Shownotes:
CEDIA Update #7 is full length today. Toshiba’s XDE DVD Players are another option to Blu-ray. They’re working on upconversion like we’ve never seen.
I’ve been learning a lot about how Hz effects your TV viewing experience. Philips announced their new Aurea II 100Hz Displays at IFA last week and Sharp announced their Aquos 120Hz Displays.
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September 4th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
What do you think about the future of DVD’s vs. streaming or downloadable movies? I have been waiting to find a good blu-ray player but am reluctant to yet again update my current video library.
I like the idea of using services like netflix, blockbuster, or now amazon to get my movies on demand. In my small DVD library there are few films which I have watched over 4 times which really doesn’t justify the cost of purchasing vs. renting, especially since it seems every decade or so I need to update my library to the latest and greatest format.
I wonder if actual DVD’s go the way of the VHS or betamax? Will eventually all content be delivered via download or stream?
September 4th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Cali,
I’m going to disagree with you slightly on the Hz rating for watching LCD TVs. A 120Hz or the new 240Hz (think in multiples of 60 for the US TVs) panels may help reduce some of the “motion blur” as described by the video in this episode of GBTV, but it likely will not correct the digital noise you mentioned you noticed while watching the olympics coverage. The digital noise you saw is more likely due to the MPEG-2 compression used by the local broadcaster’s encoder. The ATSC standard currently only allows broadcasters 19.3Mb/s data rate when broadcasting a terrestrial digital signal. The master feed provided by the network (NBC in the case of the Olympics) can sometimes be up to 60Mb/s and it is up to the local affiliate to encode and compress that signal along with other guide data and potentially other sub channels down to the 19.3Mb/s allowance. Some of that data has to be discarded to get from 60Mb/s down to 19.3 Mb/s and that is where you start seeing some artifacts in the picture.
The higher refresh panels should make an improvement when watching most content, but nothing can help a program that is being starved for bandwidth.
It is sad to see that we’re in the middle of a digital broadcast transition and people are already making comments that our new digital broadcast spec is falling behind.
September 4th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
To Mr. B,
If you are particular about picture quality, go ahead and make the jump to Blu-ray. I’ve been wrong about broadband speeds before, but I don’t see the average US consumer getting access to speeds capable of delivering an on-demand HD experience at the same level of HD-DVD or Blu-ray for another 6-8 years. Some markets are seeing speeds of 30Mb/s in very limited rollouts later this year. You’ll hear more about DOCSIS 3.0 in 2009-10 from traditional cable companies which is capable of delivering 100+Mb/s to the home, but will it be at a sustainable rate? Also look at the recent news from Comcast that they are going to start enforcing a 250GB per month cap. A double layer Blu-ray disc is capable of holding approx 50GB.
If picture quality isn’t as important as the delivery mechanism, then certainly give the Netflix Roku or AppleTV products a try. I enjoy my AppleTV, but HD video at 5Mb/s using the H.264 codec does have its limits.
My wish is as broadband speeds increase, Apple and Netflix are able to raise the standards for their video streams and ISPs will not penalize the consumer for using their broadband service to get access to these technologies.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Eshhh. That was a LOT of bad advice in a very short time.
“picture enhancement” for DVDs other than simple upconverting is a baaad idea. You don’t mess with the original source material to increase the contrast and sharpness. it’s just going to make destroy shadow detail (by boosting contast) and fine detail (by sharpening)
The problems you described with fast moving objects on your hi def picture has to do with Microblocking…something you should be familiar with since you encode video.
Yowza…stop reading press releases Cali.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
I have quite a few comments to make about the topics raised in this brief:
1) Toshiba’s XDE: certainly Toshiba has made many extremely high claims about XDE processing capabilities, but as the first reviews roll in (such as CNET’s), it is rather clear that this is just another form of edge enhancement and “upscaling” that can provide an interesting alteration to the standard definition DVD picture, but no actual improvement since detail is lost whenever the new XDE features are activated. Simply put, XDE will NOT make your DVDs look like genuine HD.
2) The cause of inferior looking broadcast HD television is almost never the refresh rate (Hz) of the display. LCD manufacturers have marketed higher refresh rates as being a solution for motion blur and artifacting, but it is not.
The two primary causes of inferior looking broadcast HD television are:
a) compression artifacts
b) poor quality scaling and/or de-interlacing
Compression artifacts are inherent to the source. Most broadcast television provided by cable or satellite is heavily compressed using mpeg2 video compression and the result is visible compression artifacts in the broadcast feed itself. Your television, sadly, really cannot do anything about this. No amount of processing or higher refresh rates can correct for a poor quality signal to begin with.
What CAN be controlled by the television itself is scaling and de-interlacing. 1080p (1920 x 1080) is quickly becoming the defacto standard resolution for HDTVs, but broadcast HD signals are either 720p or 1080i. In the case of 720p, the signal will need to be scaled. And in the case of 1080i, the signal will need to be de-interlaced. More often than not, if the television itself is degrading the image quality, it is doing so due to poor quality scaling or de-interlacing. Again, the refresh rate (Hz) has nothing to do with this.
3) 50Hz is the standard for PAL territories. But in North America and all other NTSC/ATSC territories, 60Hz is the standard.
