What the cable company calls HD is often not even close. 8-)

My cable operator has "digital cable" with HD content and it just isn't worth writing home about. They compress the bejeezus out of the signal to the point that I can often notice macroblocking and other artifacts. You don't realize just how crappy it is until you get to work with a true HD source and see what it CAN look like.

Cheers,

ah my 1000th post has finally arrived on the outlaw forum. and while i may have wanted to save it for some important discussion, i wont.

my hd cable from time warner is pretty good. we do have the hd suite as well which adds espnHD and some movie channels. the major networks are usually the best though, with the exception of fox. not too long and everything will be broadcast in HD... what amazes me is how slow this transition is. i mean NO ONE can say they prefer analog over HD. it is about the money though.

i wonder what (if i get there) kind of excitement my next 1000 posts will make. hopefully by then outlaw will have released the 300wt amp i have been waiting for and i can comment specifically about some of their gear.

Yes, my biggest complaint with HDMI is the connector. Why they didn't standardize on BNC fiber, or interface similar to DVI is beyond me. They tried to make a cutesy USB/Firewire-like connector, without really thinking about the differences between how computers and Home Theater/Home Audio are set up and used.

Seems like HDMI is limited in max length vs component. 50' is probably fine for most of us, but that doesn't seem to be enough for anyone with a front projector in a large room where the cables are run in the wall.

Next problem is with the built in DRM. It's crap. Shouldn't be in any standard. Yeah, we have to live with it if we want HD DVD, but we shouldn't have to.

Also the fact that it's a moving target is also pretty crappy. This is where the whole thing really breaks down. They come up with an interim standard knowing that it will be updated. Equipment manufacturers put out equipment based on the interim standard knowing that it will be updated. Meanwhile consumers are left holding the bag wondering if what they buy today will work tomorrow or a year from now or 5 years from now.

Most of us that are spending $3000+ on a TV aren't going to be buying again in 2 years, but basically the whole industry from the content creators on down to the equipment manufacturers are turning their backs on the consumer by not promising backwards compatibility with today's standards.

Now, maybe this sort of thing is inevitable, but not now. Component video can handle 1080p just fine. And I'm sure that the geniuses at Sony, Toshiba or wherever could come up with a new Toslink standard that is A) compatible with existing standard and B) high enough bandwidth to be used for the foreseeable future.

HDMI might be fine for Joe Sixpack, but it ain't cutting the mustard with the *diophile communities.

Look at the problem in perspective: if the warnings are right about an approaching oil peak and a catastrophic decline afterwards in the infrastructure that supplies the services we've all come to think we need, in 10 years we'll be lucky to have books.

I HOPE I'm exaggerating.

Hmmmmm.....listen and you'll hear the sound of this thread gasping its last breath. Maybe, like THX, we should resuscitate this in another forum (not 990)?

At least the clock thread finally died, although its death was very much akin to Pee Wee Herman's death in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.

But much like PeeWee, it was all bout the self stroking of the original poster....

1/2 :-)

Hey - just ignore my last message. I must have been reading too many gloomy prognostications. In this saloon one shouldn't serve that kind of drink. Sorry.

My cable company does not compress HD at all. They do remodulate it to QAM 256 but it is uncompressed. Sounds like your cable co needs to update their capacity. I've compared my cable HD with OTA and OTA may have a slight edge, but I blame that on the cable set top box not any recompression. I can't get HBO and about a half dozen other channels over OTA anyway.

Oh what the heck I'll keep the thread going.

I agree the connector could be better, but the whole interface was designed to make it easy for JSP. Part of the problem I've seen is us audio/videophiles are used to big fat cables with ferite coils and some of the HDMI cable makers accomodated that desire actually making it worse. For the record I have three HDMI sources and have never had a connector come loose.

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Seems like HDMI is limited in max length vs component. 50' is probably fine for most of us, but that doesn't seem to be enough for anyone with a front projector in a large room where the cables are run in the wall.

From my experience to my projector (30ft) the HDMI actually is better looking then the slight loss I get from my same length RGBVH cable. The nice thing about digital it is either there or it isn't. At 30ft I see no digital sparkle in my system. There are also HDMI optical solutions that can go hundreds of feet.

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Next problem is with the built in DRM. It's crap. Shouldn't be in any standard. Yeah, we have to live with it if we want HD DVD, but we shouldn't have to.

As I mentioned earlier DRM really has nothing to do with HDMI/HDCP it is specific to the format, blue ray, HD-DVD, Cable STB, or OTA receiver. If you look at the HDCP docs DRM is not part of it.

Quote:

Also the fact that it's a moving target is also pretty crappy. This is where the whole thing really breaks down. They come up with an interim standard knowing that it will be updated. Equipment manufacturers put out equipment based on the interim standard knowing that it will be updated. Meanwhile consumers are left holding the bag wondering if what they buy today will work tomorrow or a year from now or 5 years from now.

Agreed this could have been less painful but the interface has been pretty stable since version 1.1 and does pretty much everything 95% of consumers will want including high bandwidth multi-channel PCM audio of the upcoming HD DVDs. So unless you really need SACD or want to decode the new formats in your Pre/Pro then yes you will need upgrades but that has always been the case in the CE world.

Quote:

Most of us that are spending $3000+ on a TV aren't going to be buying again in 2 years, but basically the whole industry from the content creators on down to the equipment manufacturers are turning their backs on the consumer by not promising backwards compatibility with today's standards.

If you are talking component I agree, although I've seen some press relaeses recently that say the component "hole" will not be blocked on the new formats, at least initially. If you mean digtial or HDMI I disagree as it should be upward compatible.

Quote:

Now, maybe this sort of thing is inevitable, but not now. Component video can handle 1080p just fine. And I'm sure that the geniuses at Sony, Toshiba or wherever could come up with a new Toslink standard that is A) compatible with existing standard and B) high enough bandwidth to be used for the foreseeable future.

HDMI might be fine for Joe Sixpack, but it ain't cutting the mustard with the *diophile communities.

This is where I have a differing opinion. As good as component is I would have to say a digital (HDMI or other) signal is going to less prone to interference and transmission loss. Like I said earlier digital usually works 100% or not at all. More importantly though is I can't imagine why in todays world where the source is digital and the displays are digital one would want to do a D/A at the source then an A/D back at the display.