Poll: Would you rather see live 1080p or high quality 3D from your cable / satellite provider?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
barnes @ Oct 4th 2009 6:34PM
How about true2way?
Wes @ Oct 4th 2009 8:16PM
Hmm, where's the "All Of The Above" option?
I'd like to see Live 1080p that's not vod, high quality 3d support and less compression on my hd-video. Why do I have to choose just one? Since cable companies take 5-10 years to make any progress on a task they are working on?
Sean @ Oct 4th 2009 3:30PM
I really don't see the point in brining everything home in 3d. I really don't even care about it at the movies either. Its a gimmick at best. I would like to see 1080p over cable, but I'd rather see less compression to existing content. Any of this would be asking a lot from some of the crappy cable companies out there right now though.
-Sean
xemumanic @ Oct 4th 2009 4:08PM
I agree with you mostly, except the less compression part. While I've seen metric assloads of compression and wish it were gone too, going 1080p and using H.264, _could_ (the key word here) solve both issues in one fell swoop.
Yes, I know its unlikely for the cable companies to do it right nonetheless, but with more efficient compression, there would be more available bandwidth for TV in general.
But the real solution to all of these issues is for these bastards to properly update their networks. I remembering reading in the chat of the EHD recording last week that Comcast/TW (forget which) San Diego is like 80% SDV. That's embarrassing. How bad is their network that they need SDV that much?
greg @ Oct 4th 2009 4:07PM
agreed. 3D is a gimmick. A headache inducing gimmick for my eyes. 1080P is beautiful - if the compression needed doesn't negate the quality.
Or, here's an idea... how about a focus on the quality of the content?
usacomp2k3 @ Oct 4th 2009 5:15PM
You might disagree if you've seen really good 3d. Sports in 3d is amazing. That said, I only consider alternate-frame video as true 3d.
Chris @ Oct 4th 2009 4:12PM
Just give me the HD channels that are already available that Directv does not carry before you try and offer me live 1080p.
xemumanic @ Oct 4th 2009 4:15PM
DirecTV not having certain channels seems to be more of a behind the scenes contract issue than any technical issue. They launched a lot of new satellites in the past few years, and I think they even have one more to launch.
jesse @ Oct 4th 2009 5:02PM
um well i go for the 1080p live but the 3d part im waiting for cuz ive buying a 3dtv for my gaming the movie part i kno thas a few years off
NaterGator @ Oct 4th 2009 5:04PM
@xemumanic:
The problem with your logic is cable companies _cannot_ switch to H.264 as easily as sat providers because cable companies are bound by the logistics of maintaining the backwards compatible "for granted" MPEG2 infrastructure.
dagamer43 @ Oct 4th 2009 5:06PM
3D is probably going to require a new TV and funny glasses.
Gimme H.264 1080p please!
John B @ Oct 4th 2009 5:19PM
The funny glasses. Right. Because when there's a 3D show on, everyone's going to be looking at everyone else and laughing at the glasses instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing and looking at the TV. That says more about the person than it does the technology.
John B @ Oct 10th 2009 1:08AM
And all of you who voted me down can f*ck off. It's just proof that I was right and that you don't like the fact that you're so f*cking shallow that you can't deal with a pair of glasses for a few hours in the privacy of your own homes.
John B @ Oct 10th 2009 1:17AM
And all of you who voted me down can f**k off. It's just proof that I was right and that you don't like the fact that you're so f**king shallow that you can't deal with a pair of glasses for a few hours in the privacy of your own homes.
usacomp2k3 @ Oct 4th 2009 8:20PM
I'd much rather have 720/60p than 1080/30p.
Brian @ Oct 5th 2009 1:08AM
Why when the human eye can't even see 60, let alone 30fps.
John @ Oct 4th 2009 11:46PM
You already have 720p60.... the current broadcast and cable standards are 720p60 and 1080i60; the 60 on 1080i refers to fields, however, not frames. So it could also be expressed as 1080i at 30fps. The reason for that is that 1920x1080 is roughtly twice as high resolution as 1280x720, so if you deliver it at half the frame rate, they take up almost equal bandwidth.
And as far as I know, 1080p30 isn't really used anywhere. It's 1080i60, and then either 1080p60 or 1080p24; I'm not 100% on that though.
