I think it is difficult to make quality observations based on what you see off-air. There is no real incentive for stations in my part of the world to broadcast in HD because the general public wouldn't even know it is happening. I had a discussion recently with someone on a forum saying that a certain sports program broadcast out of the UK looked awful and why was it not in HD. Fact was, it was in HD, but it eventually transpired the guy making the criticism did not realise his receiver could not display HD anyway.

I have long held the view that quite often the public would not know quality if they fell over it, but it should not stop us striving for the best we can produce. If you watch a really good piece of HD material composed, shot, graded, edited and presented to perfection, there is no argument in my mind that we should try to equal it.

But off-air? not a chance while the stations think that covering a news story with material shot from an iPhone is the way to go. Look further afield for quality, you wont get it from the average television station.

Geoff

I have a 50 inch TV and most of our transmissions are SD and poor quality.

I watch quite a few discussion shows on the Australian government owned ABC1 TV channel. It is in SD (576i). What annoys me most is how flat and washed out the studio transmissions can be. They sometimes cross to an external studio or show a video clip and the improvement can be dramatic. Even within the same program, shots of the speaker(s) from different cameras can look quite different. A PIP of the main presenter has different exposure to the full image version. Sometimes the faces look like they are made of plastic, and when the speakers smile, great cracks might suddenly appear in the faces.

Too much smoothing and too low contrast. Often too bright or too dark.

I would have thought that studio work would be the easiest, because you have time to prepare and you can control the lighting.

One of the worst programs is "The Business". I sometimes wonder whether it is to flatter the regular presenter. I have seen a broadcast with her interviewing in a normal room, with normal lighting, and it was quite unflattering of her.

The SBS channel suffers from too much compression (ca. 3 Mbps). The bit rate is lower than that of ABC1. If there are waves on water, in particular, the picture breaks up into mosaic squares.

A good DVD can look spectacular, but not as good as a good BD. Unfortunately a lot of what I watch is bad SD.

[I]"The SBS channel suffers from too much compression (ca. 3 Mbps). The bit rate is lower than that of ABC1. If there are waves on water, in particular, the picture breaks up into mosaic squares."[/I]

Peter,
SBS also broadcast in HD, channel 30 if you're in Sydney.

Bob.

"If you produce something in HD and the clear images stand out so well that it seems too real and the organic art of movie magic and fantasy is somewhat evasive.
Perfect is not always good because there is no artistic stimulus.
The viewer deserves to use their own imagination using the visuals you offer them in the manner you as an artist chooses to present."

I couldn't disagree more!

I respect everyone's opinion, but yeah, I didn't get that statement either. Not all paintings have to be pointillist to be artistic. Imagine reading a novel with half the words missing.

If you have one producer with millions of dollars to put on a project and another producer with little to no funds, which one would be more artistic?And which one would be more tech?

[I]"If you have one producer with millions of dollars to put on a project and another producer with little to no funds, which one would be more artistic? "[/I]

The one with millions, he hires the best creative people.
The guy with no money no one with any talent wants to work for.

Welcome to the Entertainment Business.

Bob.

-farss.
No offense, but that didn't answer the question.
Everything has a price.. So easy.
Raw art is priceless.

I think Bob's answer is more applicable to the real world.

I live in the same world.. I feel just as real.. but I will always advocate the artistic approach... Especially in the visual arts field.

Maybe there is a disconnect in this discussion. There is little correlation between poverty and talent. There are artists who are poor and artists who are not. There are a greater number of the poor who are not artists. Film producers making block-buster films are engaged in a commercial enterprise, not an artistic one. Artists push the boundaries of their medium rather than embrace its limitations.
Video and film is a multidisciplinary activity with a great range of intentions, from the simple recording of events, through entertainment, to the artistic. The talented are known by the flair they contribute to the work, whether foley artist, DoP, or director, and are paid accordingly. Some of the well paid are technically skilled rather than creative, but the best are artists. Obviously one always takes an artistic approach, tempered by budget, time, purpose and talent.

This is starting to sound like some mythology where artists have to be poor and starving to be any good. Low resolution is a requirement for art? If someone claims to be a visual artist and is handed an HD cam, if he couldn't produce art and whined for an SD cam, I don't think I would consider him an artist. That old saying about "blaming the tools."

