HD1080i

Chrome Webm and h.264

2011-01-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

YOUTUBE WEBM HTML5 - SPEED CONTROL

Notice that the Video below on YOUTUBE is all HTML5 and uses some cool features of that player and WEBM… Plus some so cool new stuff such as : PLAYBACK SPEED 2x to 1/4 speed, nice quality and small file size.

Play this one at 1/2 speed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TshFWSsrn8 at 2:48 it really blows your mind how amazing the driving is.

CLICK ME using CHROME 9

Right-click that YouTube video – its not flash, its About HTML5. or Save Video As. No Flash 10 notice.

I cant edit with blogspot's editor anymore. its junk.

Google TV - Android meets the big screen

2010-12-26T16:38:00.000-08:00

GOOGLE TV IS AMAZING

Android for Google TV is rather amazing, its ability to hook a lot of sources quickly is nothing short of impressive. There was no equivalent to benchmark such devices

We got the Sony 46" Google TV and the Logitech Revue, they are in fact the first of their kind as a consumer product.

In too many ways its not possible to even assess it without a couple months of living with it.
All other systems that claim "Internet" are really not open to the whole web, but have the same behavior as Apple products with closed VPN type access to apps that must be "signed and credentialed" by the manufacturer.

Google TV is therefore the First OPEN yet dedicated-to-TV embedded system of its kind. Basically it took guts to launch this platform and it only gets better from here.

Stats-wize there is a rather large difference between the Logitech Revue and the Sony 46" TV... The Sony has 3.7 gigs of ram available to it, the Revue has barely 700 megs.

DESIGN FOR TV
http://code.google.com/tv/web/docs/design_for_tv.html
One of the problems inherent in any open system that can go anywhere into the web... there will be problems with content and page code, and of course, Flash. The iPad is probably the worst at this... where Steve Jobs says "It Just Works" but users say "It just works Badly" and Apple basically levys a demand to the world that all websites should be changed to HTML5 just to deserve the attention of an iPad owner. Time has shown that arrogance to fail the smell test totally. In some ways the Google TV situation falls into this paradigm, where you can go anywhere but "Designed for Google TV" is a desired outcome as presented by Google.

We did a lot of testing and page creation, hybrid stuff with both std HTML, Javacript HTML5 for CSS and canvas tricks and combinations of both. We will roll out some demos in 2011.

This below is at http://s4.madmenmag.com for Google TV - note that its full screen flash and runs quite well in Android. This was a real project for AMCTV found at
http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/season-4-fashion-gallery/

A hybrid Google TV site is here : http://the-charlie-hotel.com Charlie Chaplin's bungalow compound in Hollywood, with flash , html and wordpress. Boht Sites use Level 3 CDN and Google Analytics, powered by engines suited to google TV use-case. ( Arrow Keys on remote will turn pages.. etc ) - we found Flash to run rather well when done properly.

Android or Google TV software is quite good and they have a lot to be proud of in how well they attended to interface handling with 3rd party hardware makers. We think the problems lie soley with the CPU SOC chosen.

We ran cold on one issue only .. the Intel Atom Processor is just not powerful enough and they knew it going in. For 1920 x 1080 screens you must deliver performance in full screen bitmap movements and that will stress the SOC solution the Atom has. The Intel Atom line is basically inexpensive SOC that runs in about 10 watts... good for battery powered low performance netbook-like systems, but not appropriate for always-on Plugged in HDTV loads where battery consumption is not an issue.

We suggest Reading this FAQ before seeing our upcoming posts
http://code.google.com/tv/web/faq.html

Note:
We have had a few posts here from contributors, they have been removed, and no longer will this blog be supported by any other than the one author owner of this site. For the record, we do not concur with Walt Mossberg's assessment that Google TV is not ready for Prime-Time and a geek-only system. The Software is quite good and will very likely get much better... but some of the baked-in hardware issues will need adressing in future iterations of the system as a whole.

INTERNET HDTV

2010-09-03T07:47:00.000-07:00

Apple Just announced the new Streaming Apple TV, commencing the battle for big screen eyeball time. Disclaimer: ( we have the Samsung Internet TV, it rules our Lab at the moment ) Apple offers nothing that we dont already have.

We found this article and CTN said ok to copy - here is that in part from
http://ctndigital.com/ctnd/hdtv/

The next target for consumer attention is:
The Internet Connected HDTV

We already know how to navigate and get this to work, this is not a revolution, it is an unstoppable evolution that will happen in a competitive battle for your living-room entertainment investment. It is a new reason to get the most out of your biggest screen and every mega-corp on the planet wants you to desire their entertainment engagement source.

This could change everything, in a home venue

on the largest screen available

where hours are spent every day

by millions of people

who are internet connected already.

The key here is Already Connected
– the benefit is HDTV CONNECTED – RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX

Closeup of a Samsung TV Remote for Internet Connected TV

with Widgets and APPS, wired and wireless.

The top right button basically says it all… what we have done is get connected, scale to fill the screen, network to global CDN delivery in the millions, and craft a very low-friction navigation outcome that maximizes sticky-time for the best user experience.

A NEW MARKET, DISRUPTIVE OF CLASSIC TREATMENTS and BEHAVIORS.

IT BEGINS WITH CONVERGENCE OF HDTV AND WEB.

There is actually a long list of benefit to user-engagement outcomes that span a variety of affinity behaviors. The first thing to do right, is make the experience a destination-quality outcome that can become sought-after. The initial enablement for HDTV networking is through the existing mechanisms of initial access.

WIDGETS AND APPS
At this time all internet connected HDTV widgets are limited, typically Netflix Vudu and weather, and boring, do not offer any "window shopping" options, in the perfect place for a LOOKBOOK to offer high resolution on-demand detail, Video, and interactive elements.
There is also a new and fresh market for backstory and celebrity content that showcases and promotes major film and TV events. This type of engagement is built to be extended, video enabled and interactive and include fullscreen advertiser placements. Showcase books are something we already do and the HDTV is where it belongs, these and Magalog lookbooks are likely to be the first of what you will see.

DO EVERYTHING RIGHT - BE UNIQUE
Change the Paradigm to magazine pages that deliver video on page turn, no press to play required. ( during use, Pause / Play is allowed ) such that the user engagement is initiated from the first moments of exposure, The screen is in motion, reading for drill-down can be by Column Glide of the up-down arrow keys using font sizes similar to that of a channel guide listing and easily read – leading to drill-down value when it suits the need. Promotion and advertiser benefits are designed into the process of engagement.

This offers a solution for those promotional needs that do not feel right in the hyped QVC false urgency of the moment, or infomercials that have very low credibility, and most importantly, puts the viewing audience in control of content selection. Since the default action is to "turn the page", the user only has to click one button to choose to move forward, keeping the experience as simple as is possible.

EARN AND KEEP YOUR AUDIENCE
With a Remote Control as the interactive tool, the engagement paradigm has fundamentally changed. The viewer may leave the page and turn forward while they stay in your content and do not leave your "channel"… In the BOOK context -- The next page is an arrow click, and CTN does what it takes to deserve more dwell-time and attention capture with each LOOKBOOK page. http://madmenmag.com

KNOW WHO THEY ARE
Tracking via internet tools already used, all are available, and with partnering, subscriber information is matched with time-spent-on-page data to reveal measurable ROI, along with the existing social network tools for posting interest snippets to FACEBOOK and TWITTER, ( already inherent in CTN PageBlend )

Nearly all current bluray players now offer internet connectivity, removing the barrier to entry caused by buyer resistance to HDTV upgrades, and these run from $89 to $199. This device solution has the benefit of optional memory and firmware upgrade enhancement, support unique device subscriber services. Game consoles include these same features.

CONNECTED BUYERS in a Lean-Back context
The "Hit-or-Miss" nature of TV screen time gave rise to saturation advertising … that is now being replaced by On-Demand access offering far better Ad Spend cost performance, in a natural fit.The HD FULL SCREEN treatment furnishes the best of all worlds, available when the user seeks it and actually desires the content and in that context yields a far greater impact Q than any other option available.

This Includes Full Extras DVD streaming as a page turning book with behind the scenes and character backstory, a catalog of desired items, a tour of a destination location, any product that HD detail benefits from such as jewelry items to motorcars to Publications and catalogs.
Downloadable fullscreen books that enhance the entertainment experience and can be further monetized by ad insertions – purchased for HDTV using internet connected solutions should be available soon.

FALL and Holiday Season 2010
Every HDTV maker is refreshing their lines with Internet TV. By November Net Connected TV will be Standard. In these bluetooth remotes, everything we need is more than already there. Visio launched The Internet TV and APP store in January 2010. Right now all Internet TV Makers are actively seeking engaging content for the VPN ( virtual private network ) of the Internet connection they offer. In some cases HDTV makers are actively funding developers to gain content-driven traction to draw audience to the APP stores that are all Brand-Centric "Walled Garden" implementations at this time.

Something for everyone .. with QWERTY KEYS – such remotes offer search and form filling options, SHOP and buy processes. For the bookshelf below the Bookends act as slider left right for category selection horizontal scrolling

Select and hit "OK" is the DVD navigation paradigm and pretty much eliminates the learning curve problem of how to navigate. Page-turn HD magazines with video and shopping links will be one of the next good reasons to want all this.

CTN BOOKSHELF

click to view

BLUETOOTH REMOTE CONTROLLERS are devices you may already own. These systems allow for any bluetooth touchscreen to download an APP that acts as a remote. iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone, Any Android Phone, Logitech, and will easily reach out to Panasonic VIERA, Sony BRAVIA, VISIO, SAMSUNG and more. DLNA – Anynet support network-aware connectivity to home networks at the router and wireless access point is growing also.

For HDTV there is a void of quality designed-for-HD content – provisioning a fresh visual source to find there is a wide open opportunity for entry and emergence of fresh new paradigms, already launch enabled and promotable in widgets and apps that at this time are rather lame and do not meet expectations. That is about to change. Compelling, HDTV exclusive APP delivered wide-angle of reach and content will rule this space as… the next attention-getting content battleground for media will happen in the living-room… you already own the internet connection… control it with a click and prefer that experience to the non-interactive behaviors of cable tv.

EVERY HDTV AND INTERNET TV SOLUTION HAS ITS OWN PORTAL
All these islands of access to the web are special cases, subscriber managed in some way and roped off from the real web. Most On-screen App Stores are category-based, Pandora Twitter Facebook and Netflix, with some gallery and YouTube in the mix. None of it has a Home Theater look and feel, or any unique outcomes to look forward to. Whomever creates the most desired HDTV NET PORTAL wins, and currently that is a wasteland of whatever the HDTV makers can get, which isnt much… yet. Anything substantive will stand out in such a situation as we have now.

ENABLEMENT MATTERS – THE OPPORTUNITY IS NOW.
The solution has to be easy and immediate, very visually attractive, impose no huge "Search Load" to find. The problems facing HDTV makers is they have very little in the way of compelling content reasons to go there and use that INTERNET BUTTON for it.

RISE ABOVE THE MUNDANE
It is important to provide multiple compelling reasons to visit interactive content on a home HDTV that must compete with laptop and desktop user experiences. Youtube is NOT a destination. Vudu Hulu and Netflix are about the best of all you can get right now. We Need more.

BEING ON THE CURVE
To be on the adoption curve at the hockey-stick inflection point where exponential growth begins, you have to be ready, and connect the dots of supply/demand nodes for every point in the path that leads to the customer touch-point. This means design for digital screen, visuals for todays standards of recognized excellence, and showmanship that keeps them there once you have them.

Internet Portal Access built into TV with wireless "n" is the primary path to ubiquity, Blu-ray players and DVR boxes will also do this, and emerging iTV, BOXEE, Google TV REVUE systems will be 99 bucks and sit in every Wallmart and BestBuy right next to the HDTVs that fill entire walls. Many will be totally wireless "n" and configure themselves for immediate use with a single OK button push. That is done and happening now.

This alternative solution means replacing the existing HDTV is not required, just a one-time cost to extend the value of a broadband connection into the living-room. many people are doing this for themselves already, forging the increased adoption rate, blogging the experience, and its very much positive. All this is happening faster than we would have predicted.

By 2011 the critical mass of user-base for HD enabled Net connected content will be like a super-massive black hole that brings the quality content into its orbit. The initial marketspace to date has been acting as a natural filter for higher-end preferences, and as is aways the case, it will expand to include larger and more diverse audiences. The difference will be that there will be almost too many ways to get Net-Connected content to an HD screen, a situation never before present in the entertainment spectrum. This makes for a very competitive landscape based on what is actually available for content and exclusive value added.

We believe highly interactive HD quality content in the living-room will be one of the better and more sought-after validations of Internet TV, and entry to this space is already enabled in our PageBlend System.

The cross-section of device platforms supporting Flash 10.1 is going to grow dramatically in the very near future. PageBlend is already capable of supporting these new device implementations.
When the ability to see internet-based entertainment includes basic local news and On-Demand specific offerings ( Sports perhaps? ) then the conversion away from 100+ per month fees commanded by Cable will seem foolishly expensive.
We are acting on this now.

Retro Anaglyph 3D for BARNEYS NEWYORK

2010-08-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

BARNEYSMAG.com

SAMSUNG - 3D Ad Projection in Amsterdam

2010-07-22T07:35:00.001-07:00

New TV HD - AMC RUBICON

2010-07-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

Intelligence - Spies ... loads of very cool stuff. This is where having HD to see details is the way to see the clues ...

Before you see Rubicon - go here:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/

AMC RUBICON - perfect timing -Get an insiders look at the presskit EPK
http://amc.ctnhd.com/rubicon ( top secret stuff just for my readers, by yours truly)

http://amctv.com/originals/rubicon

So is it possible that some of our intelligence community reports to a shadow new world order government that even they dont know about? Henry Bromell is the eveep on this, and he is brilliant, created this as a fascinating tour through such conjecture, and we agree and love the quality and rendering of AMC in HD, everything you see is related to something, and they promise it will not be "dumbed down".

You all know, i never rave about any shows, its all the tech in this blog... except for this time... Finally TV that doesn't suck. Save the date - Aug 1st, Sunday Night at 8pm on AMCHD.

IPTV - coming this week

2010-05-19T07:27:00.000-07:00

GOOGLE I/O is today - and Adobe, Sony, Intel all have plans for you and it is not 3D.

Convergence is something i have railed on about for years, put that flatscreen to proper use, and YouTube owner GOOGLE is about to release the hounds and commence doing it.

The reason may not be what you think... free TV? , big YouTube videos? Nah... its all about the advertiser, you know the stuff TiVo enabled you to DVR and skip over?

I think this doesnt raise or lower the bar for TV tech and its network opportunity, it widens the bar, the reach, to the point where YOUR cat coughing-up a hairball in 720p home video could well be a hit on IPTV. No Kidding ... this is finally the year.

SKYPE - Facebook - Yahoo - all there, all simple widgetized reasons to explore your inner couchpotato self with all the poeple you have somehow friended. Personally, i want to see more indie rock videos, not made by famous bands, not played by global rockstars, but performed by all those talented people out there that can do noteworthy music and have a pal with an HDCAM.

Panasonic ( which BTW makes very good stuff ) is onto the Skype also.

2010 - 3D, Internet Convergence, touchscreens

2010-03-14T18:46:00.000-07:00

Wow. I guess after looking at the Stats of this Blog, that globally i should be responsible for setting the record straight on what is next. For one thing, Convergence ( web ready TV, Boxee, Hulu etc ) and gestural motion capture ( Natal and the Move systems ) - this is going to be a great year.

Seriously, HD has matured. I get hundreds of questions a week about hooking up computers to HD screens, and from that i have got to write some definitive guidelines on that again, many problems and requests are nearly identical. I am sorry that i can no longer reply unless you are Press or known to me already, 22,000 emails on one of my systems inboxes crashed the OS ( i was not paying close attention and didnt know this was so popular - so that email address doesnt work now ) oops... But in essence you have spoken ( in like 9 languages that i am unable to read without google translate ) , i heard, and when i can i will summarize useful solutions for you all. One proof in all this, is that Marketing people for HD products think you are stupid, and the vast inflow of smartly asked queries here are proof that you are smart, want more , and are sick of being sold on bullsh*t and happy-talk from vendors.

One thing to watch for in a new purchase, is HDMI 1.4 compatibility, you need that for the speed of 3D data transfer for the shutter glasses, and new Internet enabled automation

What’s new in the HDMI 1.4 specification?

HDMI 3D and Ethernet Channel
The HDMI 1.4 specification adds a data channel to the HDMI connection, enabling high-speed, bi-directional communication. Connected devices that include this feature can send and receive data via 100 Mb/sec Ethernet, making them instantly ready for any IP-based application. The HDMI Ethernet Channel allows internet-enabled HDMI devices to share an internet connection via the HDMI link, with no need for a separate Ethernet cable. It also provides the connection platform that will allow HDMI-enabled components to share content between devices.The 1.4 version of the specification defines common 3D formats and resolutions for HDMI-enabled devices, enabling 3D gaming and other 3D video applications. The specification standardizes the input/output portion of the home 3D system, facilitating 3D resolutions up to dual-stream 1080p.

I know that nVidia Gaming cards for 3D play will use this and you want it. Real 3D occular displays using lenses of specific polarization are up in the air a bit, so the shutter solution will be the initial primary mode to want. Yep - ugly battery powered glasses. Its worth it though, since properly done, you see 3D that appears to reach out of the screen ( nearfield convergence ). It works pretty well - though you have to sit in the sweet spot for it ... The first time you see this will also be the last time you will be satisfied with 2D.

2010-03-06T11:04:00.000-08:00

Back from a 5 month offsite - Happy spring! - thanks helen for stepping in at moments

I really like Walt Mossberg these days, very even-handed reasoning and experience matters in this world of over-the-top excessive attitude-drivel. Frankly there just is no equivalent to this guy at this time. Well worth the watch on new tech:

Excuse the jaggy playback - WSJ doesnt know how to Video Smooth their flash player. Maybe I will show them how to clean that up sometime...
Replication to HDTV from devices with Internet connections, Boxee, TiVo's new Premier and some laptops ... this category is gaining momentum, and since 5 mbit connections can deliver decent flash and h264 720p that scales well enough... this convergence will continue.

We have an HP Touchsmart 600t ( 1920 x 1080 ) here in the Lab Break Room and it connects to the 60" screen via hdmi - so we have wires ( power and HDMI ) leading from the coffee table to the wall. This is fixable by slicing a groove in the foam under an area rug, but placement of rugs to do this looks awkward and we just live with that.

http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20100303/how-to-watch-video-wirelessly-on-your-tv-set/

The iPad - 4 deceptive tactics used by Apple Marketing.

2010-02-27T21:14:00.000-08:00

Guest Post

By Helen Bach.

Apple Marketing is many times deceptive, and they persist until called out on it. Like Marketing and advert imagery that shows Flash content on a device that by design and spec will NOT play Flash.

Oops. Again and Again. The Above Image was taken right from the Apple.com homepage. The image in it was a flashplayer gallery . It should have been a blue block broken plugin symbol and that would have made the New York Times Travel section appear to have NO IMAGES.

The Marketing that surrounds the Apple iPad has been repeatedly faulty. Apple management openly derisive of things it should have left be, and the backlash is getting louder. They will reap what they sow.

Typical of what we post here, the Native Screen Resolution, in Pixels, rears its massively fanged head once again to prevent over-statement of capability and fooling people that 720p and HD1080 should be used in association with devices that have less than 1280 pixels to show for it.

1) The Current Use of 720p in iPad marketing by Apple Inc is false.

A requirement for claiming 720p is having native resolution equal to or greater than 1280 x 720 pixels, and generally also means 16:9 aspect ratio. The Published iPad Specification is neither 720p nor 16:9 - The iPad is 1024 x 768 and 4:3 typical of old laptops from 2003

"720p" with the word "display" is a High Def Spec requiring a minimum native resolution of 1280x720 or greater.

720p not an "option" in mp4 codec encoding when used as a feature , its called a specification. Any display of less than 1280 pixels width and/or 720 pixels height is NOT 720p and cannot be attributed as capable of 720p display. It is scaled down rendering of source 720p file types only.

From apple.com http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/

TV and video
H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

This is deceptive advertising, and the usage of 720p even as an "up to" is not proper language, e.g. accuracy claims against this are viable. However that said, being short a couple hundred pixels of resolution likely will not hamper the user experience much on such a small screen, so this is accuracy nitpicking against a specific numeric claim.

2) Misrepresenting the ability of Mobile Safari and iPad to display Flash player content of any type.

This issue is a big one. The iPhone OS is nice enough for a phone, but its not enabled by Apple to run Flash in the Mobile Safari Browser.

At this time the iPad cannot accomplish the task of rendering flash plugins in its Mobile Safari, by edict of Apple Inc. When caught on this, they blame flash as though inclusion of it will be a problem, much in a "Tail Wagging The Dog" kind of way in association with a claim that the iPad has the best browsing experience. It doesnt. But they display webpages with flash content intact as though there is no visible problem.

Shown above is the New York times rendered in a video frame - an average gallery tool found all over the web, incorrectly displays a food dish to the left done in flash , and then corrected as a "blue block" missing plugin to the right. This correction was required but only performed after repeated observations of thousands of bloggers. It was improperly shown on the website for a few days and still persists in places. There were 4 additional instances of other images and video blocks that inproperly showed flash content. They had to know this, hence it was deliberate.

This is not a "best" user experience, its a plain and evident broken plug-in hole in the webpage of a famous and high profile New York Times website as rendered by an incapable browser.

See below what you can do with that if you can edit your webpages.

3) Claiming that HTML5 can replace Flash as a rich media delivery system, and that it is an Open Standard.
This is False in too many ways to mention in detail here -- but importantly ... it is in fact not a finalized standard. HTML5 finalized reference Open Standard will likely be completed well after product release of iPad, but the story is a case of functionality tunnel-vision with respect to Video Playback in a webpage.
What they are really referring to is use of the <video src=somefile.mp4 > video play tag. Only Safari and Google chrome currently support this tag for the mp4 that Apple referrs to, and neither completely support HTM5 canvas features in a way even remotely as capable as Flash Technology.

This is deceptive in that only a web developer with both knowlege of HTML5 and Flash would be capable of really understanding the implications. The average user and Apple customer-base does not have this know-how, and therefore has to accept this mis-representation on faith, one way or the other.

4) Claiming that Flash Player use in mobile devices will cut battery life from "10 hours to 1.5 hours" -- with no proof, verification or demonstration that the iPad can even run Flash Plugins. The moment they sell unit 1 and deposit the proceeds, they will have violated law if they do not comply with any requests for proof by any customer.

Possibly this claim can be labled as anecdotal since it does not specifically appear in marketing official Apple released and copywritten publications, but reporting on this statement by Steve Jobs is widespread enough to create issues.

This kind of claim is the type that the FTC can easily take to court on, since "proof of claim" is written in law both at the federal level and defined with even greater clarity at State Levels with regard to Mail Fraud laws. (Note... this includes any Print advertising that uses postal services, magazines and newspapers )

For mobile devices, a feature of serious importance is battery longevity, so this is dangerous and the most egregious of all the deceptive and unproven marketing being done. I have lived through this "product feature description claim" legal contents and contests in other businesses, and was surprised at how far reaching and serious it can get, its more than just bad form. Its legal.

In point of fact Android and Palm WebOS are proving that quite the opposite battery life effects are likely, but that is also a moot point without lab quality testing and independent mensuration and verification. The difficulty here is in how this is playing out is that this appears to mislabel another company as producing a faulty product and defining any functionality and performance in numeric terms without proof of claim, and that is a workable case when measurable difference in profitablility of any kind can be established, good bad or otherwise. Its the same as a false claim of higher than real performance in a product marketing process.

5) AT&T Coverage.

I cannot talk with many urban friends now that have iPhones. Conversations break so often that they no longer get included in my deals. 'nuff Said.

At Stake: Billions.

If Apple sells 1 million tablets at 500 bucks then basically half a billion is removed from the economy in a way that has marginal defined productive value. Like TV and Music, its an information flow that does not build value.. until you look at the next step in all this. a Huge Cloud-Based data center that users will pay 99 bucks a year to store and protect their stuff, exchange info like family photos, etc. And of course renovate the concepts of an APP STORE to a STORE YOUR APPS paradigm. The Apple Walled Garden so to speak, comes with a high price but does deliver Apple-approved content to Apple supplied devices in ways accurately defined in the Apple Terms of Agreement.

Thanks for reading - Helen Bach
( edits for terminology by HD1080i )

BOXEE - iphone/ipod touch remote

2009-12-10T20:36:00.000-08:00

tips:

* the boxee remote app has two modes: Gesture and Buttons
* in the Gesture mode you need to hold down your thumb and move it around in order to navigate.
* clicking on the boxee logo acts as Select/Play/Pause
* dragging the boxee logo to the edges of the screen will act as a continuous up/down/left/right
* clicking in an input field will open up the iPhone Qwerty keyboard and will enable you to easily enter text
* the app works over WiFi, so make sure the WiFi on your iPhone is turned on

let us know what you think!

DTV Transition - the OTA MAP

2009-06-04T08:10:00.000-07:00

So lets say you are going to try getting your $40 coupon and free HD over the air. Right

Seriously, it is a great option for city people, but DUH, they already have Cable. For places like lets say Portland New Hampshire... options are based in distance an intervening mountains.

What to do? Try... and here is how you find out some basics on channel range. Visit http://www.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps and type in your Zip code.

Aim your antenna based on the directions shown in the map and tweak from there. I have it working and found that the test antenna UHF directional worked fine in the attic ( protected from the outdoor weather).

Tell me your story if you have one.

DTV CUTOVER bill - round 2

2009-01-27T12:29:00.000-08:00

The Senate passed a bill on Monday to delay the nationwide switch to digital TV signals, giving consumers nearly four more months to prepare.
The House Did not pass this bill, - the senate crafted yet another. we will have to wait to see what comes of it.

The transition date would move to June 12 from February 17 under the bill that was fueled by worries that viewers are not technically ready for the congressionally-mandated switch-over.

The U.S. switch to digital television signals will be delayed four months until June under legislation that cleared Congress on Wednesday and now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature into law.

Obama supports the delay, sharing concerns that 20 million mostly poor, elderly and rural households were not ready for the congressionally mandated switch.

The bill delaying the changeover to June 12 from February 17 cleared the U.S. House of Representatives in a 264-158 vote and followed Senate passage last month.

Of course now all those dumb ads they wasted time on are now junk due to the date change. but they were junk to begin with, embarrassing us in the business with how hopelessly lame our FCC is.

For Shame and Shame again

About 13 million people hold expired $40 coupons the government was providing to offset the costs of converter boxes needed for older televisions, according to Consumers Union. The government ran out of coupons last month and millions of requests for coupons are pending.

NEWS UPDATE Feb 5 6:30pm - HR 1 Stimulus Bill has DTV Conversion Coupons: $650 million to continue the coupon program to enable American households to convert from analog television transmission to digital transmission. ( it will be Voted in to law tonight )

13 MILLION!

"We believe it is irresponsible to ask mostly rural, or elderly consumers to reach into their own pockets to deal with this transition when many folks, including the federal government, are making a profit," said Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst at Consumers Union.

Airwaves to be vacated by television broadcasters after the switch were purchased mostly by AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc in an auction that raised about $19 billion for the U.S. government.

Both companies agreed to a short one-time delay and their licenses will be extended under the bill.

For the most part, only viewers with older sets that receive broadcast analog signals and do not get cable or satellite television, must act to prevent their screens from going black after the switch.

Most Republicans opposed the delay, arguing it would create more confusion after years and millions of dollars had been spent by the government and private industry to advertise the February switch.

FCC Acting Commissioner Michael Copps said earlier this week the agency had been working on a "plan B" in case the Congress extended the deadline.

There is some good news i will cover...Later ... DTV new bandwidth usage includes wireless HD and internet provisions.

RIP Circuit City - inventory selloff NOW

2009-01-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

Circuit City Gave up , Judges couldnt reconcile the Chapter 11 - no deal going.

A bit of a bummer for locations in where Circuit City was the Anchor presence in BigBox TV sales, but quite frankly this outcome was written on the wall long ago. It seems the cathartic outcome of OBAMA CHANGE is to come clean on your errors and take it on the chin, however that may be, industry corrections are happening everywhere, this will not be the only one. Watching Tweeter's fall from grace hurt a bit, but this one hurts a bit more i think.

Good news for you who have some cash and time and are willing to spend it in closeout sales.

As POSTED:

When will the liquidation sales begin?
Liquidation sales begin as early as Saturday, January 17, 2009, and will last as long as it takes to sell through the merchandise at each of the stores. We expect the sales to wrap up by the end of March 2009.

How much will merchandise be marked down, and can customers negotiate prices for the merchandise?

There will be clearance pricing, but specific discounts are not being announced. All sale prices are at the discretion of the liquidator. Prices are non-negotiable and all adjustments must be approved by the liquidator's on-site managers. *
What payment types will be accepted at the liquidation stores?

Stores in liquidation will accept cash, Circuit City gift cards and most credit cards. Personal checks will not be accepted. All sales are final.

Will Circuit City's price matching policy or the 'One Price Promise' apply during the liquidation sale?

Because the liquidation company is in charge of the sales at the closing stores, their policies are in force. So, One Price Promise does not apply during liquidation events, nor does the company's Unbeatable Price Guarantee. All sales are final.

if you can pull it off... MANAGERS DEALS.

Lets say you and a half dozen friends want new TV deals, Get together and then ... talk to the manager, have a huge wad of cash visible, and you will likely walk out with a deal you could not get anywhere else. Anything they have that says LG or Samsung on it is done right for sure, so start there, and they have a huge Sony inventory. So get there early, see what they have, then get on your cellphone, pull a co-op buy together and talk the manager down on a qtty buy. Thats how to get big screens for the price point of smaller ones.

VISIT- REDUX:
The liquidators went back to MSRP -10-30% so actualy for some items the price tagged is HIGHer than pre-liquidation $$. NOT worth the trip for many items. both BJ's and Best Buy had LOWER prices on some TV's/ unreal. Long lines though, so people were buying some stuff, but i think it was hype-mechanics and not real deals. I didnt see anything worth it, and left.

FCC and the DTV Cutover - NO ATSC converter for YOU!

2009-01-06T18:37:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a bit of a rant... Its just so yet more BUSH administration botched performance in your face that its time to scrape that wound open, clean it out and finally let it heal. or something, anything?

Part of the DTV cutover from NTSC ( interlaced crappy analog broadcast video ) to ATSC ( somewhat less crappy still interlaced digital mpeg video ) is going badly for the FCC. The were offering $40 coupons for every american to get a new tuner for thier analog TV's that use over the air antenna as a source.

They Ran out of money.
And you thought i was joking.

see for yourself: https://www.dtv2009.gov/
Happy New Year. You Lose if you waited... but then again, there were hardly any ATSC tuners to actually buy until recently....

Any requests made after Jan 5th will get at "Raincheck" sort of waiting list response. This shouldnt be a problem actually because its kind of lame to not want a new TV flatscreen anyhow, and prices between 200-400 bucks for a new one are easy to find... however, we are in kind of a cashflow problem here in the states and saving money is smart. So we want our" Free" tuners please... You promised this would not be painful didnt you. You lied didnt you.

but wait... 40 bucks wont pay for the ATSC tuners you can actually buy. So the DTV cutover is not as promised, but is yet another consumer item "Tax". ( Read: ripped off again )

This would not be all that bad except for one thing. THE FCC auctioned off the analog bands freed up by the switch to DTV for BILLIONS. yes they pulled BILLIONS out of thin air. .. and kept it. No Free tuner for you mr & mrs 2009 and cant afford a new TV at the moment.

Blame game time:

This is FCC Chairman Kevin.
Say hi to ths nicely groomed howdy-doody smile here, he is rich and you are not.

he said "I am deeply honored to have been designated as the next Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and I thank President Bush for this distinct privilege."

Here is more info about him ( from the FCC site )

Chairman Kevin J. Martin
Chairman Martin was nominated by President George W. Bush to a Republican seat on the Commission, and was sworn in on July 3, 2001. He was designated chairman by President Bush on March 18, 2005. Chairman Martin was re-nominated for a second term as commissioner and chairman by President George W. Bush on April 25, 2006.

