Comments

B.Verlik wrote on 2/11/2005, 8:08 PM
My opinion is always right. And that's a fact. If you don't believe me....just ask me.
mhbstevens wrote on 2/11/2005, 8:08 PM
Actually I just picked up 3 crates of Spumante, so sparkling wine it is. Anyone in southern Cal for a Spumate and wild flower shoot when the rains go?

Cheno wrote on 2/11/2005, 8:33 PM
"This should point out no one OPINION is right and much of what is posted to this thread and others is OPINION and not fact. Forums such as these are most useful when everyone can post their opinion without a couple trying to shove their opinion down everyone's throat pretending their opinion is fact."

BB, you forgot to capitalize the other three "opinions" in your paragraph. Not sure why.. just wanted to point that out.

I'm not sure what you've got against Spot and John that you must continue to press it in this forum. Take it offline.

I've offered to let you email me offline and I'd continue to badger you. Anyone else says something about your attitude and you ignore them.. Spot or John pipe up and you're right there to bicker and argue.

I think you are a coward and hiding behind your computer spewing forth this dribble only continues to ingite whatever flame is burning. Don't just blame it on others... you can easily ignore and move on. Personally, I think most of us are tired of your OPINION anyway. Save it for your website and the 5 people that frequent it.

P.S. My new showerhead is working great. I'm trying to get the right distance from the showerhead to my body. You mentioned earlier in the thread how distance really determines the worth of something. Can you tell me how far I need to be to get the optimum performance from the water?

Spot|DSE wrote on 2/11/2005, 9:39 PM
How did the champagne become part of this discussion? I'm a player if there's a prize on the table!
In southern Cal right now for the NRB show. I'm getting tired of always being in Anaheim and never going to Disneyland.

John, the Qualia's rock, even though someone who's never seen it say it doesn't. Native resolution ABSOLUTELY applies. It's the resolution of the panel that counts, otherwise it's all passed through any number of processes to determine the final image quality.

BB, have you ever SEEN the Qualia? I doubt it since they only launched in October, and hadn't been seen until early November.

MhbStevens, how did your HDV look on your TV? Inquiring minds wanna know!
Cheno, if the promise of champagne flows forth, we'll push some of it through your showerhead.
Hulk wrote on 2/11/2005, 9:54 PM
That projector does seem really nice.
1920x1080 native resolution is very impressive.

Plus you can vary the screen size to in effect adjust the pixels/inch ratio to suit the viewers taste. And if there is one thing we've learned from this thread, there are a lot of different "tastes" in here.

Some people might like a smaller really high pixels/inch display while others could go more for the giant movie screen approach.

Cool.
Spot|DSE wrote on 2/11/2005, 9:58 PM
Gee Mark....having seen our viewing room, don'cha think that Qualia would be great on our 12' screen? With the buttkickers and surround? WOW!
(I really just want the champagne at this point) :-)
BillyBoy wrote on 2/11/2005, 10:30 PM
"My new showerhead is working great. I'm trying to get the right distance from the showerhead to my body. You mentioned earlier in the thread how distance really determines the worth of something. Can you tell me how far I need to be to get the optimum performance from the water?"

Sure Cheno, glad to help. Turn on water, face away from showerhead, bend over grabbing both ankles, aim your butt up and towards the shower head. Try not to fart. Since you're full of s.... hold position for ten minutes or longer.

Hint: you want to be a smartass, I'll respond accordingly.
Grazie wrote on 2/11/2005, 10:36 PM
WOAh . .neat QUALIA site . ..

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QUALIA/word/index.html

G
Grazie wrote on 2/11/2005, 10:38 PM
QUALIA: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/


I didn't know THAT!?!?

G .. . kool. Kool concept from the Greeks!

John_Cline wrote on 2/12/2005, 8:57 AM
I had some more time to kill here in Las Vegas, so I went back to the Sony Qualia store and spent some more time with the HDTV's. They had a variety of professionally shot HD footage and it all looked great. While $30,000 is a lot to spend on a TV, it's not as pricey as the pro Sony or Barco projectors and it looks unbelieveably great. The new reflective LCD technology is similar to DLP but, IN MY OPINION, it looks better.

