What's the level of the HD in HD broadcasting these days? (1 Viewer)

[Charles Smith]

I've been meaning to ask this for a while, and I just happen to have the laptop with me in front of the TV, so here it is.


I'm watching the pre-Oscar red carpet proceedings on WPIXD (channel 235 on my Comcast lineup), and immediately noticed that the hosts and interviewees are wax models this year. Or perhaps they're being shot through a stocking.


It wasn't more than a few years back that HD broadcasts were the great new thing, and when I went HD in 2007 they were definitely impressive and exciting to me. It was funny then, too, because you'd hear some people talk about the makeup and lines and zits or whatever on news anchors and celebrities, and how distracting that was. But how wonderful it was to others of us, that we could actually discern the features and characteristics of their faces.


So, am I imagining this, or was there a backlash? I first noticed this on HBO's Bill Maher show a few months ago, that in close-ups, everyone's face looked airbrushed. Since then I've picked it up on some news shows, but by no means all of them. So if I'm not imagining this, what happened? After all the years of anticipation leading up to the advent of HDTV, have we now, after just a few golden years, decided we really didn't mean it, that we need our news personalities and celebrities to look as airbrushed as SD presented them?


Maybe someone can tell me it's all okay, that if I laid off the Manhattans and Martinis and cleared my eyes, I'd find I was imagining this whole thing. In the meantime, if anyone can confirm or deny what I believe I'm seeing here, that will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Greg_S_H]

I can't help you, but the claim makes little sense. Movies in the theater have greater resolution and have been showing up the flaws already. Unless TV stations were letting their personalities skate by on lower standards.

 

[Mikah Cerucco]

I don't have the goods, but this can hold you over until a more comprehensive answer comes along.


I believe Comcast (and sat too for that matter) recompresses content for delivery to the subscriber based on the number of HD offerings they have and the amount of available bandwidth they have to deliver it. Back in the day, I remember many conversations comparing the compression between Comcast and DTV (the one with the lower being a selling point). If you want to see what real HD looks like, I think the best signal you're going to get is Over The Air (OTA) antenna. Or BluRay.


That said, there are other things that come into play as well, including cameras and makeup. Essentially, though, most of these businesses have figured out the average consumer has no real perception of "resolution" or "picture quality", just something vague. So as long as the picture is widescreen and fills their new HDTV, who cares if it's 100% of the original signal or 80%?


Bottom line: HDTV is capable of more than we often see.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Originally Posted by Greg_S_H

I can't help you, but the claim makes little sense. Movies in the theater have greater resolution and have been showing up the flaws already. Unless TV stations were letting their personalities skate by on lower standards.

TV productions, including local news, geared the hair and makeup to 480i and not film standards. There is a huge difference in how you approach hair and makeup for 1080P and how you approach hair and makeup for 480i.


That being said, I noticed no serious loss of detail on my local affiliate's HD broadcast. Comcast is notorious for compressing the crap out of channels to fit in as many as possible. If your TV had an ATSC tuner built-in, trying attaching a rabbit ears antenna and checking the OTA picture quality. It could also be an issue with your particular affiliate.

 

[Charles Smith]

Unfortunately, I'm not in a location with any over-the-air broadcasting available or I'd happily take advantage of it. Perhaps what I'm seeing is indeed a Comcast problem, and frankly, I'd be a teeny bit happier to hear that that's the case, than hearing that the networks themselves have taken to compromising the picture quality on their own programs.


As for knowing what real HD looks like, rest assured that I do, via quality Blu-rays viewed at proper distance on a Panasonic VT25. As for TV, I watch very little "regular" TV, but I get around the channels enough to have a feel for the great variety of resolution. The most consistently good HD resolution, to my eyes, has been found on Jay Leno's and Dave Letterman's shows. And the HD portions of the evening news. I used to say that about Bill Maher, then that took a dive as noted above. HBO's HD shows look very good, but of course their Blu-rays blow them away. The thing that bothers me is that there's a certain consistency, among programs and channels, to what I'm observing. So, it's not like Comcast is always all bad, across the board.


By the way, the Oscar broadcast itself was fine. It was the other channel's red carpet show that was so poor. And I'll have to try looking at this closely again sometime, but I couldn't shake the perception that it was just the faces that had the airbrushed quality -- and not anything else around them.