Before joining the FCC, Martin was a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. He served on the Bush-Cheney Transition Team and was Deputy General Counsel for the Bush campaign. Prior to joining the campaign, Martin was an advisor to FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth. He has also served in the Office of the Independent Counsel and worked as an associate at the Washington, DC law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Before joining Wiley, Rein & Fielding, Martin was a judicial clerk for U.S. District Court Judge William M. Hoeveler, Miami, FL.

Martin received a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Masters in Public Policy from Duke University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the Federal Communications Bar Association.

Yes you read that right... Bush pushed him in, he used to be a clerk, worked on the republican campaign effort for re-electing Bush and the Lucky Guy to get gifted such a major role in our economy... boggles the mind. He is a lawyer. Does not know squat about Broadcast Technicals from any educational angle. Basically a dealmaker.

.. SO puleeeze kevin. do this right. You are pinned with your pants down.

Pony up th free ATSC tuners you promised while you were banking BILLIONS of dollars extorted from would be DTV broadcast kings and wireless digital companies. ( one pal of mine inside Cisco said that the FCC broadcast band auction was over 20 Billion that he knew about ) ... i think its more but i am no accountant and cannot prove anything. They can afford it.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Home Page · Telecom
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent US government agency, directly responsible to Congress, and regulates interstate and ...www.fcc.gov/ -Filing Complaints

Feel free to waste time here http://www.fcc.gov/
and get a chuckle out of inept website people here: http://www.dtv.gov/

and get on the waiting list here: https://www.dtv2009.gov/

Republicans have been crapping on middle america ( and the world ) for way to long. We know you, and we want you gone. Now is fine with us. Sorry but my appointee for broadcast band bucks bullshit meter went into the red and i couldnt let it slide.

Ok open question to all you readers out there...
does anyone have the grand total of collected $$,$$$,$$$,$$$ that the FCC got for the broadcast spectrum auction for all the newly freed-up channel space that DTV gave them?

REDUX:
Apparently the incoming OBAMA administration realizes all this ( please no comments on that ) and is suggesting that due to FCC funding misfires, and the understanding that middle america is not all Cable network connected, ... a delay in the DTV cutover is now on the table. KUDOS to team OBAMA for pointing that out... I agree... and i think that converter boxes should be covered by the coupons for VHF/UHF local user ATSC needs.

And its not that simple. we just tried one, and found out that the antenna impedance mismatch problems with digital signals is way more vexing than the average user would understand. Its very possible to plug in an ATSC tuner and get practically nothing for an image. When i find a good article DIY on that i will link to it.

REDUX #2
Cory ( http://ondrejka.blogspot.com/ ) someone who helped build the Second Life that HD1080i also has a presence in ( and sometimes gets lost there ) noted today jan 13th, that Washpost reported Julius Genachowski is the Next New FCC Chairperson.

quoted:

"I met Julius in April of 2007, early in the campaign process.

What struck me after we had lunch was:

a) how incredibly smart he was,
b) how quickly he synthesized new information, and
c) that if this was the kind of person Obama was attracting, then he would get my vote!

The Obama team continued to pull in amazing people and the rest is, as they say, history. It is all the more amazing given the many voices and directions percolating within the campaign at that time. Julius was a clearly a huge part of the process of pulling things together. I am certain he will be up to the challenges at FCC."

Ok i envy Cory that he got to meet that person, and i also respect his assessments, so for me anyhow, the light at the end of this tunnel is NOT an oncoming train, but an emergence from the parasitic dark ages of whatever that was we lived through for the past few years.

YET MORE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/08/AR2009010802586.html?hpid=topnews

excerpt:

"With coupons unavailable, support and education insufficient, and the most vulnerable Americans exposed, I urge you to consider a change to the legislatively-mandated analog cutoff date," John Podesta, co-chair of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team wrote in the letter, which was sent to leaders of the Senate and House Commerce committees.

The government-mandated switch to digital television will free up wireless airwaves for public safety agencies and other advanced mobile services. An auction of those analog airwaves raised $19 billion for the government last year. Congress allocated $1.34 billion to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to distribute converter box coupons.

By early February, projections suggest the number of consumers on the waiting list to get a coupon could climb to 5 million, increasing by hundreds of thousands every day, the letter to Congress said.
Yesterday, Consumers Union urged Congress to delay the transition "until a plan is in place to minimize the number of consumers who will lose TV signals."

Lawmakers are looking for ways to make sure consumers who need coupons get them in time. "But with the date looming, moving the date back certainly warrants further discussion and may be a wise choice," Daniel Reilly, a spokesman for Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, said yesterday.

Ok so it seems the info i had was about right and general knowlege for those in the middle of it.

A quick call to CES ( thanks rad & wingnut ) revealed that there are in fact ATSC cheapo tuners, but the request for subsidy to ramp up production quantity and shipping costs was denied last year and thats why basic fundamental ATSC unbranded tuners is not there. They would rather sell you a new TV.

Rad says that if walmart or the like slapped thier logo on one of the ATSC microboxes, they could have claimed a presence in the solution. Note to Walmart - RAD is usually right. If you step in and solve this then your markting loyalty will be on the top of everyday TV sets across america. ( note to self- buy walmart stock ) Brilliant. Buy him a beer.

Wingnut loves the 3-D Nvidia WOW demo. says Gimme Gimme.

SCALING - up , down and HD1080i

2008-12-08T07:21:00.000-08:00

Thanks for all the commentary, i only post a few, but it seems the current enconomy has caused some decent enough price reductions ... we are pretty much over the critical mass of 16:9 equipped people needed to really properly push HD1080i. Thanks for that.

However its still all about scaling so i have to repeat myself a bit for those that are newer to HD... years ago i railed on about HDREADY crap marketing that fooled people into thinking the TV/HD Flatscreen they were buying, was real High in Definition. My guess on trends is that Millions more flat screens will be sold at the 599 thru 999 pricepoint, they are good also, and you need to really know something about it. So here you go...

1) THE #1 Broadcast Standard for HD is 1080i. = 1920 x 1080
Lots of sources (ABC?) that profess 720p content, really are being converted at the broadcaster C/O into HD1080i. and thats what you get. Thats not a bad thing, but it is the truth for most all Cable Digital and dish users. Some sources are 4:3 Std TV square and HD for that is 1440 x 1080 ( which is quite nice but not widescreen ) ... dont ask me why, i dont know, it just is.

2) THERE IS NO BROADCAST STANDARD OF 1366 x 768, and that resolution is NOT 720p. It's very capable of playing 720p, but so what? a 1080p can play 720p also, which is still essentially meaningless when blu-ray and broadcasting is all 1080 anyhow. At least most all advertizing these days points out what the native pixel resolution is, so as 1366 x 768 so you do not get a nasty surprise when you plug it in, you have been informed correctly.

3) Its all progressive display on a FlatPanel display. It doesnt matter how your LCD/PLASMA flatpanel screen gets its source, what you see will always be a P for progressive. 1080p60 or 1366p60 is really the way to describe it. The "i" for interlace is just how it arrives, when it is processed into what you actually see... it is a full frame for every refresh. This is where 120hz or the new 120 frames per second processing has value, but more on that later.

Ok thats the basics, and i want to emphasize that 1366 oddball numbers do not mean the monitor is not at all good, or that at your typical viewing distance, a 1366 is substandard and to be avoided.

Why? Because when anything coming in to the TV/Monitor that is not 1080 ,will be all about the SCALERS anyhow. So your Standard Definition content, DVD players and such are feeding the screen something less than 1366 or 1080 for a lot of what you will use it for.

SCALING:
That is a processing job done inside the TV/Monitor that takes the incoming video and makes it fit your screen pixel resolution. There are brilliant unheralded genious type video gurugeeks that specialize in making these processing chips and they ( these days ) are doing a fantastic job, cleaning things up and making a superb visual outcome. The Screen you buy is really all about the contrast ratio available in the tech of the panel, and the realtime postprocessing that feeds it.

( it fascinates me that the manufacturers know this, and the marketers seem to ignore it, meaning: you dont get that scaler processing info without digging for it. They should be bragging about how thier stuff uses gigahertz processing to give you a fully analyzed and corrected frame at 60 , or 120 times per second. Lots of times that is a garbage in - beauty out scenario. )

-- more in a bit
HD

HD1080 Screen use

2008-11-04T20:51:00.000-08:00

Congrats out to OBAMA and all that it took to make a candidate of both White and Black heritage and DNA, our next president...

And i have to point out that during the final hours, CNN did an amazing job on CNNHD. a Screen full of high def red white and blue for sure, every detail crisp and readable at a distance. The tech they threw at us was great, virtual mapping of 3d comping to camera live was the best i have ever seen on consumer broadcasting production. Some amazing teamwork deserves a medal or something for such a great job of anchor reporting with interactive elements.

That virtual capitol building on the anchordesk and the senate seat display floating up and in front of it was all comping in realtime 3-d matched to moving camera with a clean alpha channel, nice stuff like shadow drop, and all live interactive. Great. Love this for it is what HD should be doing. FOX and all the others claiming to be Americas Election HQ or whatever, totally out performed and outclassed by CNNHD.

To be Fair , MSNBC had a couple nice holodecky tricks using similar tooling and that was great also. thanks for that.

UP next - 1080p120 display tech & why its so great.

HD1080 - Convergence Continues

2008-09-05T07:24:00.000-07:00

Hi - sorry i was out of office for several weeks. But we are back and there is news to relay to you.

The Mixing of Media
We have been watching the market evolve, and getting inside a few things, most notably watching who reads this blog and noting that they sometimes reference it as confirmation that their strategy is solid. Thats a good thing, but please do excuse our typos, we dont have a lot of time for this blog. Our informal focus groups have responded with a resounding YES & I WANT IT NOW for the advent of hometheater - internet convergence and simple access to more and better stuff. There is no doubt in my mind ( and the others in HD1080i labs ) that ON DEMAND is way more important to them than TV schedule in terms of desired content.

Physical tests have indicated that people will use a wireless mouse preferrable to any IR remote, so we bought a laptop ( 1920 x 1200 17" ) with an HDMI 1.3 connector for screen 2 and tested it.
HOW? - wireless. with what? A LAPTOP.

Basically a wireless laptop connected to the HDMI port on an HDTV reaches out to the wireless router in the house, and plays fullscreen 1920 x 1080 on the home theater. We made friends at Vimeo awhile back and asked for HD 720p in that site to do some testing, and LO and Behold, they did, using BitGravity as thier provisioning network over the web. So basically now we can upload and view nice 720p on our home theater.

Van Nuys - SIXX AM debut Performance from CTN GREEN on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/1473953

SWEET 720p

Of course hooking up an HD laptop to an HD screen is not rocket science. but ...

The byproduct is that some text is a bit small to read so 2 things happen. Firstly, move the couchs and chairs closer to the HDTV. Secondly, use the zoom on the lower right of IE7 to make pages bigger when surfiing, ( doesnt always work though, and is often clunky ) and/or just prefer webpages with larger text. This turns out to be a huge plus when using VIMEO since its nice and big and easy and perfect for hometheater convergence usage. Our system upscales at the HD Monitor nicely and the laptop has a blu-ray player for comparison to a std max quality, and of course, we edit HD here so we have a lot of VC-1 ( wmv ) files in our network and accessable to the laptop.

Amazon Video On Demand on BRAVIA Beta
of importance is that the Sony people ( thanks for those that read this blog ) have noted the same thing, and for them, enabling their HDTV with a section of wireless laptop motherboard inside is not a real big problem, they did it, it worked, they showed it off, everyone loved it. AMAZON's Unbox ( which i tootally bashed as awful in a past post ) is upgrading its stuff to plug and play with the properly equipped BRAVIA.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/ontv/bravia

Note this is a beta and not really intended to be public, the link may die on me.

ITS WAY BETTER than using the Ps3 or XBOX to reach the web. BRAVIA is a great line and its a no-brainer to want one if you already have a nice fast web connection. https://internet.sony.tv/customer/template/faq.vm?lang=en

If you dont have a fast connection ( like 700kbps or better ) then maybe you want to ask your provider if they can supply you with faster download speeds. Usually they can.

HTPC - HD1080i on convergence

2008-05-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

- everywhere you look in the geekzone of video the term HTPC seems to crop up, it means Home Theater Personal Computing.

really? you say what? We have been plugging video cards into HD TV and Widescreen whatnot for over 4 years now, and frankly, i do not see yet another need for yet another term, but so be it. I am waiting for the HDPC next ... right. Meet the paperless virtual HD magazine.

At HD1080i-labs here we have been noodling with some higher definition web content, in one case its a magazine that "authors" can insert choices for pages and collaborate.

A public version is here at http://ctngreen.com/mag/ and http://www.ctnluxe.com/mag where real virtual magazine stying and interactive elements testing is happening right now.

( It works on 1280, 1366, 1680 and 1920 screen resolutions ) Requires a mouse, remote control buttons left - right or basically your laptop touchpad. The Remote control arrow keys on some Media Centers turn the page also.

Clicking into a page may offer a click or launch a decent sized video.

My personal take on all this is that the personal computing engine should connect to the big screen and the web, and allow for family time in a way that is usually not done on a PC. From what i see the PC is a one-on-one device, we have 7 here and from the outside looking in it would appear that there are rooms full of zombies staring into screens and connecting with people that are not in the room with them. Its good in that everyones tastes are enough different that they are infact rapidly consuming content in thier own channel so to speak. Not so good in that you have to call them on thier cell or IM them to get attention, standing behind them gets you ignored. There is more going on when everyone is interacting with the same thing on the big screens, be it video games or movies or whatever.

HD1080i will have a portal soon with focus group membership for convergence experiments, so if you have a widescreen HD system, save this page, we will hook that up in a bit.

HD-DVD RIP or What?

2008-04-10T08:09:00.000-07:00

Someone just jumped me saying
"I got an HD-DVD player ! 99 bucks at XXXXmart!"

eh? you did WHAT? HD-DVD died over a month ago.

There is one serious misinformation thing going on here... XXXXmart sold you an abandoned technology platform, an apparently didnt tell you about that.

Although Toshiba officially threw in the towel in Mid-February, most of us knew there were deals going on in private to aquire it and spin off a new company for the platform. Apparently those deals are slow in shaping up, or the cross license issues are too severe to stomach. HD-DVD at this moment has no future solid plan and is essentially a dying legacy in its own time.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080219/20080219005651.html read if you must.

This is questionable in a bunch of ways, for one it means that Blu-Ray will do as it pleases and the XBOX crowd is left with an aftermarket source for its Game console? Not really... its deeper than that, HD-DVD is an excellent platform, its just not secure enough for HD movie releases from Hollywood. This does not mean there is no exit plan, Toshiba halted R&D, MFG and patent squabbles are now moot ...

HD1080I , Compression quality, Contrast

2008-02-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

.. yet more op/ed ranting and something about contrast.

I am giving out serious kudos now to FOXHD for it's production team and broadcast team excellence. Hands down the best HD in my area is Discovery HD, ALL the NBCHD stuff, PBSHD with ESPNHD, MHD, and MOJOHD always delivering fabulously.

Thumbs up FOX, thanks for the very well crafted and inspirational attention to the Declaration of Independance before the opening.

COMPRESSION

All in all, the best image you get comes not from resolution, but from well managed digital video compression technology. Your picture 1080i in HD is all digital so your problems will not have anything to do with interlaced or progressive scanning, but with MPEG2. It's a lossy method for getting your video to you, and at any rapid scene change you see obvious block recovery and macroblocks in high action stuff. What you want is H.264 or Mpeg4 ( DISH ) or VC-1 ( blu-ray and HD-DVD ). unfortunately comcast uses harware MPEG2 compression codecs, at broadcast and at Set Top Box, so it's all about bandwidth allocation when its coming down the cable and into your livingroom. The next level in HD programming delivery is to improve the use of MPEG vs bandwidth. Right now Comcast ok but allocation to very high bandwidth to FOX-HD channels is up to each C.O., in my area its excellent.

Game on - will attend to the rant on contrast and ratios after the game.

CONTRAST and RATIO

You will understand much better why the Phillips and Sony ambient light detectors are more important than you may have realized, and add value to your experience in ways you should not take for granted. Study this:

Contrast is probably the #1 "quality of experience" and therefore also a a top choice parameter for selecting a good widescreen HD display, I see this a lot elsewhere on other HD sites. The truth is a bit dicey though, in that the source material can and many times does, have an older style and NTSC color range profile, and what you see for contrast may actually be the result of production editing in that video rather than display capability. It is often possible to look at a display in the store and base your choice on poorly edited contrast in the source content on-screen at the time.

Manufacturers and Product people in HD displays know this, and often include filtering and color tuning in the display processing firmware, to maximize the full range of thier image at any given moment. Sometimes this is a user-controlled option in the SETUP menu of the display, sometimes its bundled into a more general "Color Enhance" option in a menu selection. In my opinion, this is a double edged blade, in that you can benefit greatly most of the time, but some of the stuff coming in will be mishandled by this process. The reason the contrast test demo above is in grayscale is because of that, since Color Saturation-Gamma-Intensity has its measurements based on processing that happens in a GRID anaylsis ( large areas of screen are sampled for ratios ), making the in-Scene and scene-to-scene details part of the processing. Basically for you this means the Contrast numbers in the specs are not sufficient to describe really what to expect from the display.

I would like to see Black Level identified more in a standard spec, since that is often one of the few display characterizations that is not dependant on source. This means - see the display with no content at a medium backlight setting. ( some displays detect this and darken to thier max value) - In Store the lighting is too bright for you to assess black levels, so this is where you should ask more questions of an experienced salesperson ( if available). Plasma Displays in particular used to be rather poor at black level and in almost all new 1080p plasma screens you see now, that has been corrected and most 1080p Plasmas are excellent. Some LCD screens will also bleed the white Backlight and not provide a true enough black level for you... my Advice is to read the customer reviews, many times the truth about a black level quality is presented there.

I have found that the large box brands these days pretty much ALL do this well in newer designs, Phillips and Sonys ( and others ) measure room light and set contrast to suit and most of the time that is goind to produce the preferred look to intensity and contrast.

DOGHOUSE
Its really important to note however, the worst out there is the ABC stuff,

http://abc.go.com/site/hdtvfaq.html

... that page is almost completely wrong, its kind of pathetic.

as an aside - PLASMA and LCD tv's do NOT SCAN so any mention of digital scan lines is pure nonsense. Just let me say you righteous 720p people are your own worst enemy, since 720p is decompressed , upscaled to 1080 and recompressed for cable HD1080i broadcast, making it the blockiest fuzziest looking image I get in HD. Maybe Over The Air HD is better, but everyone i know is using DISH ( kudos for the MPEG4 BTW its very good) and Cable.

If you want Over The Air 720p then go : http://antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx

and aim our antenna and hope for the best. Second to the worst is TNTHD that does this BIG HEAD upscaling. I wont watch either channes, except that WCVB weather is probably the best in new england, i wouldnt see any ABCHD.

360 days left to Digital Cutover

BD+ Blu-ray & Hollywood

2008-01-09T19:23:00.000-08:00

...inside rumor and even in the news of late, BD+ adoption. Back when it started they showed us a cartridge BDM version that delivered movies and had another tech layer of copy / duplication defense.

Nobody (it seems) but me, liked the cartridge. I hate dust, gunk and scratches, over here we prefer a well protected media surface, but cost complexity is best handled by the simplest solutions For The Seller and Handling/Packaging.

SONY AND PHILLIPS et. al.
Well they did what they said they would, hardened the Blu-ray surface to many times what it was, and added a final on BD+ that convinced Warner to go Blu. Leaky confidential info holds that Paramount and Universal will switch sides and go to the BD+ for all subsequent releases in the near future. Since Disney and of course Sony were already there, and FOX and Lionsgate were pushing the envelopes for BD-live, that pretty much wraps it up for HD-DVD being the preferred platform at the high-end and mass market tunraround whenever this happens. Most likely that actual event is many months into the future, since Paramount took Millions from Toshiba to go exclusive for Transformers and more. ergo: Paramount has to deny this. But when that deal runs out, I would expect HD-DVD releases to be 3rd tier distribution deals. Doesnt kill HD-DVD but it does mean that most of us will be taking the blue pill before the red one is available.

Since Blu-ray supports VC-1 advanced profile codec, basically it has the best of all worlds, and the network infrastructure underway now for BD-Live is potentially the most massive ever seen. ( Sorry Misscrosoft but you have had years of Media Center and the like crap that has NOT gained foothold adoption, this market is ripe for something new and you are not it )

There are more reasons then we know but...
The exact point I made about Canadian and Asian knockoffs showing up in HD-DVD is happening stateside now ... is so rampant because your average consumer finds its really hard to tell a real HD-DVD release from a forgery copy that plays well in most all older Set-top machines. If it plays at all they are happy.

I Like HD-DVD
So ... I am bummed about this but it indicates that HD-DVD is now following a destiny to be the cheapo low-end marketspace and Blu-ray the high-end preferred Major Motion Picture release format for the 2008 season.

HD-DVD authoring is actually rather easy for single play movies, so in some ways the amateur HD user may well like it better, the preferred home-movie format.

The authoring tools for Blu-ray and HD-DVD are so dramatically different that Post Prod cost to master is rather high. Due to contracts and such stuff i would guess that after February 1, 2008 we may get a flurry of announcements that indicate named releases will only ship blu-ray. Replication to HD-DVD will happen way down the timeline like when the films is released to on-Demand cable or Broadcast HD... e.g. First Run Major releases will be BD+ until perhaps a year later when HD-DVD licensing is let out to distrubution.

Hmm. I am also told that entry-level blu-ray players at a $350 MSRP and $299 street are coming very soon, some may have BD-Live which is a slick feature-set that merits its own post, and is community and advertiser placement friendly. So lets say you see a car or fashion item in the flick and like it, you may well be able to click , find the vendor and buy it. Just Like That, click the flick and make the pick. Uhmm ok Gimme gimme, i am ordering a BD authoring package now and i guess i have to learn this new Java in there.

Whatever, this scenario with formats is playing out the way the Disney guy said it would, and frankly i dont mind at all.

ULTRA HD

SAMSUNG... ( trust me when i say 1080 at 2mpix kicks the crap out of 1366 at 1mpix when the source is there and the display does its job ) Everyone says the same thing, THIS DISPLAY IS SWEET Now lets see some 2k and 4k movie production for this stuff. 1440p and QUAD HD. OMFG. Great for landscapes but i would NOT want to see Hillary Clinton up close and QUAD HD.

Q&A on HD1080i

2008-01-07T21:12:00.000-08:00

Before i get back to industry reporting and How-to stuff usually found here, i will respond to a few questions that come our way...this is an aggregate of typical incoming stuff from out there.

1) Does Plasma HD have a Burn-in or image retention problem to worry about?

-- These days the answer in general would be no, plasma burn in ... typically a lower left station logo for example ... is no longer an issue. Manufacturers have resolved this , and most systems have a mode to refresh the displlay should you suspect it has become uneven in places. ( sometimes not available to the remote but in a maintenance mode menu for techicians ). It is important to know however that each Red Green Blue plasma pixel cell is really in a low power on-state whenever the Plasma Monitor is turned on, and this very low output required "ready-state" is complex to manage. I suggest seeing an in-store demo of the new Pioneer KURO line of Plasma 1080p displays. You will be convinced that the state of the art in plasma is here now and affordable with outstanding brightness, contrast and blacklevel. Always ASK questions.

2) How can i hook up my Computer to my HDTV?

-- I really get this alot. Short answer is that you need a great video card, and it must have enough video ram in it to support an HD resolution. nVidia PureVideo in everything from the GT7600 on up has this and cards made recently also have TV mode menus in the driver packages. The general case:

A) Your HDTV has a DVI / hdmi input and it is an LCD display. ( most all do that )
B) Your computer has a graphics card in it that has a DVI output.
Reference - http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html
C) A nice long DVI cable and a wireless Keyboard and mouse.

DVI is that large connector with a lot of pins:

This card is the 7600 and it runs 2 displays, so when its time for the TV room -- plug the TV in as display #2 and its all good from there. The right click on your desktop, select properties
( shown below is for my dual card 3 monitor array )

The nVidia "nView" drivers detected the Westinghouse 1080p display right away- very easy, listed as the LVM 37w3 ( same ID as the MFG item# and manual ) i didnt have to do anything.

It is important to note that DVI cables are thick and clunky and past 50 feet in length can be a problem. My advice is to save some money to buy longer cables by going to Bluejean Cables:
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/dvi-cables/index.htm
They also offer DVI to HDMI cable adapters and DVI to VGA. Basically a one stop shop to hookup your PC to a HDTV.

If you have windows XP or Vista and an nVidia GeForce 7600 or better, then you basically are already HDTV ready.

There are lots of caveats. the worst one is the older 1366 x 768 displays. You may find that the only decent looking outcome is 1280 x 768 which doesnt fill the screen, but looks ok. However newer 1366 displays and nVidia equipped computers ( including laptops ) can handle this just fine. I am informed by ( User 1366-4-life) that "the R series Samsungs has a special DVI option when using HDMI socket 2. What this means is that my laptop is able to scale any output to exactly 1366x768. So I get 1to1 pixel mapping. " Sweet. thanks for that. You may need a DVI to HDMI adapter mentioned above, and its all good. I have seen Apple laptops just plug in and play right away to a 1366 display also.

-- why do i not mention VGA inputs? Basically they so often come out crappy looking and you will be dissapointed, i no longer reccommend that.
read my archive on that http://hd1080i.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html

All that said... you will really love what you can do and share when you have a HD screen hooked up to your computer. Photo Galleries and slideshows of your digital camera are STUNNING. HDTV 1080 display of your pictures will become the option of choice, great at parties, since you can shoot and share literally in moments.

Direct X10 games will blow you away, nVidia 8800 has all the goodies in it to do impossibly fast rendering of huge game scenes. Online game worlds are usually capable of large screen display, but your internet connection may well be maxed out with data flow in a large depth high res mode. ( some call this "lag" )

Your DVD collection played through your computer may well look alot better also, possibly better than the DVD player you have now, since progressive conversion of de-interlacing is inherent in the code and nVidia Purevideo engine.

3) Are Rear Projection displays a maintenance hassle due to projection bulb life?

-- This answer would be YES ... However the solution is buy with a preventive maintenance program that often costs an added amount, RP systems like Sony's XBR and DLP from various sources are a good bang for the buck. They Look Great.

You get a bigger display area for less money and often the Rear Projection design is very compact such that the display is not a lot deeper than a true flatpanel LCD or Plasma. When making a purchase decision here, be sure to allways buy the maintenance program that has a technician come to your house and replace the bulb and re-validate color, as part of the price. Renewable 3 or 5-year plans make sense, dont buy an RP without one.

( Note - we get alot of comments and we dont post them often since it seems a lot of people put personal contact info in them, which is nice and we have a lot of new friends from that, but we restrain from publishing contact info here )

New Years Resolution : 1080

2007-12-27T09:29:00.001-08:00

Once again we look back and look ahead, here you go with an insider's rant.

And Yet Again we will say YOUR NEW YEARS RESOLUTION IS 1080. Why? because that is the broadcast standard and name of our domain: HD 1080i. Finally the thought that interlace delivery of 29.97 frames per second 1920 x 1080 doesnt have to be full frame progressive to be perfect, and the performances on many cable and dish more than amply proved the technology is solid and here to stay for a long time to come.

2007
...was a great year for HD in general - new channels that had been sitting "in the can" so to speak were rolled out widely, INHD re-morphed into MOJO HD ( a personal fave for us here ), MHD hit Comcast ( thats HD MTV and its very clean crisp work )... SCRIPPS negotiated a full lineup of HD for HGTV and FOOD network ( all good ) and UHD ( universal ) is doing a great job. KUDOS however only go to DISCOVERY HD and NGO ( National Geographic ) for pristine 1080 performances and superb content quality. We were hoping to RSS aggregate schedules for HD but that is not yet there on the supply side, so keep an eye out for it.

ESPN HD as always... super.

A note to the 1366x768 crowd... do not worry that you have an inferior display, its probably fine, but jump on the upgrade path offerings that will provide trade-ins coming in 2008. ( sorry i cant spill the beans on who is prepping the clever 1080p upgrade markteing, but it is coming ) I will probably no longer speak to the VHS/1366 stuff in 2008, and anything not 16:9 widescreen is basically old news.

WINTER 2008 Pricedrop season.

If you didnt get a nice big flatscreen under the tree, you probably are among the smarter of the population, since DLP and most all Rear Projection systems will see a massive price drop and the large $999 HDTV will be within reach as a very good bang for the buck,... LCD sizes increase and price competitive economy of scale kicks into full gear. We will list our picks for you.

HD and look of large.

HD 1080 is a different world to videographers, and a happy place for Film producers... why?

In the old days of TV the image was so blurry that facial details were generally only visible in very close shots, in HD very close shooting is way too much detail usually. I sort of feel sorry for Hillary Clinton because she really cant take an HD closeup without looking rather scary, and it will happen in the coming elections as camera operators defy producer guidance and zoom in when they should not, old habits will be hard to break, and hard to take in HD. Yikes. Benefits of HD definitely goes to Mitt Romney who really looks presidential in closeup HD ( scary thought, but true )

TMFD. a new term for you.

New Technology that extracts from noise reduction filtering is already in use on News Channel HD, Smooths the skin tone color table but makes for rather plastic cheeks unless you are very good at it on the news anchors of the business, but its getting more tuned all the time. I am guilty of employing this myself in post production, since all i have to do is draw a box around the area of the image i want filtered and the rest is automated for me, no more stray hairy zit blemish wrinkle farm whatever... Temporal fNoise Filtering tools are rather cool and rescue the situation of what i will now call TMFD. ( Too Much Facial Detail )

Sorry Conan, but you should be the first to start really using this.

Another comment - does Makeup fix the problems? In Short, yes it can , but at $250/hr for quality makeup vs just clicking in Post Production... the producers will migrate to the digital solution and instruct the make-up poeple to use color standards that favor the "fix in post"

HD-DVD

Anyhow, enough tech rant - whats in it for you? HD-DVD for one thing, its pricing and performance is just too damn good, there is not enough difference between Blu-ray and HD to merit a larger price for the Blu-ray. You will see $99 HD-DVD players in 2008 - they may not be really great in some ways but they will enable the masses who also chose to buy the $999 widescreen. That said, i still really like the Disney stuff for its high action clean look Blu-ray work, it really is state of the art, but its current economics just dont really favor middle america all that well. http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/hddvd/ Kind of caters to the Sci-Fi side, what with a toy Phaser gun universal remote, if only it could zap-away the crappy enforced trailers in the DVD.

SHAMELESS PLUG:
http://cpmotionpictures.com/ "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead" getting Nominated!

More in a bit and HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Happy Holidays

2007-12-20T10:59:00.000-08:00

HD Virtual 1080

2007-12-02T12:15:00.000-08:00

Among other things besides HD cable and DVD, there are other full screen 1920x1080 places to go and visuals to get, live and interactive for those who have a computer attached to a DVI input capable HD monitor.

Firstly and foremost, you need a powerful graphics card, nVidia 7600gt is a great bang for the buck there, and my system is a dualcore 3ghz connected to verizon FIOS, so my interaction is quite good.

SecondLife

Normally i have some measure of disdain for virual worlds and the addicted virtual user, but Second life has attracted a lot of talented graphics artists and the newest rendering engines make this worth a diversionary moment or 2 just to look at. Therefore, each thumbnail below links to a 1920x1080 screen snapshot so that you can see also.

This is Arcadia - a floating tudor village

This is Arcadia - my avatar in the street

I get about 29 frames per second update speed from mouse moves that change the full screen, and zooming into a location always produces more detail and things to see and do. This is basically an interactive solids modeling system where users provide the texture maps for the solid model primitives, cube, sphere, cone, cylinder etc. The rendering engine is called Windlight and since it runs on your computer, only changes to the world data are sent. That can mean a lot of new data when the screen is full of other people walking around.

A garden enviromnet with flowing water and waving tree leaves.

The tessellation ( polygon density ) of the modeing is quite accurate, so zooms into detail are generally rewarded with an image in greater detail, except for inserted video which is streamed off other servers and is mapped in quicktime.

my Avatar looking at my video edit of the Area 51 Midway ad- in quicktime on virtual HD screens - Click for the video itself

... expect to waste a couple of hours at least ... but it is free and HD capable.
http://www.secondlife.com/

If you have wireless Keyboard and Mouse, then this is wonderful exploration, provided you stay in locations that are well crafted, everything you see in HD will look great. Since the "teleport" function can lead to rather excplicit mature environments, it is expected that users are over 18.