Perhaps I allowed myself to go off my original point in this topic.
I must say though, it has been interesting reading all the input here.. It makes me feel at home.
I maybe got to emotionally emerged and got off at the wrong stop.
SD to me has it's own flavor and look. Those attributes inspire the artist in me.. So maybe I'm rich, maybe I'm poor... One thing for sure, my experience with VP12 shows me how artistically wealthy I am and can be.

Most of my work involves restoration of old or badly-shot media. I would pay good money to have the sources for my various projects have more resolution, color, and fidelity than they usually do.

The idea that capturing using a lower-resolution, lower color space medium is something that anyone would voluntarily want to do is completely absurd and the result of very muddy thinking.

Why?

Because I can easily make HD look like SD with about two minutes of work. You won't be able to tell that it was shot in HD. In fact, using my Sony FX1 camcorder I simply flip a switch and my HD comes out as good old SD in DV format. Voilà!!

Unfortunately, I cannot find the switch on my various SD camcorders to go the other way ...

(johnmeyer) Again.. The SD look and feel has it's own flavor.
There are tons of plugins out there that duplicate the look.
I never said HD is bad.. I prefer a particular look to my visual art.
Why is that "Muddy Thinking"?
This is just open talk.. No one is looking to get insulted.

If "muddy thinking" is an insult, then someone lowered the bar for insults.

[i]You empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. [/I]

Now [I]that[/I] is an insult.

I find it easier to remove blemishes and objects from still images that are somewhat blurred because my hacking is also somewhat blurred. A sharper image requires me to take more care when masking the objects.

However, I would much prefer a sharp image to work with in the first place because at the end of the day I have a sharper image. If I want a dreamy fuzzy look I can easily get it afterwards.

"SBS also broadcast in HD, channel 30 if you're in Sydney"

Thanks Bob. Yes I know, but SBS is inclined to breakup from time to time and the HD transmission much more likely than SD. I prefer mosaics to breakup.

I live south of Melbourne where the transmission comes from nearby Arthur's Seat, not Mt Dandenong which most Melburnians receive.

Not to belabor the point, but I've taken the liberty of tweaking one of Ansel Adams' famous black-and-white shots of Half Dome. Two versions for your viewing pleasure--one in HD and one in SD.

Which one do I "like" better? Well, I suppose the sharper one, because it just conveys so much more structure and detail--which is presumably why Ansel Adams used a 4x5 plate camera rather than a 35mm Leica.

But then I've seen a lot of really crappy movies shot on color widescreen 35mm that can't hold a candle to lots of B&W 4:3 stuff shown on the Turner Classic Movie channel. So I guess it all depends.

John Meyer: Holy Grail is one of my favorite movies. I loved the castle Anthrax sketch. BTW Monty Python just announced they are re-forming, though at their ages any project will probably involve the use of wheelchairs and Metamucil.

To talk about "flavour" of a medium is to get to talk about artistic preference. To say that you judge egg tempera to be the superior medium because you keep chooks is a different matter all together. You might use SD because that's what you have, but to say you can't get the results you want from higher definition source material is what we don't believe.

"But then I've seen a lot of really crappy movies shot on color widescreen 35mm that can't hold a candle to lots of B&W 4:3 stuff shown on the Turner Classic Movie channel. So I guess it all depends."

Which proves that the quality of the artistic results is in the content NOT whether it is SD or HD.

HD can be just as artistic as SD.

[I]But then I've seen a lot of really crappy movies shot on color widescreen 35mm that can't hold a candle to lots of B&W 4:3 stuff shown on the Turner Classic Movie channel. So I guess it all depends.

John Meyer: Holy Grail is one of my favorite movies. I loved the castle Anthrax sketch. BTW Monty Python just announced they are re-forming, though at their ages any project will probably involve the use of wheelchairs and Metamucil. [/I]I watch TCM almost every night. The movies are great, and someone has done a remarkable job restoring all those old prints (actually, probably from the original negatives).

I did see that MP announced they are going to tour again. Your comment about Metamucil is spot on: I saw Cleese here in Carmel two years ago, and one of his best bits involved his recovery from having part of his colon removed.

The last time they were together on stage in Aspen, they finished with an amazing setpiece involving Graham Chapman's ashes.

So, bring on the Metamucil!!