Is HD what you thought it would be ?

[rocket69]

Hd rocks via sat service. If you started off with any cable hd service you can tell the difrence. Blu-ray rocks the sox off most hd movie channels version.

Now that led tv's are hitting the market with 6,000,000 to 1 contrast bluray looks like carp. Great for us multi monitor pc nerds but as far as 100mbs video service coming around any time soon I culd ony hope. 240mhz tv's are also in that ball park of mbs and not going to use it for any thing but pc display .


P.S. HD quality can only be as good as its source. And if that's top notch and u got some $499 60" noname kodakrap or olviatrash then its your fauly gear or the ripoff artist that suckerd you.

 

[whatchel1]

No regrets

I converted before most. I worked for a company that had the earliest HD sets available. Set up one of the 1st in the Sea/Tac area. Was the only student in my broadcast engineering class. Have never looked back,loved it then and love it now. I'm on my 2nd HD set. Can't understand why anyone would ever go back to SD. BTW LED TV's are very bright even brighter than LCD's but they still can't produce blacks like CRT's & Plasma's.

 

[Frank Jr.]

It is about the all mighty dollar and what we can afford. I love my hd tv, it's really nice but......It is all smoke and mirrors when you really get down to it. We all watch center screen. High definition will eventually be the standard. What happens then? I can take a good sd tv and signal as long as the picture is 27 inches or smaller and get a damn good picture. Now if your tv is less than a yard wide you should be embarrassed. I remember my parents buying a 1000 dollar vcr. Do you remember how expensive dvd players were when they first came out? An old crt tv I can clean with a paper towel and Windex. Now we are scared to touch the damn thing. May scratch it! In many ways things have gotten better. In some ways we have gone backward. I remember the tv repairman coming to our home with a bunch of tubes and fix our tv. Now we send it off to be repaired and wait or trash it and buy a new one. I wonder what Philo Farnsworth would say about all this?.......

 

[catnap1972]

Granted, all the channels will be HD capable but as long as you have people watching the Andy Griffith Show and Gilligan's Island, you'll have plenty of leterboxed and stetchy-vision SD.

Well that's the point that many of the HD "advocates" seem to gloss over...like it or not, the majority of broadcast content (speaking overall) is still SD. Everything going forward may be filmed/taped in HD but it's unlikely that the majority of legacy content will be remastered (I just don't see studios and/or syndicators spending money on that)

 

[pabeader]

I love HD. With my 722 I only have to change the ratio once and it seems to remember. As far as noticing a difference. Flip back and forth between the HD and non HD channel and it is VERY apparent. All my TVs, even the $79 < 20" shows the difference. I actually find it hard to watch shows that aren't in HD. Makes my eyes hurt.

I did notice something the other day, When I am using my glasses, to see, the difference is much more apparent. As opposed to when I use my contacts I mean. I have an astigmatism that is corrected in my glasses but not my contacts. Wonder if there is a correlation there?

 

[rockymtnhigh]

95% of what I watch, or more, is in HD, and I am very satisfied. Very little stretched stuff that I watch. And I can't tell you the last time I tuned into a SD channel. HD has just gotten better and better in each of the three years I have had it. Zero complaints.

 

[rocket69]

I did notice something the other day, When I am using my glasses, to see, the difference is much more apparent. As opposed to when I use my contacts I mean. I have an astigmatism that is corrected in my glasses but not my contacts. Wonder if there is a correlation there?

Pabeader have you seen the new HD glasses at lens crafters. Mabe they wuld work better or mabe they are just a gimmick like all the rest of this HD garbe.

 

[mntwister]

I am enjoying the HD, when the HD channels actually show it, much of the programming is still SD. There's still no comparison to a movie on Blu-ray with so much less compression in the picture and the lossless audio. The lossless audio on Blu-ray is a HUGE advantage for me, after you hear it you realize just how bad compressed Dolby Digital is.

 

[pfan1981]

Went with free HD for 6 months and the wife said, "We are cancelling after these 6 months are up"

The six months came and I said, "Alright honey let's cancel." She responded, "No way am I giving up HD."

Needless to say, we are happy with HD. Now if every Brewer game was in crystal clear HD. It's hard to stomache the SD games on our HD sets.

 

[satjay]

It is about the all mighty dollar and what we can afford. I love my hd tv, it's really nice but......It is all smoke and mirrors when you really get down to it. We all watch center screen. High definition will eventually be the standard. What happens then? I can take a good sd tv and signal as long as the picture is 27 inches or smaller and get a damn good picture. Now if your tv is less than a yard wide you should be embarrassed. I remember my parents buying a 1000 dollar vcr. Do you remember how expensive dvd players were when they first came out? An old crt tv I can clean with a paper towel and Windex. Now we are scared to touch the damn thing. May scratch it! In many ways things have gotten better. In some ways we have gone backward. I remember the tv repairman coming to our home with a bunch of tubes and fix our tv. Now we send it off to be repaired and wait or trash it and buy a new one. I wonder what Philo Farnsworth would say about all this?.......