Hit the PageUp key and your avatar can fly like superman through the scenery, chat with other users in real-time. The virtual Day-Night cycles provide rather stunning lighting in the Windlight viewer, almost to the point where a virtual set could be made to angle and light a movie set in pre-production mode if so-inclined... and i will make an HD video of some travel inside this virtual modeling space. The architectural experimentation alone is worth the effort, and results are immediate, lighting control and surface textures rival today's videogames.

CBS and Cisco are already big into this ( and Sony BMG which is usually empty and abandoned, with concert stages and music video, whatever)
Visit -- http://alpha.cbs.com/primetime/csi_ny/second_life/
They have a virtual New York City already built. No kidding- look at thier video. CSI:NY is in Second Life, talk about convergence, virtual greeters... solve a crime or something.

1080 at 120hz - enabling tech

2007-11-12T06:02:00.000-08:00

120HZ? twice the speed you need..,?

Take the 120hz refresh rate HD1080 displays currently offered, marketing themselves as "better" for sports viewers. This is a bit nuts since all broadcast HD is 1080i meaning interlaced frames at a full frame display of 30 ( actually 29.97 ) frames per second. If you have a flatpanel display this means it gets 1/2 of the lines it needs to make an emage each 1/60th of a second, the other half in the next 1/60th of a second. What most people dont get is that this makes for a "temporal arrival" of 1/2 of the frame content each 1/60th of a second, and therefore the firmware can in fact produce a complete image every next 1/60th of a second by incrementally performing adaptive de-interlacing in its buffers. The best display therefore is 60hz frame rates from reconsctructed data incrementally getting half its frame ( every other line ) on a continuous basis.

Flat = Progressive.
If you have an LCD/DLP,Plasma whatever HD system then your best display rate is 60 frames for each second, or 60 hertz (60hz), since all flatpanels are really computers with frame buffers that can only display a completed full image at some display rate.

Its that computing power that amazes me, and this is part of what 120 hz is cool that is not self-evident unless you are an HD content editor shooter & producer (me)... mostly due to the fact that you wont see the situation for all that it is unless you work with HD cams and editing and have the stuff it takes. ( the wife calls it "wires and junk" but i call it "cool" )

DELAY TIME - what you see is what came in .267 seconds ago.

What you see on your HD screen is delayed by the processing time it takes to build a frame, some systems are slow and the frame processing is evident ( when i connect my HD camera and look at the LCD in the cam and the HD display at the same time i can see the lag time on the HD screen ) Why does this lag time matter? Well it really doesnt, if you are watching sports like a couch potato, you are basically absorbing stream data and not interacting with it. zzzzz... i know that sounds a bit techbabble but thats what it is, 120hz refresh is basically lots of processing headroom in the display and it will deliver a better image when a better image is what is coming into it.

So for you sports fans, 120hz frame rate screen refresh is of minor esoteric consequence in wanting HD sports that only changes its frame content at 60hz anyhow, granted its a bit smoother... but unless you are side-by-side comparing slow and fast screens, you really dont much see the kick any differently. HD1080i is what you get and what there is and thats 29.97 frames per second.

120HZ HD for Interaction.

120hz matters when you have a superpowerful HD system you must interact with, and the response time should be instant through the entire path of processing, no lag , no delay, very fast. Something the Ps3 promises and should be able to do, sometime in the very near future... ( not today though ).

DIMENSIONAL VISION and PLAY

Real Depth -- Here is where 120hz displays can do stuff that no other system could do. 3-D ocular managed stereovision fully dimensional rendering and processing. wow cool what the hell is that...? Basically Stereo vision from a single source, same scene shown from 2 angles, in computing CGI this is really getting the bang for the buck in 3-space modeling... in the delivery though its been all but flickery and clunky unless things are HD and very fast.

For a proper 3D system to work, it should produce a different frame for each eye. Good ones do that at 60 times a second. At 120 hz refresh you now can show each eye its own frame sort of. Since human retinal latency is what it is ( image persistence in your vision ) 60hz flicker looks like constant light. By way of example, flourescent lights blink at 60hz and if your retinal latency was really fast, you would realize that those bulbs actually flicker a bit (bulb phosphors smooth that out but thats what it is ) with a 1/60th of a second full on-time. Old CRT tubes are the same. Ok Mr Wizzard....wave your hand quickly in front of an old tube TV screen and you will see the strobe effect. Take it for granted...Movie theaters are 24 frames per second, and we are used to that also, brighter images last longer in retinal latency so its all good. Go see an IMAX 3D and you will for sure know what all this babble is about. Just ignore the bad eyewear.

It doesnt have to be this ugly - the goggles were IMAX toying with the new film "deep"

I have no clue who that girl is.

120 hz speed of refresh lets us basically enable 3-d at HD resolutions for smooth display of each eye at 60hz, and its how the next generation of dimensional game interaction is possible, and you can do things no IMAX camera can do. Get drastic, think maximum immersion. Blow your mind a bit with stereo cgi. If you see this stuff for even a few seconds your mind will be forever altered.

Ideally a video game is an interactive movie ( actually both, watch play machinimation, i like video games to be movies since the story-telling is a powerful form of engagement) The Smart Money is on those people -- Gamers and Movie makers -- that understand Video Game worlds and take everything a step further.

TRUE HD vs UPconverted.

2007-10-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

"True HD" (OP-Ed)

Oh my god... i'll bet everyone thought HD was HD, started to realize it was NOT, and searched to find HD1080i... we get a lot of search string hits here.

For one thing... Almost without exception the actual broadcast video transport stream you get from DISH or Cable source, into your Set Top Box or DVR and out to your TV, is HD1080i. Think of it more as a delivery tactic than as anything else, it is an MPEG ( 2 or 4 ) compression convention for digital video. That resolution for a fully displayed frame is 1920 x 1080 pixels, regardless of the source or of the display monitor or TV you may have.

Here is the rub... some DISH and a lot of cable broadcast content at this moment is NOT HD, it is Upconverted or telecine converted from a lesser resolution format, and that is ok sometimes, but really a slap in face most of the time. You Paid for HD channels but you are getting whatever thay want to send out ( or the best they have at the moment ) In fact it would seem people are proudly displaying the letters HD everywhere they can regardless of whether or not HD 1080 was the source. So be it, things are improving every day... we are watching you....

Fotunately some stations are admitting when they are NOT boradcasting HD to an HD channel, and you may find that listed as OAR UPCONVERSION... ( with no explanation )

OAR = Original Aspect Ratio. This can mean movie theater wide - an Academy format widescreen movie usually a bit over 2 times wider than it is tall in the frame, making a black band at the top and at the bottom even on a widescreen TV.

UPCONVERSION means they scaled it from a lesser resolution to HD1080 before broadcasting it. I am grateful for when a channel listing identifies this for me so i know what to expect, and sometimes the picture is ok enough that its all good, sometimes not. The black and white Fellini stuff looks real nice though.

If you have a 1366 x 768 display then you probably dont notice the "softer" image quality of an upscaled 1080 since your display promptly down scales it from 1920 to 1366 wide before you see it anyhow. In my opinion ALL HD looks rather good and about the same on a 1366 display.

Personally i prefer true 1080 hd, like HDNET and DISCOVERY HD, even though after a while I cant take repltiles and landscapes, bodyparts and nature goo, i watch just because it looks so damn nice. 2 words. planet earth. well worth setting aside time to watch this.

Most often though the upscaling we prefer here is done by an OPPO or my own computer, and better than cable provider upscaling, and my displays have Faroudja in the chipsets anyhow.

NOT HD but is a higher definition 1440 x 1080 (spoof frame displayed as example)

Some UPSCALING is done to create a SQUARE 4:3 non-widescreen HD equivalent ( 1440 x 1080 ) and then that is sent to a broadcast box that converts to a 1920 x 1080i formatted display frame with black "pillar box" sides to it. I have to repeat my issue with this because there is currently a surge of that going on in supposed HD lineups, basically a big square image. They sort of get away with it since many studio cameras are very very good, some are 1440 and scaling direct out of the camera looks pretty good for a talking head news show.. it isnt True HD, but it is 1080 pixels high.

Am I harping on this issue? Riding that Horse into the ground...

YES.

This "We just launched a lot of NEW HD CHANNELS" noise is NOT living up to the marketing hype, ( at this moment anyhow ) we know it and it is NOT WORTH paying extra to get a package full of that. I still prefer the OnDemand HD quality over most of the packaged bundles... And COMCAST .. put HDNET BACK into the channel line up i paid for. There are still only a couple dozen decent HD channels, and even then only a handfull or 2 that actually show HD content at any given time.

HD Resolutions: 1440, 1366x768 and 1080i broadcasting

2007-09-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

Wide screen and the old CRT square screen...

1) FOX and ABC HD is square with black rectangles to each side. how is this HD?

This is called HD Pillarbox. Basically its is SQUARE HD, as in not widescreen.

-- there is a burgeoning 3rd display resolution of 1440 wide image in a 1920x1080i broadcast.

Almost all hd broadcast is 1080i. for standard 4:3 TV content which is not widescreen 16:9, some channels are 1080 in a 4:3 format. simple math e.g.

1080 * 4/3 = 1440 wide image is a 1080i broadcast (square image)
1080 * 16/9 = 1920 wide image is widescreen HD broadcast.

Sometimes this is generated HD, upscaled from quality STD definition source by a special device used to create the claim that HD is being delivered. The old days of 720p broadcasting claims are dissappearing, replaced by this format. It matters, since to many people a wide screen is what they bought and wide image HD is what they want. I dont not consider this a valid HD outcome, but it allows for simulcast Standard def and HD without having 2 formats to produce, and cost 2 times as much as a result.

The other issue is that analog 4:3 STD definition uses a non-square pixel shape, .9091 : 1 to be exact. Most people dont know this. Analog nonsquare pixels , converted from analog to digital pixel conversions to digital square pixels are issues handled by production people. This should be transparent to average user, but it does in fact make you look 10lbs heavier on screen. ( a bit wider so to speak )

2) WHY is there 1366 x 768 HD display resolution? "I just got a great deal on my flatpanel and now i'm reading that its not really HD, and the picture is fuzzy."

We get this way too much. More than half the search strings in are weblogs read like this. Basically it costs less and thats why you pay less for the 1366 displays. It isnt a bad thing, and if your eyesight is not eagle sharp 20-20 perfect, then you may well be quite happy with that for years to come. Almost all manufacturers now make displays with well crafted scaling engines for placing 1080i (1920 x 1080 ) sources into a 1366 x 768 screens, looks great since the incoming 2 mpix of data is way more data than the 1 megapixel of the display.

The fuzzy picture may well be the source and not the display. A lot of broadcast TV is STD definition and inherently fuzzy to begin with. Spreading that out over a larger area only makes the fuzziness larger also.

Advice:

The biggest problems are when you attempt to connect a computer to a VGA input of a 1366 x 768 display. I have a whole post on that, it has lots of complex issues, but it usually can be done, and if you read the manuals many have a 1280x768 mode that wont fill the screen but will work. In some cases its worth asking the store before you buy, what VGA modes does this tv support? If you can , upgrade your computer to have DVI output and get a TV with a DVI input.
For me that is the nVidia 7600 GT graphics card and a westinghouse digital 1080p

Read http://hd1080i.blogspot.com/2006/12/1080i-on-1366x768-resolution-problems.html

If you have a 1366 x 768 display then dont bother to buy an HD-DVD or Blu-ray, and get an OPPO upscaling DVDplayer instead. It will look great and you will be happy with that at a much lower cost.

NOTE: We Don't post all comments since those that want responses directly leave email addresses in them that should not be made public and open to spammers.... I got a few comments that indicate some readers are in fact fully aware of these resolution situations and Overscan, safe area in 4:3 STD NTSC and Variations in Color Gamut. Thanks - you guys are great and i will post more on each area.

Analog And Cable Cutoff

2007-09-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

So it would seem, the FCC has issued yet another mandate, cable ubiquity being what it is, to sustain analog transmission ( of exactly what... who knows ) untill 2012. This Paves the way for yet more fuzzy definition of when all digital broadcast really fully takes over. The FCC has also not yet fully determined if the 22mhz available band around 700mhz frequency that is freed up by over the air analog switchoff, will in fact get allocated for wireless broadband. Google wants it, Verizon doesnt want them to have it.

In other newness, LG and best buy have struck a deal on some LG brand HD offerings and i say that this is great news, go take a look, there is nothing quite like seeing and believing.

Closer to my livingroom news... NO DAN RATHER because there is NO HDNET on Comcast is now in its 2nd week here at HD1080i and we are just as pissed about that now as ever before. To Unceremoniously pull an HD channel and not even offer it as a paid options is giving us issues. Note that Comcast is part of the ever so happy AOL family. meh. color me underwhelmed with the HD i get here on cable.

COMCAST - ick. A model CRM in puppetry.

2007-09-08T19:07:00.000-07:00

Pay more and get less. Its Comcastic!

I cannot find HDNet in my Comcast Channel Lineup.

HUH? HDnet's Sports, World Report, Katie, Dan Rather and Pinfield and damn it all... i want my HDnet. Where did it go? Apparently I was late to this party, our local cable system was just acquired from Adelphia by Comcast, and it took time for the effect of that to impact my area. HDnet was no longer in my channel lineup... So i Looked around for info and found the biggest slap to sensibility...
is comcast itself.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER FEEL LIKE A PUPPET
no kidding - this is really out there and its at http://www.comcastic.com/

By "Out There" i mean whacko - I looked around, found a logged-in panel indicating nobody-home-here ... Zero users. Its actually kind of odd, spooky and off-topic wierd, showcasing flash interaction and totally without video, however you can make the puppet jump around and record a message.

Marketing Paradigms define the expected demographic audience.
I cannot believe that some moron would think that a flash puppet and spooky music is even appropriate for a COMCASTIC sales message. Right, dont just treat your customer like a mindless puppet, may as well prove your comittment to insult by providing a puppet buddy to play with instead of having a nice robust offering for your HD SUBSCRIBERS (read: Me ) THAT PAY A PREMIUM to see 1080 tv in HD. They must think we are all mindless children. This is so bizzarre on such a fundamental level that i have to wonder what drugs the marketing people are on.... Possibly the reason this impossibly stupid paradigm for Customer Relations is still there, is that they are now all in rehab and not working at thier desks.

READS:
http://nationalwriterssyndicate.com/content/view/192/2/
http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/story/263760.html

I checked around. There has been a petition to bring HDnet back to Comcast lineups. http://www.petitiononline.com/comcast1/petition.html

Normally i do not Rant like this, I have to be pushed. I guess COMCAST behavior this year is what it takes. QUALITY of Service is another irksome Comcast issue.

COMCAST macroblock errors.

Above is a flash video i made of my Comcast Connection. Click play and move the slider. Happens too often, is probably C/O load or thier own crappy satellite downlink. I will bet you thought cable meant clean link down a wire? NO. your Central Office that is likely less than 10 miles away probaly got its feed from a satellite, fed it to you down your TV co-ax into a modem. DISH / DIRECT TV network should tell you that, your cable TV probably comes from a satellite, but i guess they dont have the stomach for a good solid infomercial.

The Comcast HD Lineup here is not great. I will not go into a line-by-line bashing but if Discovery and ESPN and MOJOHD are the only clean HD they have, then they do not care about HD. I do not want to pay for all that wannabe-but-not HD programming REAL HD only please. Comcast, losing HDnet was the final Straw.

-- just got an email from Mark Cuban ( thanks )
- -HDNet is talking to Comcast and hopefully will sort things out, since i want HDNet Movies and HDNet's World Report and The Dan Rather stuff back where it was in the channels i paid for and expected to get.

- FIOS TV has HDnet and i have signed up, I am told my rollout is in a few weeks, and i will have to wait.

Partial Listing of HD on FIOS includes:

TNT HD - ESPN HD - ESPN 2 HD - NFL Network HD - HD Net - HD Net Movies
Universal HD - Discovery HD - Wealth TV HD - National Geographic Channel HD
MHD - Food Network HD - HGTV HD - Lifetime Movie Network HD

Lighting the room for HDTV

2007-08-31T07:29:00.000-07:00

PHILLIPS AMBILIGHT
This comfort illumination approach actually works, but you need to attend to placement carefully, since backlighting the display will express every imperfection of a poor wall paintjob. Symmetry for this type of treatment matters, properly done there is proportional open wall space on all sides. I like the approach and its well suited for those that do not desire the HD screen to be so large as to take over the look of the room when its not in use, and conversely, totally invest its presence in the room when its in use. For a room with white/offwhite larger uncluttered walls, this is ideal.

AUREA
http://www.aurea.philips.com/
See this and you will get the idea that generation 2 has some new ambient lighting features, with a full spectrum variable lighting capability. Make big seem bigger is the thinking , but when you see a movie with this, the difference between dark scenes and bright explosive high action scenes is furiously dramatic. This display should probably be installed by a professional with experience and the ability to hide all wiring for maximum value of wall mounting. For a freshly designed living space with a new wall paintjob, this Phillips product has the makings of a distinctive must-see option to consider. ( read: we do not own one, but we want one )

SIZE
If your room has that clean scandanavian look like one of mine does, ( White/ Teak ) then this kind of display is stunning to consider, thinking that the HD screen is the source of nearly all light in the room when its on.

For a 1080p owner with an HD-DVD or Blu-ray player its really common to see people putting chairs at about 10 feet or less to the screen, its more detail immersive, and for us, its the ideal distance for game playing with the Wii. However many people have unmovable couches or room layouts that do not have chair placement fexibility. Hence a 42" screen is not as big of a feel to the room when its in use. Ambient lighting does make it seem larger, but at this time, its my opinion that 25-30 foot rooms can contain a 50-70" display without having a big black square occupy much attention when not in use. The Aurea is likely a perfect canditate for apartment dwelling people who desire their space to feel totally different during movie and tv watching experiences. It is designed for that, and when its on it will own the room, make you forget where you are.

Note: that Big is Good, and the 50" market is very strong. You can get an SXRD 50" for $1999 at 1080p and a very very strong picture intensity that suits all lighting conditions.

DAY NIGHT
There are a couple different ways in general for a flat panel system to present itself in a room, split to Day and Night basically. Since most TV and Movie viewing is an evening light condition, the lighting in the room is under your control. lighting the wallspace to the left and right is good for keeping the room usable, a dimmer is a good idea for that if you have std incandescent. We dont, since our Green Thinking pushes the flourescent bulb that doesnt do dimming. For such a situation, lighting behind a planter that indirectly illuminates is quite good.

HD-DVD & Paramount

2007-08-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

Paramount shook up the marketspace a bit by indicating a refreshed 18 month deal to do distribution in the HD-DVD format, that made some news.

People do not get that a big supply-side quagmire was caused in part by a Blue Laser shortage by supplier and patent holder http://www.nichia.com/ . Just look at the press, its all about lawsuits to firms trying to supply the gap. The "shortage" due to mfg yield and across the board costs did some 2006 damage, and revised deals, hammered Sony... on and on. The muck of all that is drying up now, enough for larger players to walk on anyhow, and this is making way for china and korea to push out mass market items.

Hence the $199 HD-DVD player is coming soon (A2 = $229 ) to a store near you. This is the price-point in my opinion that enables a critical mass of players, and therefore a demand curve for HD-DVD. Although its kind of a shame in a way that the PS3 and its player brethren did not gather more player coverage in HDTV equipped homes, it was in a way predictable that game engines would be purchase justified for media playabiliy and then in actual practice used mostly for games.

Here is the real rub in all that. VC-1 codec on HD-DVD is just too damn good, it has no filesize bloat for quality, so blu-ray claims of more storage area just doesnt hold water or matter, since it is not needed in a VC-1 authored 1080p. Although i have not got a fully produced VC-1 longform in house, i have made enough 1080p VC-1 to say without a doubt that 25 gigs is plenty enough. And to make matters worse for percieved price performance, my focus group could not tell any difference in the play of either HD-DVD or Blu-ray format for quality of image presented.

So... has Paramount pushed the HD-DVD adoption path? Perhaps, but really its more like they are following the smart road that is already there, with the coming season of inexpensive HD-DVD player availability, and the benefits of packaging that deal with some of thier titles.

Are HD-DVD's being ripped and burned into market by those scummy little copycat replication houses selling knockoff copies of HD movies? Not really. No impact from crackable DRM at this time, no issues with 2gig segment-splits or downloads of feature full length films either. All that noise was from a small crowd to a small crowd. Mom and pop middle-america has no interest in hacker antics or in massive downloading. They just want to see a movie, have it on a $199 player, and pay 25 bucks to own it. Merry christmas to whomever supplies that to them.

We do Ad-hoc stuff based on interviews. Anecdotal reactions:

Is there any such thing as format or brand loyalty? Sorry , focus group responses are near zero brand-centric. They are price-performance and content-centric at a 90% confidence level across all demographics. Blr-ray claims of better in the eyes of the customer doesnt seem to matter to actual real people confronted with a choice... hence the choice is a filter: can i take this home and play it?

Technology responses were:
NO tech issues or need for tech awareness.
http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com/ Click on HD-DVD interactivity on the left.
The groups as a whole didnt care much about the "extras". The size of the Pause and Play buttons mattered. Biggest gripes: enforced trailer play at load, universally hated. ...when in the mood for action thriller, they dont want a face full of chickflick or shrek.

A crappy movie story in pristine 1080p will not compete with a slightly fuzzy broadcast copy shown in a 720p plasma screen of a great filmwork. Good news for the great feature film biggies, since interest in well produced bigbudget stuff is very high, they still rule even when the box office is also the local bestbuy & wallmarty shelf-space, refreshing the demand for HD format re-releases. Some offers are actually pretty good.
http://thelookandsoundofperfect.com/_pdf/perfectoffer_advert.pdf

Bottom line of the moment seems to be ease of use, availability and pricepoint.

Fore me personally, I love the "extras" and rich feature-set. I would like a really good slo-mo option, not all players seem to manage that.

The Blu-ray camp has to get off the highhorse here and stop being so self-absorbed, see the pricepoint situation unfolding and cost-enable the distribution. In all honesty the Paramount thing is just a case of being smart in the moment, and not as a tech thing at all, its in the numbers on main street america. People arent going to go HD-DVD because of paramount, they will be looking at Paramount films because the player has the right price and it had a couple of thier films bundled in the brick-and-mortar holiday deals.

Once the high-end geekweenies and techsavvy market-buys approach saturation (soon like about now actually), the paradigm shift to mid-upper class buy-patterns will clobber all the crap decision-making that got a nod in last years boardrooms. All that self-serving attitude will dissappear with the bottom line. Anyone who has not re-written the margin profile for a line item or product will be in trouble. Know this for sure ... marketing quality will be the means to the next moves, and content producers should be the winners in the next round.

This is JOOST for you

2007-08-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

The Venice project (Baaima N.V.) of a time gone by has been on my watch list since day 1. Now its called JOOST. It is IPTV to your computer, through the web, hassle free. If there is any DRM in it, it is user-transparent. Its fun. So its not HD yet, but at the moment i cant write alot about HD content since there is such a short supply of it. Its basically 800x600 but scales nicely.

I fully expect these IPTV types to offer an HD premium service for the likes of me at some point, so i pay attention to whatever is out there that actually works.

http://www.joost.com/

.... go there and download it, its fast and free.

If you need an "invite" token because of locale or circumstance, click the button to the left, because you should see it. I recommend that you have a good internet connection that does 800kbps or so and a nice big screen, nVidia 7600GT DVI.

I have tested nearly all the download and on-demand players out there, even the ones that make you pay before they prove anything to you ( or fail miserably with windows DRM errors ). I know this stuff well now. I have followed Joost since day 1 and it stands out as the easy best-of in every regard... hence Joost is the top of my I Like This Stuff list.

Sci-fi, the brilliant lunacy of LEXX, it is a click away.There are dozens and dozens of categories though must be a few thousand videos, movies shows and whatall stuff in there. Check out LX.TV also, my pals in NYC doing a great job there.

Note - Broadcast TV digital resolution is actually a bit LESS than the resolution delivered by JOOST, so if you play this full screen on an HD TV you will quickly forget you are on a web connection. Someone in the room tried to use the TV remote to turn up the volume... (chuckle) it took a couple of minutes to realize that the sound control was on the PC connected to it. There's your proof.

See a Brightcove Stream by ALL Things Digital with JOOST:

ON DEMAND web delivered tv is here its better than much of what cable is doing right now ( though i expect that to change- Comcast has started loading up its free on-demand library with fresh stuff )

There are caveats. They have great deals with high quality distribution like Warner and National Geographic, but those licenses are regionalized, meaning you dont get everything available globally just yet. Its just my humbe opinion, but if you are aware enough of what the state of the art is you will find JOOST heading there at every turn. You Tube proved that first-to-market is not required for critical mass acceptance ( take that AOL, Yahoo etc ), just make it easy and fun and it will get there by word of mouth, and social network adoption. Click the Invite, go for it. - Ad delivery is lower right of screen in a small clickable, and segement interstitials that generally are less than 30 seconds. Go Army, Nike, no problems with that.

Compression artifacts seem to come and go in the video quality, the stereo sound is generally excellent. Buried inside Joost code is all kinds of special extras, some are turned on, that can let you chat, there is a Speex codec in there so i'm guessing the future holds a lot of connected multimedia social features. Personally i would like to see something like playlist bookmark because there is so much stuff in there i would like to quickly get back at another session.

SIXX AM

2007-08-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

CRASH MANSION LA - Stage Video
we had to wait for August 22d, after the CD is released.
Ok so it isnt really great HD quality, the audio kind of blown out and its a very edgy edit of live stuff ( my style for such stuff is to feel raw with it ) , so with caveats galore,

DOWNLOAD a 90 meg 720p VC-1 file

of "Van Nuys" Live by SIXX AM Live at Crash Mansion in downtown Los Angeles

If you click the picture it may launch the windows media player and attempt to stream. If you are able to get a stream from this, then add comment & tell me - i have a beta testing position for you in a very cool new thing. ( comments for this post will not be publicly posted, so its ok to leave your email and contact info, thanks )

The bottom end ( subwoofer ) was 10,000 watts and shook both the camera and my eyeballs. The lead singer is James Michael and such a versatile live performance should get credit, (SIXX:A.M.) new band worth following. I was house photo/video for this show & made friends with the band, they are donating 25% of proceeds of a book to Covenant House in LA for runaway kids. Nikki Sixx and Pearl Aday ( meatloaf's daughter ) are featured. They are good people regardless of your opinion of Motley Crue. I save this for documentary reasons since it was the very first song on this stage in a production performance. A virgin moment for Crash Mansion LA

REDUX: thanks to all that know me and asked for a true 1080p VC-1 of this video. I will render it out 1080p 6 mbit vc-1 and send you link by email. The news here is that SIXX AM will not tour this CD, so this footage may well be the only performance video there is. I was hoping they would do at least a small tour so i could multi-camera shoot this properly, but alas, this is not to be.

( Again- thanks to all who renewed my faith in the value of pixel-for-pixel 1080p by contacting me on that. I do very much appreciate that you are out there and care. )

You can read the entire article on the Press Event this came from at National Writers Syndicate.

http://nationalwriterssyndicate.com/content/view/164/2/

MTV Senior Exec Peter Baron - Billboard Mag editor Tamara Conniff - NIKKI SIXX - Jim Richards, Clearchannel Rock Programming ( photo by Jeff )

The Nikki SIXX , SIXX AM event was in support of Covenant House / Running Wild in the Night, a benefit for runaway teenagers in greater Los Angeles & the video was for Crash Mansion LA and benefactors to that cause. On that note, another edgy edit of a song from that event.

Download Pray For Me http://www.hd1080i.com/720p/prayforme1280.wmv

Then DONATE https://secure.ga1.org/05/runningwild thanks

Internet Movie downloads - DRM for the masses

2007-08-14T09:28:00.000-07:00

DRM = CRM without the love.

Digital Rights Management & Customer Relationship Management.

My experience was a total failure in a situation free of human assistance., here are real situations, both involve Windows Media Player DRM deployments by 3rd party movie download vendors, Amazon UNBOX and STARZ: Vongo.

UNBOXED

This all happened on a nice clean auto-update enabled WINXP setup. After buying the clip, it tells me i need a one-time install of a player. Fine... i started clicking, downloading, accepting, nexting and clicking, and yet more this and that... until

Hmmm. Would i like to run system diagnostics?.

No. i want to see my downloaded movie. I wall all good with this unbox right up to the last moment of high expectation that i would see something.

I had to download an application and apparently that was not enough, and now it wants to run amok in my stuff? My suspicions were that it was about to check working codecs in this system and possibly break an otherwize perfectly running setup. I edit HD video and author video from my own camera, i can't have my system develop new problems.

This extra diagnostic to download is all about DRM and preventing me from doing anything i'm not supposed to do or have, without warning me what that might be. Everything I saw was not real helpful about what it will do to me in the process.

So i allowed it to diagnose anyhow, mostly so i could tell you about it, and praying that it wouldnt do something without asking. Well that was a misguided hope. It was not just troubleshooting. It was Patching. Patching WHAT? Stuff that it just downloaded or stuff that was already installed by other applications? It did not report findings and ASK permission. Bad Move. "Diagnose" means find out something. This is what i saw:

Ahem. Troubleshooting?

Eventually after all that, it did a patch to something but it failed anyhow in a forever loop of telling me a DRM problem exists. Click and click and it left me short $2.99 and with a lame link to customer support. In all fairness to Amazon, i stopped there and gave up, even though the system persisted in trying to help me become a happy DRM-enabled Unbox user. Uninstalled that one and ....

I went to the Next One VONGO.
I liked it, but long story short, it failed also with a windows media DRM error.
They didnt warn me that Windows Media was the player, or that 300kbps was the best speed i would get, untill well after the SignUp and Pay Process was completed. Bad Move. So i surfed the interface and picked out a movie. click download. A small popup outside the vongo player was all i got, & that said all my efforts were not going to result in a download. Vongo had an error.
... yet more frustration, i finally resort to asking vongo screens for help...

Apparently the WMP is in need of some unique key or something. The Next screen says click in Internet Explorer only - now i know its vongo relying on Miscrosoft for way too much. If you plan on using Vongo then try this click: ( it should ask for a user / and password )

www.vongo.com/player_check/DrmSample.wmv
.. So i did. WMP pops up.. it is yet another window ...

and Windows Media player refuses to do anything. Clicked The Web Help button...that provides a very cryptic windows web page full of geektalk and error numbers that indicate my sound device is disabled or doesnt work, which is untrue... and identifies a multi-step system check that i would have to do. Apparently it cant deal with my system and i have to technically intervene. If that link above works for you then maybe Vongo will work for you also, but that should have been a test provided right at the start, and now i'm unsubscribing and clicking whatever escape path i can find. * REDUX: Microsoft must have found my article, they removed the geek page it launched. All you get now is "You've encountered error message C00D11B1" ( what can i say - this site gets a lot of reads )

NOT a good user experience at this point. A WINDOWS DRM FAILURE. I suspect that if you have even a tiny issue you are not going to succeed. So i updated yet again my windows Media Player and it says it's fine. Hello? I had planned to report on how the state of Web enabled movie downloads was progressing... but i cant right now, and it cost me 13 bucks to make this report.

End result of DRM encounter... BAD USER EXPERIENCE WITH THE PROCESS. I will not be giving it a second chance or re-attempt the effort since there is so much great stuff elsewhere. Take a lesson you guys, a DRM problem should not result in persistent sequential points of possible failure, AFTER taking all my info and Card, as it did for me. This is a two part sucker punch you do not want any customer to encounter. One Click Fix. work on that one ok?

Know why before you buy.. if you read this then you now know AMAZON UNBOX and VONGO are really WINDOWS DRM , but the technical why is still fuzzy. i will see what i can do.

Other things...