John B @ Oct 4th 2009 5:18PM
Where's the option for "Both"? Why does this have to be an either/or question?
And those of you who are continually calling this a "fad" need to start looking at the industry because you're being ignorant. 3D is coming (even though shutter glasses have been available for the home for some 10 years). The video companies are all getting behind it. Panasonic is rolling out tractor trailer demonstrations to push the technology. 3D TVs are already out. There are cable channels in Europe that are recording and broadcasting original material (like the Royal Ballet) in 3D. Sony just introduced a prototype for a monocular lens camera that does 3D. There have already been industry conventions dedicated at 3D.
3D might always be relegated to "niche", but the days of it being a fad are gone as far as the industry is concerned.
Wes @ Oct 4th 2009 8:28PM
I know what you mean John. I hear many people touting how its a fad but I'm pretty excited for seeing 3d content at home. I think it really is the next-wave of the future.
I remember as a child, I had a toy that was a cross between a sphere and retangular box? All you had to do was place any small object inside it and close the box. Inside was all mirrors. Above the box appeared a perfect 3d image of the object you could pass your hand through. It was really sweet as a kid and it looked so real. I'd love to re-capture that experience but with motion (Ie, not a toy solider but something that could really move). Especially 1080p at near lifelike sizes (52-60") at 60fps.
Sure, the first versions might be medium-quality or look a bit cheesy but one could say the exact same thing about old computers/consoles. Ohh, Zelda on the Nintendo looks nothing like real-life action. There's no reason to develop it any further. Heck, just looking at those simulated screen images cause headaches after just an hour or two of playing!
William C Bonner @ Oct 4th 2009 6:09PM
When you talk 1080p are you talking 1080p60 or 1080p30?
I believe that the ATSC standard only supports 1080i and 720p (at the high end) and the 1080i can be converted as a display format of 1080p30. (30 full frames a second)
I don't know what the cable formats support (QAM?) but how does the cable signal get converted to your TV picture anyway? Do most HD customers pay for a cable box from their cable company for each TV they have hooked up? This would effectively turn the TV into a monitor, and totally ignores the built in tuner.
I get my TV over the air for free. I watch most of my TV in HD, except for the late night stuff that I watch on an old TV in my bedroom.
Boo Radley @ Oct 4th 2009 10:18PM
I would say that most people are using a box and not the tuner, a few may use antenna but the large majority have cable or satellite for HD feeds. Unfortunately the less expensive HD monitors of a few years ago are harder to come by in larger sizes, especially at a big box store.
John @ Oct 4th 2009 6:27PM
High def holograms. Check out the super bowl ring hologram at the NFL hall of fame in Ohio. People reach in to grab the ring it looks so real. Give me a gadget that will give me high def holograms. I think they are wasting time and money on 3D tv.
kcmurphy88 @ Oct 4th 2009 8:21PM
How about they pull the plug on every "HD" station that stretches SD to "look like" HD. And use the bandwidth for nearly anything else. Even SD could use less compression on many systems.
Mike @ Oct 4th 2009 8:24PM
720p or 1080i, when not over-compressed, can look terrific. I would prefer that over overly-compressed 1080p. And given current delivery constraints, live 1080p would most assuredly come at the the expense of bitrate.
monkeyroach @ Oct 4th 2009 8:56PM
less compression plz
Wayne @ Oct 4th 2009 9:07PM
I want ala carte HD channels. That would help reduce compression. The cable company would let you choose up to X channels in HD. Then you wouldn't have any stupid HD channels that you never watch, either.
xemumanic @ Oct 4th 2009 9:16PM
How would a la carte channels change anything compression wise?
John @ Oct 4th 2009 11:50PM
A la carte won't help the compression issue unless the cable company provides fewer total options, which they won't because that would be a competitive disadvantage. The fact that you're selecting to have fewer channels doesn't mean the cable company doesn't have to send them down the pipe to other people, or even have the capacity reserved in case they're requested. Even that latter point assumes a fully SDV implementation which no provider yet has; under current cable implementations, all or nearly all of the channels are delivered down the pipe all the time, including ones you haven't bought, with only a few if any channels in SDV.
