[Closed] Is HD on tvs supposed to look different?

pantechnicon |pan?t?kn?k(?)n|

noun Brit.

a large van for transporting furniture.

ORIGIN
mid 19th cent.: from pan-‘all’ + tekhnikon ‘piece of art’, originally the name of a bazaar in London for all kinds of artistic work, later converted into a furniture warehouse.

Huh...the more you know.

Anyway, you should be able to tell the difference. Although, he said treading very carefully, I believe the older one is the less obvious the difference. My mum is nearly 70 and says she cannot tell the difference. That's on a 37".

What model is the TV?

If your telly is old enough that it didn't have a bundled HD freeview receiver, it it an HD telly? If not, then no, you'll see no difference.

To be fair though, ours is fairly modern, and the difference isn't exactly earth shattering.

nearly 70

The tv is about a year old, is HD, has a freeview receiver but we have a poor signal where we live, therefore we bought a freesat receiver.

For me it is a noticeable but not amazing difference.

Some programmes benefit more than others. And not every programme broadcast on an HD channel is actually filmed in HD

Have you used a high quality hdmi lead with one way deoxygenated copper and gold plated connectors? (or seriously, have you checked the output settings on the box and the settings on the TV). As others have said the difference is more noticeable on some shows than others.

BBC HD looks dramatically different from BBC regular (SD). The difference is discernible on small and large HD TVs. The difference you'll notice does depend on being close enough to the screen though. [url= http://www.techhive.com/article/2997267/home-theater/how-to-get-the-best-seats-in-your-house.html ]Opinions on optimum viewing distance vary[/url] but you want to be close enough not to see the individual pixels and not so far you can't resolve fine detail in the image.

If your single strength is good enough (your freesat box should be able to tell you this) then things to look at include:
connection between FreeSat box and TV is by HDMI cable.
you have your TV set up to show the right HD format (automatic, 720P, or 1080P. Ignore 1080i it is awful)
your FreeSat box is outputting at the correct resolution (automatic, 720P, 1080P) e.g. some boxes default to 576P or 576i which are enhanced definition and standard definition respectively
You are looking at the correct channel (really. I have seen folks complain about pixellated images only to find out they were watching SD and expecting HD)
You have turned off all the dreadful 'smoothing' algorithms on the TV (sometimes called 'sport mode') these essentially blur the frames into each other.

The difference between SD and HD is like night and day. HD looks like smooth, crisp, moving photographs. SD looks like TV used to.

Any plans to move to 4K?

Have you tried comparing your FreeSat box against e.g. an HD laptop signal or other kind of set top box and e.g. Netflix?

Good luck.

[edit] as folks have pointed out, if a program was not shot in HD no amount of post-processing tricks will make it HD-quality. Gardener's world is one program where the SD and HD contrast is marked. Especially on the close-ups and extreme close-ups of plants and insects.

When we got our HD box, I had hooked up the HD lead but also had the Scart socket connected and was watching the TV through the Scart input for a good while until I realised to get HD I should watch TV through the HD input.

I see a big difference (1 year old Sony 40in)especially if the content is well produced and the telicine conversion was well done, so BBC usually looks great but anything shot on old CCD video 4:3 usually looks rubbish. If your tv is not true 1080 HD but 720 you will not see a difference.

HD ready tellies you won't notice much difference anyway also if you have knackered eyes then I'm afraid HD isn't really noticeable.

I've always found it odd that the first programmes to adopt the new technology in tellies is the soaps.

Lady_Gresley - my HD telly is 26" and has a pretty good pic. Can't for the life of me understand why folk want monstrosities.

We have a humax free sat receiver and a Sony 32 full HD TV. The difference between SD and HD broadcasts is huge!