Resolutions: 1680 x 1050 pixel display.
You can get a decent personal sized LCD at 24" or more from BEST BUY for just under 300 bucks at this resolution. So i tried it. Its very good, be sure to have a nice nVidia graphics card, since it's Pure Video chip does a clean enough scaling job for regular DVD and 24p stuff. Played my 720p files very nicely. Played Apple and Windows Media files at both 1080 and 720p just fine. I was suprised, since the next aisle over had an Apple Monitor of the same size for huge #$$ and didnt look any better at all to me. Its the same old story where 1366 at 1 megapixel is less dots than 1680 which is less than 1920 at 2 megapixels. More is better.

FCC and 700mhz.
There is a new wireless option on the horizon.
Cisco and the like, are trying to get some of the freed-up from analog ( 2009 ) 60mhz or so of space in the 700mhz bands for local wifi channels that may well support some HD video speeds & internet service. It can easily do 10 miles line of sight. I Hope the FCC lets it happen, but this is complex, since it requires 2-way unique transmission. Some of this could leapfrog the 3G cell issue. We could all be talking thru the web on skype-like enabled iPhone type devices that can download an HD Movie and play it into the HDTV thru Bluetooth or something similar. Sound like a dream? yup, but it is quite do-able by these players and honestly would become the mobility and convergence we want anyhow. Worth doing for sure, but way down the road.

FIOS.
I cant wait to get the heck off of comcast and on FIOS TV. .. sorry comcast but your comcraptastic compression is so blocky that having a 1920x1080 TV is nearly pointless. May as well look at a 1366 x 768 for all the mpeg2 blocks i see... only ESPN and DISCOVERY / MOJO are clean. Might just be my location.... DIRECT TV claims to be better at HD, launched a new satellite to do it, but they are about equal at the moment for quality ( down the street ).
Saw FIOS TV somewhere else, and it killed me. I MUST HAVE THIS, no-brainer, if its in your area... get it.

PS3 withouthout the "e-motion engine"
My Verdict: the 80gb PS3 is probably the one to want, it actually uses the cell processing to get everything done and the newer system is better. Give Sony some more time, they have a real-time OS ( operating system ) to finish tuning for all this and that takes a lot of effort. I worked an operating system in the past and know that optimized code and process bloats can and do get found and tuned up. Same thing for the Red Ring of Death in the XBOX 360... this too will pass, it's a great gamer engine.

Apple Bytes

2007-06-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

OP/ED

Regarding what to buy on the HD screen in front of you, there is one thing that is now a must-have common requirement that never existed before...

Connection to a computer of some sort. I had expected The XBOX 360 and PS3 to be a powerful conduit, but that is a dream state and not yet a reality of consequence.

Why?

It started as the early adopters fiddled around to get the most out of thier new investment in a big LCD and as nVidia invented itself into what is now a superb graphics solution for HD. But now its become more of an access-point and network relationship of the screen and the devices. Graohics cards with DVI outputs, and basically newer machines created to value add this ability starting about mid summer of 2006.

Although Microsoft saw this coming, the media center has yet to really capture our attention, where the Apple provisioning paradigms are in our faces more and more, and the iTunes Store gains yet more presence in enablement with its simple micropayment on click. Although i have doubts that a lot of Apple TV boxes will be out there, i am sure that the gathering of partners around the iTunes store will become stronger than the FCC or the Cable/ Dish providers ever had considered possible, and Apple will eat their lunch on this one.

The biggest issue here is the silo of each network having its crossection and pricepoint sensitivity... where Comcast and Dish basically still have rather limited HD 720 or 1080i content. you have to be in thier network and trapped into thier packaging to get whatever you can, it is regional, and it is limited.

Apple by persuing the web for distribution breaks all those limits. It bcomes a global touchpoint for whatever it can provision. I think it is hilarious that cable Internet access is being used to download iTunes Video files to play on the HD Screen. In point, Paramount ( those poeple are brilliant BTW ) is likely to offer up some content, at least in 720p, for the iTunes Store, as a "rental" tactic much like a specialzed file life-cycle download that will run for a few days and time out. Why is that a good idea? Because it is what happens. Look at your DVD collection and tell me how many times you saw those movies. By and large the response will be 1 or 2 times.

My preference however is to see the 1hour episodic TV shows that are no longer running.

Babylon 5

If you could get that 1 hr tv show for 2 bucks and it plays well in HD upscale, you will migrate to that solution, and become an On-Demand thinker in the process. If you want to BUY that DVD movie its probably 15 bucks on iTunes and the better deal is at the brick & mortar location of your choice.

I just selected downloaded and played an iTunes video on my hd screen.. here is what i found.

1) The Graphics is in a quicktime window and wants your HD screen to be Screen 1 of your setup. In my multi monitor setup, i had to pull plugs and reconfigure to see the HD 1920 x 1080 monitor as screen 1

2) The quality was as good ( scaling in my 1080p is excellent - firmware matters ) and in many ways better than the so-called HD of my cable provider. Oh My God. that shouldnt be true. But thats what happened.

3) My surround system did not understand the iTunes audio channels, it was stereo, no explanation, but the subwoofer had plenty to work with and i did not feel like i missed much in what i got.

4) All the play and rewind stop and start pause and whatall i that wanted was there. My wireless mouse was all i used. I typed only one thing, and that was the search words, the rest was all click at 15 feet from the stuff while in my comfy chair.

I have a PC, dual core and nVidia 7600 GT card on winXP. Vanilla computer except that the DVI goes to an HD Screen. . . , no MAC anywhere in this room.

To do the same process with comcast and dish, i would have to use the remote and run through a pile of screens to get a list of 20 files. MY Media Center frustrated the heck out of me and i gave up trying to get anything. AOL .. nah. Joost? has stuff but its not yet robust enough in its offerings, i dont see lots of movies i want or TV that i have any interest in. ( however this may change as Universal/GE rolls out content, Viacom adds its runs, and others get on board )

iTunes has more than i could believe, in the thousands, its global and its very easy on me. I am not locked into a provider, i just click, and to be honest about it, i do not care who it is offering the stuff, i just want it there, and if iTunes has it then that is where i will go.

REDUX... Sept 1 '07
It appears that HD is just not in the cards for iTunes just yet, its really not able to produce a strong content showing ... NBC and Universal Media Group ( big ) have decided not to renew contracts for episodic releases and by December 07 it seems the Apple TV and iTunes provisioning will be rather crippled for good stuff as a result. I believe in the Apple effort, but its just not in the cards right now, maybe later.

There is now a push out there for these content owners to have thier own catalogs in their own download and on-demand systems and websites, so expect to see everyone in on it for PC to TV in 2008. Paramount has a decent hookup for that and its working well.

MYTH BUSTING #2 1080p displays

2007-05-13T15:51:00.000-07:00

-- so much old info is still out there, that we feel compelled to do some ...

MYTH BUSTING 1080 - #2

Myth: 1080p Displays are too expensive.

Back in the day, just a couple years ago, there were not a lot of 1080p capable displays available, and those that were in the stores were priced around $5,000 on up. Typical was the Plasma display for 8-10k, and out of reach for most HD buyers who could not equate a TV / home theater to the price of a decent used car.

Those days are gone and prices are more reasonable. 37-50" widescreen flatpanel displays are about right for most living areas, and 1080 display accuracy is now available for well under $2000.

There are basically 3 techonologies that do well in the 1080 display category, LCD , Rear Projection (SXRD,DLP) and Plasma. ... this topic will address the up to 50" 1080p world of Full HD 1080.

LCD 1080p.
By a wide margin of acceptance, LCD leads the 1080p marketspace. This is partly due to companies like Westinghouse Digital that have prices well under $2500 for thier 1080p screens. Line brands like Sony XBR have joined the marketspace with 40" sizes at around $2000. These have component, HDMI and DVI input support, and I have seen many of these connected computers ( using the nVidia 7600 GT or better PCI Express graphics card ) and the results are stunning. The Xbox/HD-DVD or PS3 with Blu-ray and an LCD 1080p is package afforable at under $2k that is all it takes and basically you are in FULL 1080p HD. Best Bang for the buck goes to LVM 47"w1 1080p from Westinghouse Digital at street price of $1600 This makes my point and LCD displays lead the way for 1080p growth.

Rear projection: SXRD & DLP 1080p
The Rear Projection systems do the bigger sizes at a better price-point, a 50" SXRD by Sony is very affordable, and has done great things for enabling 1080p in more homes.

The achievement here is that the video image is absolutely continuous with no space between pixels. In LCD and Plasma you get closely spaced RGB subpixels.

With SXRD screens you can put your nose right up and it looks great, get close and it gets better. Exactly the opposite of plasma screens. But certain product lines can suffer a maintenance issue that requires bulb replacements or projection system upgrade. DLP systems use a spinning color wheel as opposed to separated RGB chips of the SXRD. These displays are excellent in our opinion and are a very good dollar value which makes the pricing with maintenance-plan comparable with LCD offerings. You will be replacing a bulb, but that is not always a user-serviceable item. Therefore in these displays we suggest you buy the 3-5 year full maintenance option, which can run from $300-500 added cost. You will still pay under 3k for a big bright stunning widescreen system and they are only a few inches deep in the newer designs.

PLASMA 1080p.
These kill me...they are so fantastic in black levels and brightness, but i cannot get behind the pricing. The pricing is higher than LCD and SXRD, they can still be found around the $3k and under price point, but they are few. In my opinion the 1080p display should be under $3k. Be very careful since the lower priced plasmas may say 1080 but in reality that is not 1920x1080 native resolution in every case, so you need to check the spec.

GET ONE

We have found that the best deals are not the ones up front in any store. usually the best 1080p options are LCD around 37-47" and they may be in the back, or your have to ask for it. This is because the best price-value LCD offerings have a lower margin and will make any adjacent plasma look like less of a good deal. For the Bigger sizes we love the Rear Projection look and several SXRD and DLP makers are good to 50-60" at that $2500 price level.

BLACK LEVEL - COLOR AND FRAME RATE

Some HD editing shops use the 37" and 42" 1080p LCD 'Westys', simply because they are so affordable and broadcast accurate, its almost 2 for 1 in cost performance. However, be careful about the current color gamut of these systems for computer imaging. Basic 1000:1 black level contrast and under 10ms response time is fine and typical across the board.

Many 1080p LCD displays have the old NTSC 75% color range, rather than the billion color range of todays HDMI 1.3 spec and some newer HD source material mastered in VC-1. At this moment that doesnt much matter to the larger market that gets its HD from broadcast sources, however...We are told by several vendors that the full color gamut 4:4:4 and 12bit color management display systems are better at blacklevel and far less blocking in gradients due to the expanded color range. This matters. a lot. and in my opinion is the final unrealized step in HD 1080 perfection. Get all the pixels, all the clean look and all the color range. Such source content will likely only happen with High Def DVD since broadcast 1080i color gamuts are standardized with fewer colors than is possible with a well crafted VC-1 DVD in 1080p. Look for specialized processor equipped displays that color enhance to reduce gradient blocking.

Some 1080p HD systems have a dedicated 24p mode, and kick in with HDMI connections on HD-DVD players like the Toshiba X stuff. It matters since the display latency push is a very processor-centric thing to keep a smooth image with progressive frame shooting. If you are picky about your Telecine converted HD DVD then do check your specs on that.

Its important to note here, that many of these offerings do not include an ATSC tuner, and frankly you dont need one right now, since the larger realm of HD is available by Cable provider ot Satellite ( Direct TV )., and in most areas, over the air HD broadcasts can be counted on one hand. This is changing and by 2009 the ota ATSC digital boradcast standard will be available, but this does not mean that HD1080i content will be heavy in the mix of over-the-air digital offerings. Broadcasters can convert 4:3 SD content to digital with some effort, but HD1080i is a whole new animal for them, and conversion is a new level of infrastructure investment. By that time CableCARD and ATSC tuner option add ons will be better and less expensive.

HD - connect me please

2007-04-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

commentary:

I must admit these days of 2007 are far better for HD screens than ever before, and 16:9 widescreen flatpanels are enabling more and more people to get in on it all.... then they discover something: "Hey this LCD HDTV display is really a big computer monitor. I can see everything. Big. "

Connected and unwired:

This is not a pipe-dream, this is what is next, and such a thing removes netflix and physical rentals, provisions a real HD solution of maximum ease and suitability with yet another box connected to your HD display. I see it as a very proper way to get indie movies into your home, and honestly, a lot of these movies are better than you may know. All this takes yet another enablement, by wireless connections, and by computer.. yes yet another box. most are sort of MAC Mini in shape and basic style. Usually the interface is clunky due to the IR remote.

I see a new scenario coming up quickly... where you come home from work, and read the news on your TV, then scroll through some available movie downloads. There are thousands. So you set a few preferences for the moment and pick from a list that is smaller and fits tonight's mood. Start up dinner and a commence the download ... in minutes ( or less ) you can relax in front of the movie or whatever you chose.

Navigation is better when you can point directly to what you want.
We prefer the ability to point that the wireless mouse has, as opposed to the navigation up-down-left-right-enter by IR remote that your basic Comcast/TiVo whatever uses. Use a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse, when batteries are fresh it works for about 25 feet.

There is not enough HD content out there.
An HD owner can eaily grow tired of what is NOT available. This opens up a big wide 16:9 door for the IPTV content distributor.

Modes of Use

Apple TV is like generation 0.5 of all this, and though downloads from iTunes are ok, some are finding 2 modes of useage. First mode is Surfing & Immediacy the current situation out there for immediate play, after dismissing Comcraptastic stuff -- then switch to web and check out ABC and Joost ( they are the current chosen few of the moment anyhow ). So What is on Right NOW? Usually what you want to see is not in the short-list VOD or its on at 10pm. Mode 2 is very much the paradigm of Theater going, or nightly broadcast TV, where you chose something to see and set aside or have to make time to do that. That is perfect for the download type of user, HD-DVD viewer or DVD upscale whatever and already typical, get psyched-up to see a show or movie with no interruptions. These mindsets are very different, the immediate mode viewer will tolerate some advertizing, like prime time TV, while the Theater mindset hates every second of enforced pre-movie trailer viewing like current DVDs. The ideal scenario is Video on Demand where the viewer gets a high-quality experience from the HD. Its just not there yet. The web holds some promise... for example:

IPTV Architecture: Centralized or node and peer?

Vudu

The founders of TiVo are creating a next-gen option for all this: The NYT says --
"Vudu, if all goes as planned, hopes to turn America’s televisions into limitless multiplexes, providing instant gratification for movie buffs. It has built a small Internet-ready movie box that connects to the television and allows couch potatoes to rent or buy any of the 5,000 films now in Vudu’s growing collection. The box’s biggest asset is raw speed: the company says the films will begin playing immediately after a customer makes a selection."

The imagination of the developers seems to include instant access, which is why a dedicated box is really required, in a peer-to-peer workload configuration. The Vudu is really a node in an immense distributed system, like a dedicated subscriber Bit-Torrent optimized for just one sourcebase, the first 10 minutes of everything they have ( ad serving pre-roll and intro segment to the vod content) can be spread all over the planet, and always be just enough ahead of the main load to stay streaming. Of course, this requires an available critical mass of nodes or major nodes ( like akamai has ) to kick it off, with costs decreasing as home adoption takes place.

Sun Streaming System
At the other end of the spectrum is Sun Microsystems, with a no-node nondistributed design, basically centralized brute force delivery. Think BIG... at a whopping 320Gbps per server load, these are monsters designed to live in IPTV over fiber, perfect for FIOS type suburb and city demographics. This would provision stuff like a 50,000 title library, and really get the content availability up to where it should be. Ideally this whole approach is for fiber networks that would handle HD the way we like it, but i suspect that DVD quality is what we will see more. Since your basic internet connection is central office managed anyhow, it just makes sense that this kind of system is right for NOC and datacenter placement. They have a dry but descriptive video: Sun Streaming System

All these IPTV options show promise but at 300-600 bucks per box and some cost per movie, I would really need my HD to be excellent, and have loads of content. The way the web works now, routers and switches are always running into overload conditions that can clobber a real-time stream, making the download-before-play the proper HD option in my opinion, where basically the Video Rental Store is on the screen of your TV. Of course this all has been promised before....and the PS3 and XboX have totally let us down for all the horsepower in the devices, the HD download is talk... so the game network systems sites are promises, but if the devices are connectd and HD is the screen, then at least we have an empowered base installed and ready to buy HD-IPTV. That critical mass is fast approaching, and i think 2007 into 2008 is open season for anyone that wants in on this.

The Paradigm Gear Shift
Between now and 2009 digital cutover, expect to see a lot of paradigm-shift-failure where boardroom decisions are made according to what feels good for the Corp. and by the time such stuff is in play, the IPTV startups are going to be eating their profits. This is because the Film ownership and distribution mechanics of film dealmaking are in very different hands.

And Now what?
The smart film financing and distribution firm will have partnerships across all distribution channels written in contract and ready to put to use. The Theater - Broadcast Special - DVD Release - Downloadable - web/intergrated event stream could make a film stay on the radar for many times longer, maximizing the moment value of marketing ( meaning; the display of the advertizing moment is the impulse-buy mechanism of VOD immediacy ) When done properly, it costs very little to add-in digital and gain more eyeball and wallet access than any Theater to DVD only situation could possibly produce. This is lower cost-of-goods-sold entertainment product with continuous and global cashflow, no need to ship physical products and push for front shelf space.

Content is King:
Unless you are a sports fan, then only 1 or 2 HD shows a week are worth the PVR space... I think this is nuts... there are thousands of hours of HD and 2k works ripe for re-release. Where is it?
... insider tip - keep an eye on this guy, www.charlesferri.com -- he gets it.

1080i 1080p Myth Busting

2007-04-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

We a lot of seemingly authoritative bad and old writing out there, it is time for some basic...

MYTH BUSTING HD #1

1080i is worse than 1080p.

Not really. Broadcasts are in HD1080i and properly managed at both ends, is very good. Since Flat panel displays do not scan but instead assemble each frame in video memory, it is always a 1080p screen result. Nearly all the 1080p displays available in 2007 do a great job of de-interlacing, although i have a preference for DCDi ( Directional Correlation De-interlacing ) as done by Faroudja.

1080p in HD-DVD and Blu-ray is better mostly from the reduced compression and not the interlace (i) or progressive (p) delivery. In Fact some 1080p 24 at 24 frames per second from film productions is more "filmic" ( a word i have heard used often ) at a lesser frame rate and more motion blur than the usual 30 or 60 frames persecond that a good 1080p LCD HD display can show you. Odd - even arrival of interlaced data is alternate rows of pixels requiring processing to assemble an image. Over and above that is the 16 x 16 pixel block used in compression codecs.

-- So really where is the problem for 1080 video? It is not Interlacing.

MPEG and Compression

The usual problem for digital video in any form is not in the progressive or interlaced delivery of the image frames, but in the over-compression of the digital processing. Current broadcast standards are delivery of TS or Transport Streams in MPEG2. This is required because the MPEG compression de-compression process must happen at the both send and recieve ends. So the Broadcaster uses MPE2 to compress and your Cablebox firmware uses a built-in standard MPEG2 chipset to de-compress. Its old technology, from back in the DVD days. Direct-TV and others are migrating to MPEG4 variants which are somewhat better, but blocking errors are still the outcome when this technology is mis-used.

Worst Case Scenario: BIG BAD MACROBLOCK

The problem is in bad data or over-compression used to save bandwidth, and visible evidence of this is square chunks of the image looking out of place and time. That artifact is known as a MacroBlock... if there is any detriment to digital works, it is abuse of the mpeg2 compression codecs that reveals blocking in the frame. All your digital video is made up of these blocks and when its all good, you probably do not see them or know that they are there. This is different from interlacing which is a very fine comb-like edge artifact.

Basically a cheap broadcaster running out of Bandwidth will smash and squeeze the video stream right up to the point of customer complaint. Then you see macro blocking.

Now that you know what all this is, complain when you see it. Click to see below -- a very extreme case of compression recovery failure in macroblocks. Click Play and then move the slider to see and select frames for view. ( there is no audio ) A variety of error cases is visible but they happen fast so the slider helps see this in detail.

You should never see anything this bad, but it serves to expose what your digital video is really doing, in that you are always seeing blocks of data. Extreme cases like this make it much more obvious. This example was sent to me on a DVD from a friend who thought his system was broken. It was recorded direct from his cablebox. It is important to note, that this processing problem is not your new flatpanel display, but happens before that at the Cablebox/Converter, and can be from line noise in the cable, a problem at the source, or bandwidth overload, among other things.

Broadband Video HD - NAB me

2007-04-17T06:36:00.000-07:00

Well its time again for the National Ass. of Broadcasters to have a bash in vegas, and this year instead of real broadcasting, its about real broadbanding... Video that is on your desktop converging with your mobile phone and flatpanel in the living area... yikes. No ATSC/HD/wha...? Lots of new cameras and editing stuff, but the buzz is Broadcasters yakking it up about the web? ... while the Apple TV gets another bashing, these guys are rolling out some cool tooling...

MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT
I just got some On the Floor news. Silverlight rocks...its a modload to your system to play it, & that is enclosed in a 1 meg download. The floor quote is "It will kill everything else" in response to high quality over-the-web large format video and surround audio. I asked if SilverLight was a VC-1 codec variant, and they said "VC-1 is integration. you must see this yourself, it is crisp clean and seamless."... hmmm i need to know more. I will bet though that it is VC-1 VBR with a tagging layer and some overlay managers with sync tags and stuff for mouse handling. This is interactive publishing for WMVHD that integrates vector art and therefore lets you scale the outcome in pixel-space. This product launch is really speaking to code-sets and markup availability for convergence. Interact - see - buy stuff - user experience mechanisms that are adoptable by any web community developer system on any (?read: except linux ) platform. The Fact that it can do HD nicely is but one part of its feature-set. In my dreams it would let me realtime mashup and track-over 3-d compositing. The Wait and See is something called Expression Blend that adds whatever you have handy and lets you do what havent thought up yet... because it has its own authoring studio... e.g. this is the WPF/E project.

http://microsoft.com/silverlight = the splash date is April 30, MIX07

VC-1 is already very good. Take for example this clip 30 meg download 720p VC-1 CBR (wmv9) of flames, where each frame is selectively different except for blackspace. No Mpeggy blocking. Its kind of a stress test since it really loads up a player to deliver progressive frames cleanly where the next frame has a changing distribution of compressable content, and there is a lot of gradients that degrade into blocking in when the codec is inferior.

Interaction in the Experience. The next evolutionary step.

For Example: we are developing what we call Curious George Elements ... integrated nuggets of visual epiphany in an awestruck moment of insight and discovery... or basically a cool clever message trinket built into a movie. Based on a visual event or maximizing a product placement, a stroke will launch a mini top layer abstraction treatment. Lots of heavy tagging, and creative mindgaming of motion visuals, and showing off a lot., since basically its the showmanship that value-adds the HD interactive experience.

There is Gold in them there frills...

A HUGE amount of all this fresh video action is really based on the Must-Have nature of the wave this is all riding on... or more accurately, wave after wave after wave in a seeming endless near tsunami of video for the sake of video. User contributed video. Everyone is a potential rockstar. High availability of cool is a magnet for the right-now crowd. To fuel this scenario you need, lots of download speed and bandwidth, a computer and a large flatpanel ( the computer could be that laptop, PS3, Xbox, or soon, the flatpanel itself. ) And of course, the next downloadable player format. ( no listing of real.com, they owned the webvideo market and then shot themselves in the feet with bad marketing ploys so many times that they have no legs - proof that its possible to piss-off your users in droves.)

Currently capable of Higher def and TrueHD display downloads are:

Qucktime 7 (beware of iTunes piggyback download)
Windows Media Player 10 ( very nice, easy )
Divx ( possibly the cleanest player chrome out there )
Joost (Beta - this is all custom stuff, excellent )
Neokast (Beta)

ADOBE MEDIA PLAYER

In a booth near you at NAB are the next gen Adobe Media Player flavors ( what no fancy name? ) basically the next level of flash player, with video interaction up front. So far my full screen flash HD videos totally clobber the cpu, and die with no grace whatsoever...., so all video there is in smaller windows, 800x600 being a typical size that will play ok. Adobe is acting really big on all this - sporting a partnership with akamai (broadband high bandwidth video streaming service, anyone with the $$ can partner with them, puleeze what? this is your big deal?).

PR on Adobe.com = uhm. yawn? where is my HD?

The current level of player for flash 9 uses a variant of the On2 codec which has less scene-cut block recovery and gradient blocking problems than earlier versions based purely on jpeggy stuff. Its already quite good, bit it hogs cpu horsepower as the flv player code is a hybrid of Active-x and a true video handler. When the next gen FLV format is truely pure and coding is a layer that has access properly, then all manner of advertizement embedding is available. meaning? Enforced intro-outro ad coding, mouseover product placement ad launching, counting clicks. Those of us us in video can do all that now, but its hard to handle and automate, very custom work .. this new stuff has all the toys built right in, so we are told.

There is something i want to set straight though. DO not credit ADOBE for any huge tech value... It was MACROMEDIA and On2 technologies did the heavy lifting that kicked this off, Adobe was just the buyer in all this... none of the savvy work here was Adobe in-house smarts. My guess is that VP7 integration is in this mix.

HD 1080 Trailers

2007-04-11T17:46:00.000-07:00

..and some 720 trailers too.

I really like teaser / trailers because they often contain some choice moments of any work. Even better is to download or stream them and examine a few selected frames. Its my hope that more than a few repeat visitors to this site are equipped with 1920x1080 displays or at least the ability to se a 720p at 1280 pixels across.

Print Screen

H.264 is the Mpeg4 HD delivery method of Apple's quicktime format, and it uses AAC audio, it is quite good, even when you only get 720p to look at.

Here are some links:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/
http://www.apple.com/trailers/

A more complete 1080p download for Quicktime users:
http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/hdtrailers.html

You will need quicktime's latest download to view this if you currently have version 6 or less, Version 7 is required.... bad news is you will be forced to swallow an iTunes download of 32 megs to get it. iTunes will install a ton of stuff, among which is apple DRM and ipod connection listeners. For that reason i am NOT linking the download here, since i think that is a bit over the top. ( I uninstalled Real Player due to their invasive and irritating piggyback download and the impossibly annoying Jukebox and event reminder popups they placed in my system. there still is some jusched junk in my machine leftover from that.)

Logic defect in PC use: Important to note is that the 1080p quicktime will put the controls of apples player off the screen in a way that cannot be seen. DuH - you could hit "Ctrl+Enter" for fullscreen "Ctrl+F" play to get around that, or pulldown the View> "Play All Movies" to start playing.

HD Free over the air, SXRD

2007-04-09T09:40:00.000-07:00

# things that are Coming Soon ...

FREE HD
For a mere 99 bucks you can grab HD over the air digital TV, from Plextor, of course its another "coming soon" thing, but this enablement has my interest since its nice and compact and has a high availability price-point. Of course they say "Watch High-Definition TV Anywhere!" when the practical reality is closer to the broadcast antenna is where you have to be, let us say clear line of sight 50 miles is more probable. We will let you know when ours arrives and we tour around New England with it.

SXRD XBR1 - oops, trouble ahead.
So it would seem, the XBR1 display engine for the SXRD 50" on up rear projection Tv's are now in life-cycle testing out there since market introduction years ago. Apparently a Yellow band or green blotch could possibly develop in the system over time... repair under warrany ends at 1 year, so if you have one, go to sonystyle.com and get the 3 year plan. Alex covered it well here: http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/5135

1366 resolution screen displaying HD1080i
I still get way too many hits from searchers looking to discover what really happens when a 1080i broadcast arrives into thier 1366 x 768 display, industry take note, you need to explain yourself. I have already done many many post on this: here is one ...
http://hd1080i.blogspot.com/2006/12/1080i-on-1366x768-resolution-problems.html

The actual www.HD1080i.com
ok ok ok, i havent launched the site yet and I am still in the process of tuning the CMS that runs it. I will Beta the start page next week and allow membership to people that have a 1920 x 1080 display connected. For everyone else ... HD1080i will launch soon, and have downloads for testing your display ( for those with HD screens connected to your computer).

One good note, i have flash 8 running in full screen 1920 x 1080 so there will be a special area for those of you that are so equipped, to see what i see. It is really is stunning stuff...such things i can do with that definitely sparks the fire of future cool.

There will be a 25mbit server in LA and another in NYC, mostly because my clients are there, but such extra high stuff is required to properly make HD. Not to exclude anyhone too much a 5mbit 720p also will be available for those with 1280 computer screens and flash9 or windows VC-1/wmv9 advanced profile. www.HD1080.net is now and will be a subscriber source for trade screen distribution.

IPHD - ABC digital High(er) definition primetime.

2007-04-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

click to launch website

Competition for eyeballs... Its a wonderful thing. Ok so its not true HD in any sense, but its good enough to write about, and well worth your time to investigate.

Basic typical Digital TV is about 352 pixels across the width of your tv screen, which for most people is far less than the available resolution of a computer screen. Its all about pixel realestate and the screen. ABC is delivering a nicely scalable 720 pixels.

Click the image above and take a look at ABC's latest. visually it is every bit as capable as Joost, its got all it takes to deliver what you want. yes, at full screen. Select "Size" in the lower right. Resolution here will be at least 3 times better than any broadcast option. If your display has nice upscaling internal to the monitor then you will actually prefer this to your basic Comcast. Although it is high bandwidth, i think most good to great broadband connections will handle this just fine. It basically is the file quality of a progressive DVD in "Big" mode. Go for it... you will be hooked.

Awesome sums it up nicely.

... credit where credit is due, ABC is going to grab a lot of eyeballs with this latest offering, several very savvy advertizers are in on it. Nissan, Toyota all announce at the openers. Navigation is a left right slider and a click gets you the episodes, up to the last 6. I missed SIX DEGREES and didnt realize what a great show it is, thanks basically to this website and its video. There is no reason at all why this convergence cant win out over other options, in a huge way. Advertizers get thier eyeballs. Currently its wide open, no membership hassles, and it totaly kills AOL Hi-Q etc all the rest. At this moment in time, the ABC primetime content player and its production quality, kills every other offering out there for video on a web connection...

It is 16:9 so it fills my 1680 x 1050 screen 1 here at hd1080i labs... Nicely. Only my own videos look better, and thats because they are coming off my local server farm at HD1080i . This is from a website. I do not know what this codec is yet, but i plan on finding out more. It puts my mpeg2 Comcraptastic subscriber cable digital service to shame.

It has a mini mode, and yes, if you have the right phone, you can see it there also. Its BIG mode is 720x400 pixels, basically DV1 format. It seems that its the source file that is upscaled by a custom codec and surrounded by navigation with flash (7,8,9) enhancements. It is in Stereo.

You will need to download several new software bundles that use active-x. It is worth it. My dual core cpus loaf along at 22% to play this in Big mode. It only plays in screen 1 of my 3 screen setup (5280 pixel desktop - I reconfigured and whatever screen 1 is , will get the full screen playback. its quite nice in 1920 x 1080.)

My desktop screen capture ( 3 monitor setup )

For me this was a serious eye opener. There are GREAT ABC shows out there that i would have had no exposure to, and totally missed, had it not been for this player/website. It's quality is better then STD Digital CableTV. This is the type of entertainment convergence-repurpose & reconnect that I was harping on last year, and it will be very strong in the entertainment marketspace.

I just tried it on my other HD/PC and quite frankly, its better than APPLE TV so hold on to your wallet. I have windows media center with YpBPr component output for 480i on the Toshiba satellite laptop and ran this through my std NTSC CRT monitor. Stunned. Then through component input DVD player out the s-video connection and into to a big screen 4:3 the kids play video games on... Fantastic. ( in basic talk - i hooked a laptop up to my 50" rear projection circa 1996 TV set and it was better than Comcast in quality and ease and stereo sound.)

I sort of wrote-off ABC as a 720p not really into high definition quality network. They carry on about "Scan Lines" in HD1080i... and i know anyone with that problem in HD1080i is simply doing it wrong and living in the past. Watch "planet earth" in Discovery HD and tell me you see anything of a scan-line problem. You wont, they do it right and its amazing. This new ABC website is causing me to re-think the delivery-value of desireable content though. There is a lot of great HD network operations out there, but they are lost in poor content - most of it is stuff i do not care to see.

I will cover the options for making all this work in 1920x1080 through DVI from a cost efficient box next time, but i should mention that all my graphics displays are driven by nVidia cards, and they have HDCP and PureVideo off a Verizon FIOS connection.

IPTV - Mashups and Local Heros.

