I still like 1080i better.
720p is pushed by computer people. Not by real broadcasters. (hi).
I wish Joel Brinkley of the Times would have compared 720p and 1080i.
GEorge
Top Industry Stories
STATE OF THE ART: High-End Dueling Televisions
(NY TIMES; May 27, 1999)
By JOEL BRINKLEY
rom the outside it's hard to believe how passionate electronics engineers, people who are only a few years too young to have carried pocket protectors, can become about issues as arcane as this one: Does a high-resolution television picture look better using the high-definition format favored by many television manufacturers, or the so-called 480-P format used by the computer industry?
Few other debates in my experience have generated more fevered and continuing acrimony, including the Arab-Israeli peace process. So it was with a fair bit of trepidation that I decided to attempt an actual side-by-side comparison of high-definition television and the computer industry's favored alternative -- knowing full well that whatever conclusion I drew would set off fevered fusillades of e-mail and Internet altercations.
Stuart Goldenberg
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William H. Gates, Microsoft's chairman and the nation's wealthiest man, has already stepped into this argument. He stood before a large audience at last year's Consumer Electronics Show and pointed to a huge video screen as he said: "Look at those high-definition pictures. Don't they look great!"
A few people in the audience snickered because the image Gates was pointing at wasn't high definition. On display was a video presentation with the same level of resolution as today's television programs, 480 lines of vertical resolution, but it was presented in the "progressive" format used by the computer industry. (The term 480-P stands for 480-line, progressive format.)
Progressive images look cleaner than the "interlaced" images or regular television, used by broadcasters worldwide. The interlaced images are favored because they take up less space on the airwaves than other formats. Progressive images are painted onto the screen all at one time, while interlacing divides the signal into stripes. The even-numbered stripes are transmitted, followed immediately by the odd-numbered ones. The two sets of stripes are then interlaced in the receiver, and it all happens so fast that the viewer sees the lines as a unified image. Still, this process introduces various flaws and afflictions, but most viewers barely notice. They have never seen any other sort of television.
So in one corner for this comparison is 480-line progressive television, or 480-P, what computer executives call "the sweet spot" for most viewers, virtually indistinguishable from HDTV. And in the other corner is 1,080-line interlaced HDTV -- the best possible image using today's technology, according to television manufacturers and many broadcasters. Consumers may find this comparison useful because several sets have come onto the market that offer 480-P television at a price substantially lower than a full HDTV.
The instruments for this little match are two new products that consumers might consider if they are interested in high-definition television but are unwilling to spend a semester's college tuition to buy one. They are Hitachi's $2,999, 36-inch HDTV and an essentially similar product, a television that RCA calls a multimedia monitor because it can also display computer images. It costs $2,499. With the addition of a digital tuner box (which by summer will be available from at least two companies for less than $1,000), each set offers 1,080 lines of resolution. In addition, both also include technology that converts regular television signals to 480-P.
The first thing needed is full disclosure: This comparison includes so many technical compromises and irregularities that any serious engineer would have a hard time listing all of them, even on an entire pad of graph paper. For one thing, both of these sets are at the low end of the price and performance scale; neither is capable of portraying HDTV or 480-P in its fullest glory.
But even though this isn't a faultless comparison of what each format can offer at its best, it is useful nonetheless because the test compares television pictures as consumers would see them, using consumer-grade equipment.
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Many people will savor every last bit of detail that the very best picture can offer.
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The next thing needed was test material, something to watch in both formats. The Harris Corporation lent a high-definition tape player and a half-dozen HD movies on tape. For comparison, a DVD version of one of these high-definition movies was needed. And it turned out that only one movie was a match, a film I'd never seen: "Desperado," starring Antonio Banderas as a Mexican gunslinger.
The two sets sat side by side -- on the floor, because their combined weight and width (just over 300 pounds and just under 6 feet, about the size of a refrigerator turned on its side) was greater than any piece of furniture that I own could be expected to bear. After an hour of tinkering, the picture settings on both televisions were roughly the same, and the movie versions were playing in sync on both sets. One was playing "Desperado" in HDTV from the tape, the other in 480-P from a DVD.
What was the first visceral impression from this grand showdown between the all-powerful computer and consumer electronics industries:
What a dreadful movie!
That may seem off point. But as the comparison proceeded, it actually proved to be quite relevant.
It was not much of a surprise that the high-definition picture looked notably crisper and clearer than the 480-P version, even when I switched and played each program on the other set. The 480-P images certainly looked very much better than standard television -- quite pleasing, in fact. But high-definition on these particular sets held more than three times as many picture elements, or pixels, the fundamental building blocks of a television picture. So details were visible on the high-definition picture that were obscured on the other one.
For example, early in the movie, a snarling bandito dialed a phone number by jabbing the buttons with the tip of his Bowie knife. On the HDTV set, you could see the jab marks. On the 480-P set you could not.
In a dirty, dingy bar -- scene of a grisly, gratuitous shootout that left a half-dozen bloody bodies on the floor -- a filth-covered sign on the back wall was murky on the 480-P set but readable on the other. It said, "Members." And who knew that Cheech Marin, the brazen bartender, had blue eyes? Only viewers of the high-definition set. On the 480-P set, they looked black.
Finally, when the movie ended and the credits rolled -- white letters on a black background -- the names, including the electric best boy, Antonio Sanchez Romero, were razor sharp in high definition. The letters were a bit fuzzy on the other set. But the fundamental conclusion that came to mind after two very long hours of comparison was this: It's just television. Does it really matter?
Certainly many people will savor every last bit of detail that the very best picture can offer -- the mold on the bathroom wall that was visible on the high-definition monitor but not on the other. But for many others, a 480-P rendition of Antonio Banderas as he breaks a bad guy's nose by smacking him backhanded with the neck of his guitar will look plenty good enough. Both of these sets -- the Hitachi 36SDX88B HDTV and the RCA PS36800 -- provide reasonably good conversions of regular television to 480-line progressive, as do several others now on the market.
The Hitachi set can also officially be called a high-definition television, while the RCA cannot. Both sets have regular square screens, while HDTV's have wide screens. Under the television industry's definition of HDTV, a set must be able to display a wide-screen 1,080-line image. The Hitachi accomplishes this by displaying a picture of that resolution in a letterboxed format, while the RCA set can display 1,080 lines only when the full screen is used.
But there is another point a buyer might consider. During the evaluation, I sat 7 feet away from these 36-inch televisions. Later I draped a tape measure across the floor and found that at 12 feet, the differences were still apparent. But at 15 feet, any advantage that high-definition offered had disappeared.
So if that's the distance between the television and the sofa in your family room, ignore all the arguments and be confident that a 480-P format on a television this size or smaller will be quite good enough.
State of the Art is published on Thursdays. Click here for a list of links to other columns in the series.
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