The benefits of HD do come into their own on larger screens for sure. On our bedroom 32" TV (LED backlit LCD) there is very little difference between SD and HD - it's marginally better. On our old 42" Plasma the difference is definitely noticeable - but on the main big 65" TV (Plasma) the difference is very noticeable - the BBC HD quality is so good the picture almost 3D quality about it. Even the quality of HD between the different HD channels is noticeable as not all HD is created equal.

The problem here is that people get hung up on resolution. Actually resolution is a minor element that contributes to overall picture quality. If you're getting a good picture quality on SD then great. On our big TV watch BBC SD there is a noticeable lack of definition but on BBC HD it's very clear and well defined - the smaller TV shows nowhere near the same difference and the SD quality is very good.

HD straight off the aforementioned telecine looks amazing. The broadcast chain takes out all the goodness (former telecine designer)

Watch the news in normal then HD. Main difference is the presenters look about 10 years older in HD.

Daft question, but you are watching the hd channels through a hdmi cable on one of your hdmi inputs?

I've got a new Sony 49" telly and the HD picture is noticeably better than the SD equivalent.

720 or 1080 doesn't actually make much difference if the TV is set up properly.

SD is notionally 576 picture lines but it was interlaced so only 288 were refreshed each frame. An HD ready set is capable of 720p - a full 720 lines per frame. Full HD sets are 1080p - 1080 lines per frame - but they only get that from a Bluray disc (or maybe streaming) Broadcast HD is 1080interlaced - 540 lines refreshed per frame. 720p looks better than 1080i with some content

I had one of these until a couple of years back (768 line vertical resolution) and the picture was better than all but the very best 'full HD' sets. http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Home/Plasma/PDP-4280HD

Check the TV settings - set the 'picture' to 'cinema' or 'normal' rather than 'vivid' (presets might have different names) as over saturated, over sharpened HD pictures can look almost as bad as standard definition.

Look at the background where there's a lot of detail as HD makes more difference there than on close up/TV studio programmes. Sometimes I can watch an SD programme for some minutes thinking it just looks a bit dull before theres a shot which makes it blindingly clear it's an SD and not an HD picture.

Lady_Gresley - my HD telly is 26" and has a pretty good pic. Can't for the life of me understand why folk want monstrosities.

I know right? It's like I went to the cinema the other day, and I was like "Dude!, why is the screen so big?!?!" The dude reckoned it was something to do with immersive experience, freedom to choose, picture quality and other nonsense, but I wasn't having any of it and stormed out. I think I had made my point, as he was silenced enough not to call me back.

I've only got freeview so can't comment on freesat but the difference between SD and HD is huge - our TVs are 32" and 42" Sony.

assuming the relevant feeds are of adequate quality (ie not eurosport, whose non-HD stream is shit)
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Daft question, but you are watching the hd channels through a hdmi cable on one of your hdmi inputs?

This.

Plus, "is it a HD broadcast?" Not every programme on a HD channel is in HD.

It's connected via hdmi cable, but looking at that chart, I'm sitting about 12 feet away from our 24" telly, so maybe I won't actually be able to see any difference! Doesn't really matter, I was just wondering what the difference was, very little it seems! And of course, it's all the same rubbish programmes anyway...

HD looks noticeably better vs SD on both Sky and Freeview across two TVs (Samsung 46 & 65 inch sets).

Sky HD is "better" than Freeview on the same channels.

Aren't the claims those graphs make inaccurate?

"Simplistic" might be a better word.

Can I be really cheeky with a slight hijack?

Whilst there's so many knowledgeable peeps in this thread, can anyone say whether my little 26" telly would benefit from a soundbar? Thank you. 🙂

The old PAL over UHF was better than SD on freeview - they dropped the quality quite a bit when they changed, even though they were both PAL.

I had a 32 inch Sharp TV with only 540 lines but it was brilliant with SD (and also with HD ready stuff).

For PAL it used to chopped a few lines from the top and bottom of the picture and show 'as is', no upscaling rubbish to worry about.