2007-03-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

MASHUPS
Gimme my Electro

I have this friend Sarah Hudson, from long ago, i helped here and there with the launch of her first CD on EMI under the S-curve imprint... lateron that basically became Joss Stone's launchpad and S-curve ended when Joss upsigned into the EMI hit roster. Sarah is from a legendary pedigree of music talent, her Dad produces Beatles Ringo Star and some hits here and there, Ozzy is her Godfather etc...name droppings. Her latest incarnation is totally outward and dance audience centric, Glam and thump-bump-and-grind youthful have a good time stuff. http://ultravioletsound.com something i whipped up for her while we build out her new public presence. In there is an appeal for something not done before, i'm editor on this project.

Its a mashup video. You can be on it. We will cut your dancing into some performance video. It will be a national play thing so feel free to potentially embarass yourself infront of a gadzillion future viewers. It has network interest.

HOW? by taking your digital still camera in movie mode, up close and in good lighting straight on - shoot 30 seconds of dancing and singing to her song "Gimme my Electro" - like a Karaoke Queen ready for the big time.

Shoot this against a blank wall please and dont worry about the audio, we will turn you into an Andy Warhol pop-art star with some effects later on. Keep it short, i only allow a max 35 meg upload. Right now i need headshot faces shouting out "Gimme my Electro" - you will be next to some celebs and off the hook people like Perez Hilton, so feel free to have a blue hair day.

To hear the song, upload that file, go here:
http://www.ultravioletsound.com/mashup/

This is .. totally in fun, so you must put out fun in your piece, and you just may get 5 seconds of screen time... Here is an old video to get you the feel.

http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=662538576&channel=493148924

Benefit-centric stuff in Los Angeles, Art & Spielbergs

www.artribe.org

Some high school kids in the affluent zipcodes of southern california are doing something big. cool. This includes the likes of Sasha Spielberg, progeny of Stephen Spielberg and Kate Capshaw. These kids are talented and if you are in the area, please go in and contribute.

This webpresence and its future gallery are donated by DSMJ / Juldengroup - its all high end and real likeable. The benefit is called Mother and Child - and is lead by Alexa Gray , a very talented and persistent individual who would not take "no" for an answer. Her photoart is the front page of the site right now.

the writeup:

The ARTribe organization is made up of Los Angeles high school students dedicated to raising money for a worthy cause by promoting artwork created by fellow high school students at the Santa Monica Art Studios. On May 11th, ARTribe will be launching the Mother and Child Project, supporting prenatal care in Vietnam and Nepal. Our event will showcase the work of talented local teenagers determined to make a difference in the world through their creativity. Photography, sculpture, film, drawings, and paintings selected by a panel of artists and jurors will be on exhibition. Artwork will be made available for sale at the event and 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the S.P.I.R.A.L Foundation. Ticket Price: $10 Other / $20 Adults

IT'S CALLED JOOST
I am a Beta Tester for JOOST www.joost.com and this is a development that is fully endorsed by Paramount and Viacom ( Sumner Redstone ) , VIACOM is the same company that is suing the inferior and out-of-control YouTube. ' nuff said, Joost is cool, you tube is well, the gutter, a dumping ground.

I have spent some time on this and I LOVE JOOST. The great thing about VideoIP is that seeing is believing, if you have the bandwidth ( I have FIOS ). JOOST kicks cool onto your screen, much beter than i expected... I Never want to see another fuzzy crummy blocky youtube video ever. I Like BIG and JOOST is 800 Pixels wide, a good start, and it scales to 720p size and up rather well. My normal sized streams are 720x480 DV my Tiret Video, but when i'm editing everything is HD 16:9.

When I see someone else like BrightCove and JOOST doing it right, i want to share it. If you have a nice HD screen at 1280, 1680 or 1920x1080p as one of your online screens, then this JOOST will engage you, it is capable of rather interactive on demand TV, they are building out content libraries now.

Take the Rad Pill NEO...

.. So i get this commenter mentioning something called Neokast, i sign up and check it out. It is in Beta right now. go here - http://www.neokastblog.com/

Downloaded it's player codecs - that part is quick. On the site the player itself doesnt sport anything other than a stop button, so its a very clean presentation chrome. Somehow these Neodudes have found a scaler solution that keeps the blocky behavior of mpeg out of the frame rendering.... and that streams nicely enough to be offered as a live stream source... like action on the scene right now in your face and 720x480 doing it. Its very good, i didnt expect to see that, more typical is the on-demand from archive stuff. I would imagine your basic DVCAM toting wireless equipped shooters should go with this and deliver rather cool stuff, like a "Right-Now.tv" kind of thing. I think 802.11 g or n will handle the source stream, and Neokast stream replication is solid at beta-tester loading.

Neokast definitely is on my watch list for tech to implement later on.

HD 1080 - VOD - IPTV?

2007-02-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

The thing about content in 1080i and 1080p High Definition is; that all of it is expanding in all directions. Right now content producers and entertainment houses are looking to the day that the critical mass of consumer enablement arrives, though it seems like it has been years in the making -- Its sort of an evolution revolution in slo-motion.

More access, more content. Lets say you could deal with the less immediate stuff by downloading it for later viewing, or perhaps plan a movie night... that works, netflix and blockbuster rely on it. How about: you could get that Movie with no forms, no trip to the videostore, or even opening your postal mail. On-Demand channels in cable/dish and your basic TiVo / DVR use in broadcast HD -- not a lot of HD in there, no library of substance.

The ultimate would be an HD media center that lets you preview across all platforms of delivery and availability, and have that in 1080 flick with a click-now to download, see-later cheap get and keep. That woul be only ( from what i can tell ) a few lucky fiber-enabled Verizon FIOS Tv users, and by all accounts it is the best, bar none. But for the rest of the population not connected through FIOS... what is happening now: Amazon and TiVO, 2 goliaths in the market are in beta test on a download service that sources web connectivity to TV display of VOD... but its not yet in HD.

480i only

Commentary: - I really like this service from Amazon Unboxed, and hope to see it grow. Even though its not yet HD its quality is pretty good, you can enjoy it on about any video device including handhelds and PC's ( sorry not yet MAC ready ). Its DRM requires windows xp, and for me it worked fine, has not timed out ot acted broken in any way, all i got was stereo audio but i dont know if some movies ( as opposed to TV shows ) are in surround from service. Download was rather quick, it seems Amazon is trying to do a good job here. -- my favorite benefit here is that they do not require a "dedicated and branded " player download, like AOL HiQ and Divx do, so its all portable.

The Apple iTV and Amazon/TiVO and countless other freshly minted market-space kickoffs are in progress right now, and from what i see, you need a lot of the correct matching equipment and provisioning to get to it. NO HD1080 is in there yet but i'm sure a premium offering will come to pass and be worth the wait. On my display 720p scales up to 1080 pretty well, so i am looking forward to this.

720p only

want 2 megapixel 1080p VODownload?

Standard TV/DVD
Its not HD. . . yet.

Of course expecting HD from walmart is crazy anyhow, and Cable/Dish HD service, not really Video On Demand, its "what-they-have-at-the-moment" is pretty good & getting better -- most times it's digital quality is tolerable and only a dedicated network like a cable provider or satellite/wifi can handle HD bit-rates anyhow. The ideal VOD is a searchable library of large amounts of content, and by all observations i can make, that is where all providers are heading, so there is a lot to look forward to.

A solution to bandwidth is there are 2 resolutions to HD, one (720p) that is 1280x720 or one megapixel, and another (1080) is 1920x1080 or 2 megapixels. Most broadcasters are now going 1080i , which done properly is really seen at 1080p on an LCD or fixed pixel widescreen flatpanel. ( hardly any flatscreens "scan" so interlaced 1080i arrival to your screen is of minor consequence. ) so bandwidth for both 720p and 1080i delivery of premuim VOD is do-able, VC-1 or Mpeg4 for when the recipient is a computer.

However... 90 times more 1366 x 768 resolution displays are in use right now than there are any other in wide-screen flatpanel. Many owners dont even know thier native resolution. Those that do know are staunch 720p advocates on blogs and boards. .. and even more perplexing is that a lot of the 720p broadcasters show a 4:3 non-widescreen image most of the time.
720p HD broadcasters :
ABC HD (720p) rarely 16:9
FOX (720p) lots of 4:3
ESPN-HD (720p) But i see it in 1080 in Comcast always 16:9
UPN (720p) 4:3
WarnerBros WB (720) 4:3 typical

The resolution Divergence:

The overwhelming majority of connected HD's are 1366 pixels, and the majority of transmission boradcasting is an mpeg transport stream in 1080i. So all these people are getting a 2megapixel incoming quality that the display or set-top scales down to 1 megapixel, which by the way, looks pretty damn nice, and most are pleased with that. Its my opinion that the displays currently available do a much nicer job of down-sampling a component input source, so dont use your set-top at 720p. What does all this mean? -- A library of 720p Video on Demand may well become a winner for the "click and see" crowd, so i would like to have Apple make its iTV / iTunes offering be as device portable as possible without haveing to be an Apple hardware owner.

Video.AOL.com

Ok so if you are a 720p user with a good scaling display, then perhaps DVD quality VOD over IP is going to engage you. Perhaps AOL HI-Q video is for you. This service has a lot of free content, some of it is quite good, and it uses a dedicated download system to get it to you quickly.

Once installed , the Kontiki HI-Q downloader will deliver 475 meg full length show downloaded and ready in about the time it takes to make a pot of coffee and a Microwave popcorn bag. It requires you to be a registered member, and use it's dedicated player, the expiration on the above Babylon 5 show was Feb 1 2010. The Hi-Q/IN2TV player itself is ok, its features are spartan , but i do not like the surrounding chrome - PC connected HD screen owner should check it out. The demos are free and the sound is surround. The AOL VOD library is rather large, it will take some time to realize how much is in there.

Either way, distribution channels and DRM will have to grow, and from what i can tell, since its digital, the disc and fiber platforms we have around now will do it, probably immediate VOD is best at 720p, and 1080 is more of a download. I did a couple of tests with vc-1 and got great results at 720p24 using up about 200megs every 5 minutes of runtime, scaling that to 1080 full screen came out ok.

I support Trade-show floor HD loops, and use a small-box computer at the show to remote upload, so i had to figure all that out and make it work. In this way i sort of had a taste of being a VOD download provider. It caused me to appreciate VC-1 as a codec even though the audio was only stereo for my work, it was quite good.

I guess about all we can say is that for next gen HD VOD over IP channel, we have only just begun, internet distribution basically requires a dedicated network stucture near the last mile endpoints to compete with Cable providers, and few more HD screens need to be out there. Some very creative people are working on a Next-Gen WiFi that may well change the high bandwidth distribution heatmap of connectivity at the 5mbit+ level, i am keeping a close eye on that since it may well be the most cost/benefit solution around. Think about it, everyone has a cellphone, the towers are aready there. Souped-up ultra bandwidth tech is closer to you than you might think.

JOOST is coming soon, lots to talk about, Convergence of Web/TV and interaction...

More on 3-4gen IPTV VOD next time ...

Size Matters: Resolution vs distance

2007-01-20T20:59:00.000-08:00

HOW BIG IS YOUR PIXEL?
This Chart has distance vs screen size for various resolutions, with lines drawn indicating THX and SMPTE guidelines, typical of Home Theater setup documents, this one was compiled by another bloggin enthusiast, Carlton.

click to enlarge.

According to this graph, these standards for a 55" display at 1080 are around 8 feet distance. For me anyhow, that is pretty close, but its easy to see this graph plots distance to equal visual quality, and represents the avg distance to resolve 2pixels visually at the same size. Meaning: resolution and pixel size matter when you take any given image and spread it out over a screen area.

I know you are looking at your computer screen , so try this gray/grid test:

Its sort of an eye test, 2 x 2 pixel boxes in gray , surrounded by 1 pixel wide black lines, solid gray to the right.

TAKE A TEST:
Assuming a typical 1024 x 768 laptop 15 to 17" display is in front of you,
look at the grid and move back until it looks all basically gray.
Measure (or guess) your distance.
Using the chart above, follow the red 1080p line.
A good size for you may well be the screen size in the x axis.

Typically if it takes 8-10 feet before you see all gray in the left box, then you will definitely see value in the accuracy of owning a 1080 resolution display, in a typical living space , at 50-60" in size. Of course, that isnt scientific or statistical in any way, but it does help you think about the value of detail with respect to your eyesight.

This means seeing a single pixel, and easily resolving 2 pixels which is the width of the text in white. On Displays that "Scale" you can slide the browser and see the pattern in the grid is banded and fixed to a screen position.

For our purposes we are discussing HD that is flatpanel Pixel-for-Pixel accurate or a fixed pixel display.

Edit Desk:

3 LG Flatrons 1680 x 1050 and one 37" Westy digital 1080p. This is one place where up close like 4 feet distance reveals all in the HD display. Great for editing HD video and checking compression artifacts in the final render of a project. In some ways, compression matters more than display resolution when visible compression artifacts exist. CBR ( Constant Bit-Rate Mpeg ) is probably the worst culprit. Depending on the scheme used, you may see square or vertically rectangular blocks in high action scenes and scene cut recovery.

Most people dont want to see blocks on the video with a pixelly feel, but often, thats what you get in a 1080i broadcast that is over compressed, and in that case 1080 display shows about the same picture as a 1366, its called:

Broadcast compression blocking: MACROBLOCK.
This stuff is blatant and visible is usually much greater than 2 pixels, typical is more like 16 x 16 pixels in MPEG 2. High action scene cuts like this explosion in STAR WARS broadcast:

Kind of a blocky moment above. This isnt Native resolution fat pixels, its compression artifacts that create a loss of detail during high action event moments, a bandwidth issue for constant bitrate mpeg. Dont allow yourself to view such stuff when buying. Ask for a Blu-ray source to see on the display, perhaps a KING KONG scene, and play it at full frame and slo-mo speed.

1080 LCD accuracy is undeniably rigorous and in my humble opinion, broadcast 1080i mpeg transport stream compression doesnt often live up to the ability of a good 1080p display, yet anyhow. For dramatic high action kept clean, like most of the well crafted HD movies, you most definitely want your 1080 to be from a Blu-ray or HD-DVD. It's just the way it is, and this is what THX is really telling you, for HD off a disc, sit close for home theater experience...but...

So how big is your Pixel?
If you sit close enough to the display to see a single pixel then it would seem you are close enough for sure, the rest depends on eyesight for a lot, one thing that HD does for you is let you see detail textures of a surface that in 480i would just be a solid blotch, the incredible set design detail of many Sci-Fi movies with scenes depicting size and scale that the director used for a purpose. Accurate resolution also give you much more of a connected presence, like being right there in the scene, reading what is on all the signs in Times Square for the King Kong movie for me was a real treat.

FIXED PIXEL DISPLAY is the basis of flatpanel tech.
In the early days of CRT Tubes they used to market pixel size at DOT PITCH, in millimeters, so a .28mm dot pitch meant a nice tight pixel on the screen. Mots people didnt know what that meant but understood a smaller number meant a nicer screen. Sort of like Jessica saying "I totally dont know what that means, but i want it". These days dot pitch or the physical pixel size is not marketed or even in the Spec Sheets. I think it should be.

Pixel Shape
Most people looking at standard TV dont realize the pixel they see is not square but in fact a rectangle. Most Plasma screens and LCD is square pixel, but 4:3 NTSC TV is a .9091 to 1 shape. Not square. So when you see a regular pillar boxed STD def TV show on your HD screen, its really scaled in a lot of ways.

Back in early TV for Color on CRTs they worked it out by placing Red, Gren, Blue vertically masked bars or color subpixels with very thin black borders separating the colors for the electron gun to scan. This caused a need to "converge" in STD TV sets ( get Red Green and Blue to line up ) . We got used to fuzzy in the process, tint knobs, yuch. HD TV is not fuzzy now and square uniform pixels are part of that.

HD PLASMA 1366x768 runs into the same problem that regular TV CRT masks had, in much larger PLASMA screens the black area surrounding each pixel of Red Gren and Blue dots can be visible. They call this the "Screen Door" effect, since up close, your picture looks like you are seeing it through screening, which in a way, you are... People that claim HD is not what its cracked up to be usually are reacting to having seen such a plasma screen and extend that to the entire HD world. On larger 1366 x 768 plasmas at the 60 inch size you can really see each pixel and the black surrounding area. I would tend to favor the screens that look great at any viewing distance. Spend your money if you like what you see at 6 feet away.

DLP and Sony SXRD XBR2 almost totally eliminate this pixel to pixel separation, the whole Rear Projection tactic allows for that and they really do it quite well.

Sometimes things get bad...
THIS COLUMN written by some old guy in Baltimore sums it up pretty well, a huge 1366 x 768 screen was probably what he saw, with a rather dry and mildy irritating sense of humor.

THIS PAGE on Westinghousedigital.com actually lets you print out a full size picture of your tv, sort of taped toogether letter sheets to let you see how much space your TV really will need, and how big this is in relationship to your seating.

OK so what is what?
I think that from 37 to 55 inches, you are basically a TV watcher, typical of a lot of living spaces, and that from 55" on up you really are in a Home Theater kind of setup, where really the Screen takes over a typical room and becomes what the space is designed around. In my opinion this makes a sweet spot of LCD at up to about 4 feet of screen and Gives rear projection rigs like DLP and SXRD stuff an advantage at 60 inches on up.

I have read some posts elewhere that profess 1080p is too expensive, and i really need to point out that if you do the search, you can find great 1080p for a bit over 2k$.. My HD 1920 x 1080p Screen cost me $1298 and that was when it came out, you can buy it for less than that now. In 2007 i would guess that 37-42" screens with 1080p will likely hover around 1k, good deal i think. I paid 1800 for my RP Hitatchi in 1992 or so 45" NTSC screen, and thats a 480i, so in the big picture you are getting more for less if you seek out the great deals on 1080.

IMHO if you dont mind having to replace an expensive lamp maybe every 2 years, SXRD 1080p from Sony is superb.

PIXEL for PIXEL accurate HD1080p off Blu-ray or HD-DVD is worth it. Its is for the most part, the only way you can see what the director/producer intended. No scaling, no mucking with the image, every frame is a piece of art.

IF you can not see a difference between a 1 megapixel and 2 megapixel display at 8 feet away, then you really have less of a problem with resolution decisions. Probably you are more sensitive to black levels and contrast, and will prefer plasma or SXRD technology.

FINAL THOUGHT.
I have helped more than a few people over the past months, and comparison buying is in fact a challenging thing to do. Sometime in the spring i will create and release a Test HD-DVD and downloadable TEST File that lets you see comparative situations and excersizes the scaling and processing chipset in a display/player. Know why before you buy, and IMHO - pixel perfect is the best choice to assure no future regrets, since a TV is something you tend to keep for years.

ANALOG SHUTOFF Feb 17 2009 ATSC

2007-01-11T09:02:00.000-08:00

The Switch heard round the world....

A new Monster is born. "ATSC"

Ker-thunk goes the analog broadcast TV channels and the end of an era is created as digital takes it's place. Possibly the biggest broadcast event to ever happen, as a mandated change to end over the air television in analog and replace it with digital-only broadcasting... a monster created from the bits an pieces of an already cobbled-together network.

THE ANALOG TO DIGITAL SWITCH is not specifically HD, but it assures that HD has standards that are the same everywhere.

It is ALL channels of broadcast Television. HD is already digital, and its the best of what that has to offer... I have it on good authority that several producers see that as a date to initiate 1080i anyhow. They have been collecting HD shows on the shelf and in the can and building out a full schedule to support that for a couple years now.

US Congress voted on it, passed it... House and Senate tabled, but is going to happen anyhow. ( some citizen groups are planning to sue about it, The UK is having an even tougher time of it, it seems to become a global thing since satellite digital is the way of a lot of this.) Whatever...Our USA FCC decided that they need to re-organize the distribution of broadcast frequency allocations for other wireless purposes, and that comittment will be honored.

This is dragging us all into a situation. We didnt have a voice in how it got the way it is and no voice in how it will change. Meaning: the TV makers in Asia have been handed billions of US dollars to make stuff that deals with it.

Feb 17th 2009 is kind of a calendar-as-dartboard for all this.

WHAT IS IT?
Basically the end of NTSC and the beginning of ATSC.

ATSC = The Advanced Television Systems Committee, Inc., is an international, non-profit organization developing voluntary standards for digital television. The ATSC member organizations represent the broadcast, broadcast equipment, motion picture, consumer electronics, computer, cable, satellite, and semiconductor industries. ATSC creates and fosters implementation of voluntary Standards and Recommended Practices to advance terrestrial digital television broadcasting, and to facilitate interoperability with other media.

Note the International nature of this. It will be one of the few events in history that is intended to universally affect a global population of TV users.

The New Digital TV Tuner is also called ATSC, the digital broadcast standard. Regular TV in the usa is called NTSC. doesnt really matter all that much, its a Bunch of numbers, new channels. Juggling act of biblical proportion that will in one day obsolete half century of TV Tuners.

To defray the impending furor, the US Govt thru the FCC have allocated a billion or so to subsidize the making and selling of the new digital tuners needed for the new digital age.... like 50 bucks is worth something in the year of the OX, 2009 is targeted for the consumer. Probably a rebate form you have to fill out and hope you see a check in the mail... right. Some TV station will come up with a "Crisis" name for it, i cant wait, & I will be available for wry commentary interviews.

CABLECARD

Prior to that, Cable providers are required to install and enable something called a cablecard...ever hear of it?.. do you have Cable? you will need to know more. Starting July 1 a deadline exists for switching over to new digital cable set-top boxes with slots for removable security/descrambling modules called CableCARDS. It doesnt really do YOU the consumer much good, but it does provision the management of content protection that is demanded by the content owners, who have pressured "the system" and FCC to insitute and implement it.

Motorola or possibly CISCO is likely the maker of your cableCARD. Think of it as your card-sized gatekeeper, the same capacity to list the GUIDE is the one that phones home to the network for fresh info, identifies you, and by definition, every click of yours is unique to that card ID.

Read ALL ABOUT IT

Industry executives estimate that the CableCARD-enabled versions of the mal-equipped digital boxes will cost more than $200 each. Someone is making money on that, and someone is gonna pay. Probably you. Right now Comcast is asking the FCC for a waiver of the July 1 2007 date untill a cost effective plan is crafted, since basically they bought Adelphia and took on a huge load of old crap doing it, its a stress point for them. For Inclusion of ATSC tuners in larger HDTV, the must sell date by the FCC is now March 1, 2007. This means that if you buy a large HDTV it may well have both NTSC and ATSC tuners in it, or NTSC and Cablecard Slot, or both.

YOUR NEW TV
Since analog shutoff is about 2 years away, and that is easily within the expected lifecycle of your next TV purchase... you need to know this if you have an antenna on your roof that feeds that CRT TV set.

CableCARD enabled? READ THIS ON CNET

If you have Cable/dish access ( and its your internet connection ) then you will see this Feb 17th 2009 come and go with zero impact, unnoticed, since by then you very likely already getting a digital signal through your subscriber-set-top-box anyhow., HDCP/cableCARD and whatall DRM will be in place.

Over The Air DIGITAL TUNER SET TOP CONVERTER Like this one here...

If you are thinking of getting rid of your old TV , i would have that yard sale soon.

LCD True HD and Full 1080p

2007-01-08T21:21:00.000-08:00

It would seem that 1080p LCD in the 37 to 55 inch range is going so strong that any other display tech is going to be price sensitive very soon. This is the Westinghouse Digital Lvm 42"

1080p at 42" only 4.5 inches deep is the Westy LVM-42W2, and at a street price around or under $1500 it is perfect as a start for your 1080 experience without breaking the bank, and totally connectable to all your devices. Mine uses both component inputs, one for the Cable box and one for the HDV video camera, one of the 2 DVI inputs is my main computer with an nVidia 7600gt card and the other DVI is to a small Aopen box i use for tradeshow HD loop delivery. The HDMI connector is to my DVD player and the VGA connecter is to my Laptop. I have 6 sources of HD video to pick from.

1080p doesn't have to wipe out your wallet

I see a lot of posts out there that say you cant get over 40 inches for 1080p for under $2k and that is just plain wrong. This Westinghouse screen is so good that usually it is not on any display floor, since other 42" displays look a bit fuzzier at 1366 x 768 and cost more $. No retailer wants to obsolete his own inventory, so to get this one you usually have to ask for it. They tend to keep them in the warehouse. Or weighing in at only 60 lbs , have it shipped to you. I asked for mine at Magnolia, an HD TV store within a store at Best Buy. I asked about it, the manager came over, nodded, said it was a great unit and got me one in 3 days.

http://www.westinghousedigital.com/details.aspx?itemnum=44

Because the LVM-42w2 is a true 1080p monitor, you can attach all your favorite sources using uncompressed digital interfaces. Multiple high-bandwidth digital interfaces mean high-performance HD digital cable, HD satellite and an HD game console. Additionally, PC and notebook users can enjoy the same fat pipe, along with industry-best Genesis Display Perfection® technology.

It is important to note the Faroudja DCDi 3rd generation chipset is in this one, making all your source scaling as good as it possibly can be.

In my humble opinion, this display is perfect for your average living space, has no HDTV tuner so it costs less and connects to your HD Cable / Dish / Satellite provider set-top box, and has very basic speakers that you do not even see. Very clean front -- you can even disable the lit (w) logo on the front. My unit is not bright silver, sort of a brown tone that reminds me a bit of the old high-end macintosh tube amp front bezel. The Scaler chipset is worldclass and all computer connections to it are pixel perfect. Its contrast ratio at about 1200:1 reads like it might not have black levels that a true home theater enthusiast wants, but it displays the entire color gamut of my sources perfectly, i just dont have the backlight set at full , usually about level 2 out of 5 is more than enough, and with that setting, black levels are about right for me.

Most importantly, every computer, game, dvd player we connect to it displays perfectly. We have 3 computers ( 2 on DVI and one on VGA ), and all are doing exactly as i set them up to do, no fiddling on the display side. Part of this benefit comes from an auto-display-config that is built in and figures out what its incoming signal is. That mode pops up and sets itself correctly every time, so i dont have to click through the source options to see, just turning on the connected device causes the display to switch to it and run display optimizing. I dont know whay they dont brag about this on review sites or on the westinghouse digital site, but they should since this makes it a perfect conference room / trade event click and use solution.

This is one display that looks great with your nose right up to it.

And trust me on this, people will do that. In fact they may just prefer to park themselves 4 feet away and stay there to look at it. I run my HDV-FX1 hd video camera right in to it with component input and it becomes my interview realtime review monitor. Its display latency ( the difference between actual time and display time lag ) is so short that no one has a problem with it. It is so accurate that its now my reference monitor for lighting and camera exposure.

All i need now is a nice Anvil transit case for it.

HD1080i endorses this display as a best $ for the buck.

HD wireless cable by Phillips

2007-01-08T09:55:00.000-08:00

Some new monikker called "wireless cables" ... oxymoronic but just the way we like it, no visible wires and more points of connectivity. Itsn not a wire, its a couple boxes.
Think wireless HDMI 1080p ... only you dont run out of jacks to plug stuff into with wireless is channel availability, so devices can really sit near the couch or hidden away anywhere in the room and not have to be under the TV anymore.

The big problem with Wall mounted flat panels is the ugly wire drop downs of all the crap you hooked up that is plugged into the back... that eventually forces you ( actually it may be your wife's constant harang on too many wires that produces that ringing in your ears ) to poke a hole in the wall to run them out of sight and therefore make all that connectivity more of a hassle to get at. My advice, Pay an Installer to put in the wall arm, and install the power outlet anyhow. But after he leaves, you buy another gizmo and now what.. all that cost of install to avoid wire is right back where you were, another dangling cable.

When you are finally done... buying slightly longer cables to reach the rack and whatall plugging the clean looking wall mounted outcome together, you have spent WAY MORE time and money than any of the cool new wireless systems cost. I would like to thank MONSTER CABLE's pricing for making wireless a very attractive and cost effective solution. In my case I would need a 36foot linear run down the wall , around the baseboard, around a corner and up into my rack for an 18 foot direct line-of-sight actual distance.

From the mouths of babes...

My 4yr old son once reminded me of how pervasive wired component systems can be... when one day i asked him to hand me a stereo audio cable...
he looked at me, confused, and said "what cable?"
I replied, "the long black stuff next to you." ...
to which my son promptly admonished me with:
"Oh that's not a cable, that's anudda damn wire"

Obviously he had been listening to my wife's comments..., Thanks Hun.

REDUX:
I got a lot of helpful texting by cell from pals walking the asiles of CES, makes me wish i had gone there.. but a consensus was handed to me on Wireless HDMI. click.
1). NetGear EVA8000
2). Neosonik
These two systems are HD1080i compatible with HDMI 1.3 which means video and audio digital wireless. The Netgear sort of assumes your PC will rule the decision path for content, and the Neosonik assumes you have all digital source and how you handle that is more component Device AV centric. Offhand i would say that Neo has it going properly for the user that just wants wireless and no need to sync this or boot that, and they have a proprietary signal that is more immune to wrieless traffic of the standard 802 whatever. Thats a good thing, my experience with netgear is that at 50 feet or so your signal is now junk. Neosonik claims twice that reach.

WIRELESS DROP

There are several new wireless offerings, i like all this enough to mention each in its own turn. look for posts on wireless 1080 hdmi later on...For example there are Flatpanel systems out there at CES that have something i would call wireless drop, where you place the ATSC tuner and its controller box just below the display, all your wires go into that... ( and along the baseboard however they are needed, out of sight for the most part ) The screen is connected by a High Speed wireless that only has to travel a few feet vertically up to it. Sweet. This may well be the solution of choice if you like the display ( A samsung plasma ) . My preference would be to have this option available for any display thats 1080p, but i do like integrated stuff also.

WIRELESS SURROUND

Basically the surround sound rear speaker issue gets too painful, largely because of the rear speaker wires that had to go under carpet or along ceiling or in a path of travel within the room. So for a time i had basically 3.1 sound Stereo LR, center speaker and subwoofer. The only part that really had to be wireless was rear left and right. I finally bought a Pioneer VSX D414 that satisfied this for me. Wireless HDMI 1.3 is full audio and video , inherently allowing a better path, but beware, some systems will have a processing delay time that makes the sound a bit out of sync or seem more distant, sort of disturbing the soundfield for nearby rear speaker sounds that are in the video. Near Zero Audio processing latency is needed, you have to ask about that.

WIRELESS HDMI
really this is the way to go.
Why? because you want it all in one processing path to avoid audio and video sync delay issues and you need HDCP inherent to the system for it to work anyhow, the HDMI for 1080 use is designed to deal with all that.

Full HD 1080

2007-01-07T07:58:00.000-08:00

Shown above are the relative areas of screen resolution.
red is 1920 x 1080 16:9 FULL HD
gray is 1366 x 768
black is 1280 x 720
blue is 720 x 480

If all pixels were the same size, this would be the relationship of amount of equally detailed area. If you take an image that is fully detailed in the space of the blue box and stretch it out to fill the area enclosed by the gray border, then you are essentially doing the same thing as getting your face 3 times closer to the screen. This doesnt get you a better image, just the same thing bigger. New Technology is available and developing that actually can make the larger scaled-up image look rather nice, and in effect make you feel that you are seeing a higher resolution.

HD is where edges matter, details tell all.
Its very important, the ability of the human visual system to resolve details, like body language, that is present in anything they see. 1920 x 1080 pixels of resolution provides this detail where you are seeing the image in about the same detail that you see everything else, when spread out over 40-60" of area and that is average room size viewing distance to resolved detail.

The problems that need fixing are that Video and TV are images in motion... things change over time. It is here that Interlaced ( every other row sent separately ) content from broadcasts must be reassembled into a complete image. 1080i coming in, 1080p on the screen.

Le me show an example before describing the issues.

Mike's Bike Video

crop of Mikes bike video frame in 108o ppixel for pixel

Interlacing error is one pixel separation of horizontal ( odd / even ) lines, play with the flash example above, animated sliding to see what it really does in an image. Click "Normal" to see what is normal 1080i.

You may well have seen fleeting moments of such stuff on your screen where a comb like edge appears when something in the video is moving, and you also may recognize this as a horizontal effect. This comb look is always a left-right edge problem. In the above view, it only takes 4 pixels of purely horizontal panning shift to cause a horrible outcome when de-interlacing is not done properly. If everything is done right which is the usual case - you never see this.

