digital TVs, monitors, projectors you can get a mish-mash of confusing jargon. It's not High Definition if it ain't 16:9 and capable of AT LEAST 720 lines of horizontal.
The High Definition signal broadcast mostly by your local PBS stations is superb. That alone is enough to make most normal people go bonkers and buy into the technology. The picture is so good you won't care what you are watching. I'm not kidding. No, really, I'm not kidding.
anyway plain old digital is pretty darned good, and it's free. now just to make things more confusing, just because you receive a digital broadcast doesn't mean you get a good picture. It depends on the source. if you take a show like "Star Treck the Next Generation" which was recorded on video tape and broadcast on the analog NTSC standard, your digital conversion ain't gonna look nearly as good as the old 1965 "Star Trek" shows that were filmed. As a result, the only things that will look really good on a "digital ready" tvs or monitors are the old TV shows that were filmed. Video tape sucks.
anyway I got you started. check out this website to see if you are in range, and then you'll have to find a decoder box. RCA and Sony make them, and Pioneer and Panasonic used to but for some reason took them off the market--I think because they were burning down people's houses. The things have fans because they get so freakin' hot. There's alot of calculations going on inside there...
Petew, I'm glad I read this post. I've always felt TNG looked terrible compared to the original Star Trek series. However, I thought it was due to DirecTv jamming each transponder with too many (ie: compressed) signals. Otherwise, why else would some stations look good (not great, but simply good) compared to others. I never considered that it was due to tape vs. film. Interesting, does this mean I can't curse out DireTv anymore ? Oh well, time to find a new scapegoat.
before I went plasma i had a regular, non-digital 27" TV hooked up to my satellite dish. the satellite signal is so much better than the cable.now for a long time everybody recognized that any "live" broadcast, particularly the local evening news shows (use these shows to adjust your black and white levels (picture/contrast) and color saturation and hue if you don't have pro calibration gear) or C-span (i love C-span), had a much better picture than regular network programing. what this shows is that the NTSC standard TV signal is pretty darn good, and it also shows that almost nobody is broadcasting it--everybody is selling us something less, perhaps 240 lines, maybe even 200...or even less.
when you blow these old "broadcast quality" pro video tapes up to the size of these 40 or 50 inch screens you see a whole lot of crap--you see all the noise on the origional video tape and all the noise the signal has picked-up along the way.
but a show that was filmed and sent digitally in the NTSC standard looks better than ever. Check out the Three Stooges.
You can tell right away what is live, what is film, and what is video tape.
but wait till you see off-the-air high definition on an HD capable set (that has been professionally calibrated, because they don't come from the factory properly set-up).
oh, more bad news...the high definition cameras are very expensive, and each one is probably calibrated a bit differently than every other one...so every HD broadcast will be a little bit "off"
so it's still not as good as film...
we've just added another layer of complexity by which we can screw things up beyond any understanding.
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