Re: television picture quality
- From: "A Lillywhite" <andrewDOTlillywhite@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 10:54:52 +0000 (UTC)
Morning Bill!
Just so long as your not letting any of this get you down....
I had a similar experience regarding the ICE when collecting a new car a few
years ago. I had specified the audio upgrade factory option. The child of a
sales person charged with handing over said motor to me, knowing that this
one had the "audio upgrade", clearly something of a rarity, walked me to the
vehicle saying "and listen to this", proceeded to open the doors of MY new
car, insert the key in the ignition and whack the stereo up to max on Radio
One! The only thing that spared his life was that I was more interested in
finding the off switch, killing him could wait! He seemed somewhat confused
that this display didn't impress me.
Regarding domestic tellys, it doesn't help that new sets arrive from the
manufacturers with all the "bells and whistles" switched on. It took me
quite a while to find all the default gizmos on my current IDTV, turn them
off, and return the picture to normal. The worst of these was something
called Contrast+, which turns perfectly good pictures into plastic smooth
clipped nightmares. Combined with the other features of Noise Reduction (on
a digital source?!) and Max Sharpness the out-of-the-box picture was an
abomination. With all the features disabled people actually look quite like
real people quite a lot of the time - particularly with older source
material. Most of the time it even gets the aspect ratio right.
It does depress me that it often seems to be the people with the money to
afford the best equipment often have no idea what to do with all the
technology that they have bought. One of my inlaws proudly displaying their
new digital camcorder, had to spool forwards through an hour or more of the
shop assistant demonstrating the camera, because it hadn't occurred to them
to rewind or change the tape before recording their own holiday...And yes,
their big expensive wide screen TV perrenially displays 4:3 pictures
stretched to fill the screen, my how all those TV celebs do put on weight!
Andy.
P.S. Loved the Curtain joke...
(This exciled Yorkshireman will only "drink anything" after several pints of
something decent!)
"Bill Wright" <insertmybusinessname@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dv01tq$p7n$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Many of us lament the declining technical standards of television pictures
in the UK. A depressing perspective, however, comes from sober
consideration of the way the pictures are displayed in the home of the
viewer. I can't remember *ever* seeing a TV set in a non-specialist's
house that was set up correctly. Pictures are inevitably displayed with
too much contrast, brightness, and colour. The correct setting of aspect
ratios is almost unheard of. The sound is likely to be similarly
mistreated, with the bass at max and the treble either (strangely) at max
or at minimum. The centre audio will probably emanate mainly from the rear
speakers, which will be on the floor behind the settee.
I think we have to ask ourselves, is there any point in worrying? The
British public neither knows nor cares about good technical TV quality.
And what of HDTV? Pearls before swine maybe? I'm expecting to see
countless examples of people who show off their HDTV when it is in fact,
for various reasons, SDTV. No doubt they will advance the colour and
contrast, and if they find it, the 'sharpness', to the fullest extent.
Their friends will mutter on the way home "I don't know what all the fuss
is about" but they'll still go out and buy HDTV the next day. I can see
people playing old VHS through their plasma and telling their pals it's
HDTV.
I suppose broadcast HDTV will be totally ruined by compression artefacts
and will be almost worthless. But no-one will notice. Everyone who has
bought HDTV will go on about it in raptures until their workmates reach
for their wallets just to catch up.
It's a sad state of affairs, but I think our present-day accountant-led
technical culture has probably got it right. The vast majority of the
people of this country don't give a damn about good TV pictures. A few
might pretend to care about good sound and vision but in reality most of
that minority don't. All they care about is having the latest flash gear
to show off with. I'm sick to death of rich kids with massive plasmas in
four rooms looking blank when I demonstrate RGB versus RF.
The technical niggles discussed in this group would be met with total
incomprehension by 99.9% of viewers.
It's the same with car audio. Have these people ever been to a concert of
any kind? The ones who feel they are too sophisticated for 'pop' are the
worst. They play pop classics (Beethoven's Greatest Hits etc) and wind the
treble and bass right up to 'give it a bit of life'. Good grief, I had one
such lure me into his red dart to show off the audio system, and with the
air of one knowledgeable person to another he played something called
'Switched on Classics' by the 'Neon Philharmonic Orchestra'. He honestly
thought this was classical music, and he honestly thought that the
pulsating bass was good. I thought the rear window of the car was going to
fall out.
Bill
.
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