- Image by mgminthu via Flickr
Recently the House of Representatives decided not to delay the forced transition to digital television, despite hundreds of thousands of television sets that aren’t ready and an exhaustion of the government funds promised to buy digital converter boxes for the old sets.
I have the privilege of an HDTV in my hotel room, and truth be told, many television stations aren’t ready for the change either.
How good a show looks on HDTV varies a lot. If a show is deliberately filmed in HD, the picture is beautiful. Heroes was great. I understand why people want HDTVs, especially since the prices are coming down.
Normal TV channels are slightly degraded on my LG monitor. Edges show a little bit of “feathering” or blending. It’s forgivable but slightly annoying.
I have some HDTV channels, though, that broadcast shows that were filmed prior to HD. They look terrible, like Ted Turner’s colorization gone awry. It’s not Obamicon.me, but it looks worse than the show appeared on normal TV. If you like Friends, Knight Rider, Brady Bunch, etc., you’d be disappointed. It’s as if the broadcast station has a harder time converting old signals to HDTV than my monitor does.
It’s a little crazy to think a good analog TV plus a converter box might be better than an HDTV, but unless you have true HD channels and shows, that may be the case right now. Anyone else with an HDTV getting these results?
Similar Posts:
I’m wondering if people are avoiding the converter due to Hulu. If my husband wasn’t the TV guy, I wouldn’t even bother. We have cable though, so no converter needed right now.
I have and HD TV, but I have no HD service from the satellite company (bought the TV after signing the contract) and the old standard definition stuff looks pretty bad when comparing it to my older analog TV. Its not too bad from the chairs where we usually sit, but too much closer and it is obviously fuzzy. Also, some of the brighter colors, reds and oranges in particular seem to flash between two similar colors.
Now, if I have the TV hooked up to a higher definition source, like my DVD player which up converts to HD, it looks incredibly good.
We have satellite and I use PCTV to watch that on my laptop in my room… but I also have an old analog tv with rabbit ears that isn’t ready for the switch. I’m thinking of getting rid of it all together, but haven’t committed yet.
One thing you didn’t mention… HD broadcast hockey games… pathetic. There’s always blurring whether you have an HDTV or not. Interestingly, the HD broadcast coming over satellite or cable into an analog tv is somewhat pixellated at high-contrast points. So that tells me an analog tv with an HD converter box will have funny looking images sometimes. But if it’s a movie or something slow moving it will be nice.
A friend who lives about a mile from me has already converted and he can actually pick up stations he couldn’t before with the rabbit ears. That complicated my decision on getting rid of the tv or keeping it.