Before some one says it, yes I know TCM HD is really an upconvert of the SD channel right now. That will soon change as I hope the current state of the HD channel's patented "Sepiatone Fuzzyvision"™. I have seen some awesome HD transfers of black & white movies so anyone stating that HD doesn't do them justice has never seen HDNet's transfer of "Judgment at Nirenberg" or "To Kill a Mockingbird". Those transfers were pristine.
Today during several movies I did a "blind blink test". I put TCM on one of the tuners and TCM HD on the other on my 622 receiver. I then read a few articles on my laptop while pressing the swap button the 622 remote so I could not keep track of which of the two channels I was looking at. After that I paid attention to the picture on the TV and compared scenes as I only hit the swap button. I repeated this until I picked what I thought was the superior picture. Then I hit the cancel button to see where I was. TCM SD... Crap. Try again. Same result. okay maybe one of the tuners is better than the other. I Swapped channels on the tuners and repeated the experiment. Again the SD version wins.
The reason why has to do with contrast and definition. The HD version has a Sepiatone cast to the picture (more yellow) and the black level is about 5% higher (brighter-less contrast). The picture also seems to be fuzzier. While watching "A place in the sun" in a court scene, the faces of the people in the gallery were sharp and easily definable on the SD version. On the HD version they appeared smeared with no real features. On close-ups of faces, you can see much more detail of the skin texture and hair on the SD than the HD version. And finally on the SD version seems to recover from motion much faster than the HD version, which is really surprising. As a person's face moves within a close-up, both lose skin texture definition which is normal for MPEG. But when the motion stops, detail returns much more quickly to the facial features on the SD version than the HD which is not normally the case due the the faster bit-rate and higher number of key frames.
The sound on the HD version is better to my ear. It seems to have higher, clearer frequencies. with crisper sound and richer bass. The SD version sounds like there is a sock over the microphone muffling the sound.
While watching a color studio segment after a movie, the color saturation is about the same on both versions, but the "fuzzyvision"™ filter was still very apparent on the HD version.
Anyway I guess TCM HD is a myth right now. It will eventually start actually showing HD programming, but today the three times I actually watched it for any length of time, the SD version was preferable. I'm a little disappointed, but hopeful that this will change sooner rather than later.
See ya
Tony
Today during several movies I did a "blind blink test". I put TCM on one of the tuners and TCM HD on the other on my 622 receiver. I then read a few articles on my laptop while pressing the swap button the 622 remote so I could not keep track of which of the two channels I was looking at. After that I paid attention to the picture on the TV and compared scenes as I only hit the swap button. I repeated this until I picked what I thought was the superior picture. Then I hit the cancel button to see where I was. TCM SD... Crap. Try again. Same result. okay maybe one of the tuners is better than the other. I Swapped channels on the tuners and repeated the experiment. Again the SD version wins.
The reason why has to do with contrast and definition. The HD version has a Sepiatone cast to the picture (more yellow) and the black level is about 5% higher (brighter-less contrast). The picture also seems to be fuzzier. While watching "A place in the sun" in a court scene, the faces of the people in the gallery were sharp and easily definable on the SD version. On the HD version they appeared smeared with no real features. On close-ups of faces, you can see much more detail of the skin texture and hair on the SD than the HD version. And finally on the SD version seems to recover from motion much faster than the HD version, which is really surprising. As a person's face moves within a close-up, both lose skin texture definition which is normal for MPEG. But when the motion stops, detail returns much more quickly to the facial features on the SD version than the HD which is not normally the case due the the faster bit-rate and higher number of key frames.
The sound on the HD version is better to my ear. It seems to have higher, clearer frequencies. with crisper sound and richer bass. The SD version sounds like there is a sock over the microphone muffling the sound.
While watching a color studio segment after a movie, the color saturation is about the same on both versions, but the "fuzzyvision"™ filter was still very apparent on the HD version.
Anyway I guess TCM HD is a myth right now. It will eventually start actually showing HD programming, but today the three times I actually watched it for any length of time, the SD version was preferable. I'm a little disappointed, but hopeful that this will change sooner rather than later.
See ya
Tony
