CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[wallace123456]

When cable or satellite companies transmit movies or stuff like concerts on Hi-Def channels, how do you know if it is just an up-converted form of an SD source (hell, they could be throwing in a $1.99 SD DVD from Wally World for all I know), or is the source in Hi-Def (720p, 1080i, 1080p)?

I hope I am making sense, but, I see movie and concert listings being shown over Hi-Def channels, but there isn't a consumer product (HD or BD) for the same showing.

wallace

[WanMan]

You don't know, and you have every right to suspect otherwise.

[Skylooker]

Have afew beers and bbq until the picture starts to look crisp, if it starts to blurr, back off the beer a touch.

Mike

[WTS]

Well just by watching the HD movies on sat you can tell they are definatley not from a SD source as there is no edge enhancement noticable. I can say that actually most HD movies on Dish are very acceptable in PQ on my system, of course some are better than others. I never notice any black crush or pixelating, softness depending again on the chan/movie. Of course it's not as clean/crisp as a Bluray disc but it's a far cry from SD.

[Person99]

You don't have any way of knowing really if it is an upconvert or not. You can't really use the data rate or anything like that due to null packets and such.

But, I will say, you should be able to tell with your eyes most of the time. An upconvert from your provider will never look any better than an upconverted DVD. You probably can tell the difference easily between HD and upconverted DVDs on your system.

The only real gray area is the crappy HD you get from some stations like Universal HD. Those are only a bit better than upconverted SD, but I can usually still tell that it is crappy HD instead of upconverted SD.

[ecrabb]

Dave and Walter are both right. Unless your display sucks ass really badly, it should be pretty obvious whether the program material is truly HD or not. Even heavily compressed (and down-scaled in the case of DirecTV) satellite or cable HD will be MUCH higher res than any upconverted SD program.

Further, the unavailability of a program on Blu-ray provides no hint of whether the program you're seeing on cable or satellite was created in HD. There's a MASSIVE amount of programming that's been created on film or digital in HD+ resolutions, but is unavailable on Blu-ray; much of it will continue to be unavailable for years.

If I had to just guess and put a number on it, I'd imagine the programming available on Blu-ray probably represents less than 1% of all movies and music programs that already exist mastered on HD, 2k or 4k digital masters, and BD probably represents less than 1/100 of 1% of ALL HD or HD capable programming.

SC

[wallace123456]

[wallace123456]

I was afraid of the answers (no real way to tell other than visual).

So Dave, is your thread "Time to Get Rid Of HD Movie Stations?" purely out of saturation of movies as compared to what's available on BD?

wallace