Posted on 01/07/2006 8:08:19 PM PST by george76
The wraps came off high-definition DVD players at this year's annual Consumer Electronics Show, offering the final component to replicate the movie theater experience at home.
And while a fierce DVD format war likely will delay the mass adoption of such devices, digital video is here to stay - the Consumer Electronics Association trade group estimates 25 million U.S. homes will have a high-def TV set by year's end.
But big, expensive flat-panel sets aside, this year's gadget show offered plenty of smaller screens for video...
Yahoo Inc., DirecTV, Starz Entertainment Group and Sony were also among the companies getting deeper into the business of trying to make it simple to watch recorded Hollywood movies, home video and even live streaming television wherever you may be, on all manner of device.
Not to be outdone, radio was out in force as well, including palm-sized satellite receivers that hold hours of recorded music.
Digital radios, which promise a high-definition listening experience from traditional earth-bound stations, were also on display as that service begins a wider national rollout this year.
- The Inno, a portable combination XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. receiver/MP3 player with 1 gigabyte of internal memory.
- Several new handheld video options included the Gigabeat player from Toshiba, one of a series of devices running Microsoft Corp.'s portable media center software.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Tweeter on sale.
Thankfully I've got a section unfinished basement beneath my theater setup ... it made the wiring a snap.
Getting there and starting to reach critical mass. Critical mass = mainstream, reasonably priced, available content.
Next important step: reasonably priced HD DVD players and a convergence of the standards. This may take a few years to sort out because of the two competing technologies. Plus the availability of reasonably priced burners.
I am waiting and I use a HTPC for my high definition production and play back.
I'm in the market. Add me to the HDTV list.
"LCD = annoying screen door effect."
You've said this twice (at least as far as the post I'm replying to) but really this is a subjective matter.
I have three LCD screens in the house: my 19" Viewsonic PC monitor (1440x900), wife's laptop (17", 1440x900), and the Panny LCD-RPTV (50", 1280x720) and none of them look, to me, as if they have a screen door effect.
OTOH, both my wife and I perceive a rainbow-shimmery effect on plasma screens which many others don't see.
Well, we're looking to convey the CRT projection unit if/when we ever sell our townhouse. The target unit I have in mind for a replacement is the Mitsubishi WD-65731 65" 1080p DLP.
Nice setup!
For Xmas?
As soon as we move, assuming we can sell the townhouse. There's a potential fish on the hook who wants to close by the end of October, so I could have this set up in time for Thanksgiving Day football games. :)
The other nice thing about that unit is that its "matching base" is 20" deep, something I double-checked after seeing the post about so many being too shallow.
"And 1080i is not nearly as good as 1080p"
Almost all digital displays (all LCDs, direct view and projection, DLP, plasma) that have a 1920x1080 resolution are 1080p internally. At this time there aren't really any consumer 1080p sources available, although HD-DVD and Blu-Ray may have 1080p outputs. But since those are mostly film source, good internal processing in the TV (de-interlacing with 2:3 pulldown) can achieve the same thing. I wouldn't really worry about getting a set with 1080p inputs (and there are very few at this time).
"If you leave your TV on many hours a day a plasma will be bad in 6 months time, the screens have a 'half life' that goes down rapidly if used a lot."
Most plasmas these days are advertising a 60,000 hour lifetime, which would be 6.85 years if the tv was on 24 hours a day. Not a major problem. On good plasmas the burn-in problem is also fairly minor, although I still wouldn't suggest leaving a static image or 4:3 "pillar box" image on one for an extended period.
That is a huge monitor and at 1080p, too.
Hope you get it.
DLPs (and LCD/LCOS, etc, projectors) do have moving parts, as well. For DLP there is the spinning colour wheel, and all the bulb-type projectors have cooling fans, too. Many plasmas and LCDs also have cooling fans, which can be a source of unwanted noise.
I'd like to be added to the HDTV ping list...thanks.
"Is there a special input for 1080p? Thought that DVI and HDMI have the non-interlaced resolution covered."
As I understand it, HDMI (and I think DVI, too) have sufficient bandwidth for 1080p, but many TVs with HDMI inputs can't handle a 1080p signal
"Question: what resolution do the cable companies broadcast? 1080i, 1080p or something less? And what bit rate?"
The cable companies rebroadcast whatever they receive. As far as I know, all broadcast HD is either 720p or 1080i (or, rarely, 480p), never 1080p. The bit rate the cable company uses is typically variable and depends on the configuration for the system that they have chosen. They can split up the available bandwidth in the system in a variety of ways.
"The higher resolutions mean more data down the cable. I am always suspicious that the cable company may cut corners and feed a bit rate that is less than the HD standard. Some "HD" shows look like they have macro distortion. Others are crisp and clear. Some shows are labeled 1080p, too.""
The distortion may come upstream from the cable companies, either in transmission, or in poor quality compression techniques in post-production. As you know, the cable itself has a limited bandwidth, and the MPEG2 compression scheme that is used in cable (Dish is switching to MPEG4 for HD) is not the most efficient, so in many cases there may not be sufficient bandwidth for all the detail, so you get macroblocking.
My TV will be a year old this Christmas. I did a lot of research at the time and screen burn in would have been bad for a TV left on sometimes 16 hours a day. Improvements in a years time could make a difference now.
This is from one article that has been updated;
SCREEN BURN IN
LCD technology is not prone to screen "burn-in" or "ghosting" (premature aging of pixel cells) due to the nature of the technologies “twisting crystals.”
With plasma displays, static images will begin to "burn-in," or permanently etch the color being displayed into the glass display element. The time it takes for this to occur depends greatly on the anti burn-in technology of the manufacturer. Recent improvements by plasma manufacturers have certainly extended the time it takes to burn in a plasma pixel cell. In the past I was concerned to place a DVD on pause 15 minutes. Now, many of the enhancements such as better green phosphor material, and motion adaptive anti burn-in technology are greatly reducing the risk of burn in. It’s gotten so much better that I don’t even worry about it anymore. In a new model plasma from any top tier manufacturer I would put “ghosting” estimates at an hour or more now (Ghosting can be “washed” out by displaying static gray material). Permanent burn-in I would put at more than 10 hours.
ADVANTAGE: LCD, but not as much of a concern as a year ago.
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