It is this issue that makes de-interlacing and scaling firmware in your HDTV or set-top so important. Lots of very fast technology goes into this, read my other posts on DCDi. Each frame is de-interlaced prior to scaling inside the display's processing path, using Directional Correlation de-interlacing math. Very cool.

But it isnt that simple. Some broadcasters will actually scale up lower res video, not deinterlaced, and then send that out thru 1080i. Classic failure to attend to this detail of processing is not your fault, or the fault of your TV, it is created by the source provider ( telecine processing ) and the Cable/dish digital provider systems. TNT especially - thru Comcast, on shows like "Charmed" have digitized film in interlaced format, scaled that, and distributed.

Broadcast 1080i of a scene from King Kong.

Properly handled de-interlacing of a film broadcast in 1080i should look like this, where a motion blur in the direction of the motion is presented ( zoom up of a screen shot from King Kong ) 1/60th of a second. You can see a slight ghost of the plane's wings from the previous frame, and a line-blur from the tracer bullet it shoots. No Jaggy comb effect, broadcast properly. In 1080p you should see none of this slight ghost, but you need a 1080p source like HD-DVD or Blu-ray to get it.
I'm not going into 2:3 pulldown since that film-rate to ATSC broadcast rate is now handled really well by every player in the market.

1080p
Bly-ray and the HD-DVD in progressive formats, remove the need for processing of this type entirely, by providing an already cleaned up and exactly rendered image of what they want you to see in every frame., and do that at the source, your HDTV doesnt have to do anything more than just decode/de-encrypt and show it to you.

The value of 1080p? It is like a guarentee that the technology is available and in use to assure a perfect image in every frame. This doesnt mean the movie itself was great, detailed and clean, just that the technology is there to provide for it. I think Made for HD DVD, shot in 4k or HD ( not film conversions telecine or otherwize ) will really express this, and that has yet to become the normal production.

If you make an investment in 1080 native resolution display technology then you will get the value out of it from the Full Frame no-interlace processing inherent in 1080p from the high definition DVD.

I shoot in HD and "flatten" my videos at the point of color correction to be 1080 for this reason, most commonly for 24p since it lets me control the motion and feel of focus in foreground motion vs focus and depth of field in background motion blur. Lots of high action happens in sub-second time so the natural feel of a progressive frame requires managing this. It is so worth that step in processing. I now also rely on VC-1 to be my codec for archive.

OK SO WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?

HD-DVD/ Blu-ray in VC-1 @ 1080p displayed on a real 1080p monitor is what HD is all about.

Almost everything else is "almost HD", very good, but not all there is. So all these so-called experts that do not have 1080p in front of them, that do not shoot in the format and edit in the format, just dont know what the f&@k they are talking about. These editorializers that claim to have authoritative understanding of things are interested in extending thier own importance than in actually knowing the reality first hand. I read an Article that basically said 1080i and 1080p are indistinguishable for most people. I disagree, a 1080p source is enough better to justify the HD-DVD and Blu-ray for its value. Scale that down to 720p and its still nice but you just cut your detail level down to 1/2 of what it should be. Kind of like buying a Camaro with a nice paintjob and having a 4 cylinder engine in it.

WHY VC-1? - because there is no scene-cut block recovery artifacts in it when its done really well, its perfect. Read Macroblock garbage is my worst complaint about mpeg2 and mpeg4.

CES - DUAL HD-DVD/Blu-ray play in one unit.
We should see some dual format media and players this year and i think its all good.

The Dual Format LG BH100 first generation player Retail $1200.
It plays everything you put into it. ALL DVDS any format.
Conversations by cell with attendees confirms its really a Blu-ray player and burner with the added capability of handling HD-DVD playback. All indications from those that i know that spent bucks on thier 1080p screens, failed to get a PS3 yet ... is unanimous. They want one. I would like to know first hand that the upscaling of std DVD widescreen versions is good on this unit but it looks like a win.

Interesting to note they do not list VC-1 as a format codec on the Best Buy site , instead they simply say SMPTE. I guess you are expected to relate that SMPTE 421M is the official Spec name, but you could sort of say that its WMV9 and be in the same class of codecs. I want the common term of understanding to be VC-1.

This player is a fully built computer, so inside there is processing for the BDJ stuff meaning interactive programming for Blu-ray, and an ethernet port for future networking, hopefully meaning you can upgrade the operating system in it, upgrade firmware, get "Soft" deliverable feature enhancements. Yep, i'm liking this.

When the Video-techygeek early adopters are done buying this, then the price will drop and some stripped down to basics equivalent will probably be built into a TV that i will probably buy, slap on my bedroom wall. thanks LG.

2007 - Year of the High Def DVD?

2007-01-04T07:38:00.000-08:00

Who knows?

One thing for sure, the basic art of Buzz-word use is alive and well - I expect to see quite a few new products, that employ HDMI/HDCP to appear as players of all types. Here are some notes...

HD-DVD
on the plus side ...

HD-DVD seems to have one strong thing going for it, it uses this VC-1 compression codec to get the movie onto the disc and it is truely a stunning thing to see, its very compact and in that regard blows out the argument the blu-ray people use for having more storage, since the VC-1 codec just doesnt need all the gigabytes of MPEG2 or MPEG 4. It plays solidly and looks perfect. Gooodbye to that blicky blocky garbage look in rapid scene cuts and high action moments of some of the best films ever made. It gives the film clarity you want. Its is also somewhat less expensive.

Toshiba has continuously improved its set-top products for faster startup and runtime, and some manufacturers are adding chipsets that support 1080p thru a de-interlacer in the unit.

On the minus side, its seems that breakable content rights management for software players on PC platforms will be likely, making a few geek users happy at the expense of Movie distributor angst. Already some people are complaining to me that a scratch in the HD-DVD will kill things for you, apparently too soft a plastic coating and higher density makes for a less rugged media, but i would expect the HD-DVD camp to solve this, or Netflix etc. In the meantime handle with care. I cant tell you much yet about the ROM burner performance.

Blu-ray
Seems Pricing and product release delays prevail here, but the DRM is reasonably robust and the surface technology is proper for high density DVD as a format. The best movies in the best players look great, any trip to Best Buy should include a pass throu the HD area to see the Pioneer Elite. Its high ticket and perfect an all regards.

Mutli-Format Players
I would expect this as a shakeup of some sort....
LG was making some waves last year with a buzz about HD-DVD / Blu-ray combo players and we will see one next week aparently. Warner has also made some mentions of a multiformat or "format agnostic" player technology that is focused on 1080 playback more than anything else, and they appear to have a patent and working tech to prove it.

1080 is the number
no doubt.
It seems that the 720 crowd is being ignored in all storage media formats so all you 1366x768 owners should make sure your player for whatever DVD, has scalers in it that work nicely. Downsampling from 1080 to 768 is non-trivial, and quite a few companies are now in the game of making that work out for you, so its all good. Silicon Optix, Genesis and Sony all have great technology for that. I like DCDi by faroudja but have recently been convinced by exposure to LG's display that correlation de-interlacing processing prior to scaling not only works nicely, but works consistently enough to be transparent to the user.

DE-INTERLACING SCALERS
I am starting to get lots of questions now about this, which is great, it means that people relate to what interlaced stuff is about ( i get comments like , "this looks like the teeth of a comb all along the edge" ) etc, and they recognize that 1080p usually is the process of removing that. There are a lot of great chipset technologies that handle this now, in real time, with embedded processing speeds of 1 trillion operations per second and lots of memory buffers, so its all good.
Scalers are needed after the de-interlacing is done, to rezise the incoming pixels to the display's native pixel resolutions, and they usually are also incorporated into a matching chipset that reads the same memory buffer and writes to your display VRAM ... which basically is what you see, 30 times a second.. . You need to know about and appreciate this hot technology, since it is cutting edge of what used to be in a whole rack computer in flight simulators all brought together in a small package behind your screen. And it Rules what you see.

For example a couple of currently available blu-ray DVD players out there actually convert 1080p off the disc mpeg2 to 1080i , just to run it all through the chipsets that de-interlace -scale - color correct - perform 24p frame 3:2 pulldowns - sharpen and filter noise and output your 1080p. So in that case it doesnt matter if your DVD is interlaced or not, done properly you will not know a difference, and it looks great, like HD should be.

In the case of having all this processing inside the display itself, you have a great solution that can take anything from STD DVD ( 720x480) to 720 broadcasts , to game machines, to 1080i mpeg from blu-ray.

For example, My Westinghouse Digital 1080p LVM display upscales DVD very nicely and i love it. I have seen the new LG 1080p LCD display with integrated DVR that records whatever you see, and its a great buy, in a large part because the internal processing engines that de-interlace and scale do a great job. ALL the Sony SXRD XBR stuff scales so nicely you wont even realize your movie was in a different res than the screen is, although SXRD is intensely mechanical and has a projection lamp light source that may need replacing, its image is sweet based on the large amount of very tuned processing for it.

In fact this is so important that i probably will research and summarize in some type of soft-tech review, made simple to understand by the average buyer, what the processing is about and who is doing it well, give some credit where it is deserved.

1080i on 1366x768 resolution problems

2006-12-30T21:34:00.000-08:00

The title of this Post is, in fact, a very common search term that this site gets way too many hits from. That is a clue...

click for full 1920 x 1080 image

Your New Years Resolution should be 1080..
but if not... then read on. .1366 x 768 is not a broadcast standard in any way shape or form. It is a flatpanel plasma and LCD resolution offered for 16:9 displays Note ... this image above is not intended to show that 1366x768 cuts off a broadcast image, It is just to represent the pixel area differences of various resolutions. 1080i content is scaled down from 1920 wide to 1366 wide by the display. Read on.. Scaling matters.

1366 x 768 Native Resolution in fixed pixel flat panel displays:

There are 2 resolutions for HD broadcasts
1) 720p = resolution of 1280 x720 pixels ~ 1 megapixel
2) 1080i -= resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels ~ 2 megapixels

There is no 3rd resolution of 1366 x 768 in any HD source.

It is all about firmware scaling engine ( video processing chips ) in the display.

If you own a 1366 x 768 display then your image has been mashed about and re-scaled to fit your screen. Period. Meaning: you will not ever get a pixel for pixel rendering of anything coming into your display, so all this talk of "pristine 720p" from my 720p plasma display is bunk usually unless your display has an exact 1280 mode. Its no longer the video frame that the producer saw. Instead you actually are seeing an upscaled version created by the pixel scaler firmware with quality that the display manufacturer wanted to put into the HDTV.

Just because it is scaled does not mean it is not great imaging, some displays do a fantastic job of resizing and de-interlacing. Some 1366 displays do such a fuzzy job of scaling that the image seems about the same as regular TV, just bigger and wider, not Higher in Definition.

WHY does 1366 x 768 exist?
This has to do with a 1 megapixel processing boundary of easily available chipsets for VRAM ( video memory ) and video processing display drivers. Its a standard memory size of importance to chip makers. Makes for cost productive configurations where the Input / Output systems are built off of already available OEM devices, so basically the Manufacturer is more in the business of flatpanel Glass making and bezel/speaker situations on a large display. The functional basic math:

1 megapixel
1024 x 1024 = 1048576 pixels
1366 x 768 = 1049088 pixels 16 by 9 image
720p = 1280 x 720 = 921600 pixels. 16 by 9 HD standard .
720p is just under 1 megapixel of data per screen.

If they really wanted to make a 720p specific display, it would be 1280 x 720 pixels, but they decided to get every last bit they could into the viewable pixel space and that is what makes for 16 by 9 numbers to become 1366 across and 768 vertically. In fact 768 is a common vertical resolution memory boundary. Why get more pixels up into the glass and use 1366 x 768? ... because more pixels is better image resolution.

A 1366 x 768 image is ALWAYS SCALED
To Get HD from this means your image is at the mercy of scaling that makes 720 or 1080 source practically irrelevent to you, since whatever you see is processed and spit out by something you have almost no control over after your purchase. I trust Sony and Westinghouse digital, LG on some units. You must see it in the store in my opinion. Asking about scaler technology from most sales people will get you nowhere.

1366x768 is where the industry has not properly explained itself.
Why? I dont know , because i think they should, especially when the news is good, some displays have scalers that are superb and they should be claiming credit for that, since a huge amount of processing has to happen to make 720 into 768 or 1080 down to 768. In a Good display with a great processing chipset, the 1080 incoming resoultion is 2 times what the display can show, and since it has twice the information it needs, the 1366 display can really do a great job.

STORES AND MARKETING PEOPLE...
Ignoring this basic fact that people recognize the 1366 is not 1080 or 720, leaving out info about about scaler processing, is flawed reasoning at a fundamental level, and the google search hits i get about that are ample proof. People are smarter than that, and that intellect should be respected.

People DO want to know whats up with that. I think you need to see this nearly hidden piece : http://www.lge.com/products/tv/XDEngine/index.htm (flash) is not technical, but shows how LG handles the mutlitude of problems caused by resolution scaling and color. This is all done in chipsets that are in the display. By the way, LG does a great job and you will be happy to own a 1366x768 if the price-point is right for you.

1366 native resolution has caused some problems for the HD world.

why? Because many people looking at what they are told is the NEW HD are being exposed to 1 megapixel quality spread out over a large bright surface and they do not see the benefits of greater accuracy = HD in the display, because for the most part, that difference is not as dramatic, and stuff is still a bit fuzzy. Plasma displays at eye level in stores are the worst culprit. As a result some people see HDTV as a format / shape change from roughly square images to Wide Screen theater type displays that are flat. And the words HIGH and Definition are not being trusted as well. As a result you will see "FULL HD 1080" in marketing to put the HIGH back into the Definition.

THIS COLUMN written by some old guy in Baltimore sums it up pretty well, a huge 1366 x 768 screen was probably what he saw. Perhaps he would fail the 5 foot test With an eye chart of sorts here.

People that buy an HDTV also have worked with a computer... they see 1024 x 768 on a smaller screen without knowing that 768 is the display's pixel resolution ... some have seen a DVD on the computer screen. They seem to accept and relate that HD WideScreen TV is not going to be as sharp and detailed an image as thier computer has, & in my mind that is totally wrong... i blame the 1366 x 768 large flatpanel display makers for this misunderstanding.

A lot of personal computer laptop screens are actually higher in resolution , mine is 1440 x 960 and it and has enough VRAM for a secondary display, so there is a vga port in the back of it. The problems arise when you try to connect it up to a computer, which is by and large the next thing a wide screen HD display owner tries to do.

HOOKING IT UP?
here is another term you have to live with regardless..
EDID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDID)
This is a real hassle, its the handshake between devices that sets the allowable resolution options you can select in the resolution menus of graphics systems.

This causes unavailable resolution to be grayed out and unselectable, even when the real truth would prove that the selection would be just fine, and should be allowed. The only way around this is to use a display driver for that monitor, which may be very hard to find.

There are codes for resolution.
They have the name EDID's and they are standards that exist across the globe, everywhere, but not always implemented in the same way and rarely include the 1366 x 768 resolution option.

WUXGA = 1920 x 1080 = HD1080 16:9 ATSC
WXGA = 1280 x 768/720 = HD720 16:9 generic PC
& by way of example; VGA = 640 x 480.

Standard EDID codes dont exist for 1366 x 768 resolution ...
causing lots of angst when people buy a 1366x768 panel and try to hook it up with VGA connector to a PC or a game machine, to find that 1280x768 is really the only clean resolution they get, and pushed to 1366, everything is rather blocky/blurry... doesnt look right. I'll bet you didnt know that, or if you just bought a 1366x768 HDTV you just found this out and you are seriously pissed about it. For DVI connections its a bit different and you really need the display card MFG and the monitor to behave properly, but not a lot of systems have DVI, you need to get that as an upgrade to your PC. The best solution i have for you is to replace your Graphics card with an nVdia 7600 GT or 7800 series graphics card. At this moment, nVidia does it best. For the technically adventure-centric DIY guy, a shareware program called PowerStrip 3 will attempt to control your graphics card, download it here: http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

Be careful though, and have an alternate display available to see what is happening in case you set your system to something unworkable by accident.

You will need perhaps a DVI to HDMI connector cable. Get that here: http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/dvi/index.htm

FUTURE
There isnt a future for 1366x768. Its just what is available due to chipsets and mfg, and is typical for low end LCD and many displays in Plasma. The plasma crowd is worried about this and producing all kinds of studies about the way people perceive color and motion at whatever viewing distance. If you never hook up a computer display, game machine or networked device, plasma 1366 may be right for you. If not, then this resolution is just Bigger wider brighter and flatter, with fat pixels you can see at 6 feet distance.

http://hd1080i.blogspot.com/2007/01/resolution-vs-distance-1080-to-eyes.html

Redux:
The over-whelming fact is.. people are hooking up their laptops and PC's to thier wide screen HDTVs, and this connects more and more people to HD and the web. I have found that people who get 1080p LCD displays have no issues, and those with 1366 displays have to fiddle a bit with the properties panel in the PC. Also, this seems to be one case where Apple does do well, many notebooks of theirs have DVI ports that seem to work out a full screen display.

JUDDER
is a word used by gamers and videopholes.
Basically what can happen is the graphics card/ memory refresh cycle is not completed in the displays refresh time, causing a loss of smooth motion or only getting halfway updated frames.
For 1280x768 this is usually not too much of a problem in a quick computer, but older 1.8 ghz systems with insufficient VRAM resources in memory will fail to produce a useable experience.

CYBERLINK PowerDVD software players...
Some systems will lock up or simply not display, especially when the extended desktop display is the HD screen, and the software wants to display on screen 1... forcing it to the secondary screen 2 while it is in use can crash some machines. In some cases you cannot change the properties in the PC display control to make the external screen become screen 1, and you can actually cause hard problems by doing so.... The best way for that case is is to start the DVD player -- pause it. -- drag the player window to the HD screen, and then restart the player not in full screen mode. pause it , set full screen , play.

There is a fellow on CNet that says he cant always tell the difference between a 1080p and a 1366 display when looking at HD content... AND states several times that the difference between Standard Definition TV and and 1366 HD display is more dramatic than the difference between 1366 and 1920 resolution displays. This is actually true, for him. If a person wears glasses and/or is near sighted, then perhaps the added cost of going from 1366 to 1920 pixel resolution is better spent on other things, so for some people its all good.

However, the difference between Standard Def 480 TV and HD 1080 is really what HD is all about, and in my time in front of displays, the 1080 stuff is preferred.

When the guitar on the wall next to the HDTV and a video or photo of that guitar on the HD screen look identical in detail, then HD becomes the accuracy of reality, it just feels right.

AACS / DRM on HD-DVD

2006-12-29T09:19:00.000-08:00

DRM
.. OOPS - Digital Rights Management.

Something called AACS was developed to assure usage and copy protection for Movie titles. It took a hacker on a windows machine 8 days to get around it for an HD-DVD. I'm like - so what? the average user is not going to de-encrypt anything, that noise is all the realm of the total geek., also this hack is for a specific Windows based player for HD-DVD on an XBOX USB HD-DVD player.

As usual there is a large underlying basic reasoning deficiency in all this furor.

The point that people are missing is that the decryption AACS key crack is only useful to people who do not have HDCP, which is the handshake performed by the video device firmware ( graphics card or HDTV ) and the AACS in the player. An HDTV with HDCP requires a valid Key or it will not allow full resolution play. All new players and displays have HDCP.

Basically you need old equipment (HD display with old DVI or VGA graphics card on a PC), the desire and ability to run Java code on your PC, and a lot of hard disc space... e.g. you gotta be a geek with old school stuff. If your display video card has HDCP then this crack of the PowerDVD 6.5 player is not needed for HD-DVD play, and therefore not worth the bother. About all you can do is what the hacker did.. play an HD-DVD file off a hard drive into a NON HDCP enabled system.

Its important to note that AACS as an encryption method has not been broken, only the access to a Title Key has been accomplished. This is comparable to designing a very hard to break door lock, and then accidentally allowing a lot of Keys to that door to get out and be copied. The Lock itself is still just as tough, the weakness is in the Key that opens it ... Hence you actually still need the door and its lock to get in, but now you have the key and can take whatever you want through the door ( the reason for the lock in the first place ) . How do you fix this problem? Change the lock of course, and this how AACS corrects the issue, revoke the keycode in future releases. This is rather like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped, so to speak, by the time you change your lock & Key, what you were trying to protect has left the building.

Actually re-writing the movie DRM-Free into a new file that can be copied to a blank HD-DVD and played in a Set-top or something other than a PC is a subsequent step. When Mpeg4 or Vc-1 format converted copies of even one HD-DVD movie shows up and PC users come to prefer that method of viewing HD Movies, then we will know that the purpose of AACS has been circumvented for that audience only, basically HD file sharing amongst XBOX HD-DVD drives with PCs connected to an HDTV.

I suspect this HD-DVD crack will be the straw breaking Toshiba's back only when someone drops a dozen cracked and pirated HD-DVD movie titles on some movie executive's desk. Probably a copy, WMV-HD formatted and no menus, just play on a PC with windows media Player 11. ( which by the way looks great... 720p or 1080p, both are superb )

HD-DVD releases are set to happen at the same time as HD pay-per-view availability on cable/dish HD networks, so all these movies may aleady be sitting on Tivos across the world anyhow. I sort of doubt that cracked DRM-Free downloads will show up everywhere since 20-25 gigs of HD is just a lot of too much data for todays connection speeds, and i would imagine that any "FREE" cracked software for HD-DVD will become rife with virus and trojans, making it risky to trust anything associated with it.

I do wonder what Toshiba / Warner / Microsoft has for Plan "B" - should be an interesting exposure of thier ability to damage control PR on this one, and how they manage the deal they have with cyberlink's Power DVD 6.5 software dvd player. I doubt they will be able to explain the real situation of HCDP to your average user, so this is a spin-doctor job for them. Bottom line? This AACS on HD-DVD furor is all noise and no real impact yet. However, this saga does not end here, it begins here.... and it is :

VERY SERIOUS STUFF

It's the format converted HD quality copy of a movie, duplicated in quantity and readily available ... that is feared by hollywood, and Asian duplication / knockoff houses doing it -- that is the real deal to consider, and great care must be taken by HD-DVD proponents, since it is by this means that some chinaman will be eating your lunch, and the HD-DVD will be how that was enabled.

REDUX:
Blu-ray key grabbing workaround for AACS has also been done. Its important to note that the crowd doing that is not the joe-sixpack average owner, but the PC user with lots of time on his/her hands and a willingness to spend large amounts of effort in dealing with downloads and hack software. Not a big contingent, but worth looking into, since all it takes is one enterprising character to create a mindlessly dumb and easy to use Keygrabber/converter and then a "borrowed" high def movie disc is copyable and can be played without HDCP/AACS in it.

My Observation is: that the usual buyer of High Def movies is not going to want to bother with any of this nonsense, and the studios have little to worry about from joe sixpack or his kids... i think more troublesome is the knockoff houses that counterfeit the movie and sell it like its an original copy.

New Year's Resolution = 1080

2006-12-28T19:18:00.000-08:00

Regardless of what gets said, 1080 ends up in the buzzwords of choice category for 2007.

Dismal supply-side performance by manufacturers has rather damped the furor and buzz that the media attempted to raise over HD-DVD & Blu-ray value, but in almost all regards, it has emblazened the new term "1080p" into the mindset of the buying public, and if anything, that is good enough for now, as 1080 capable HDTV and HD Displays meet a tolerable price-point.

So its all good right?

Yup, although 1080 ubiquity is still a couple years away, at least it is becoming a known quantity by your middle income buyers, where in the past it was more of a terminology by-product for the consumer who evaluated a purchase mostly by price and physical size of the display width.

One interesting note however is the pending war between Plasma and LCD as competing technologies, at least in the mindset of the manufacturers and distribution chain, with each side claiming better and more quality.

I think the real Technology competition commenced when the SXRD and DLP rear projection 1080 displays got really good, and they are. NowI see the price-point value difference being much more of a choice where 1080 LCD wins for the smaller 32 - 47" screens and Rear projection for larger 50" on up. Just go look at an SXRD and tell me about it, its perfect viewing at any distance from the screen. I want one.

Have a Very 1080 New Year in 2007!

1080 - Upscaling to HD from lower resolutions

2006-12-08T22:24:00.000-08:00

I get 2 specific format related questions. I get way too many search result hits from this.

1) How does a 1366 x 768 resolution Monitor display 1080i?
2) How does regular DVD (480) display on 1080?

HD1080i on a 1366 x 768 display
Short answer is that 1080 sources are scaled down and therefore are no longer 1080. There are people that say the alternate 720p HD is perfect for 1366 x 768 displays, but quite frankly, 1366 x 768 is enough different from 1280 x 720 ( 720p resolution ) that regardless of what your inputs are getting, you will be at the mercy of the HD display scaling firmware. Rescaling and de-interlacing any source video is non trivial and can produce really poor results.

Pixel for Pixel ...Numbers:
1366 x 768 display resolution is neither 1080 or 720, and doesnt exist in broadcast specifications. It is just a convenient size for manufacturers and thats why it exists.

The methods of scaling downward from 1080i ( 1920 x 1080 ) to 1366 x 768 typical resolution should a nice enough image, since more pixels are available than are needed. Newer displays generally do better than older designs, but in most cases de-interlacing is the first step in the down scaling process, and you need to see it live and in the store to determine if you like how any given HDTV performs. That is my advice because i have seen such a huge disparity in scaling quality that no general answer will be correct, except perhaps to say that in 50" or larger HD displays, 1366 x 768 plasma will look less crisp side by side with lets say a 50" 1080p SXRD.

UPSCALING: 1080 and the 480i standard DVD
Your basic DVD is 1/6th the resolution of a 1080 display.
You can do something about it. Process the DVD image quality and prepare it for your 1080 Screen, hook it up with component, or HDMI connector and FILL THAT SCREEN, with progressive processed, clean 1080.

Upsampling Scalers.
This task is of scaling larger images from smaller sources is complex, and in best case situations it produces the ideal scenario for the 1080p display owner, since a nicely upsampled DVD in an HD1080 monitor can fill the screen properly as opposed to a pillarbox 4:3 or letterbox 16:9 "zoom" scaled image which is just low-resolution blocky stuff made bigger. You need some technology, and an easy way to recognize that it is there.

Enabling Technology ::: Short answer;
DCDi by Faroudja. If the device/player has this firmware feature, then you will love it, award winning de-interlacing and Directional Correlation edge detection and managament at the per-pixel level , or in other words, proven high tech that looks great, but you need a new DVD player to get this happenning for you. A sample of what i suggest...

OPPO DV981HD Product Webpage for $230 or less.
DCDi Progressive Scan DVD player with HDMI into a nice 1080p image.

Yamaha DVD s2500 Product Webpage for $750 or less
DCDi Progressive Scan DVD player with HDMI, well liked by the pros.

DCDi Faroudja Processing performs the magic of de-interlacing a source and then processing that, frame by frame, in real-time, for scaling. It has been the choice of film makers and high-end projection systems for years. It takes almost anything in - and creates 1080p.

I'm not going into detail further but The Pioneer Elite -(No DCDi) , - works well, this unit is superb at a substantial price, and The Denon highest-end progressive DVD player unit, always a favorite, is pricey and many times preferred over anything else.

Lets discuss just a bit, since a lot of things have to happen for a lower resolution to be converted to a higher resolution. For one thing, the source low-resolution must be detected and made into a complete image first, this is called progressive display. ALL DVD stuff is interlaced Mpeg2 so basically it must be sampled and stored into memory in the player for processing, making it available for pixel level analysis, in short, the process requires computing memory and horsepower.

Problems arise when images are upscaled and converted, jaggy edges, especially fast moving angular edges, will look bad. DCDi by Faroudja handles that with Directional Correlation math-whiz processing that detects and fixes the upsampled and scaled image edge to remain smooth, eliminating the shaky dot crawl zig-zag of simple bicubic digital image processing. Actually it does a lot more than that, but what you need to know is that the best stuff has DCDi by Faroudja to handle scaling.

So for the Case of regular DVD play into 1080 display, it is proper to get a thouroughly enjoyable experience and well worth your existing DVD libary investment to have an OPPO player or DCDi by Faroudja enabled playback unit. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings DVDs in widescreen DVD will be truely a see again and love it's look kind of experience.

MONITOR SCALING
Yes , if you have a nice 1080p LCD screen, it may do all your scaling for you.
In such a case i have found that Component Input scaling behavior with a DCDi equipped monitor behaves just slightly better. Usually you can scale the display with a couple methods.

One would be at the cable/dish subscriber box in thier ZOOM mode, which is not usually very good, another is at the monitor if it has a ZOOM scaling option.

Genesis Display Perfection® technology
This is the best implementation of DCDi

Westinghouse Digital and LG use this in thier 1080p display product lines.
I have seen and tested both and they are for me at this moment, the best solution for input resolution display scaling. Although this information is not well known or even featured in marketing these products, the Genesis DCDi DIsplay Perfection chipset rules what you will see.

SONY XBR
Is superb, they have a tuned solution that is specific to the unique display management of color and process, so a tech discussion here is not something i can do, suffice to say it can be trusted. If your have a Bravia or Grand Wega XBR than you are going to want to let the display do your upscaling for you. My personal best-of bang for the buck is still the SXRD XBR stuff. Sony has a sence for price-point performance that beats almost everyone but Westinghouse digital.

LG
Life is Good... these people have superb R&D.
Face it... LG / Phillips combination of euro-brilliance and korean manufacturing, have so got this situation under control that my other posts cover it in more detail. ANY top of the line LG 1080p display made recently is going to do a fantastic scaling job, just plug the DVD players-video in and let your LG do it all. I insist that you go see LG stuff for yourself. Currently my chipset of choice is in the LG 1080p lines. http://www.lge.com/

SHARP AQUOS
very good is all i can say, it deserves more attention from me but i will get there.

SAMSUNG
Does very good svideo upscaling, but i have no indepth knowlege on how they are doing it, and that is only in the 1080p stuff i have seen... they seem still to be interested in plasma which at 1080p is rather pricey

PIONEER ELITE
excellent - but i dont know how they do it yet. The Pioneer Elite has fooled several people into thinking they are seeing an HD source when looking at widescreen Lord of the Rings regular ols DVD. Yes its that nice, but you probably have enough wallet for this to also afford anything else you want.

HD and the PC - IPTV , Hook me UP

2006-12-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

I read Mark Cuban's Blog Maverick with great interest & He makes an excellent point about resolution and the HDTV to PC connection. "... look at the back of your PC. Look to see if you have a component, DVI or HDMI port out ? Chances are that unless you bought a PC with high def video in mind, you don't ..." He is correct and i will write about this experience here.

Most PC's have VGA connections and video cards in them that do not perform well if at all in HD 1920 x 1080, and may work resonably well in 1366 x 768. This is back to my mantra about the consumer endpoint device enablement being mission critical to next gen adoption.

there are ways to connect anything to anything.
XCM will do it. Some wireless systems will also.

In some ways, the Media Center By Microsoft does the job of storage and management for PC platforms, Apple is coming out with an iTV ( or some other name for it ) and there are more products in 2007 destined to support the process of having a home computer as a source.

-- you will want a couple things. --

1) Long VGA or DVI cable to reach to your computer.
2) A wireless Keyboard and mouse , i prefer the Logitech, works up to 25ft away, is nice.

You may want a DVI to HDMI adapter Cable.

VGA
Most HD displays have a VGA connector on the back and a PC input select button on the remote -- plug the VGA into your HDTV and start noodling with the Properties > Settings ... manage to finally get a useful image and go from there and you now have something you can see but it doesnt look great.

DVI
1) The HDTV should be and probably is PC compatible LCD
2) Your HD display has a DVI connector ( this is currently the best result for a PC connection)
3) your PC has a DVI output. This is usually where the whole idea falls short. No DVI, gotta buy one.

Short answer: - Get an NVIDIA 7600 GT graphics card. its cheap , works well with everything, has Pure Video HD firmware built in, does HD resolutions like 1920 x1080 with ease. I have 2 7600 cards, that gives me 4 DVI outputs.
My Desk:

(3) 1680x1050 LG Flatrons and (1) 1920x1080 Westy. ALL DVI.

