O O Ø O O O O
Dear pd.o
It’s that time of year again—time to reach into the old pd.o mail sack and answer the questions our readers have been just dying to ask. (Note: this is not to be confused with that time of the year when your esteemed Pint Day Saints have run out of interesting ways to present the same old material, and have to make up new and ever-more-clever paradigms for framing a rant. That will come later.) This week’s question is from lloqeq@asiain-asesores.com who, in addition to wanting to sell us a hot new stock, had this to say:
Dear pd.o.
I am looking to buy a new TV, and all these acronyms and buzzwords confuse me. Can you clarify things for me?
P.S. We called it! CNQ is RISE on strong volume. We hope you took position early and are smiling right now. If you didn’t, not worry. CNQ is bound to blow up. Big spike is expected also on Tuesday, November 28!
Certainly Lloqeq. Televisions are easy.
First, you have to get the hang of the measurements. Take my old TV—its screen is 21 5/8″ wide, and 16″ high. Clearly, this is referred to as a 27″ TV, since if you measure the screen diagonally, (or defer to a man named Pythagoras) you arrive at its largest possible dimension: 27 inches:
If this measurement method seems at all dishonest to you, take comfort in the fact that men have been using this technique to measure objects for thousands of years. Case in point:
But recently something a little funny happened. The TVs changed dimensions, but the measurement techniques stayed largely the same. Now a 27-inch TV looks more like this:
That’s because of something called HDTV—High Definition Tele Vision. You see, old-fashioned TVs have something called a 4:3 (0r 1.33:1) aspect ratio. That means the picture they show is wider than it is tall, by a ratio of 4/3 to 1. The reason for this measurement is that at the exact instant when the TV signal was standardized (back in 1941), Motion Pictures, or “Movies” were filmed in this aspect ratio on 35mm film. Of course, they didn’t stay that way for long, and it only took television 55 years to catch up. Modern movies, you see, are filmed in either 1.85:1, or 2.39:1. It was very important, consquently, for television to standardize on neither of these, and choose instead a 16:9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio. There are very good reasons for this. These aren’t the droids you are looking for. Move along.
Aspect ratios aside, the most important thing in understanding HDTV is the notion of “resolution” — the number of little dots, or pixels, that make up your television image. Consider my old 27″ tube. A picture on this television is represented by a grid of up to 480 x 720 pixels. Don’t worry that 720:480 is a 3:2 aspect ratio, and not a 4:3 one—that’s because old pixels aren’t square, obviously. The most common HDTV resolutions are 720p and 1080i. In the former case, 60 screens of 720 x 1280 pixels are displayed each second. In the latter case, 30 screens of 1080 x 1920 pixels are displayed, but in a clever, interlaced kind of way. If you look at these aspect ratios, you will discover that modern pixels are square, except when they are actually jammed onto your new HDTV screen.
You see Lloqeq, Engineers are somehow uncomfortable building screens that operate at these resolutions. Thus, when you get your new 720p/1080i HDTV home, you will discover that it is actually 1366 pixels wide, and 768 pixels tall.
How then do you fit 1280 (or 1920) pixels into 1366, and 720 (or 1080) into 768? By running your crisp digital signal through a lot of high-priced conversion circuitry, which then degrades the quality of the signal by either stretching or eliminating pixels, defeating much of the point of having the nice, crisp digital signal in the first place. This is the same reason why your fancy new LCD computer monitor looks so fuzzy if you don’t run it at its highest possible resolution. HDTVs, consequently, are designed to be fuzzy all the time.
So there you have it, Lloqeq. Television really is simple, once you grasp the basics. I hope that helps you decide which TV is right for you. And thanks for the stock tip. I look forward to getting rich quickly, and without effort.
Kjell Wooding
November 28, 2006
OOØOOOODCCLXXXIV
November 29th, 2006 at 6:09 am
No. No. No. No! You are missing the whole point of the Digital TV Revolution, or DTvR as it is known by those in the business. The whole point of converting to an LCD TV i that it used twentifirst century DIGITAL technology and not old twentieth century analog gizmos. This allows the signal to be broadcast from beginning to end in crisp DIGITAL resolution, unless the show is taped. All live shows come across in fantastic, clear twentifirst century DIGITAL resolution. This means your hockey, baseball, and soccer games are extra clear - which you’ll need since the camera is so far away from the action. The time DIGITAL TV shines is when you watch American Professional football and basketball where the camera is right there on the sidelines, except of course when the games is being rebroadcast at a later time due to the time difference from one coast to another. But when you watch a local football or basketball game DIGITAL technology is the best way to see the action, except that for the price of the equipment and the DIGITAL service to provide the crips, clear signal, and the special sports programming so your game isn’t blacked out and the new furniture to hold your new equipment you can probably buy decent tickets to every home game for your team of choice.
But I digress. The DTvR is coming and cetainly would have come anyway even if the Congress of the United States of America hadn’t forced the issue, so go out and buy a new twentyfirst century DIGITAL technology TV. I Love Lucy has never looked so much like it did when it was first broadcast.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
No. No. No. No! You are missing the whole point of the Digital TV Revolution or DTvR
Really? He wasn’t arguing “buy / not buy”, he’s just pointing out how messed up the standards are.
as it is known by those in the business.
I really hate that phrase.
This allows the signal to be broadcast from beginning to end in crisp DIGITAL resolution
…which is then lossily rescaled, upsampled, downsampled, stretched, squished, ginsued, or whatever so it fits on your fancy new LCD screen that has a different resolution than the recording camera.
Also, there weren’t nearly enough DIGITAL’s in your post. Please fix.
–A