Now, for another opinion.... Billy, Cheno's showerhead question to you was quite clever given the topic of this thread and your statement about distance affecting native resolution (which it doesn't, by the way.) Your reply to him was crude and vulgar and, while it wasn't beneath YOUR dignity, it was very much beneath the dignity of this forum. It seems you always make your most offensive statements on the weekends because you know the forum moderators won't delete your posts until sometime on Monday.

John

(Only 21 more posts untill number 200 !)
mhbstevens wrote on 2/12/2005, 9:04 AM
Spot askes "How did the HDV look"? This morning I played back the first shots - taken indoors with no lighting other than the room lamp - when my wife, who didn't know I got the FX1 yet, stumbles in, bleary-eyed with her first cup of coffe, ploks down on the couch and half-awake mumbles. "How come your dog is on the TV with a picture that looks like High Definition?"

That says it all. Thread eneded. No Champagne.
JJKizak wrote on 2/12/2005, 9:14 AM
One of the first requirements for viewing and comparing High Definition is 20-20 vision.

JJK
Hulk wrote on 2/12/2005, 9:17 AM
"Gee Mark....having seen our viewing room, don'cha think that Qualia would be great on our 12' screen? With the buttkickers and surround? WOW!"

YES! But your place is packed with so much damn gear that you'll have to let me "borrow" some of it to make room ;)
BillyBoy wrote on 2/12/2005, 10:36 AM
What Cline can't seem to grasp is this forum is for expressing different opinions, not for someone with a obvious anger management problem to call others a lunantic or scum like Cline has done more than once.

The topic of this thread "Your view on "true" HD is very telling in that the person that started the thread pretended he wanted other opinions. As everyone knows, if you disagree with SPOT on copyright issues, or on external monitors and now apparently on what defines HD, Spot and Cline will rant and rave and attempt to belittle those with different opinions.

HD while not new is still evolving. The points I made which you'll notice neither Spot or Cline can dispute, is that while broadcasters have a "standard" the MANUFACTURERS, Sony, Sharp and Panasonic and all the others prefer a much broader definition. Namely that if its 16-9 and has a MINIMUM viewable vertical display of 720p 1080i or higher its HD, regardless if that's native pixels or if fudged internally by the device you're viewing by scaling or other means. The finer point lost on these two self-proclaimed "professionals" is HOW a TV generates the picture claimed to be high definition. The meaning of "HD" goes far beyond how footage is simply captured with some camera. I would give far more weight to how its SEEN, afterall, that's the whole point of creating "better" material in the first place.

Where both Spot and Cline fall flat on their face is they are only talking CAMERAS generating HD material. In other words a camera capable of capturing native 720p 1080i is a "true" HD device. It isn't that cut and dry as you'll learn if you keep reading.

Where the issue opens up is what is the consumer actually seeing?

Short answer it depends greatly on the viewing device!

To listen to Cline, he says he don't give a damn, I shoot at "HD" I don't give a crap if the CONSUMER can't see it natively, that's their fault further making lame excuses like he shoots for "professionals" and they already know blah, blah, blah.

To me, how consumers "see" somebody's work is not only important its the reason you're in business.

Back to the main topic, HOW the end user sees the finished product varies. There is no getting away from it. So one's "view" of "true" HD isn't limited to how it was captured, or just the camera side of things, in fact the end user probably only cares about what HE IS VIEWING, quality wise. So somebody popping off he don't care what the consumer see or thinks or saying he don't give a rat's ass about the equipment its viewed on isn't very professional in my book.

So what are we really talking about? A HD camera should optically "see" and record a minimum resolution of 1920 x 1080. Anything less isn't "real" HD. Did I ever say anything otherwise? No!

A playback device such as TV to play back "true" HD needs a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 or over two million pixels. The cold reality is few sets, none of any size, can do this because the technology and cost are still out of reach to pack that much into larger screen LCD or plasma displays.

So again what defines "HD" is muddy and is in the eyes of the beholder. To further confuse things we're really talking potential verses actual. To get "true" HD quality a CRT (tube type) HD capable TV would need to be able to produce 720 horizontal lines of resolution to show a progressive 720p HD picture or a whopping 1080 lines for 1080i. While SOME "professional" monitors may produce pictures with better tubes having more pixels... in reality and especially for consumer models the number of pixels falls far short. With everything not a CRT, including Plasma and LCD, your typical "HD" TV has a native resolution of anywhere from 1024 x 768 to 1366 x 768 (for larger screens) with only some smaller ones, typically 30 inch or less being capable of native 1920 x 1080.