NVIDIA is more plug and play for the weekend warrior, no real huge stress to buy and apply for the part-time computer kid. The surprise hassle you will encounter is in the outrageous cost of the DVI cable, costs MORE than the Graphics card... unless:
Smart way to buy your cable ...
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/dvi/index.htm you may need HDMI to DVI conversion, this place has that. BJC Series 2 - 15 foot HDMI/DVI Cable $ 36.50 ... the price is right.

Wireless connections... connecting your computer using cables and having specialized graphics cards is a pain. A Better idea, is to basically have a Wireless Media Center. This option is nice in a lot of ways, especially for those with cable modems and routers like Netgear and Linksys, Dlink etc.

All hooked up now?
2 things will happen. You will see brighter color than you see on the PC screen. This is because the HDTV is usually running a 75% color gamut at NTSC specs, basically compressing the range of color to do that. The other thing is that text will be small and you will sit closer, since almost nothing for IPTV or video clips is really HD out there. Pardon my jest but basically using your HDTV as a monitor is not going to provide you with great HD video from the web, but it is rather cool for some things. I have done this with and for a few folks, and what i have seen them do with it is not what i expected. I was guessing they would hunt down videos on the web, youtube stuff. That lasted for only a short time.

What was more prevalent?... Google Earth ( try it in 1920x1080 its rather amazing ) and photos and image galleries, high res photo sharing & stuff like that. Video.aol.com and the newer open system democracy player and in some ways Divx are breaking into the higher definition videos, all with special stuff to download. Mostly this is 480 quality, some is DVD ( 720x840 ) and a smattering is 720p, some WMV-HD trailers are pretty good, but thats about it. IPTV in HD isnt on a lot of websites, at least for the moment, Apple may have an iTV gizmo for iTunes downloadable at some point, Verizon FIOS may offer some advanced features in some areas.

There is some expectation that the XBOX Live and PS3 service crossection will have some HD video, althought Miscrosoft has had a year to play with this, it still really is not a high traction situation for them, i would expect that we are a about a year away from Game-console-as-media- player HD specific content really hitting into much more than movie downloads and techie gee-whiz TV. When a solid set of numbers on $$ per eyeball ad-value happens, then this whole HD from IP source enablement will be really something to watch.

There are lots of services cropping up that purport and claim full screen digital movie download.
That pretty much all insist on membership, download of a custom player, and installation of some software that constantly uses your computer connection to report back to them.
http://www.vongo.com/ http://video.aol.com (hi-q) etc. My experience is not that good for HD screens, in fact do not expect any claims of great HD to be for real. However, in a small window on your computer it can be ok.

IPTV
This is where opinions diverge...
Mark thinks that iptv wont work, i dont really agree, i think its probably great for 480i standard definition on-demand stuff, but my real interest is in getting MORE HD content, which is hard to come by in the minimal channel availability for Movies out there at this time. Entering the IPTV world is not all that difficult. XBOX and PS3 both claim that AV access to on-line digital video is up and coming, so i will report of those outcomes as they reach a level that seems to work in the 1080 of HD, however if you dont have digital Fiber like Verizon FIOS, then maybe you will need a lot of time to download, essentially HD is for the high-speed chosen few.

Full HD 1080

2006-11-26T09:45:00.000-08:00

Is Full HD 1080 a real spec? ( stamp by Sony ™)

No, but ... that evolves, since there are a lot of new-to-market non 1080 displays that really suck, it is a useful thing for us all to see, and i like this stamp.

The truth is, that HD makers are using the 1080 number with TRUE and FULL as a differentiator for the systems that have 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution, and in all cases that i could determine, its an indicator of native processing and display in all 1080 inputs. A situation analysis here is for those marketing efforts that list 1080i as an input compatibility.
The fact is that even the new Samsung BD-1000 Blue-ray 1080p player actually converts the 1080p to 1080i internally, processes that and reconverts to 1080p for output. Huh? true.
Done properly it does not matter how the 1080 arrives, what matters is how that is handled, and most all the new nice 1080 stuff does what is needed nicely. Thanks.

I guess FULL HD - 1080
is just thier way of not saying this

Even more confusing is the marketing that lists a VGA resolution system as HD TV simply because it has an ATSC Digital broadcast receiver in it, AHA .. so it can tune into an HD broadcast that its not capable if displaying at any HD resolution levels. for shame, shame shame.

The problem people are encountering is that nearly all cable and satellite broadcast HD is 1080i and some new game machines and HD DVD / blu-ray stuff always says 1080p. The assumption being that a 720p or 1366 x 768 plasma display is just not up to the 1080 level of image quality.
We even have Jessica Simpson telling us in satelite tv ads that "It's broadcast in 1080i" ... "I totally dont know what that means, but i want it",.

The useful info here is the number "1080"?
The difficulty with all this is that 1080 is the display resolution, and the display processing is more important than anything else, and FULL TRUE HD 1080 whatever doesnt always mean you get everything there is.
Display makers are basically telling you that they are the only ones that make a real HD display and use 1080 as a number to do that. 1080 is in fact an indictor of the prevailing proper processing of what HD has to offer, and you want that for sure, but it isnt all there is to it.

Firstly, the source has to be in a 1080 format. At this point, 1080i or 1080p should mean to you that you are cable/satellite or HD DVD/blu-ray with your source.

One way some makers use to try and convince you that thier stuff is real HD, and the best, is by placing an HDMI stamp on thier stuff. Sorry, you can put an HDMI connection system into anything and it is no guarentee whatsoever of 1080p thruput, i have a DVD player here with HDMI labeled on the front that doesnt output anything other than DVD 480 resolution.

So you cant use the presence of HDMI stamps as an assurance of 1080 anything, however, you want HDMI in your system components, its 1.3 spec is rigorous enough to provide the best thru-put, and it is a good standard, but in an of itself it is no guarentee of the resolution you will get from a source you plug into it. Blaming HDMI for a poor image in your display is like blaming the messenger for the message, because it is simply a convention for connection between devices in such a way that includes everything, the lowest through to the highest in video and audio is inclusive in this. I really like HDMI 1.3 and Component YpBpR for video and DVI for PC connections, you should seek mutiple input in your HD display with all these and a VGA input for good measure.

FULL HD 1080 and PS3
Here is one of the current rubs in this mix, the Sony PS3 being blamed for games that are developed for it that were created in 1280 x 720 resolution, that were then connected to old 1080 displays. In this case the PS3 is worngly accused of having a comaptibility problem, since the hardware is just fine with newer systems that have newer processing and connection conventions.

Its sort of a 720p problem redux in that 720p is sort of a misguided child of the dual HD standards, and not all display systems handle this 720 resolution with equal ability. In a worst case scenario, the display seeing anthing that is not 1080, will downscale to 480 NTSC ( or PAL ) standards. This would be not just limited to the PS3... the problem exists with the older display and the fact that the game should have been re-authored to produce a 1080 optional resolution. Sony bashers are pushing this like its a huge blunder, but in fact its limited to a rather small group of older HD TV owners with 1080i displays, and in the greater scale of things it is nothing huge, but should have been identified somehow ahead of the selling of the games involved. These older system owners were not informed of the possible problems, assuming that sony branded items will always play well together, regardless of the generation of the product. This was a failure to communicate, the tech issues aside.

Consumer Information about 1080 ...

Is woeful at best. Sony's 1080 tour for example, basically says you want this, go to a store.
HUH? people go to the web to find useful info right now and immediately. 1080 evangelism is scattered about and not enough up-to-date to be immediately useful, google will find articles written in 2004 and 2005 that are in todays world just plain wrong.

HD1080i.com Prelaunch

2006-11-13T10:52:00.000-08:00

www.HD1080i.com was created as another evolution of one-network.com as a division of DSMJ LLC to hopefully take a place in the landscape of the HD revolution as a useful resource for a more mass market perspective, less tech , more pictures, more immediately useful info. Proving to myself that getting #1 position with "hd1080i" search word was not just an experiment, it was preparation.

The future of High Definition is complex.

The reasons are many, but the advent of a large screen with high resolution in front of the consumer market eyeballs and hands, provisions a new generation of everything connected to it, and connected is what will happen. This has enormous benefits, since it is all about enabling higher quality consumption in a market space that is defined and qualified by the mere presence of required wealth to posess it. Greetings.

This evolution first requires that you be properly equipped, and then properly connected, and that qill will scribe the initial writings and value of HD1080i.com

1080i / 1080p

2006-11-11T08:22:00.000-08:00

Interlacing is an analog broadcast format where the display is refreshed 60 times a second with odd then even then odd rows of video. That is proper for the scanning electron gun approach of a CRT or Tube TV / display, with all its phosphor latency and blurry stuff. I will take the specific case of LCD HD displays for the moment.
Interlacing is a horizontal thing , every other line of pixels must be "laced" together to construct an image frame

... play with the flash example above, animated sliding to see what interlace really does in an image. Click "Normal" to see what is normal 1080i properly assembled into your image, - click 'See Interlace' to see what interlace processing error looks like.

LCD displays are are not interlaced display technology.
This is because LCD and such divices to not "Scan" to create a display screen, each video frame is displayed direct from memory all at the same instant. PC'c connect with DVI - simple and excellent results. HD 1080 spec is referred to as WUXGA 1920 x 1080 for this purpose.

Description:
Any HDTV that is LCD is giving you a complete image display by design and cannot "scan" display lines, instead it has 2 buffers for video display, one that you see and the other is being written/updated for the next pending image. ( high speed dual port VRAM usually , called by all kinds of names, its memory in your display ) The 1080i incoming odd-even data is assembled into the bitmap VRAM memory and shown all at once, full frames in sequence, 30 video frames every second.

So if you have a 1080 LCD display, it inherently has 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and is in fact 1080p capable. However, not all 1080 LCD displays HD the same way, and are therefor not created equal. The Progressive display trolls are correct in one respect... how the firmware deals with incoming odd-even lines to assemble 1920 x 1080 as a complete image does matter.

Huh? firmware?

Firmware in your display is what drives the LCD display, Pixel math on a chip. When you purchase a widescreen flatpanel display, you get more than inputs and glass, you have a small amount of dedicated highspeed processor stuff in there. The quality of that processing is in the Chipset the manufacturer used, the slang for that processor chipset is "firmware", and it has to match the LCD cycle time and the memory that holds the image. It is seriously important stuff.

Even though flatpanels do not "scan lines" across the display, they do have a refresh rate, or time to change a pixel from one color to another. LCD screens have a typical refresh time of 5-10 milliseconds, and the firmware has to know that, since each pixel is a light valve that needs to open and close for the proper amount of light at the proper instant, but basically they are not independant, the entire screen refreshes at the same instant.

It seriously matters that the firmware is tuned for the display's characteristics, and therefore you want your display to be "SMART". I will go into detail in other posts but seek out DCDi / Faroudja
http://www.meridian-audio.com/faroudja/technology.html
available in literature as Genesis Display Perfection® technology, found in Westinghouse Digital and LG LCD displays. www.genesis-microchip.com Hard working stuff - tech read = http://www.gnss.com/products/FLI5961-FLI5962_Prod_Brief_C5962-PBR-01B.pdf

what is Progressive? 1080p?

Progressive is really a term for how a single frame of video is delivered, or transported to the display device... as you can read from above, it is not how the display presents the video frame.
So the term "Progressive scan" is a horrible misnomer that applies only to CRT display technology, it should be something else, since it really applies to how the video is sent from one place to another as a stream of data that starts at the top of the video frame and progressively fills memory until it completes the frame. Progressive is the method used in sequential data delivery for almost all things digital anyhow, and has value when very high action sports that can benefit from full frame 60 times per second video is available. Unfortunately, compression used to send these full frames can seriously negate that benefit, to the point where 720p60 isnt really any better, regardless of speed or resolution. Broadcasters now know this and most everything you see is 1080i as a result.

Interlace - image over time.
Interlaced video has one problem that takes place in high action and rapid scene movements.
That is the 1/60th of a second that each odd or even row is sent is actaully 1/60th of a second of new image. Basically it is not 540 lines odd then 540 lines eeven rows sent of the same image, but instead it is 540 rows of image at 1/6th second in time, and even rows at the following 1/6oth of a second, so whatever is moving or changing its location on the screen will be shifted in position by 1/60th of a second in every other line. This situation was ideal for CRT "picture tube" displays, mostly due to the persistence time or "latency" of screen phosphors. LCD and the like have no such situation, so it must be handled.

Great firmare will determine this condition, ( correlational edge bicubic de-interlacing for example ) and that pixel detect and fix math creates a smoother edge in clean motion blur.
Unfortunately, for us, some display do a great job at this, making a film-like look, and some are horribly digital jaggy about it. Display Processing Firmware matters.

But, it doesnt stop there. what matters perhaps more, is how the codec or compression is done, and lossy compression always has some very visible injected artifacts, blocky stuff that does more harm to the image of a frame than de-interlacing does. So...
Compression of the video frame is very important, since each pixel is not sent for every frame. Instead, each video frame image is run through som math that determines what is different in the next frame, and basically those things that are different are sent. For a News show perhaps only the head movement and eyes and mouth of the person talking are different between frames, the background is the same as the previous frame... and that info is all the next frame packet compression gets. ( this is a way over-simplification but that will do for now )
The problems get far worse when everything in the frame is different like in rapid scene cuts.

Why all this background?... you need to appreciate the huge amount of conversion that happens before your display gets its video input. By now you get that an HD video frame displayed on a flatpanel as 1920 x 1080 may well have been compressed, decompressed, chopped up into some format and reassembled a couple of times before you see it -- All this is handled for you and you have little choice in the matter, except for choice of inputs and devices with thier processing chipsets.

You can choose buying an HD display that has the right stuff in it, since that is where 1080i and 1080p signal processing matters most. HD1080i.com will explore all this in detail in early 2007, so you will know why before you buy. When it is all done properly it is truly a thing of beauty.

High Def DVD Formats and 1080i / 1080p

2006-11-10T20:41:00.000-08:00

.. reading other articles spawns yet another instruction rant from me.

The so-called experts are starting to talk like their observations should matter and they are producing an incomplete picture.. bigtime.

For one thing, Calling the HD-DVD / Blu-ray competition a format war. Not so. Its a PLAYER war, an enablement situation at the user-end, just as the HD Display is required, and a source.

In the Best-Of-HD, 1080p content is the holy grail, and the presence of a PLAYER is required to monetize the 1080p source is in the holy-water & constant supply of content... quite frankly, it is not a mass market motivator. Perhaps if millions of PS3 units are out there, but that is quite some time away from now, and honestly i dont see 1080p as a single big enough reason for disposable income flow for middle america.

Pundits hit the format war with the Betamax/VHS story. Thats too old to apply. It was also about the availability of players at the endpoint, but it was before adoption curves had traction.

Lets get fresher about this, the VHS/DVD format war.

I recall when a DVD player that cost 400 bucks became available, i was on a waiting list to get one and my memo on that was printed in MIX magazine.... in just a very short time later you could buy a passably good DVD player for 59 bucks and they were piled high in every appliance store... and during that time i watched the VHS movie rental store go from all VHS Tapes to walls and walls of DVDs to rent. The difference between VHS and DVD was worth it at the pricepoints. WHY? because the players were out there everywhere. People still had thier VHS machines and movies were being offered in both formats.

This matters even more now. The HD-DVD and Blu-ray will succeed not because of content supply, ( the studios will crank out millions of whatever will sell, quickly) but rather by the installed base of HD displays and Players.

So where is the High Def Player adoption analysis in all this talk out there? or to re-kindle and use an old joke...

What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Neither. The Rooster comes first and thats where it matters.

The most forward-thinking are talking about units that dont exist, and will cost 400 bucks that will play either format, or the PS3 that will cost 600 bucks and give you an access suite to go with game play... or of course the XBOX HD option afterthought gizmo ad-on.

In this, the 1080i or 1080p nature of the source will not really matter when the public finds that it cannot really tell the difference when the display firmware does its job properly. It will be an Advertizing target, but most folks wont much care or want to care. 1080 may matter, but i or p ... whatever works.

My opinion? I have one, and its lengthy. Short form:
It is not a format war, but a device/player subscriber value-point war.

The Player will not exist in the same way as before. The winners will be those that integrate the device into more than just a mindless jukebox, get the price-point right, and make it so that anyone with a 4th grade education can and will and use it. The days of a box for this and a box for that are nearing an end. Meaning: multiformat players that are found within more capable systems that provide surround sound amplification and are HDTV tuners, DVRs, entertainment.
I see a future win where Subscriber-box devices with the player included in it, that connect to services are more in demand... In fact i want my multiformat HIGH DEF DVD PLAYER to be just another thing in my Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300+ HD 1080i box or TIVO HD whatever i use to channel select. It makes perfect sense as the ideal subscriber value add to bring me what i want. Sony knows this with PS3, and it isnt really ahead of its time as much as it is futureproof value that anyone can see easily.

Without some exclusivity, there is no format war...

What if .. Hollywood said: "We will not be making a blu-ray version of Son of Harry Pooter" the bewiched would worry about exclusivity that would fuel a format war, based on Pooter availability. But that is not happening so the consumer will not encounter or much see this a s problem. So dont buy that $10,000 market analysis from these verbose HD experts. A moron can detect this situation.

In this millenia, the motivators include connectivity.

The connected device/player user will opt for whatever free thing they can get, meaning lots of advertizer opportunity for eyeball capture in a dedicated environment. If i Buy product XYZ with an HD player in it, and i get ABCDEF stuff for free, and its cool, i am justified, much as i see HD formats involved, they are not in and of themselves a motivating differentiator.

And even more importantly, subscriber box functionality with HD DVD and blu-ray, enables the AAC and whatever DRM phone-home authentication to work inherently and seamlessly without user knowlege or interaction... producing as a high value byproduct for marketing eyeball count feedback that is the Holy Grail for Hollywood. Whatever i buy, its got to be connected, to lots and lots of stuff, and joe sixpack wont care what's under the hood, only what's on screen.

Yes, i'm getting a PS3. Wireless highspeed gizmo and social connectivity. However, it is just the beginning of a much much bigger picture.

Differentiators? Seek interaction. The zoom click kind. No Keyboard.

This biggest problem i see is basically a lack of Fresh Content in HD. My first Treat interactive buy for an HD-DVD would actually be a google earth Encarta like wiki photo video story thing, where buying the HD DVD automatically subscribes me to all kinds of stuff that i dont get with Blu-ray, and isnt as cool without the HD-DVD. why? all the HD formats are very capable software delivery platforms, and the player will have a hard disc in it.

- lots to discuss there.

HD1080i content vs less than 1080 screens

2006-11-06T08:34:00.000-08:00

A quick review is good.. here you go:

HD1080i is a std format for HD DVD's and Broadcast High Definition. Its is 540 lines that arrive in screen odd rows and screen even rows, its then buffered and put together so that your display will assemble that in to a 1080 image, every 30th of a second.

540 @ 1/60th sec + 540 @ 1/60th sec = 1080 lines @ 1/30th sec

HD1080i is a full screen at 30 frames per second by simple math, but is actually displayed at 29.97 frames per second, for reasons of timing that stem from NTSC standards established in the previous millenia. This convention of odd and even display lines in broadcast is from the old CRT days, but it also provides a nice way to stream high bandwidth digital images, this is important because the digital packets have to handle 1920 pixels per line.

When we say HD1080i we mean 1920 x 1080 pixel display resolution.

The "i" means Interlaced, and that is just the method used to transport it to us, in odd/even rows rather than top to bottom in a single pass. Your HD monitor/display has to assemble that into each frame that you see. If it does that well then you see a great high def image.

Question:
A guy from Boeing asks: "how can hd 1080 be displayed at 768?"
Answer - it can but it isnt 1080 anymore.
Problem - 768 vertical pixels is greater than 720
Issue - 720 vertical pixels is an HD standard known as 720p usually.

so.. can they say HD and have a 1280x768 display or 1366 by 768 display? Yes... the display will scale its 1080i incoming stream of 2 megapixels down to the 1 megapixel resolution of 768.
e.g. more resolution arrives than your 768 display can show you.

so can they say that HD is there when the display is 768 vertical pixels? yes ... but it is being deceptive to say "accepts hd 1080i", or HDTV, and then show you something less than HD quality in pixel space.

everyone, even the usually trustable people are causing this problem.

Even engadget... http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/11/03/lgs-dual-screen-hdtv-equipped-refrigerator/

puleeze.. an HDTV-fridge? Nope. Why? - Display resolution.
anything 1024pixels in horizonal resolution does not qualify for HD. 1280 is the minimum number. So how do they get away with this?.. they install an ATSC HD capable digital tuner. Meaning; the co-ax for your cable or HD antenna connects to it, and it receives HD channels. However, what you see is not HD resolution, but HDTV channels at reduced resolution. I'm sure it looks great but it is NOT High Definition, it is HDTV channels at something much less than HD resolutions.

Confusing? Of course it is.

So what is HD? ... a digital signal path with an HD Transport Stream, displayed in at least 1280 x720 on up to 1920x1080 pixel resolution. For the HD experience to properly exist, all devices from beginning to end must be true to the spec.

Slapping a tuner (ATSC chip) that recieves HDTV signals into some device , and displaying it on a small low resolution screen is NOT HD, but it can be marketed by the slimy people as HDTV. They know that simply the HD connection is enough to sway buyers to a product. Its like naming a hotel "OceanView" when the hotel is 20 miles for any shoreline. Slimy.

OK WTF?
If you are a Consumer/buyer and wandered into this blog, then you are among the thousands that seek the right stuff and get a very mixed bag of junk to have to figure out... the odd thing is that i have been talking about bad marketing for over a year here now, and instead of that problem getting better, its is getting worse. There are more ugly bugs in HD marketing now than you will find in an African termite mound.

Blu-ray Delay
Trust me on this, you would rather they delay it than ship whats happening now. ' nuff said and i have no problem with that, its my belief that the 2006 seasonal buying experience doesnt need a massive January 07 crash and burn over HD player issues.

HD1080i
This is the broadcast format and std display of HD streams that will persist for the next few years, mostly due to bandwidth and compression efforts prepared for future use. The key thing for you to know is that interlaced HD source transport streams look great when properly processed at the disply endpoint, and basically its all good when that happens, the result is a progressive image that is delayed from actual arrival by mere milliseconds. This means component , DVI . HDMI basically should look quite good when done right and compatibility is not really a huge issue... for the moment anyhow.

HD-DVD
I have seen it, and really it is quite nice, notably clunky in initializing itself but basically it does its job well and the larger problems exist not in the format, but in the downstream processing and display its connected to. Kudos to the HD-DVD guys.

I made a pretty good demo reel in that format, actually it can play off a regular DVD too since its short in TRT, but basically i have proven to myself that there is no real problem at all in HD-DVD image quality and fast action scene-cut compression artifact recovery. If the Video editing. mastering / colorizer team does its job well, then you are going to love it.

HDMI 1.3
ok i caught some nooise on this....
Please... the 48bit color depth available in 1.3 is just not happening out there, so dont push this. Perhaps a dozen very uber-high end displays can even come close to 48bit color gamut at the pixel rendering right now, and in my opinion it is a false selling point. Joe sixpack wont buy a mountain climbing option for his SUV if he lives in a very flat floridian Keys area, since he knows he has no mountains around... 48bit color however sounds good and poor Joe has no clue, it isnt a mountain he can see, making it an unfair pitch.

Stuck Pixels?
ok you LCD HD display people .. tell me.
Does anyone have a stuck red-green-blue pixel dot on thier screen? Let me know.

Refresh & Frames Per Second.
The 720p60 issue that people have in displaying 1280 x720 resolution at full frames 60 times per second. get this, movies are displayed at 24 frames per second. not a problem. Normal TV in the USA is 29.97 frames per second. Unless following some ballistic sports is critical to you, 60 frames per second is useless overkill.

HD and the Sony PS3

2006-10-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

I keep reading the pundits view of Sony's PS3 and note that they keep missing the boat.

In a nutshell.

1) PS3 is likely the best Value-added gizmo you can attach to that new widescreen LCD,DLP, Plasma, SXRD whatever flatscreen widescreen you just got.

2) The PS3 is NOT a console. Its a whole system and not just for Blu-ray, but for a ton of FREE connected services to get the most out of that Cable Internet connection you have. Xbox makes you pay to connect and play.

3) Its Cell processor array and GPU engines are super-computer level IBM stuff.

4) A large part of the PS2 sucess was price-point and brute force marketing. For those with shorter term memory problems, please recall that Sony pushed PS2 into up front shelf space everywhere it could, packing stores with dedicated product asiles and racks of games, and advertized in trade and TV with great persistence.

I would expect to see PS3 in the HDTV area of a store, and enterprising merchants even offering PS3/HDTV packages along with the usual Superbowl HDTV Deliver/Install packaging.

Problem though.
The brute-force strong-arm marketing lesson was learned by the competition, it put Sega out of business, and the Dreamcast was quite a good machine in its time. I see very little mass consumer push-points at this point for PS3, and i would expect that to change, and your Best-Buy / Walmarts to have attention grabbing stuff soon.

I see at a ton of wide screen/flatscreens walking out of the local stores every day// big boxes , big smiles... and Sony according to its own numbers cannot make demand levels anywhere near what they should be for these people. If even 5% of them buy a PS3 it will be a run on the stores with lines down the street come christmas shop-time.

UPDATE:
You do realize this PS3 runs on Linux operating system, custom for this machine... Linux people are diggers in the dirt of the OS, so i expect wonderful things from our geeks in the wild.

HD / HD ( Hard Disc High Definition )

2006-10-08T11:25:00.000-07:00

Hard Disc High Definition video...I have been toying with this for over a year, and come to know the VC-1 windows Media WMV-HD format for progressive video. It just beats everything else buy such a wide margin for me.
MP4 is good, but VC-1 is Great.

The problems with DVD/CD formats is the long seek-times for moving through video files. Its good but not great. Hard Disc playback from 500 gig SATA drives is better, and quite frankly, the Maxtor stand alone ( one Touch) USB2 drives are better than good enough for such stuff. If i could have my way i would make a simple OS with an Nvidia Pure Video card like the 7600gt and a 500 gig or 1 tb drive, just to do video in HD and play highres photo slideshows and flash presentations.

Warner Bros seems to want to champion the multiformat player market, and offer a system that will show you any DVD HD/blu-ray whatever. ok cool. Looking forward to that.

Alex Scoble made note of yet more poor "HD" display marketing in his Computerword blog, much like my first posts on such stuff in 2005, & he is right. Samsung makes very good and very poor displays, and they all seem to brand to a similar bezel look in some cases. Just because they say HD and it looks like in its packaging does not mean it really is HD. ALL HD IS WIDECREEN, meaning a 16x9 format... ( except for 1440x1080 wich is a subset format with a non-rectangular pixel, this is known as HDV) . Also a problem is that very odd pricing stuctures are helping to confuse customers of HD, since a rather poor Plasma w/screen door look and 1366 resolution is priced about the same as 1080 displays. Very odd. However that said..., the Sony SXRD and the Westinghouse Digitals are still the nicest price performance options for HD in 1080... read: http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/3674

The Contrast Ratio situation is cropping up also , where some pundits are claiming that 1000:1 ratios are no where near as good as 10,000:1 ratios. Sorry but that is not a mission critical issue to market differentiate with, in my opinion the 1400-1800:1 ratios are just fine, most video is authored to variable black levels anyhow, and really the feel of the black-level is very much in the source quality. Really deep black levels make for richer color contrast and in that respect, more contrast is somewhat better...However this may matter a lot to someone who is more contrast-centric such as big fans of horror and sci-fi stuff that tends to rely on black-level precision due to lots of dark scenes. The movie "2010" in HD does look better in a 5000:1 screen that it does in a 1400: 1 contrast ratio screen, but you likely would only really notice a value difference if you were seeing the difference in a side-by-side comparison. For me, too high of a contrast brightness is a fatigue of vision after a while and imparts some visual stress.

Reproducing HD in old school BW film looks... I just bought the Movie"La Dolce Vita" by Fellini, a black and white DVD made from a film in the 60"s. It has Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni in the Trevi fountain (Rome Italy) for instance. Although this is not a piece acclaimed for visual precision, it is a story well told in a genre that i like, and presented with what i feel is a nice contrast level. My westy 1080p display through nvidia graphics scales this to full progressive viwing very nicely. Anyhow, i love it... my next HD shoot is going to look like a style of this type with a high-end eastcoast feel, client is http://starloungenyc.com

My pal Askold Buk just scored the tracks for another Frontline PBS piece http://askoldbuk.com - i'm still building out his website, a work in progress.

I have decided that http://hd1080i.com will officially launch with the PS3 release date, and live up to expectation of being a decent resource for HD systems and content seekers, and hosting video will stream from Tigertech in 720p wmv-hd short clips, members will be able to download 1080p files, so those of you with PC's attached to your 1080 HDTV display can get a taste of stuff, including 5.1 mix audio that properly puts a soundfield around you. all progressive.

I lov NYC - my trip, this photo: http://www.dsmj.net/albums/Random-EYES/1viewIMG_1032.sized.jpg NYC is the place where building art is really a form, and it is always a pleasure to bring my HD cameras there.

I bought and downloaded the new Intervideo WINDVD, it bluescreen crashed my 5280 pixel 4 monitor DVI system. IMHO interactual DRM drivers caused this, but they claim its an Active-x issue. Strange since they proclaim Nvidia Pure compaibility, and thats what i have, and have been using for quite some time, no MS Active-x issues. hmmm. I had to uninstall WinDVD.

A Note to you PC DVD player people, DO NOT make wacky sci-fi looking interfaces for control of your player. I hate that now. Make Fast Forward and reverse play simple to use with a linear slider scrubber , no more wheels on screen. Make the main Title menu button big, dont automatically bookmark my last play position unless i select that. DO not force me to play target practice with your tiny interface, to do basic pause play mute functions, and for crying out loud do not make me have to hunt down a quick access to scene select screens. I get the distinct impression that the programmers had more fun making the interfaces than i am having in actually trying to use and like them.

HD 1080i vs the 1366 x 768 display & HD ready

2006-09-21T20:10:00.000-07:00

and yet more obervations....

The APPLE iTV is already being hailed by the MACheads and Fruit-compute centric crowd, small wonder, but it seems Accenture did some survey that essentially concludes that the iTV type device that turns your widescreen flat 16:9 display and home theater into a more flexible bang for the buck with wireless integration to any other device ( yes read - iPOD, MACbook whatever )... is true and the utlimate desire of the media enabled household. whew.. mouthful that was.

iTunes will deliver 720p downloads in support of this new gizmo. Its all good.

MICROSOFT finally beta'd the Version 11 DRM, thats digital rights management for content. Of course all the screamers launched into a pointless tirade over it, but hey, its like blaming the messenger for the message... all MS is doing is enabling content control for those clients in hollywood that asked for it. DRM is not mandatory in the windows media 11 products, so for it to bother you it has to be turned on for that specific content by the producer of that content... in fact i would doubt that most Publishers of video and music will start using it for some time yet to come, its beta to see what happens.

So if you get some DRM'd WMV or music or video, do not blame microsoft for enabling it, BLAME THE PUBLISHER THAT SET THE FLAGS IN IT... in fact there are abundant levels of control in DRM that allow all kinds of things, its up to the people that create the file and distribute it. If you dont like that, then get your stuff from someone else in some other way, freedom of choice will send the message needed.

The 1366 x 768 resolution screen... I get this a lot
ok here is a practical response without a lot of geekytech words. A lot of nice large 16:9 widescreen flatpanels say High Definition, and the TRUE HD camp says that 1080i requires 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution.

If you feed a 1080i signal into the component YpBPr or HDMI / DVI input of a 1366 x 768 display, then it should look fine, your screen is getting twice as much information digitally as it needs to create a great image. Do Not Worry. I have done this with one of those 37 inch DELL displays, looks great as long as you are sitting a few feet away. What you dont want is a large screen area with 1366 x 768 pixels... 60 inch displays look really fuzzy with that resolution.
In my option however, if you can, get a 1080 display since broadcast 1080i is where its all going.
I have seen and love the Sony SXRD 1080 stuff and Westinghouse LVM 37" and 42" 1080p monitors for price performance.

HDMI 1.3
This is cool, if you encounter a system with HDMI connections, this is where 1080 will be in the future, so ask if its HDMI 1.3 compliant. This has to do with audio On HD DVD and Blu-ray both codecs will boast lossless coding for up to eight discrete channels of audio at resolution at least as high as 24-bit/96kHz. The catch is that the new codecs will only be carried digitally in their native form over HDMI 1.3.