For 1080i they mapped the interlaced lines, and 720P required a little downscaling.

can anyone say whether my little 26" telly would benefit from a soundbar?

does it sound as good as your hifi - no - try a soundbar - yes - leave it.

Even if you get a bigger TV, most have rubbish sound anyway so you woul still use the soundbar in the future.

But you could also buy a nice little hifi and feed the sound into that instead, or use one that you might have now.

Or another option might be a decent bluetooth type speaker (that also has a line in), as they are single units, and then you can take it on holiday or wherever as well.

12 feet away with a 26" TV you aren't going to notice much difference to be honest, I could say that without looking at a graph! That's quite a distance for a relatively small TV. Yes I know we all used to watch 14" TV's accross huge rooms back in the day but that's all we had.

In our last lounge we were about 8 feet from the TV and watched a variety of HD and SD pictures, so when I bought a new TV I went for a better quality 37" rather than a cheap 42" as a SD pic on a big TV which is close to you is going to be awful. I now watch mostly HD and am moving to a bigger house so I could ideally buy a much bigger TV. But I won't for a long time yet.

Speakers in modern flatscreens are notoriously poor as the ever-thinner design restricts space, smaller sets more so.

Would a soundbar improve it? almost definitely. Would a no-brand £30 soundbar be any better than the inbuilt or do you need to throw £100+ on a Yamaha to make any difference, I don't know.

Drac - Moderator
Aren't the claims those graphs make inaccurate?

Cougar - Moderator
"Simplistic" might be a better word

A bit like advising on soundbars without checking the user's hearing status, I'd think 😛

Thanks for helpful suggestions. Not wanting to use the hifi having got my speakers in optimum positioning thanks to some folk on here. Soundbars are huge so will dwarf the telly, any opinions on a separate sub or is that overkill? Have been reading reviews on soundbars but there's none that specifically refer to a small telly.

A bit like advising on soundbars without checking the user's hearing status, I'd think

😆 @ scaredy.

get a soundbase ? just look like a 10cm plinth for the telly to stand on

Not wanting to use the hifi having got my speakers in optimum positioning thanks to some folk on here.

I don't follow you. What difference does that make?

Sorry Cougar, it's gibberish isn't it. 😳

My hifi speakers need to be moved outwards for the best sound ie away from a corner. From a pov of laziness and safety wouldn't want to do the same for telly watching especially as I pick and choose what to watch.

If that doesn't make sense then please ignore me whilst I continue my senior moment(s). 😀

The difference between SD and HD is like night and day

Absolutely, if you can't tell the difference then something isn't right!

So you move your speakers out when listening to music and then put them back again out of the way?

Even so, leaving them in situ is still going to be better than the TV speakers I'd have thought.

[i]Absolutely, if you can't tell the difference then something isn't right![/i]

Or your telly is too small.

Lady_Gresley - my HD telly is 26" and has a pretty good pic. Can't for the life of me understand why folk want monstrosities.

Not all HD sets are great. Herein lies the issue.

A 1080/25p broadcast contains 4 times the picture data of SD , it's a big chunk better.

For it all to shine though things need to be calibrated (REC709). Compression artefacts and colour sampling issues are much less of a problem too.

It's a load better all things being equal. You can have poor compression streams of 1080 - see Netflix v Amazon v BD-RAY. There's difference.

Compression artefacts and colour sampling issues are much less of a problem too.

Interesting that - one of the first things that I noticed when I moved from an old standard def CRT telly to watching the same SD sources on an 36" HD telly was that the MPEG encoding squares were much more obvious without the softening blur of a CRT (to me anyway, the wife had no idea what I was talking about so I may be compression sensitive).

HD sources are better but I often still notice squares, especially in very dark scenes.

I have and HD tv and freeview box and its noticeable difference, but not enough for me to bother typing 101 over 1, especially when I usually just scroll the channels between 1-38 anyway.