John @ Oct 4th 2009 11:36PM
I personally agree with the experts that 1080i when fed into a 1080p TV equipped with a good deinterlacer (like the Kuro) can look just as good or at least very nearly as good as a native 1080p signal, so I don't think that's too much of a priority -- that point was actually one of the points on Engadget's "You know you're a videophile if..." article and is commonly pointed out on AVS Forum. One 1080p prospect that would be interesting would be 1080p24 for movie channels to show them at their native frame rate, but I don't really see that happening.
I agree 3D is mostly a gimmick, but I have to wonder if that's more because of poor execution than the nature of 3D. I think 3D has some potential when done well (like Pixar films), but gets a bad rap mostly because it's been used improperly or downright badly in so many places. I could be wrong, but I feel judgment should be reserved until more people start spending more time and building more skill filming, editing, and presenting 3D (I'm not counting the fact that 3D was originally around long ago toward it being an established technology).
I think compression reduction should be the #1 concern, but unfortunately I see it as the least likely to be addressed. Cable companies are more interested in expanding their channel lineup than improving the video quality of their existing lineup (never mind the quality of the content itself, which I suppose they're not directly responsible for), so they're happy to compress their signals into oblivion to fit those extra channels in their pipes. And let's face it, 1080p and 3D are both more "marketable" items than "crisp HD", because most people think all HD at a given resolution is created equal because they don't understand the importance of bitrates. The problem is that there's no business incentive to produce clearer channels rather than more channels, because it's easier to sell more channels than higher quality channels, especially when most regions don't really have true competitors anyway and honestly most people probably don't even realize what they're missing in terms of artifact-free viewing -- of course, "what they're missing" assumes a provider that actually doesn't compress their signal into oblivion.
jon @ Oct 5th 2009 3:34AM
"...more people start spending more time and building more skill filming, editing, and presenting 3D"
+1000 3D requires completely different framing than 2D, or it's just floaty garbage.
Just like IMAX requires different composition than standard films.
That's why normal films on IMAX screens are almost unwatchable, and why IMAX films on home displays are pretty boring.
The problem is that it's not the filmmakers pushing 3D, it's the studios and the TV manufacturers.
John @ Oct 4th 2009 11:42PM
A la carte won't help the compression issue unless the cable company provides fewer total options, which they won't because that would be a competitive disadvantage. The fact that you're selecting to have fewer channels doesn't mean the cable company doesn't have to send them down the pipe to other people, or even have the capacity reserved in case they're requested. Even that latter point assumes a fully SDV implementation which no provider yet has; under current cable implementations, all or nearly all of the channels are delivered down the pipe all the time, including ones you haven't bought, with only a few if any channels in SDV.
John @ Oct 4th 2009 11:45PM
You already have 720p60.... the current broadcast and cable standards are 720p60 and 1080i60; the 60 on 1080i refers to fields, however, not frames. So it could also be expressed as 1080i at 30fps. The reason for that is that 1920x1080 is roughtly twice as high resolution as 1280x720, so if you deliver it at half the frame rate, they take up almost equal bandwidth.
And as far as I know, 1080p30 isn't really used anywhere. It's 1080i60, and then either 1080p60 or 1080p24; I'm not 100% on that though.
minimalist @ Oct 5th 2009 1:02AM
Not interested in cable at all until they offer better quality HD and stop butchering aspect ratios. Until then I'll stick with Netflix and get my TV shows and movies on disc.
I don't care about more pixels or 3-d gimmickery if those signals are going to be even more compressed than the crap that's already being broadcast as "HD".
William C Bonner @ Oct 5th 2009 2:44AM
I generally avoid the 3d stuff in theaters because I've found that watching it for more than about 10 minutes gives me headaches.
Am I the only one who actively avoids the 3D movies?
If there are shows on TV that are 3D, and unwatchable in 2D without glasses, I will just avoid watching. (I seem to remember an episode of "Chuck" last season that was broadcast in 3d. I remember not really watching it.) Will 3D improve ratings, or just further fragment the market?
Mikey @ Oct 5th 2009 6:03AM
No, but you're certainly in the minority.
A slight improvement in HD quality by reducing compression, improving frame rate, yadda yadda, is not really noticeable to most people. However, people on this website tend to be the people who know what they're looking for and therefore get bothered by any reduction in picture quality. 3D, on the other hand, is obvious. Everyone sees it, and it adds a substantial amount of realism to the movies I've seen that use RealD. I think it's awesome, much in the way that color made TV so much more awesome.