HD-DVD and VC-1 / Mpeg2/4

2006-09-18T19:16:00.000-07:00

... I got a slew of questions, mostly the MPEG4 crowd wondering why i'm talking about VC-1.

Ref MS PR from April : http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/apr06/04-24HDDVDPR.mspx Note: NBC/Universal is correct in their assessments.
iTwire: http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/5647/53/

OK so the President of universal claims; “The reviews are in and HD DVD is hands down the leader in picture quality, audio experiences and interactive capabilities that have never been seen before,” said Kornblau. Of course the "reviews" are in fact NBC/Universal people but the fact is, he is correct ... but you need to know why.

Truth?> do not credit the HD-DVD disc itself.
The great image quality is in the codec that can be used in HD-DVD, and that is VC-1.
VC-1 can be used in any DVD, it just so happens that HD-DVD is where you will find it right now.

EVERYONE WHO KNOWS, SAYS THE SAME THING...

VC-1 ( SMPTE 421M-2006) is better at HD 1080p and 720p, any framerate.. it seems to compress without incurring the issue of scene change block recovery (that blocky pixel clobbered crude look ) and stays clean on fast scene cuts and high action video preserving detail, when in my mind, it matters most.

MPEG4 and VC-1 will look the same in talking head news and basic things, but VC-1 is freshly minted code that cleans up the messthat the last generation of codecs forced us to live with. The result is cleaner playback for a smaller filesize, or conversely, more quality if the quality was there to begin with, it will be preserved with a more compact format.

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/assets/downloadablefile/bda-broadcast-480x270-13534.wmv

the questions and very short answers....

Will this matter to you? Yes.. if you have an HD-DVD and you see a VC-1 format was used, it is going to look great period. Blu-ray uses mpeg2, which means its compression to get the same clean look will require more file space.

(CORRECTION [Nov-06] - Blu-ray does support VC-1, as of when i do not know, so basically the format exists via licenseable usage for publishers, regardless of media constraint, i think this is partly due to DRM transparency allowing it, and that is a good thing. )

In a word or 2 , those that think HD-DVD is not as good for movie releases simply because it has less of a storage capability are not aware that with VC-1 you get 2-10 times the compression for the same image as Mpeg2 and probably 2-4x MPEG4. So HD-DVD with VC-1 just doesnt need the old bloated codec or its space requirement since it can do a great job of delivery for a full length Movie in 1080p. In fact i can make a nice 720p HD in VC-1 at 5-6mbits for about 180 megs every 5 minutes of runtime. do the math- this means a 1hr 45 min HD 720p video in VC-1 encoding can fit on a regular old 4.5 gig DVD, and use windows media player in full screen mode to display it.

In my most humble opinion, the VC-1 codec can enable IPHDTV at 5 mbit bandwidth rates.
My FIOS fiber optic connection can just about handle that.

This is good. I can edit an HD video, upload it it for review in a couple minutes, and get client feedback quickly, and they can see detail on thier 1280 pixel computer screens with windows media player enough to guide the development. If they like it in 720p they will love it in 1080.

Is that Macroblock thing in VC-1?
Macroblocks that are visible represent a failure in image rendering due to data rate or error correction... VC-1 is not the same, it has other points of failure in error correcting, and in my opinion its block recovery is a more elegant solution. Be wary though, a transport stream and a basic file codec are in fact a bit different ( bad pun ) It will pixellate and get blocky when the author of the video over-compresses to a point well below the bit-rate needed, but if you follow guidelines, you will not often see any issues. Macroblocks are an MPEG-specific definition.

OK - HD-DVD - Blu-ray and whatever...

What is all this Multiformat stuff?
Some companies are making a possible play into a player/disc option that covers all bases.
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10102-invention-triplestandard-dvd.html
Basically the usage fees for content publishers to employ Blu-ray causes one set of standards and DRM to happen, HD-DVD causes yet another etc ... To prevent fence-sitter behavior in the consumer-space, i expect multiformat systems to appear... however if they too get greedy about patents and trademarks, then it will still be a case of proprietary supply-side control that will break standards down to a lowest common level of mundane, in the quest for ubiquity. I am not sure i want a bi-polar DVD player, i need to give it some thought.

Other questions:
Can 1080i run a computer resolution of 1080 vertical pixels?
Yes - it is what i do infact - get an Nvidia 7600 GT or better video card and just plug that DVI into whatever 1080 HDTV you have, mine is a Westy LVM-37w3 costs 1400 bucks at best buy and it rocks for an LCD. Most all 1080 HD monitors will also run 1920x1080 in VGA mode too.
I would ASK the store guru first though, some monitors require your system to have a driver to use VGA properly for thier display at that resolution.

Addendum: It took me a while to finally make a decent longform HD piece... so i encoded it in WMV-HD 1080 and found this out... basically for a lot of stable-scene situations like interviews and talking head stuff , i got about 22 minutes per gigabyte 1080p pristine, Stereo Audio. [Begin: rant] THE VC-1 CODEC. Oh my... do the math. A regular DVD can hold a decent 1hr HD tv show with room to spare. I had one segment 300 seconds (5 minutes ) runtime in 200 megs, lots of high action scene cuts in that part. Damn. If someone just made an HDMI/component output 1080p DVD player for WMV-HD ... but oh wait.. you can buy a nice tiny AOPEN computer with 1080p DVI output, the Windows Media player 11 is free, for about 500 bucks. copy the DVD file to the hard drive and play it. Take that a step further, get the Logitech Remote. badda-boom badda-bing... its done. You can probably download a VC-1 60 minute tv show in just over 3 gigs, and love every frame, even the advertizing in it. Ok do not get me wrong, I still want to make BD 1080 and in 2007 i will ship a Ps3 with my HD product to the clients that want HD in a box for thier videos, but really, I am impressed with VC-1 to the point that i may just use it for Archive and b-roll storage for HD in my system, get my on-line terabytes back for the next editing job. Broadcasters should be using VC-1. I am so sick of Mpeg Macroblocks. I Know the VC-1 people are aware of how compact this Codec is, but i wonder if the rest of the world does? Is it shunned for being a Microsoft thing? If you know what you are doing, and take the time to do it well, VC-1 absolutely cannot be beat. [End:rant]

I need to maybe come clean on something, i am not just a HD1080 / HD fanboy. I create HD video , shoot and edit the stuff, so my view on it is a bit more intense than most will have. Something that can and will affect what you see is called a CODEC, and it is the method by which your Video is stored as a file on DVDs. It is the COmpress-DECompress process that is used in creating , storing and playback. It is more than simply a format like Quicktime or AVI and a lot of fancy software and firmware code is needed. It is a huge enabler, like Mp3 is for music files. So MPEG 2 , MPEG4, VC-1 are all really code-driven ways of getting digital video to you, most digital cable is MPEG.

HD 1080 Delivery - Perfect Targeting

2006-09-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs & "iTV" The evolution begins.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/12/live-from-the-steve-jobs-keynote-its-showtime/ Not that i would herald Apple Computer for much, but Steve has the platform to set an example that does get followed, for example, the Apple][ that healped lead to MSDOS and finally the PC platform, creating the consumer endpoint ubiquity that caused the internet to actually connect to people. Apple does well in entertainment. Did the iPOD well, so it is natural to persue more.

The iTV or whatever they call it is basically a real small digital TV box with a hard drive that you can connect to your HDTV and home theater stereo or surround sound system, and have some wireless features you want anyhow, and the box with its infrastucture is likely to launch next year. It connects thru your broadband ISP and does some On-Demand stuff of a dedicated supply-side like iTunes.

The REAL DEAL $$
Since digital TV's , flat panel widescreens, are nearing a critical mass of minimum consumer volume to make a valid business model-- the prospect of content delivery to them is now most definitely the cash flow of the marketspace. The prospect of subscribing to a service that lets me night time download conveniently whatever my use profile states i want, is a success story i want in on. If a service existed that would allow me to capture what i have interest in, i would love it, especially in 1080., and i would actually be TELLING them my customer preference profile, which they now spend huge amounts of money trying to figure out, and usually mess up. Literally they will get what they want to know, right from the source, and in doing this also make a happy consumer of service and product. Perfect Target Marketing.

Here is a real example. I work for Damon Dash and Daniel Lazar of Tiret. Damon dash was profiled on CNN and i missed it ( sept 11 ), in fact,Tiret didnt even know when Damon's profile would get into the schedule, so they couldnt warn me to record it. CNN makes this available http://edition.cnn.com/CNNI/Programs/revealed/ so at least i can catch it later. This is good, and now his video pressbook can have a clip or two referring to this coverage. looky here http://dsmjmedia.com/tiret work in progress stuff.

the FAT PIPE DREAM
Lets say now that iTV enters the picture and i tell my iTV to hunt down any clips it can find that mention keywords Damon Dash & Tiret at anypoint from now till the end of time. BOOM! Whn they happen, it grabs them, i see them, keeps me in the know the way i want it in yet another format that is more detailed better and cooler and on my biggest screen... so maybe they drop in 15 secs of some Car ad in the front that i can tolerate, and a sponsor gets a known set of eyeballs. win -win - win. IPTV down a fat pipe my way.

VOD equation
Currently VOD is defined as a sourcepoint delivery at the time of request. Thats ok but it requires massive immediate bandwidth. I want to watch what i want when i want for sure, but like the netflix paradigm, i can specify what i want, and have it arrive where i am. For me, that is time planning that works. What the providers dont realize is that scan the VOD menu, see that what i want is there, and plan to click the buy button and see it at a later date. This means it could download with less bandwidth sensitivy during off peak hours, and i still get what i want, and see it when i intend to. VOD is less of an impulse buy than they think it is, and in truth, availability and quality is more important.

AT SOME FUTURE POINT I want the same connection to HD video that iTunes has for Music, except for this model they dont have to store it all, just grab bits as the broadcast happens and send my iTV the streams. Like an HD Video Inbox. Subscribe and get. Gimme. Sign me up. Adelphia has On-Demand, but the big problem there is that what i would demand is not there, its untargeted, useless to me.

EXISTING STUFF...
Why not have Windows Media Center do this? Or TiVO HD? Sorry but i'm already familiar with the progress of thier very crappy interfaces to the point that i am convinced they have to start over to make me want it, not likely to happen, since by thier own marketing methods i am sure that only my lowest expectations will be met, and the usual case is interface through some dumbass handheld remote that will never be what i want it to be.

Apple on the other hand, seems to be nimble enough to do things of this type reasonably well, and in my view of this, the best use is to do an end-run around the cable/broadcast provider and use the internet. Its a pipe dream of course, but maybe i will read my own post on this sometime in 2007 and realize then, that i was right on the money...

just maybe.

HD 1080 delivery

2006-09-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

It is getting to the point where 1080i HD is gaining in delivery methods. This is a good thing, and the open market response to this in terms of availability and enabling tech is rather location sensitive at this time, but that is one major situation undergoing change... based on new & fresh network capability. This years CEDIA is all about 1080 resolution products and people are buying. The puzzle pieces start to fall into place.

Enter the ISP - In a table published very recently by PCworld, respondents gave us a view of actual performance for several enabling ISP services capable of HD delivery, in summary:

1) Cable ( co-ax copper ) avg = 5.7 mbps
2) DSL ( varies ) avg = 2.9 mbps
3) Fiber Optic (FIOS) avg = 9.6 mbps
4) Fixed Wireless (2.4/5.8 ghz) avg = 1.6 mbps
5) Satellite (very service dependant ) avg = 720kbp

... so whats all this mbps mean? There are too many variables to discuss here, but the supplier central office distribution thruput to you is really the control to end-point here, except in the case of satellite, where dish location and quality matter and variances are dramatic. Lets think of it as HD transport stream bandwidth.

I have found that the VC-1 transport stream is very good for hd1080 at 8384 kbps or about 8 mpbs, but for average action video you can get a decent hd stream for around 5mbps, thats 5 million bits-per-second or 5 megabit. You do well at 10mbit, and get perfect around 40mbit, which really is proper for 1080 Sports and high action stuff like racing.

Practical reality for this means that HD as delievered by connected service is able to deliver pretty well, up to and including service that functions as TV/Internet like Digital Cable. Most service happening right now is Mpeg transport though, and hence the rather blocky outcome in a lot of cases, its buffered and cleaned up some at your receiver box, cable set-top whatever.

What is VC-1? well essentially its windows media v9,10, etc and standards adoption is being managed by SMPTE 421M-2006. It does a great job of delivering a compact HD transport stream within the available bandwidth, because it was originally crafted to be capable that way.

Why does this matter? Well, MPEG 4 (H.264 ) was heralded awhile back as the best... But you want to see more, you get VC-1 / SMPTE 421M. At this moment Mpeg 4 is good to go in my opinion, BUT My guess is that it will become more prevalent, based on the simple economics of better picture in less bit-load, with on-chip device decode and essentially realtime transcode.

Getting that HD from its source, to my eyeballs ...
For those in the know, last mile fiber-opic is the way to go. Thats what i have.
... Verizon FIOS, which currently has no video on-demand of its own, yet, but i have it on good authority that a clean fiber connection is capable of gigabit performance, with very little stress. Unfortunately the infrastructure is still in buildout and central office processing is not yet there for the video HD consumer, but it's in the hands of verizon, they can supply whatever they want through this pipe, whenever they are ready to.

This opens up a world of something very cool, IPTV. Essentially this is connecting your HDTV to your Internet Connection. IPTV is a-la-carte supply of HD and pricepoint momentum is happening now. check out http://matrixStream.com for example. VOD or Video on Demand. This is my personal favorite solution, VOD being the high quality i would expect for my time spent looking at stuff that i would set-aside time for. WHY? because i look at movies and events maybe 2 times.. I may be odd that way but i will wait for quality and i will pay for it.

What is The Sony PS3 Really?

2006-09-07T11:34:00.000-07:00

OK i have to rant on this a bit, since for me anyhow, the PS3 marketplace arrival, regardless of when it happens, is in-fact a next generation event.

The Ps3 is based on Cell Processor Technology.
This is the technology of the next globally #1 supercomputer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5322704.stm read if you will.

The thing about games that makes performance is the crunching of lots of data in a repetitive manner, this makes Game rendering unique in that the same little chunks of code run over and over and over the to make your image. In such a world 2 things happen:

1) ... you want multiple processors to run at the same time rather than 1 processor running really fast on only one thing at a time.

2) ... you want ultra fast databus to visual memory transfer speed.

This is why a Fast Computer CPU and Fast Graphics GPU ( Nvidia SLI for example ) matter to a huge extent when you are processing for interactive performance for a lot of pixel space. Perfect for what a cell process technology gets for you, each cell chip consists of eight processors controlled by a master unit that can assign tasks to each member of the processing team. Each cell is capable of 256 billion calculations per second, and exchanges data at that speed.

Basically a multi-cell processing engine like the Ps3 is a piece of a supercomputer.

But there is more.. The PS3 will have one HDMI 1.3 port. The final specs were created June 2006. Why does the 1.3 spec matter? COLOR. On a large 1920x1080 display, color banding from gradients done at 24 bits will cause some banding artifacts. HDMI 1.3 will allow 48 bit color accuracy, for 281,474.9 billion colors. All will handle 1920 x 1080 pixels at 60 frames/s through progressive output, in what is commonly referred to as high-definition (HD) 1080p format.
IMHO - not a lot of displays are as good as the HDMI 1.3 spec provides for.
http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/neasia/005020 if you like tech.

The Ps3 is More than a Console.

Its capable of much more than just a game machine, although the initial unit's operating system probably will take time to develop out to the point of exerting the full power of its own hardware. This is also where future improvements can be implemented/ but there is another thing...

The Ps3 runs on on a customized SONY Linux.

Yikes! what's that you say. Geeks around the world are fully aware of linux, but your average Joe could not care less, never heard of it. There is no doubut that a lean mean Linux kernel can do some amazing things, and that by not using a Microsoft Operating System they can keep STD PC virus/trojans out, but we will just have to see how well that all plays out in the long run.
The power of all this means the PS3 can to a lot of things simultaneously, having processing that reads from shared data over a network at high speeds, lots of concurrent Wireless and internet useages. We will see how well the geeks of the gamer world can offer up enhancements that actually work, i can envision a whole class of ps3 add-on markets emerging as a result of interest in performance and functionality, leading of course to version upgrading of the PS3 OS and potential compatibility issues where some users who install a 3rd party TURBO tool of some sort end up having something else not working properly.

The "Phone Home" problem. In my opinion, networkable devices have this issue of power-up and connect to the manufacturer that is both good and bad. A lot of valid marketing purposes can be achieved, but at the same time it makes me worry about how and if i want a PS3 in my home network router. Does anyone have info on that that is real?

HD Critical Mass Ubiquity

2006-09-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

The golden egg does in-fact require a goose...
Face it - ebay and Google et. al. really required critical mass of users to function at the larger scale, such that the PC was not just a cubicle appliance, but that average household had one, AND an intenet connection AND the ability to read and click. All these things were synergy dependant where devices, services and intellectual enablement were in place at a tolerable price-point. Basic Marketing 101. Look at MySpace. It doesnt have to be too fancy, just high availability and ubiquity.

So where is the Critical Mass equation for HD devices product and services?
HD has been available for many years now, lots of Cable has been put in place and much of that is fiber-optic growing at a decent pace... " .. fade in the sound of crickets "

What is HD as a platform that drives the marketspace?
Firstly, please accept that HD is a platform.

For a short time i sat in a Best Buy parking lot waiting for someone, and witnessed more than a few people leaving the store with big boxes that have TV's in them. Flat-Screens.
Aside from the Home theater entusiast, the ever popular Sports on Dish/Cable seems to be working well as a market driver, and ads forboth HD displays and HD content is evident in broadcasting now. The winning equation for HD is connectivity to source, decent content from source, and user experience ... so its no big surprise that spectator sports are good drivers for the consumption side of device/service.

Digital interaction at high resolution is, for me anyhow, the ultimate goal. It enables more, and it establishes global std conventions for size and frames per second, as much as the ubiquity of the web browser on a PC, comes in lots of flavors but the experience is and delivery is the same.

I see HD as great for who? Advertizers. Bigger better brighter bang for the buck.

But they wont really move until the critical mass of available eyeballs in this HD platform are active and out there. Digital Cable is an astounding opportunity for marketers, since the cable goes to a physical address and household that can be researched for demographics and income levels, and preferences. Its all trackable by default, a given in the equation.

cool.

IMHO the next couple of years will be great

High Definition DVDs

2006-08-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

When will the HD DVD and Blu-ray day finally dawn? ... I mean in the context of having enough of them out there for any of all this to matter? The supply and demand curves here are very very fuzzy blotches on a graph that has been erased and re-drawn too many times already.

Seems Sony and Nichia are still having problems in production of the head assembly components, most notably the Blue Laser diode that it all relies on, causing a trickle of supply to exist in a world that is already commencing to suffer from Hype-fatigue.

The Release date for PS3 Blu-ray for Europe was March 2007 , then that was moved to November 2006 and is now moved back to the original March date. This is kind of falling forward on your ass so-to-speak.

.. so both companies are cutting delivery to 3rd party vendors in order to meet the basic needs of Sony's comittment to shipping a blu-ray player in every PS3, and these vendors are big companies in thier own right, making this essentially a shortage of mission-critical compnents, and Nichia will sue anyone who tries to step in and make these. Hmmm, it seems a shame that such gatekeeping bottlenecks have to exist.

UPdate: The PS3 release for Euro is likely to have all the bugfix firmware for proper 1080 and networked use, so in many ways... the wait may have produced a better outcome.

Thinking out Loud in HD

2006-08-24T21:35:00.000-07:00

.. and seeing in great detail.

I get into a lot of interesting discussions. One such discourse evolved to include some real world uses of the incredible accuracy of an HD 1080., and the options available in this digital world.

STD Resolution TV -- you have seen ads with block disclaimers at the end that are totally unreadable, some legal moron obviously thinks that this fuzzy pile of text flashed on the screen of a regular tv for 2 seconds has properly informed me of something, but i'm not sure what that is, i cant read it. In reality, no one can.

But in the HD world there are 2 new major differences that change viewing.
1) you can read lots of small text no problem.
2) most TV remotes for digital HD have a Freeze Frame button.

In one case i was able to freeze and read what the disclaimer block was in an HD ad.
Yikes. I now have no respect for that company or its advertizing now, since buried in the text i read was a phrase " ... presented may have no basis in fact." Meaning essentially the entire ad could well be a total lie. Hmm. This inferrs that all these years of not reading the fuzzy little block of text at the end of most ads was their way of protecting themselves from what happens if i actually believe the ad. SHAME ON YOU lawyers and marketing morons.

Ok - lets use HD for something useful now, using a digital device where the TV is the display.

.... like lets say an encyclopedia Blu-ray DVD in a new PS3 running at hd1080 with embedded video and high resolution zoomable photos and google earth planetary zooms, and have it read the text if i want, and page flip the book right on my screen.

Will that work.. -? Yes.

I tried it in a hybrid Flash tool i have , using full screen flash at 1920x1080 resolution and a wireless mouse on my HD TV, sitting in my comfy chair, moving the mouse on the armrest. ( logitech wireless mouse works at about 25 feet - i could run the thing from anywhere in the room. )

Of ourse i knew it would work , it should be interesting to determine the seek-time of HD DVD and Blu-ray when it comes out with enough tooling to really test this as an option. 25+ gigs of content distribution means that you really could fit a huge amount of very notewrthy text, photo, video, music into such a tactic, as long as it all came up quickly when selected. My Guess is that a regular HD DVD player would be too slow, but the gaming engine of the PS3 would be pretty quick about getting to whatever is needed off a High Def DVD.

However - supply is an issue for all blu lasers....

HD & HDTV content delivery

2006-08-19T07:29:00.000-07:00

... hope everyone is having a great summer, this has been a really excellent one - no hurricaines yet, Great private A-List parties http://dsmj.net/starroom/aug5.htm etc

So this time i will rant yet again, before getting to buiness and finally launching www.hd1080i.com this fall. ( oh and BTW i got another HD monitor - the westinghouse digital 1080p 37" LVM-37w3, and its also what i'm typing this on, demonstrating to myself that total digital experience convergence in my house is in full swing, since it's my TV, internet, video editing monitor and Game screen)

MACRO BLOCKING
bah. mpeg-ts.

The method used to get your digital video into your screen space is an MPEG transport stream.
why do you need to know this? ... because it is where the worst quality problems are happening.\ e.g. Why get a High Definition TV and digital Cable service/Dishwhatever and then end up with larger than life junky video frames. I see it everywhere, all services of all types, no one is immune.

Generally speaking a high quality well authored DVD or High Def DVD will be your best viewing experience, but quite frankly most of us wont be seeing the full real deal there in this calendar year, so i will speak to the broadcast quality digital HD and SD.

Ok so what is Mpeg and what is a transport stream?
Its your picture. Its Digital, and it can occasionally suck.
MPEG is a motion picture encoding scheme for compressing digital content, and transport stream is how it gets compressed at the source and decompressed on your end, that is the short of it. BOTH ends matter, but you basically have very little control over it, selecting the right provider company and having good equipment is about all you can do.

Basically the transport stream seeks to compress in a frame sequence optimization by only sending the content that is different in the next frame. So if a frame is mostly an unmoving background and the only things changing are the people talking ( headshots typical of news and talk shows ) then compression works really well and detail is preserved nicely because the bandwidth or size of the transport stream is composed of only the peoples heads in motion.
So in an HD video frame (1/30 sec) maybe only 10-20% of the 2 million pixels are different ,only 10-20% of the frame image data is needed to properly create the next frames. This is why Conan O'Brien in HD looks pixel perfect and really scary Conan's facial detail is always there, that guy can make his face move in such extreme ways and you do not miss a thing.

It all starts to go to hell when the entire frame is in motion and almost every pixel of the 2million in an HD frame are dramatically different, properly done, an Mpeg transport stream will then issue what is called a Key Frame whis is a much less compressed but complete image frame. That means 90-100% of the 2million pixels is needed to construct a new image for the next video frame. Uses More Bandwidth, Bigger data load.

"I See Big Squares"

Unfortunately, bandwidth numbers for the range of low data load to high data load is usually less than what is needed to send full frame transport stream keyframes every time, and the result is that you see the math in all that fail and the screen image is Blocky, There are small ones and Big ones, my biggest beef is the Big Blocks. Now your know what to call that problem. IT is a MACRO BLOCK. they are always there and the variation in its quality is what you notice, transport stream block failure, they come in various sizes 8x8 and 16x16, but bad Macro blocks are big and really botch an image past the point of tolerable pain.

In a worst case you may actually see completely missing blocks on your screen (black squares), or little squares of total garbage. These blocks are usually next to each other in a row when that happens, and it is a transport stream error correction problem , for cable that is a really lousy broadcast quality or system bandwidth overload at the provider/distribution end.

Macro Blocks are the BIG ONES = 16 x 16 pixels ...that is a data block of 256 computed pixels that is constructed at your end by your cable box / Dishthing and and then assembled to the screen memory of your TV by what is usually some very advanced firmware code. Welcome to the DIGITAL world, even if your equipment is totally high end your provider can and will send an MPEG Transport Stream that will make you feel like you are in a trailer park with a coathanger antenna...its the static crap of the digital age.

Ok lets get active. IF YOU HAVE GOOD EQUPMENT & SEE LOTS OF MACRO BLOCK ERRORS in your stuff, then i want you to IMMEDIATELY COMPLAIN in full detail about channel and time, by phone, to your provider.

... and conversely if you DO NOT COMPLAIN, then they will think thier stuff is delivering ok and continue to deliver junk possibly considering that you dont care or that such and issue is tolerable.

Most of these people behind the scenes of it all are trying hard but they cant always see everything at every endpoint in thier system and your feedback is in fact a component of thier quality control. There are a bazillion possible points of failure, including connection quality and signal corruption in the line between you and the Central Office, and if your dish or antenna is having issues, then system bandwidth overload is not the only problem, weather and sun-spots and whatall noise can corrupt the signal.

Ok i know i am way over-simplifying things, but if your video investment is important to you, you really need to know this at a minimum level. Geeklink = http://www.zenith.com/sub_hdtv/mpeg_tutorial/pixtypes.HTM

In Another Note:
Blah. dumb junk i get to read where people comment about the difference between 1080i and 1080p. IF YOU HAVE AN LCD type HD display, then you are seeing images presented full frame at a time. Progressive OUTPUT however is not a guarentee that the input is any good...Interlace errors you may see are almost always going to be the product of bad video editing at the source that was then made into a bad TS . Almost all HD source transport streams are HD1080i & therefore arrive to you interlaced, and your monitor assembles that into your image in a full frame (progressive), and scales the result to your screen.
This means that a nice 1366x768 is going to have 2 times the data incoming that it needs to create a Progressive HD image and basically it will look great. People with 1920 x 1080 displays need to be a bit pickier since all the data is used and not scaled, so all the transport stream data is seen. Fortunately most all 1080 screen manufacturers are very quality conscious and most if not all current 1080 screens are well equipped with internal computing engines and firmware.

1080 and the SXRD

2006-07-02T18:25:00.000-07:00

Sony again, this time on BRAVIA and its 50" SXRD.

Jeff Goldstein, Sony A/V product marketing VP, said, “It's time to ask ourselves, 'What kind of HD experience is our industry really offering?' As always, when it comes to high definition, Sony believes that we need to set the right expectations for consumers by developing technology that provides the very best HD performance possible.”

This... is true. But dont take my word for it. Go into any Best Buy store ( Magnolia ) and ask to see the new 50 " SXRD from Sony. or the 55 or the 60" . its all good.

Trust me 50 inches is a sweet size for most larger living rooms, and at 1920 x 1080 , sitting close to it is a real pleasure... at 5-6 feet away it covers your field of vision and visual immersion is assured. however it is so good at detail that you will not enjoy the macro blocks from over-compression and Standard tv signals and some dish network channels will express all the sins of a poor source quality in stunning detail.

This unit is so big bright and clean that you will not believe that 2800 bucks can get you all that.
now granted, it is rear projection and it has a few possible caveats, but in the grand scope of flat wide and big, this is a great buy. You may find that its at the back of the store, and away from the plasmas and "screen door" displays, mostly because it will blow away anything near it in a side by side viewing, and it makes competing units look like a poor choice for the equivalent dollar.

SONY & the Blu-ray Delay

2006-06-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

This month: More Commentary

It seems that all the fireworks for HD-DVD's appearance in the market has been for the most part a low-key affair, and the upcoming delayed ( yawn & read on ) Blu-ray release target will likely be the same. From what i get in conversation, its already to the point of HD Hype Fatigue with most of this HD blue laser stuff, and the hang-time of the topic is really short.

Push comes to shove HD ...

Toshiba's mammoth new 1 terabyte hard disc & standalone tuner-recorder-burner being released for the Japanese market now is an early adopter's wet dream, i would guess that NTSC versions will become available soon for the rest of us.

What you dont know about the delays is...
Patents. A small Japanese company named Nichia... and a strangle-hold on what they call the "pick-up" which is really the blue laser read/write head assembly's main component and primary jewelry inside your basic Blu-X system. People that blame Sony for delays are just not in the loop on what has happened here, and it is complex, but suffice to say Nichia is suing everyone that attempts to make a blue laser head with patent infringement litigation, and also cant ship enough of what they make to meet Blu-ray demand. Hence the August 15th Sony release date becomes October 25th... but really, getting anyone to care about anything in mid August summer vacation is a bit off the wall anyhow, releases after September make more sense.
Read if you must ... http://www.nichia.com/ but basically the patent holder is bootstrapping thier development cycle for manufacture, and being a bit codgy about letting it out to china pricing. Others report that its a "chipset" shortage, but from what i got its more of a firmware code thing, and after seeing the HD-DVD firmware get a solid bashing by the pros, i am all for Sony and its partners to test, re-test and focus group study the code before i see it anyhow.

Does all this harm the Hi-Def industry... ?
... it harms the device market credibility more than anything else, and Mr & Mrs middle America really do not care just yet, they may stress out a bit for that must-have christmas goody based on blu-ray in Q4, but short of that it really is a tempest in a teapot with the industry eating all its own cookies and a few of its young. So be it. This Billion Dollar Baby isnt really even born yet so its still safe from the wrath of industry marketing morons, and i didnt hear any great thundering echoes from the dull thump of Toshiba's HD-DVD launch.

So... what makes sense?
... the market-speak of the DVD future will be "format agnostic". Huh?
e.g. put the high def dvd of whatever type into your player and it works.

HD really has value for the movie makers and they will want this, with the requisite std DRM.
Recording to such formats? ... Face it, the mass market has little need for 25 gigs of storage unless it wants to save HD videos or a year or so of Digital photos from an 8 mpix camera, and it only has to work with relative ease. Format-ambivalent is more correct a phrase from a dollars-spent standpoint of the existing HD screen owner.
The market will buy a player in 2007-2008 that costs 300-500 bucks and plays HD-DVD and Blu Ray and the remote control for that unit will have to deal with the format specific abilities of each, it aint rocket science there, but it will have its time to arrival.

ATSC Tuners ... DIGITAL TV?

July 1 2006 is/was supposedly the cutover date for Tuners in TV's over 25" that are digital ( USA FCC MANDATE ) -- they must have an ATSC digital tuner inside to be compliant with FCC stuff, but frankly, no one really is waving that flag at the moment -- doesnt seem to matter much. If your have a Digital cable subscriber box, or Dish/Satellite then your Tuner is from the service anyhow, such as that may be. For future laggards the govt also plans to offer a subsidized ATSC tuner sometime in the years to come.

BIZDEV:

I have gotten some interesting correspondence on 5.1 audio and Sony delay handling, but mostly its from the .01% crowd that really knows whats happening, the public view on it is rather apathetic. Basically the HD TV owner is the one who really wants this, they probably do not send in thier warranty cards, so i'm sure that the very people who should be selling to a targeted market of HD Screen owners, are in fact NOT READY and do NOT know who they are. The retailers know more than the indusry suppliers -- I know this is true for more reasons than i can share. I so want to kick this business in the butt for being that way, and hd1080i.com will stay in static page mode for yet another month or so as a result of all this poorly handled business momentum.