Purely anecdotally, I'm convinced that this isn't just down to the sets, but that SD broadcasts have actually dropped in quality with the rise of HD. It'd be interesting to see what modern SD streams look like on an old 28" CRT.

If we hit 1 then it usually offers a little prompt saying "Watch in HD?" and if you hit okay it changes to 101.

Kind of academic though as our telly is very rarely off CBeebies HD 🙂

Interesting thread. We went from a 28" CRT to a 42" (Panasonic) plasma, both input from a loft aerial rather than satellite and watched from approx 10 - 12ft away. Both delivered good pictures and distinctly better than friends who had 32" ish flat screens fed by Sky. I don't find the difference between SD and HD mind-blowing though. It's not like I can't tell the difference, it's just that I don't watch BBC SD, for example, wishing I could watch it in HD. Similarly I'm more than happy watching SD movies from iTunes as opposed to paying a bit extra to rent/buy HD.

People do tend to look sweatier/shiner in HD compared to the SD broadcast. Not sure that's a good thing 😆

Interesting that - one of the first things that I noticed when I moved from an old standard def CRT telly to watching the same SD sources on an 36" HD telly was that the MPEG encoding squares were much more obvious without the softening blur of a CRT

Agreed. CRT certainly masked a few issues.

But a good HD source (not all encoding/bit rate is equal) is leagues ahead.

A HD telly is never going to make the best of an SD source, in the same way CRT was fairly flattering.

RE picture quality, most HD content is encoded and broadcast at a variable bitrate, meaning that sometimes the amount of data being transmitted is throttled down depending if the encoder feels it need to send extra data or not. In the old days of early Freeview HD I did some testing on this during Wimbledon week with DVB-T anaylser and found that prior to that BBC 1 HD was being transmitted at around 8-9Mbps but during the tennis it was upped to 12-14Mbps. I'm presuming this was to improve the quality of the image, a ball flying across millions of blades of grass is a tricky thing to capture digitally?
It may have changed in the years I stopped playing around with SMATV systems but you used to have only around 36Mbps of data per MUX (both DVB-T and DVB-S)in the UK, not much space to squeeze in a few HD channels and associated red button data and/or radio channels.

but that SD broadcasts have actually dropped in quality with the rise of HD

As I said SD on freeview was a fair drop compared to a decent UHF feed - I remember flicking between some whitewater canoeing footage on a freeview channel vs the same on the non-freeview channel, on a trinatron CRT (a good, cylindrical one, not the flatscreen ones) and the difference was non-trivial, and perhaps of a similar magnitude to switching between SD and HD.

And I never watch the SD channels as the drop from the HD channels is too much for me.

It definitely does look different - speaking as someone who gets to compare regularly. I have not paid for HD on my own telly so I am not justifying a purchase - but many hotels I stay in have it.

Your telly might be too small or far away to notice though - but that's fine, have your room how you want it! Why not stand a few feet away for a closer look to spot the difference?

As I said SD on freeview was a fair drop compared to a decent UHF feed

Remember there's SD and there's SD. The bit-rate that gets used determines the quality, UP TO a maximum determined by the resolution i.e. the HD/SD bit. ITV in our area looks like crap, whereas BBC looks good, despite both being SD. ITV clearly has a lower bitrate.

many hotels I stay in have it.

Humblebrag HD. 😉

Remember there's SD and there's SD

figured that one out...

I was comparing the same broadcast on the same equivalent channel, both BBC1, or maybe 2. Obviously a few seconds delay between channels.

[quote="molgrips"]but many hotels I stay in have it.Probably good for the many and varied skin tones and close ups seen on hotel TVs.

Makes a big difference in Mrs B's 54" TV we can easily see the difference between 1080 and 720 too. Sports is one thing where SD vs HD really shows.

@cinnamon imho even cheap pc type speakers make a difference (eg £50 ones) plugged into the audio-out. I have an ancient flatscreen tv (10+ yeats) with forward facing speakers and its amazing how much better the sound is than newer (6 years) flatscreen.