Loban @ Oct 5th 2009 9:55AM
Nope, you're definitely not the only one who avoids 3D. I don't think it adds much to the experience and the glasses are annoying (I wear my contacts when I go see movies just so I don't have to wear glasses). It doesn't seem to be 3D enough for me if that makes any sense. I always find myself thinking "I guess it's sort of popping out at me.". Plus, you can always tell that a movie was made for 3D even when you're not watching the 3D version because there is always those stupid scenes where they have something fly at the screen for no reason. It adds nothing when you're not watching it in 3D and just looks out of place.
Loban @ Oct 5th 2009 9:49AM
Who gives a crap about 3D and I'd rather see totally UNcompressed 720p than compressed 1080 any day of the week.
Hamlyn @ Oct 5th 2009 10:13AM
How about some decent programming worthy of watching...?
Chad @ Oct 5th 2009 11:08AM
I have IPTV you insensitive clod!
Spiza @ Oct 5th 2009 1:09PM
NFL in 3D, I can get my shows on Blu-Ray.
czar tooi @ Oct 5th 2009 6:20PM
With proper inverse-telecine and high quality deinterlacing, you're already seeing 1080p24 broadcast over 1080i60. I don't see much reason to implement 1080p60, except maybe for sports, which I don't care about.
DirecTV might broadcast an h.264 signal, but in many cases they are re-compressing an already encoded MPEG-2 signal that they receive for distribution. Not cool. Native, unmolested h.264 from the source to your receiver would be fantastic, but I think that's quite far off.
For now, let's just lobby the cable and satellite providers to broadcast the highest quality picture they can, and stop repackaging.
BuffaloX @ Oct 5th 2009 5:20PM
Less compression on current stuff would be nice.
mugatu @ Oct 5th 2009 8:55PM
I have a theory that the reason the major networks and cable (free or otherwise) won't give us HD as we want it is because they are afraid of piracy and of losing control of the revenue stream. Thus the reason they crop, compress, scale, cover the screen with graphics,and do whatever else it takes to keep us from watching beautiful HD as it surely could be delivered. They're afraid of 'perfect' for the masses because it will hurt their downstream Blu-Ray and PPV sales. They suck. They just suck.
squiggleslash @ Oct 6th 2009 7:33AM
At the time of writing, 668 people pressed the wrong button by accident in this poll ;)
You know, all the MPEG standards bar MPEG-1 (which didn't support interlaced content) support a mode in which progressive content is served in its native frame rate with metadata describing how to interlace it. In fact, 90% of NTSC DVDs (and all HD DVDs, FWIW) are packaged that way. The content is 24p, and the MPEG PES tells the decoder when to repeat the last frame and when to decode the next one. Good progressive DVD players actually make use of this, ignoring the interlacing metadata and just decoding the whole frames.
So far as I'm aware, all digital TV standards are based upon MPEG systems. I would be fairly surprised if TV stations aren't already transmitting dramas and movies in 24p. The only reason I can think of not to do that is if they're converting everything to 1080i60 before feeding it into some single encoder/transmitter, or if they're a cable company recompressing everything - ironically reducing the efficiency of any future recompression when they do the conversion.
What I'd like to see is better support for 1080p24, the Satellite companies don't have to add bandwidth for this, they just need to intelligently encode the content they're retransmitting. And I don't want to see 3D. At all. Ever.
suade907 @ Oct 6th 2009 1:18PM
I would rather see a provider charge you only for the channels you want. Seriously there are anly like 20-25 channels I need on cable or Dish or directv.
Arn @ Oct 6th 2009 1:53PM
Wouldn't 1080p60 encoded with double the bitrate of 1080i60 be a waste of room ?
First, in 24 or 30 FPS content, 1080i60 doesn't change anything from 1080p60. For 60 FPS content, yes, there's a difference, but how big is it ? Deinterlacing may not be consistent in terms of image reconstruction from one device to another, but we would need proper benchmarks with 1080p content filmed at real 60 FPS and coded via two ways : 1080p60 signal and 1080i60 signal. Signals would be decoded by different devices (tuners, computers, TVs) and the images displayed compared.
By the way, how many cameras can record 1080p60 signals ?