High Definition Television

[Barliman Butterbur]

HDTV is the next step in television. First came black-and-white, then color, then digital. Now it's high-definition, which carries a signal with about five times the complexity and data of "normal" television.

For those who wish to find out more about it, this site (http://www.hdtvgalaxy.com/) gives a tremendous amount of valuable information, with links to still other sources.

You haven't lived until you've seen PJ's movies in HDTV!:D

Barley

[joxy]

My first scan (!) of the site didn't produce a definition of "high-definition" (!), but I may have missed it.
What aspects of complexity and data are increased five-fold?
I did note one statistic, that HDTV works on 720 horizontal lines. As the current NSTC standard in the US is 525 I can understand that would produce a substantial improvement, but here, with 625 lines in the PAL format, the standard digital picture is already very good and I think any further improvement would scarcely be noticeable.
There are references to Dolby digital sound, but again the level of Dolby provided is not specified.
Dolby 5:1, and the better DTS, are standard for DVD sound here.

[Barliman Butterbur]

My first scan of the site didn't produce a definition of "high-definition" (!), but I may have missed it.
What aspects of complexity and data are increased five-fold?

There's a FAQ there someplace but — the signal is about five times the bandwidth of an ordinary TV signal, so there are five times as many pixels, and they are much smaller than the ones in the ordinary picture, so there is five times as much detail per square inch. So much so that it looks virtually like looking through a window onto reality. One's first experience with really good HDTV is one of absolute uncanniness. In addition to that, the sound band is of CD quality, and there is room in the picture signal for split images, menus and links leading to various areas for more info on the main broadcast. For instance, if it's a broadcast of, say, Julia Childs preparing a chicken, there might be a menu operated by your remote control taking you to the recipe, which would appear onscreen simultaneously with the main picture — and so forth.

Barley

[greypilgrim]

What about Plasma T.V.? Isn't that supposed the be the latest and greatest?

[joxy]

Plasma is just another method of presenting any form of television input.
Other methods include the current CRT, cathode ray tube, and LCD, liquid crystal display.