The AACS or Advanced Access Content System is the consortium behind HD DVD and Blu-Ray’s content protection.  Companies making hardware to playback these formats must play ball.  Last week the AACS came to an agreement about downrezzing, a longtime bogeyman of videophiles.

Basically downrezzing is the act of downgrading (down-sampling) video signals from an HD playback device’s analogue output.  Analogue or component video outputs on your new HD DVD or Blu-Ray players had been the focus of downrezzing rumors because content cannot be regulated through it.  Pirates can theoretically make unlimited copies from an analogue source so HDCP (High Definition Content Protection) was created to protect movie studios properties.  Your non-HDCP compliant video connections (IE component) are liable to be downrezzed on HD movie discs.  So, instead of getting full blown  1920 x 1080 resolution (up to full 1080P) from them you’ll only get 960 x 540. 

The feature (explained at VideoBusiness.com) on the new movie discs is called ICT, (Image Constraint Token) an embedded digital flag that can be turned on or off at the studios discretion.  Studios choosing to downrez their video release to an HD disc will be required to warn consumers on the packaging that this copy will be down-sampled from an analogue source.

So far no studio has stated how they’ll respond to the ICT option but there are rumors.  Warner is likely to enforce downgrading video quality on its releases because it had been the strongest proponent of the measure.  Its likely 20th Century Fox and Sony will tend not to use the ICT because they have argued against such measures in the past.

It’s just another example of legal constipation of technologies progress.  It’s an inherently flawed philosophy that may one day be the downfall of mankind.

This ad is typical of what you find from some retailers, particlaur the big box shops like Best Buy where the marketers get the better of common sense.  This one is actually flirting with truth in advertising issues and is certainly guilty of exaggerating, if not guilty of some worse infraction for lying to customers.

I picked this up from the HDBeat, a blog on the topic of Home Theater except this one gets traffic.  To simplify the reason this is a lie, their rating of 1024×768 is not really HDTV.  1024 lines of verticle resolution isn’t enough for HD.  It’s higher than NTSC, but this isn’t a 720P set, this is what’s called EDTV (enhanced definition) not high definition.  If it seems like a fine point, actually it is because there is a body called the ATSC that has placed real world definitions on what is and isn’t HD.  So, basically you’re asking for a car and they’re giving you a rickshaw. 

Here is Magnavox’s online profile of this set, they know its not HDTV and they call correctly call it ED.  Someone should let Best Buy know. 

People are obsessed with so called future proof purchases when they go to the electronics super-mart.  Marketers and sales people alike try to sell the idea of future proofing by pushing features that will supposedly allow you to upgrade or will be compatible with the next big technologies.  But the reality is that future proofing is a misnomer.  More often than not you’re going to spend extra money on something that will be just as incompatible with the next step in technology as the cheaper version.  Since the average person only dabbles in tech toys, who can blame you for being insecure about spending so much money on something you might not fully understand.

It seems like an objective practice, trying to buy the right product that will remain relevant into the future. 

In computer software, as any gamer can tell you; conventional wisdom states that you should buy hardware to run the software you already own.  Newer more powerful hardware is developed faster than the software that uses that hardware.  In fact hardware is developed with built in firmware and APIs in an effort to charm third party software developers into using their standards, that’s business.  If one standard/API/resolution/format has the reputation for being the next wave of the future (Betamax VCRs may have been seen as the wave of the future in the late 70s) that’s good marketing, not necessarily good science.

Buying a new HDTV?  The best thing you can do is find a TV to play your DVDs and current Mpeg2 HD broadcast technologies and look really good doing it.

Moore’s Law states the density of data on an integrated circuit will double every 18 months.  This reverberates through all technologies particularly Home Theater.  It’s why a PC interface technology called DVI was heralded as a godsend years ago as the true digital input for High Definition display technologies only to be almost instantly replaced by HDMI in the Home Theater market.  Now bandwidth limitations of HDMI are being felt by new HD display technologies that are already capable of 1080P/60 resolutions (TI has DLP chips capable of this resolution) but these TVs have no way to input the new resolution from a 1080P/60 source because HDMI, the widest bandwidth connection available today still falls short.  Advances in technology are never smooth, entire families of support technologies must also advance.  What good is RAM that can operate at bus speeds that exceed 66Mhz when there were no PCI chipsets capable of taking advantage of this feature in RAM.  Before 400 FSB became a reality in PC’s a series of technologies had to integrate and participate in what was a great leap in computer technology.  Unfortunately entertainment technologies have more difficulty creating standards than PCs.

The only thing you can predict successfully is that this trend isn’t going to change.  The best you can do is stick to conventional wisdom and buy Home Theater hardware based on the software or media and media delivery methods currently available. 

