SD or HD?

[Dude111]

Which do you prefer??


I prefer SD as i have always loved it!!

HD is nothing more than a WIDER PICTURE.. A marketing scam to get people to get stuff THEY DONT REALLY NEED!!


What are your thoughts??

[Eric H]

Well lets see, if it's shot on Film then it was in HD to start with, if it was made in the last 50 years it was most likely in Widescreen and HD.

However HD is not the same thing as Widescreen.

Most TV shows of the 50's & 60's were shot on film, therefore they were shot in High Definition but not in Widescreen.

SD came in both Digital and Analog formats, i.e. DVD and VHS (and Laserdisc, Betamax etc) are all SD NTSC but unless you have very bad eyesight then you have to know that DVD's provide far superior pictures to VHS (as did most every other Analog format of the time, i.e. Beta, Laserdisc) VHS had the advantage of being less expensive.

Why on earth would you not want to see a Film in a format that presents it as closely as possible to how it looked in the Theater, or in the case of TV shows seeing them in a format that presents them as sharp and clearly as possible?

I was never a fan of VHS from day one, but then I'm probably a more critical viewer than most.

Since I actually have lived with HDTV and a Bluray player I think I have the hands on knowledge to say that they are a great improvement over the old NTSC Format, both in clarity and color rendition, even a SD DVD is a quantum leap above VHS provided you have a Monitor capable of taking advantage of what it can provide.

The bigger the screen the more apparent the advantages of HD become, if your using it with a 19" CRT set and running it through the tuner than you probably won't see much difference.

[CoogarXR]

I have a place in my heart for both. I like watching my old VHS movies on the ol' trinitron. But I also like watching a blu-ray on the plasma and home theater setup. Sometimes I do find myself getting too caught up in the technology of the new stuff though. Like for instance, I rented Madagascar 3 on blu-ray, and many times I got distracted by the wow-factor of how good the picture looked, heh. I am sure that will wear off, as most things do.

But, if I were to hook the blu-ray up to the trinitron, I would think it's a bunch of hype. As was already stated, you need to have a HD signal and a HD-capable monitor to fully appreciate it.

[lnx64]

I watch Bluray on my old Samsung. Can't see the compression artifacts like I can on DVD, so it looks quite good actually.

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by Eric H

Well lets see, if it's shot on Film then it was in HD to start with, if it was made in the last 50 years it was most likely in Widescreen and HD.

However HD is not the same thing as Widescreen.

Thank you Erik .. I guess thats what i meant STANDARD OR WIDESCREEN...

I prefer standard like i have always watched

[ChrisW6ATV]

I prefer, above all else, Original aspect ratio. Black bars on screens, when they are needed, are great! I find the concept of chopping out parts of movies (usually) so the whole TV screen is filled with light to be asinine. Wide screen or "standard" (4:3 ratio), whichever was made by the original director, don't mutilate it to "fit the screen"!

[Eric H]

Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV

I prefer, above all else, Original aspect ratio. Black bars on screens, when they are needed, are great! I find the concept of chopping out parts of movies (usually) so the whole TV screen is filled with light to be asinine. Wide screen or "standard" (4:3 ratio), whichever was made by the original director, don't mutilate it to "fit the screen"!

Exactly, whatever it was filmed (or Videoed) in is how it should be watched, whether that's Widescreen or 4:3
Generally speaking Feature Films made in or after 1954 were shot in some form of Widescreen.
Some are wider than others and will still be letterboxed even on a 16:9 set, cropping these films or using Pan & Scan to get them to fit a 4:3 screen is truly butchering them.

Letterboxing is the only way to get all the picture on screen, unfortunately if you are watching them Letterboxed on a 27" 4:3 screen the picture is going to be very small.

I've been watching X-files on DVD recently, I was very surprised when I got to season 5 to find out they had been shot in 16:9 (aka 1.78:1), that was around 1997-98 so they were very quick to adopt the format, no doubt figuring it would be more valuable in the future, or possibly so they could incorporate some of the footage into the Movie made in 1998.

[lnx64]

Those later X-Files episodes are also in 1080p too if you stream from Netflix, instead of 480i like previous episodes.

Anyways, it depends on what I'm watching, but I usually put my DTV converter box in pan and scan mode for the smaller simple TV shows, because I just don't care to see "everything" in the picture. If it's a movie, then give me widescreen.

If it's football, this isn't a question, it better be widescreen, so I can actually see most of the field.

[andy]

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