Scan lines vs. Skills

Ever since we got HDTV last September we’ve been watching most of our television on HD channels, switching to SD channels only when necessary such as for Battlestar Galactica or British TV on BBC America. In fact, we sometimes watch shows just because they are in HD!

Thanks to the Winter Olympic in Turino, Time Warner Cable <sarcasm>generously</sarcasm> added Universal HD channel during February for the Olympic coverage in HD along with NBC HD. When Universal HD is not showing Olympic events, it shows syndicate shows from the NBC/Universal network which includes the repeats of Battlestar Galactica in full HD glory. What a difference a few extra scan lines make (Ok, a lot of extra scan lines)! The image is sharp with great colour rendition but without being a distraction. Compare this against the blurry, low contrast, washout image from the Sci-Fi Channel I won’t have spent a minute to watch the show if not for the skills of the scriptwriters and the actors.

This just shows that great writing and acting can still attract viewers, verse high production values. Just look at The West Wing and ER. Two shows that were once great but now we only watch them because we used to and that they are on HD. At least West Wing is on its final season but ER is still limping along.

As for the Olympic coverage it is very uneven. Quality range from nice HD image from indoor events such as figure skating and speed skating, to just widescreen SD image (albeit good quality) from outdoor events. Of course only a small percentage of the population in the U.S. (even less for the Europe) own a HDTV set and nearly half of these owners don’t even know they are not watching HD unless they are using a HD set-top box and tuned to HD channels! Oh well, their lose if they don’t want to do some research for their expensive HDTV purchase.

Technorati Tags: BSG, HDTV, Olympic, TV

February 20, 2006 0

New DVD player on the way

Thanks to the President’s Day weekend, Leah and I have to wait until Tuesday for the delivery of our new DVD player. I sounded pretty happy with the Zenith DVD player so why am I getting a new one? Here are the reasons why:

Menu system is slow as molasses. Every button press takes up to a second to affect the screen menu. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but you have to wait a second to see. And I regularly choose the wrong menu option because I pressed the button one too many time.
Even though the Zenith uses the impressive Faroudja upscaling/deinterlacing chip and produces great results on region 1 NTSC DVD, it doesn’t have the 2:2 pulldown capability for region 2 PAL DVD turn on. What it means is that the player doesn’t de-interlace the PAL video properly and produces jagged edges on screen. (De-interlacing explanation here)
The player has no concept of 4:3 material so playing old British TV DVD which are made before 16:9 widescreen format means the image is stretched to fill the TV screen.

Initially I thought these issues won’t bother me, and since it was donated to me free I couldn’t complain anyway. But eventually the slow menu response and the jagged edges really got to me.

The new DVD player that I bought is the OPPO OPDV917H which does not have any of the above problems, plus better colour rendition as well as more frequent firmware updates. Not to mention it tops the Home Theater Secrets DVD Benchmark Review, beating even the Denon 5910!

So Leah and I are refraining from watching any DVDs this long weekend so we’ll enjoy them using the new player next week.

Technorati Tags: DVD, Home Theater, OPPO

February 18, 2006 0

Terrorist Attack Foiled

By now I am sure a lot of you (at least in the U.S.) had heard about the foiled terrorist attack on L.A. by the U.S. government in 2002. But apparently the CIA didn’t know about it. What I think happened is that Jack Bauer from CTU LA foiled the attack while he was on vacation so no one knew about it.

Technorati Tags: 24, TV