The future is uncertain.  We can make an educated about what’s coming based on what is currently in development.  But that almost always wrongly assumes the implementation of that new technology currently in development will be expressed through the context of today’s technology.  Trying to buy gear that gets you ready for the next generation of technology is a fool’s game.  You’ll end up having overspent on technology just as obsolete as everybody else’s.  The trick to being an educated consumer is in buying technology that isn’t already obsolete or better yet finding life in inexpensive so called obsolete gear.

Beware of specifications in all things; don’t get caught up in the details and try to look at the whole performance of anything before you buy.  Using your ears and eyes in a hands on test of any new product is the ONLY way to properly gauge performance.  This is always true in speakers, receivers, amps and display devices. 

The latest spec to be made into a marketing tool is the LCD panel’s spec called “rise and fall” a spec that is supposed to quantify pixel response time.  Faster pixel response times makes images move cleanly across the screen, this is particularly important for video gaming, scrolling and fast moving images.  But the specification that is supposed to measure this is misunderstood not only by consumers but by the manufacturers themselves.

The true rise and fall spec is supposed to measure the time it takes a pixel in an LCD panel to rise go from black to white and then fall go from white to black again.  A complete rise/fall cycle can occur in a just a handful of milliseconds.  Confusion is introduced by the lack of a true industry standard for this measure.  So you end up with some manufacturers using another pixel response measurement called grey-to-grey response time.  That’s the response time it takes for a pixel to go from one shade of grey to another, the numbers are obviously much more impressive on a spec sheet.  The trouble with grey-to-grey response times is there is no measure of exactly which shades of grey are being used, there is no standard.  Grey-to-grey response times are just a marketing gimmick to publish better numbers on a spec sheet.  It’s confusing to customers and even confusing to manufacturers (like the Samsung example here) who published one spec in an ad, then the spec sheet for the product posted the true rise and fall specification, the numbers on the spec sheet contradicted the ad for the same product.

VESA (the Video Electronics Standards Association) will addressed the problem and publish a technical definition for rise-and-fall pixel response time soon.  Expect VESA to clear this one up by mid 2006.

“What sucks about HDTV” is regular feature on the HomeTheaterFocus Blog that will illuminate common complaints, shortcomings and general misconceptions about HDTV.  Of course, we all love our HDTV, but many have shelled out thousands on an HD monitor expecting total viewing nirvana only to find its limitations.  “What sucks about HDTV” has its own category so you can compile a list of What Sucks About HDTV!

Macroblocking is a phenomena that occurs regularly with HDTV broadcasts, although some material will enhance it’s detrimental effects more than others.  It’s particularly noticeable in action movies with lots of fast moving images and bright saturated colors.  Anytime something movies quickly on screen it’s likely to suffer from macroblocking on HDTV no matter what kind of movie or TV show.  Macroblocking occurs because the high definition images are compressed in Mpeg2 so they can be distributed to your television by cable and satellite TV providers.  An HD stream can contain up over 1.3 Gb/sec of information that needs to be compressed (using MPEG) to pass through to cable and satellite TV subscribers.  When the compressed video (and audio) reaches the player, such as your set top box, it needs to be uncompressed to your TV’s video input.  The upper limit of that decompression rate is 19.4 Mb/sec (with compression factor of more than 60).

You can barely make out  Ziyi Zhang taking a lunge at her adversary.

The movie “Hero” (Ying xiong as it’s called in its Chinese release) staring Jet Li and Maggie Cheung is a perfect visual demonstration of the macrblocking phenomena.  I’ve taken some sample pictures with a digital camera, I am no photographer so even this “good” image might not do my monitor’s display any justice.

When she’s standing still, the beautiful Maggie Cheung has a clear complexion, as free of compression artifacts and macroblocking as we can expect in HDTV.

But when the action heats up as in this fight scene early on in Hero, two ladies wear bright red fighting among yellow leaves of autumn.  The scene would be quite spectacular, a real visual feast of color if not for the horrendous macroblocking that plagues every fight scene in the HD version of this film.

My intention isn’t to pick on this particular movie for having a poor transfer to HDTV.  Perhaps there is some element of macroblocking that can be attributed to the digitization process before it is ever compressed into mpeg2.  But any HDTV show or movie will look this bad while images are moving quickly on screen.  I can only hope the implementation of the HD optical disc formats (Blu-Ray and HD DVD) have something better in store than Mpeg2.

 “What sucks about HDTV” tries to illuminate common complaints, shortcomings and general misconceptions about HDTV.  We all love HDTV but many people have shelled out thousands on an HD monitor expecting to be in total viewing nirvana only to find there are limitations.  What sucks about HDTV has its own category so you can compile a list of What Sucks About HDTV!