Humblebrag HD

Hah.. Holiday Inn Swindon.. don't be jealous...

When we went looking for a new TV a couple of years ago, there was a very noticeable difference in picture quality from brand to brand. The Panasonics and Sonys stood head and shoulders above the Samsungs, LGs etc. We went for a Pana because it had the thinnest edge at the time. Perhaps the difference isn't so great now, or another brand now makes the best picture quality set. Size wise; I really liked the 4K sets, but there was nothing smaller than 60" or so (we went for a 32" set as it's more than adequate and we didn't want a huge screen dominating the room). There is definitely a very noticeable difference between SD and HD broadcasts of the same channel. So maybe certain brands are better for HD viewing than others, I don't know. We're more than happy with ours though.

When we went looking for a new TV a couple of years ago,

Not always a good indication. It's easy to manipulate a TV into looking better or worse than its competition, and they're often set up to look 'better' in a way that would look terrible at home.

I was aware of that, so insisted each one be put into 'standard' mode. Regardless, the Panas and Sonys were superior quality.

Some neighbours have the Samsung equivalent we were looking at. It isn't as good a picture as ours.

Went to Sevenoaks to make my last TV decision - the manager at Weybridge had spent some time setting all the sets up to the best picture he could.

Very close run thing between the Triluminous Sony I ended up with and one of the decent Panasonic plasma.

In the end I thought of potential image burn and bought the Sony, but still toying with trying a plasma.

And it just reinforced my poor opinion of Samsungs...

but many hotels I stay in have it.

i watched an episode of peaky blinders in a hotel, the tv was a new samsung thing about 40in the feed was some kind of satellite as they had tv for lots of countries (was in Basel)

it looked terrible, couldn’t work out what was going on as it wasn’t super saturated killing the subtle grading of the uk broadcast but looked very odd, mentioned it to the DOP the next day (was on a film/video shoot) and he said it’s all down to the upscaling in the tv messing with the out of focus areas. it did look like a rubbish 80’s beta cam ccd video capture. it totally killed the focus fall off and the subtle colour gradations of what i see on my mid range sony HD thats not got colour/contrast turned up to the max.

i have a reasonable understanding of colour LUT’s etc so tend to notice if anything is amiss (my girlfriend has banned me from pointing at the telly and shouting ‘Teal plus Orange!’) i still see most people’s tellys as having obnoxious looking pictures, a lot of it is to do with the motion flow stuff (films at 24fps dont really work well) poor processing and all the adjustments cranked up to 100.

OP - not read any replies but we just got a small tv for the kitchen (22 inch) and bought an amplified indoor aerial and there is a massive difference between standard def. and HD on BBC1

My wife can't tell the difference between 16x9 and 4x3 stretched/compressed. HD is wasted on her too.

I can easily tell, 40in cheap telly at about 6-10 ft away. I need to get the amp set up - she has a PA but she's lost the cables (And, recently, our son decided he is most interested in the several different coloured knobs on the front, so these are now elsewhere)

(my girlfriend has banned me from pointing at the telly and shouting ‘Teal plus Orange!’)

You and me both.

i have a reasonable understanding of colour LUT’s

I don't, and your post has mostly lost me, but I do occasionally stay in a hotel where some setting on the TV makes films look like cheap home movies. The result totally destroys the atmosphere of the film, and the actors delivery looks hilariously out of context. Everything looks like some people down the pub doing a hammed up pisstake. Amazing how much difference some colour settings can make!

[i]It's connected via hdmi cable, but looking at that chart, I'm sitting about 12 feet away from our 24" telly, [/i]

So you've a TV the size of my desk monitor and you're watching it from the other side of the room...

Can you even see any detail on it, like can you make out the ball in tennis (or even football), or an actors face?

have a reasonable understanding of colour LUT’s etc so tend to notice if anything is amiss

What LUTs are they, I know of no current consumer grade TVs that support LUTs.