Alot of good points here, thats what makes us Satelliteguys, when the latest and greatest comes out, we need to have ASAP I think my parents paid about 800 dollars for there first VCR

 

[jerryez]

i can only notice a slightly difference between hd and sd but i still think it is worth it

You must have a 12 inch screen or be blind. Maybe your set needs adjusting.

 

[andyin137]

I think what I realize after making this post is alot has to do with my HDTV,I did buy a cheap lower end TV (Sylvania,Special edition)I was leaning towards a Vizio(still think about next year)also may consider Sharp Aquaous.Mainly trying to find an HDTV that can make SD look fairly decent also,My Sylvanias HD looks great but the SD really Sucks.
Also wondering if anyone can tell me what is up with the picture of some shows on USA.I like watching "Psych" but the picture is really weird looking,clear picture but kind of has a fake look to it,although says HD its definately not.

 

[Rlanham]

There's no reason Andy Griffith or Gilligan's Island couldn't have HD masters made, unless the original masters have been lost.

Yep, Hogans Heroes looks fantastic in HD.... One of the first shows I watched in HD.

 

[Frank Jr.]

I think what I realize after making this post is alot has to do with my HDTV,I did buy a cheap lower end TV (Sylvania,Special edition)I was leaning towards a Vizio(still think about next year)also may consider Sharp Aquaous.Mainly trying to find an HDTV that can make SD look fairly decent also,My Sylvanias HD looks great but the SD really Sucks.
Also wondering if anyone can tell me what is up with the picture of some shows on USA.I like watching "Psych" but the picture is really weird looking,clear picture but kind of has a fake look to it,although says HD its definately not.

I think jerry was a little hard on you. Let me say again that I really enjoy my hd tv and DishNetwork. Both my hd tv's are 1080p lcd Sony 120 hertz 32 and 40 inch tv's. They really look good. I just recently upgraded my Dish system from a sd package to the so called turbo hd gold and received two 722k's. In the third bedroom is a standard definition 20" Toshiba that is now only connected to an ota antenna via a digital tuner. Before the upgrade all my hd programming was ota. The Toshiba was connected to a 301 that has since been retired. Now on that tv all I get is my locals. It still looks good and I get that programming free. Before I started with satellite tv I didn't have to concern myself with digital compression rates, artifacts, blocking, audio sync issues, hard drives going bad, updates to my receivers, misalignment of a dish, lnb's going bad, rain fade, connecting my receivers to a phone line, calling a csr for help and going through all that bs. I could go on and on......... When it works it is great! There is a huge difference between standard definition and high definition when you get the big expensive tv's that we enjoy and I really really do enjoy them. However I can enjoy standard definition on a small tv as well. All this high tech stuff is great but comes with a price that is not just in our wallet. I am so grateful to Scott, the Staff and the other contributers to SatelliteGuys for the help I have received over the years. Without them I would have gone back to just an antenna on the roof long ago.

 

[j8.]

Other than sports wife nor i saw big deffrence and we like movies was not worth it for us.. We canceled ,,My brother recently got it also his opion was he could live with out it..

 

[sca]

im a tech, i visit about 20 customers per week who have hd with dish. i'd say at least 4-5 of those customers never had the receiver set to output anything above 480. theyve been watching for however long, thinking they are seeing hd, when its not.
i would advise everyone to go into the menu and check it.

 

[j8.]

I have, 65 inch Hatachi set to 1080 and 722k also use have used 811, 942, 921 never saw big deffrence other than sports.. brother has 622, and hatachi his im not sure on size ill guess 42-50 and same thing

 

[ripnbigc]

I love HD, hardly ever watch anything in SD. About the only thing I watch in SD is the local news, only one of the major locals does their news in HD.

 

[Rangers484]

I am really surprised that some can't see the difference or it is too minor for them to be impressed.

I get that to some people it is just TV: SD/HD/rabbit ears, it's all the same to them.

But if you are not seeing a big difference between SD and HD picture quality on your HDTV, check your settings on all of your equipment. Are you using HDMI or component cables to get HD?

I would bet, as one poster already said, some sat receivers are set to 480, some are using coax or the S-video output to connect to their HD TV.

I can see the difference, distinctly, even on my 20 SD TV when it is on one of the HD channels. When I am watching one of my HD TVs it is night and day between SD and HD channels.

 

[j8.]

i use the HDMI