 

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), or Liquid Crystal on Silicon, has been around for decades.  It’s a well tested and proven technology found in popular HDTVs, computer monitors and Sony’s new PSP.  LCD offers a bright fixed pixel display with remarkable contrast and highly detailed images.  But like all display technologies, it’s not without its downside and if you’re in the market for any LCD based display device you should be aware of the dreaded dead pixel.

 

A dead or stuck pixel is a single pixel or dot in the screen that is stuck on a single color and doesn’t change.  This occurs when the liquid crystal doesn’t respond to the input voltage that causes that pixel to change color.  The result is a tiny spot on your monitor that stays a single solid color, especially annoying if it’s in the middle of your screen and downright horrible if you have many of them.  To learn more about LCD dead pixels check out the detailed and slightly technical article at Tom’s Hardware page and for a more personal experience of a consumer read one writer’s experience with Samsung.

 

What’s particularly troubling about this problem is that a certain amount of dead pixels is considered acceptable by manufacturers.  It’s a common problem with how they’re made, usually pixels don’t “go” bad after use, they’re born bad.  Large LCD panels are very difficult to make with a reasonably small number of dead pixels.  This is why you don’t see LCD panels any bigger than 32” inches; 50” TVs using LCD based technologies are rear projectors.  Because of the nature of the dead pixel problem, it’s not covered under most manufacturers’ warranties.  This is very important to note, especially if you’re in the market for any LCD device.  You should obtain permission from your vendor to take back your display if you don’t like it, no questions asked.  Even if you get a good look at your new TV before you buy, a dead pixel may take some time to emerge.  You’ll need to look at your screen under a variety of colors and images to determine if it has any troubled spots.  But once you notice a dead pixel on your screen you’ll always see it. 

 

Sony’s take on the dead pixel is typical for any display manufacturer.  Sony’s knowlegebase article C312288 describes the symptom of the dead pixel and as a solution states:

 

“This is normal. This is a structural property of the LCD panel and is not a malfunction.”

 

Before you buy, make sure you understand the retailers return and exchange policy very well.  Ask them specifically about a dead pixel.  Since manufacturers give you no leverage, you rely totally on your vendor’s policy in this matter.  It wouldn’t hurt to get a guarantee from your retailer that you reserve the right to exchange your new display device for any reason within a set period, and thoroughly examine your new TV in that period of time.  If you use your new display device as a computer monitor you can go to websites that offer simple tests to expose a dead pixel.

Welcome to a new recurring feature on the HomeTheaterFocus blog, “What sucks about HDTV” is going to try to illuminate common complaints, shortcomings and general misconceptions about HDTV.  We all love HDTV but many people have shelled out thousands on an HD monitor expecting to be in total Television/Movie viewing nirvana only to find there are limitations.  What sucks about HDTV will have its own category so you can compile a list of; what sucks about HDTV!

 

 

One of the most pervasive complaints about HDTV has to do with aspect ratio or the feeling of being imprisoned in black bars.  It goes like this:  I bought a new widescreen HDTV hoping to escape black bars on the top and bottom of widescreen DVD movies, but many DVDs and even some movies on HDTV channels still have black bars on top and bottom.  Why do I have to put up with black bars on the sides when watching regular TV shows, even on HDTV channels?  Why can’t there be a universal standard aspect ratio used by film and television?

 

The quick answer to this problem is; get over it!  If the black bars are so bad chances are your TV can stretch the picture in one of several modes to fill your screen, or just hit zoom on your DVD player’s remote control.  But that means contorting the images so they’ll either look stretched or cropped at the top and sides.  To see a movie as the screenplay demands you have to view in its original aspect ratio, or OAR, this means your 16:9 screen isn’t always going be filled completely.

 

For a deeper understanding of what aspect ratios are, what they look like and the consequences of pan and scan check out this excellent guide.

 

There will probably never be a universal aspect ratio no matter what kind of TV you buy.  There will always be movies made in a variety of aspect ratios because there will always be a variety of movies, directors and tastes; this is a good thing that should not be seen as a limitation.  At the theater you watch movies in different aspect ratios and you’ve probably never noticed black bars on the projector screen.

 

HDTV programming uses 16:9; all HD programs will fit perfectly into your new widescreen HDTV.  The sad truth is that programs produced for HDTV are still a minority even on HD channels where you’re still likely to see a lot of features in the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio.  Movies are another matter.  Created to drum up business at the local megaplex before DVD, the film industry has every reason to present a unique experience at the theater and therefore aren’t likely to embrace a standard intended for home viewing. 

Early TVs were in the 1.33:1 (4:3) aspect ratio, the standard square screen we’ve all known and loved for generations.  It was also the same aspect ratio of movies at the theater.  The movie industry created wider screen formats in the 1950s to set their product apart from TV.  Today movies appear in a variety of widescreen formats 16:9 is a happy medium that fits reasonably well in between most aspect ratios you’re likely to see on TV and film.