Are You Sure You're Watching HDTV?

[admin]

That's right. You bought a new high definition television at your favorite big box store. You brought it home or had it delivered. You connected it up just right and made sure you had all the right cables (and boy did THEY cost a pretty penny). But do you have HDTV? Do you? You do? Are you SURE?


Discuss "Are You Sure You're Watching HDTV?" here. Read the article.

[MDS]

This is a good summary of the relevant points of HDTV but I think this sentence contains a typo:

25% of those surveyed didn't even realize they weren't watching non-HDTV transmissions

Shouldn't that be '25% of those surveyed didn't even realize they were watching non-HDTV transmissions' or '25% of those surveyed didn't even realize they weren't watching HDTV transmissions '?

[westcott]

Those statistics are mind blowing.

Maybe I should become a televangilist, after all!

Seems like a lot of money could be made saving souls for that 25% of the 25%!!!!!

They obviously have more money than sense!

[corey]

Oops, those pesky double negatives.

Good article, should be required reading - perhaps passed out as you enter CostCo?

I do, however, have a different take on one of the points in #6: "In about 4 years no one will be using them much". In 4 years we'd better be watching mostly/all HD content, and some of it we'll want to own. I won't buy HD/BD DVD until the war is over, but when it is I'll have to get new copies of LOTR, Star Wars, Fantasia, and a few others.

[Clint DeBoer]

I put in that #6 comment to indicate my thinking that BD/HD DVD will go the way of the SACD/DVD-Audio. I think content streaming of HD will take over before either of those formats goes truly mainstream.

Thanks for the typo catch - I meant to say they "didn't not even realize they weren't not watching non-HDTV. NOT." lol

[kleinwl]

This whole HDTV and high-def audio is overblown. The market has already spoken. They want to watch their TV at 320 x 240 and lisen to their music at 96kbps on their Ipod.

All you guys with your 110" screens and 1080p resolution are just throwbacks to an earilier age. (/sarcasm)

As to my parents... I got my dad a dvd of all the airwolf episodes for Christmas... and he is loving it on his 27" CRT. I don't expect that he will EVER upgrade to HDTV.

I just think that the Sat and Cable companies are doing a horrible job of upselling their HDTV services... and having to reprogram the set top boxes after the intaller leaves is beyond the ability of most people... heck I have to plug my in-laws equipment because they can't figure out that the cable from the wall has to go into the cable box instead of directly to the TV.

Nope... I think the HD format adoption is going to continue to be slow and painful... we just have to face it... not many people are willing to invest the kind of time that we have to learn about HDTV. They want a drop in solution... and if it doesn't work... they are not going to do anything about it.

[MDS]

having to reprogram the set top boxes after the intaller leaves is beyond the ability of most people...

It certainly is beyond the ability of many people and some of the installers need more training. We can't dismiss them all though because some of them do know what they are doing. The Time Warner techs in Austin are pretty good.

When my sister first got digital cable (Comcast - South FL) I took one look at the box and told the installer that it was not a digital box because it didn't have digital audio outs of any kind. He basically told me that I didn't know what I was talking about because they have been using that box for years. It's really a matter of semantics - the box is digital in that it can receive the digital broadcasts, but there was no way to get the digital audio out of the box to the receiver. I could not convince the installer that they should have cable boxes with digital audio outputs.

Long story short is that it took months of calls to Comcast to find anyone that knew what we were talking about and she finally got a box with a coax digital audio out.

HDTV is even more confusing and we've all heard the stories where the installer used composite video and analog audio cables when connecting the customer's new HD DVR to their HDTV.

[majorloser]

My neighbors recently paid to upgrade to HD cable. When the installer came out to install the boxes and he just hooked up the regular SD coax to the TV's and tuned the sets to channel 3. "There you go! You now have HDTV. Sign here."

They were ready to cancel the HD service since the picture was actually worse then the way it was hooked up before with the old cable boxes (composite video and RCA audio). I told the neighbor when I saw the picture that the cable company either didn't hook the sets up right or didn't give the right service the neighbor thought they ordered. When they called the cable company to ask about the picture quality they told them they must have bought a cheap TV and it doesn't have HD. They knew for the money they spent on those monster plasma sets they had BETTER be HD.

I hooked them up with a couple HDMI cables and digital sound. The neighbor's jaws just dropped to the floor. Needless to say they were PO'd with the cable company.

Heck, when the DISH installer came out to install my system he didn't have a clue how to set up the receiver or what HD was. I had to do it all.

Just goes to show you the installers are just there to get the job done fast. And they may not have a clue what they're doing.

[no. 5]

My neighbors recently paid to upgrade to HD cable. When the installer came out to install the boxes and he just hooked up the regular SD coax to the TV's and tuned the sets to channel 3. "There you go! You now have HDTV. Sign here."

Reminds me of what one of my friends went through, he got HD satellite but since it only worked for a few days out of the month he had it, he canceled it. And when I was at his house helping him move, I pulled out the sat box from the rack, and lo and behold, it was connected to the TV with a composite video cable and analogue stereo; I think his exact words were “so after all that I wasn’t even getting HD??”.

[zildjian]

A possible way to get HDTV not mentioned in the article, those who have just plain analog cable (no cable set top box, & no HD package, just regular cable) can try just connecting the cable signal to their new HDTV sets (since many sets now have built-in ATSC & QAM tuners). This works on my service (just plain cable) and I get HD signals from ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CW, FOX, and maybe one other station, not to mention about 50+ music channels via the QAM tuner.
Brad