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May 29, 2006 High Definition Television ". . . digital TV will be here, with its clearer, ghost and interference-free picture. Whether or not you further upgrade to HDTV is very much a personal choice"
HDTV (high definition television) delivers on its promise of a sharp, detailed widescreen display of television shows aired in HDTV format (more on the HDTV format in HDTV 101 below). To view HDTV you need a TV set that is HDTV "ready," "capable" or "integrated HDTV" and you’ll need an HDTV signal. Currently there are three ways to get this signal: Cable: Cable can provide both national and local HDTV feeds, but individual cable companies vary in the HDTV programing they choose to carry. Depending on your TV set, you may need a set top decoder box, and you will need to upgrade your cable service to digital TV. Cable companies will vary in how they charge for all this. Satellite TV: You’ll need an HDTV satellite dish on your rooftop, front yard or such, and a set top receiver/decoder box to connect between the dish and your HDTV set. Local TV programing is not always available from satellite, so if you want local HDTV programing, you may need to supplement the satellite dish with a TV antenna. Charges will vary with different plans and promotions. Over-the-air: These signals are free, and nearly 75% of United States households are within reception range of three or more TV stations broadcasting HDTV in addition to standard TV. Your viewing choices will be limited to what the local over-the-air broadcasters are offering, and you most likely will need an antenna optimized for HDTV. Antennas are available in various outdoor configurations ($30+) or, if you are within a few miles of your TV station’s transmitter tower, an indoor antenna (Terk, $24.99) does surprisingly well, as we’ve found out. For more antenna info go to www.antennaweb.org.
Instant HDTV PCI: (ADS Tech, $129) provides another way to take advantage of the free over-the-air HDTV: watch it on your computer! Instant HDTV PCI consists of an HDTV tuner card that you will have to install inside your computer, a remote control including infra-red sensor, software drivers and programs to run the whole unit. The card has both HDTV and analog TV inputs--the former for your HDTV antenna and the latter for either antenna or analog cable. Two programs are included with the unit: Snapstream Beyond TV Express, which includes a trial TV program guide membership displaying TV program guide info from the Internet. Beyond TV allows you to view live HDTV and record and/or playback the HDTV programs on your computer. You need about 10GB of hard drive space for every hour of HDTV you record. The other included program is DVD NeroVision Express, which allows you to burn your recorded analog TV content onto DVDs for viewing later on your computer or regular TV DVD player. Instant HDTV PCI and the included programs require a hefty computer configuration: Windows XP SP2 or Media Center Edition 2005 or Win2000 with Pentium IV 2.4GHz+, 256 MB+ RAM and 15 GB available hard drive space. Installation is straightforward but does require that you (or someone) get inside your computer. The install wizard does a digital channel search to check for signals, indicating the strength of each, and permitting you to select which ones will appear on your menu. Once installed, the results we got were amazing: watching crystal-clear HDTV on our computer monitor. The program guide indicated which programs were being broadcast in HDTV, and we could record or time shift the programs using the full-featured remote control. HDTV 101. The TV that most of us now watch is based on the more than 50-year old analog NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) TV standards. The Federal government has set February 17, 2009 as the date for the cessation of all over-the-air analog TV broadcasts, to be replaced by the new digital television ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee) standards. After 2/17/2009, your old TV set will not receive over-the-air TV unless you buy a digital to analog converter box. HDTV is only one of 18 formats specified in the new ATSC standards. SDTV (standard definition television) is another, and it’s the one that will replace most of the current TV broadcasts. Other formats are reserved for governmental, military or specialized commercial uses. So HDTV is a type of digital TV, but not all digital TV is HDTV, despite what the TV salesperson tells you.
Your old analog TV screen aspect ratio is 4:3 (4 units across by 3 units high) and appears almost square, whereas HDTV screen aspect ratio is 16:9 and rectangular in appearance for a widescreen effect. But to confuse matters, digital TV aspect ratios in the new SDTV format can be either 4:3 or 16:9. In terms of sharpness or clarity of the TV display, the effective vertical resolution of your old analog TV is 480 visible scan lines. This remains unchanged for SDTV. Resolution for HDTV, however, can be either 720 or 1080 lines. Like it or not, digital TV will be here, with its clearer, ghost and interference-free picture. Whether or not you further upgrade to HDTV is very much a personal choice, and in part may be based on what the future programming content will be. |