So how can the larger sets receive and display 1080i broadcasts?

By scaling. To further complicate things "HD" content today is delivered mostly via SD DVD. Well surprise, surprise, do the math, the NTSC standard is only 720 x 480. Now who here want's to say that footage originally shot at 1920 x 1080 is going to be "true HD" when squeezed down to the maximum allowable DVD requirements? Raise your hands.

Today, when you view any "HD" material burned to a DVD and played back on a standard DVD player that gets scaled just like a 1080i broadcast likely is scaled if you're watching on a larger HD monitor/TV.

So what "HD" is centainly goes beyond the simplistic I shoot with a HD camera, ergo that means its "true" HD, rings hollow if you look at the facts. So since as of right now, likely less than 1% of the consumer public have HD DVD players, and only maybe 10-15% have HD capable TV's and very few have any 1920 x 1080 viewing device, why are so many rushing out to get HD cameras instead of waiting a year to eighteen months to see what shakes out?

Same reason a certain number ALWAYS have to have the fastest CPU, the fastest or newest DVD burner and latest and greatest camera. Hint: There will always be a better, faster, cheaper one tomorrow. I can wait. Some obviously can't.

DigVid wrote on 2/12/2005, 10:37 AM
nickle wrote on 2/12/2005, 10:45 AM
How about this then?

In photography a negative can only be enlarged a small amount before "graininess " degrades it.

However a "slide" can be blown up a huge amount without degrading.

Therefore I submit that only "slides" are true HD and when technology finally catches up with that fact, there will be true high definition.

So this topic isn't closed and the Champage which isn't champagne unless it comes from France is still up for grabs.
BillyBoy wrote on 2/12/2005, 1:00 PM
Ahh yes, "French" Champagne... For starters, all "Champagne" is in reality sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is Champagne. And surprise again, the French weren't the first to make Champagne and the town in France of the same name wasn't the first so named either. That honor belows to the Swiss who 700 years before the French made "Champagne" in a town of the same name that was located above Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland.

Having worked for United Vinters, one of the largest California cooperative wine makers way back in the 60's and 70's, I can tell you also much to do about quality preceived or real is again well grounded in snob appeal. The "true" quality of sparkling wine is judged by the size of the bubbles (smaller is better), how long the bubbles last (longer is better) and odd as it may sound, how the bubbles feel in your mouth, yes if you're a wine snob you may be able to tell variety on that alone. Taste depends on grape variety, usually a blend and that alone does not make a good or bad sparkling wine. One real tip on judging "quality" is the sweetness. Generally, the sweeter the sparkling wine, the lower its qualty, because surprise one more time, it has sugar added which aids the fermentation process along with the yeast. To hide shortcuts taken in the second fermentation process more sugar is added to cheaper sparkling wine varities.
wcoxe1 wrote on 2/12/2005, 1:07 PM
One of the nicest things about this type of forum (software) is that it puts the name of the poster at the top. That makes it convenient for those who want to just scroll on by and ignore whoever for whatever reason. Cuts way down on the reading time, obviously.
mhbstevens wrote on 2/12/2005, 3:28 PM
BillyBoy just went up in my estimation. He knows truly the nature of Champagne. Pitty about his knolege of HD.




John_Cline wrote on 2/12/2005, 4:18 PM
Billy,

You have such a narrow vision of what's going on and you just don't get it.

One reason to shoot HD right now is to start to build a library of archived HD material. You seem to hung up on what consumers can see today.

A very popular weekly network sports program with which I am involved is going to be broadcast in 1080i this year. A part of this program relies on archival footage, which up until now, is almost all SD. Don't think for a minute that they didn't wish all of this footage was HD to begin with.

While you felt the need for a larger screen and opted for a lower resolution, larger screen plasma, the average consumer can trot into Circuit City today and walk out with a Sony 34" XBR-960 HDTV fully capable of native 1080i, complete with a built-in HD tuner for under $2,000. This particular TV looks better than any LCD or plasma TV I have seen at a reasonable price point. I suspect that now that the network program I mentioned is being delivered OTA in HD, it will be responsible for a large jump in HDTV sales that would had not happened otherwise because the segment of the population that watches this program are pretty rabid fans and wouldn't necessarily have purchased HDTV's for any other reason.

One segment of the market in which my company is involved demands HD, NOW!. You are in the best position to judge your own market demands.