I could be behind consumer stuff but I work in the industry where Look up tables are often applied.

That chart is distance vs. screen size BS. All it does is give you an indication of perceived screen size equivalency. If you have adequate resolution there are no disadvantages from a viewing point of view to having as big a telly as you can possible afford/fit into your house.

Obviously if you're not into watching telly or films then you'll be happy with a small screen neatly tucked away in the corner and that's fair enough.

What LUTs are they, I know of no current consumer grade TVs that support LUTs.

If you have adequate resolution there are no disadvantages from a viewing point of view to having as big a telly as you can possible afford/fit into your house.

I would disagree generally - too big a screen means your eyes have to move too much. I don't sit near the front in the cinema for the same reason.

Plus you have the rest of the room to consider - wouldn't want a telly to dominate.

May I suggest the OP switch between the football matches on ITV and ITV4 to see how different HD and SD can be!

I would disagree generally - too big a screen means your eyes have to move too much

what do you do outside in the real world then, wear blinkers ?

When I worked at BBC research dept for my first job they were working on HD tv back then - 1989 probably.

1250 lines of progressive analog I think, it tool four digital recording machines (based on betamax machines ?) to record the picture.

4 times the information of PAL - PAL back then which was better than freeview PAL...

Bl88dy lovely, saw it projected onto a screen and you couldn't see any lines, and on a huge trinatron monitor. Part of the Eureka project - HD mac. Was going to use the BSB satellites, but then they went bust.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD-MAC ]

No there aren't. but I'm taking about knowing what happens to an image that's made 'safe' for broadcast and then shifted in gamut/colour etc at the end of the chain (consumer) including the fact that rec709 clips the blacks and whites instead of being 0-255 (think it's 16-235)

Depends what your talking about; stuff shot on regualr HD based cameras will not be shooting anything useful outside of that range. So the clipping is largely unseen data.

If shot on a camera that exceeds Rec709 (I.e film cameras that shoot in raw, log etc) are effectively remapped to our broadcasting standard BT709. So assuming calibrated well, will be okay.

We own and work with Red Dragons and Epics, it can be demonstrated how much better things are relatively easily providing your source is up to scratch and your display chain is calibrated.

All thing she equal, HD wasses on SD, and 4/5/6K urinates on HD.

That's how it should be, don't let anyone tell you anything else or get down to Red Europe at Pinewood and watch their 4K demo. It's mind blowing.

If you've ever been to an IMax cinema then you are only just filling your field of vision with a 30ft or more screen. You're never going to fit a telly big enough in your home to mean you're having to scan across it. I'm sitting about 3m away from a 65" telly in my home and though it is big it's nowhere near filling my field of vision. It could ealisy take a screen twice the size given adequte resolution.

Like I said - if TV is not that important to you that you don't want it to dominate then fine - just get a small set in the corner and all this debate is really irrelevant.

If you've ever been to an IMax cinema then you are only just filling your field of vision

...and as molgrips says, you then have to move your eyes a lot to watch. Some people like that, some people don't. Sitting in an iMax cinema (or sitting very close to a huge TV) is like going to the opticians for one of those peripheral vision tests 😆

I would love to see a really good home cinema setup with a good 4k TV, but chances of having one in our house are slim to none.

what do you do outside in the real world then, wear blinkers ?

The real world is not composed like a film or TV show! 🙄

TV makes a massive difference. Some Samsungs almost look unnatural showing HD. My Panasonic is great, but a lot more subtle.

...and as molgrips says, you then have to move your eyes a lot to watch

another problem with these snazzy cinemas with the big seats is, because the seats are so big, the popcorn holder and drinks holders are too far away and it's a real ball-ache to having to reach that far for the snacks 🙂

At home I can just rest one of those special trays on the sofa arm and dip my face straight into the goodies bowl - I don't even have to use my arms !