John
BillyBoy wrote on 2/12/2005, 5:20 PM
Lets limit it to what you said below and I'll use it to illustrate the difference between opinion and fact.

"While you felt the need for a larger screen and opted for a lower resolution, larger screen plasma, the average consumer can trot into Circuit City today and walk out with a Sony 34" XBR-960 HDTV fully capable of native 1080i, complete with a built-in HD tuner for under $2,000. This particular TV looks better than any LCD or plasma TV I have seen at a reasonable price point."

That's your opinion. John. You're entitled to it. Now here's the facts you decided to ignore. Any CRT type TV is old technology. One problem with any CRT is the electron beam that paints the picture on screen needs to spread across the width of the face of the screen requiring it to be deflected by magnets on the picture tube neck. This necessary deflection results in not every phosphor being hit squarely. The shadow mask, another part of CRT televisions being just a bit off again causes distortion somewhere on the screen, usually the far edges meaning some of the triads of red, blue and green phosphors at some places on the screen's suface can't be converged totally. Again, more distortion. On top of that, many CRT TV's suffer from blooming. A situation where over drving the contrast causes excessive high voltage and either whites show a trace of color shading or there can be a noticable distortion in vertical lines.

Neither LCD or Plasma suffer from these problems because there is no picture tube. No picture tube, no deflection, no misconvergence. The proof LCD and Plasma are "better" is looking at a HD test pattern on all three types of sets. The LCD and Plasma are capable of displaying a razor sharp test pattern top to bottom side to side with equal brightness and no ringing or halos even when you look at the very close together test pattern lines. Because of the deflection and misconvergence, no CRT can display a HD test pattern PERFECTLY top to bottom, side to side. Tha'ts beyond their ability.

So when you or someone else says a HD CRT TV is "better" that's opinion, not born out by the facts.

Jay Gladwell wrote on 2/12/2005, 5:29 PM
Be the 200th poster to this thread and win a

;o)
Spot|DSE wrote on 2/12/2005, 5:40 PM
Earth to BB.....First, anyone knows that a true 1920 x 1080 CRT display that's calibrated beats CRAP out of anything plasma or LCD at this particular point in time. No dots, no lines, simply clean. That's fact, mathematically and visually. No affect on color due to air pressure, no image shift in warming, nada. I suggest you pick up a copy of Sony's "Monitor Technology" DVD that come with most Sony flat screen TVs. Very enlightening stuff. But maybe Sony has the "wrong" opinion too, since they also put CRT display ahead of LCD and Plasma quality due to the interpolation that nearly all consumer level flatscreens must use.
Your plasma isn't a "true" HDTV either, since it doesn't display a full 1080 pixels.
Further, manufacturers of cameras don't have it all wrong as a standard, you're simply in the dark as to how the standard works. As long as the cam can shoot 720p or greater, it's HD. Period. How it's made to fit the ending display is the responsibility of the editor and final output. Almost NO camera shoots native 1920 pixels, BB. Are you suggesting that virtually no camera is "true HD?" Sounds like you are.
Read a little, you'll lern somthing. It's in the horizontal resolution that counts, but you probably already knew that, right?

I'll defer to your knowledge of champagne, since I don't know squat about wine other than any Shiraz with an R in the name is usually pretty reliable.
However, anyone in the Southern California area that wants to get together to share a glass of champagne in honor of BB, drop me a note. I'm in Anaheim for the next 3 days.

Who's gonna be #200?
DavidMcKnight wrote on 2/12/2005, 5:43 PM
BB said Any CRT type TV is old technology.

Bu in an earlier postt I thought you said, in effect, that it was foolish to buy or use a forward-looking HDV cam because Joe Sixpack couldn't see it in HD???????????????????

The point of JohnCLine's post is, anyone can go in and buy a GREAT looking set that is HD.

The difference between an older style tv, such as...oh, I don't know....maybe a $99 WalMart special that someone might choose to monitor video on ....the difference between that and the HD tv they ARE BUYING today at Circuit City is amazing. It is true HD. Period. And your Average Joe IS BUYING THAT TODAY!

So...stay with me here....if you were going to buy a new cam today, in the > $2000 range, why would you want to get an SD - only cam?

Now...I wonder (I don't know) -is the difference between the HD DLP set I have and this new Quailia thing as pronounced as the diff between a non-HD set and my DLP HD? (RCA Scenium, to be exact.)