In a nut shell, if you want high quality, enjoyable and pleasing moving images, you really need two things:
A) You need a high quality source. And that means Blu-ray or over-the-air HDTV broadcasts. Some digital satellite broadcasts look quite good and FIOS can look very good as well. But many satellite broadcasts are highly compressed and cable is almost always very highly compressed. DVD – no matter what alphabet soup processing is applied to it – will never stack up either.
B) You need a good display. One that does not have motion blur. One that can reproduce very deep black levels. One that has accurate colours. One that has an accurate grey scale. One that has accurate gamma (the rate of rise from black to grey to white). And one that has very good video processing (scaling and de-interlacing).
While manufacturers may claim that refresh rate has something to do with all of that, in reality, it doesn’t. The only time refresh rate matters is when you are dealing with matching a particular source rate with your display’s rate to avoid judder – which is a slightly jerky-looking movement due to different refresh rates between the source and the display. The reason why 120Hz refresh rates can be beneficial has nothing at all to do with motion blur or picture artifacts. 120Hz can matter because Blu-ray can be output at film’s native 24 Hz refresh rate from most Blu-ray players. 24Hz does not divide evenly into the NTSC/ATSC standard of 60Hz for displays. And thus, if you show the 24Hz source on a standard 60Hz display, you get judder. But both 24Hz and 60Hz divide evenly into 120Hz. So judder can be eliminated from all standard NTSC/ATSC content as well as from Blu-ray, which makes 120Hz a very good choice for a display’s refresh rate.
At the moment, your choices for very good displays are (somewhat thankfully) a short list! Stick to a Pioneer PDP-xx10FD or Panasonic TH-xxPZ800U plasma or a Samsung A650 LCD. All of those displays offer all of the features that make for a very good display that I mentioned and all of them offer a very accurate pre-set picture mode right out of the box by using the “Movie Mode” on the Pioneer plasma or Samsung LCD or the “THX Mode” on the Panasonic plasma.
If you have one of those three TVs, have it in the Movie/THX picture mode and still see a less than satisfactory image, you can be DARN sure that the problem is with the source and NOT the television itself.
4) Finally, when it comes to Blu-ray, the PS3 is still the best and highest value player. Thankfully, stand-alone units like the Panasonic DMP-BD35 and Sony BDP-S350 are finally catching up in price and performance, but overall, there is no reason to wait when the PS3 is available right now at a relatively reasonable cost and provides not only stellar Blu-ray playback, but many other features as well.
As for digital downloads: we simply are not at a point yet where they can even come close to rivaling the audio and video quality of Blu-ray. So-called “high def” downloads at highly compressed 1280 x 720 resolution with highly compressed 5.1 Dolby Digital sound are no comparison at all to true 1080p/24 far less compressed Blu-ray video and lossless TrueHD, DTS-HD:Master Audio or completely uncompressed PCM Blu-ray audio.
If digital downloads could offer that same level of quality, I’m all for ‘em! But they cannot. And at present, if they could, they would require far too much bandwidth and storage space to be feasible. It will be quite some time before better compression is developed that can offer the same level of video and audio quality as Blu-ray in significantly less space and even once that happens, it will still require substantially faster internet speeds with substantially higher bandwidth and also drastically more hard drive storage space. That day will no doubt come at some point, but not for quite some time yet.
So in the mean time, I highly suggest purchasing a PS3 and enjoying the phenominal quality of Blu-ray. A level of quality that no other source can rival at the moment! In truth, I honestly believe that Blu-ray may be the highest quality we EVER see and hear as consumers. While I may demand that same level of quality before I would support downloads as an alternative, the proliferation of less-than-CD quality audio in the form of 128 kbps mp3 clearly demonstrates that most people are not nearly as picky about quality as I am. I fear that very highly compressed HD video with very highly compressed 5.1 audio may ultimately end up as the defacto standard, since that seems to be “good enough” for most people. And that’s a shame, because when all of that highly compressed video doesn’t look as good as people hope for, they’ll probably mistakenly think that a 240Hz display is going to solve their problems…and it won’t!
September 4th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Very slight typo I made above – the newest Pioneer plasma models are the PDP-xx20FD, not the PDP-xx10FD that I mistakenly typed up above there.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Robbie H., a very good and thorough analysis of the subjects.
Let me re-emphasize that sadly enough our home viewing experience is very much at the hands of the broadcasters. I design electronic equipment for the broadcast industry for processing of true baseband HD signals, and can attest that a true HD picture is beautiful. What consumers get from broadcasters as an ‘HD’ signal is simply crap.
Why? Digital bandwidth costs and broadcasters are too cheep – sending more channels is more important to them than picture quality.
A baseband HD signal (i.e. uncompressed) in 1080i 60Hz or 720p 60Hz format required 1.5 Gbits/s of bandwidth, and a 1080p 60Hz signal requires 3.0 Gbits/s. Most broadcasters compress this using MPEG2 down to 10 Mbit/s or even less – were I am, broadcasters commonly use 5Mbit/s and insult their customers by calling it an HD signal.
Today, the best quality HD signal you can get is over-the-air analog HD. Sadly enough US has legislated a full transition to digital only TV, and so by law the few broadcasters generating such signal are forced to turn their analog transmitters off.
Realistically speaking, we will never get a true HD picture at home, whether it is broadcast or blue-ray – the required bandwidths are too high. The best improvements we can hope for are:
1. Better compression algorithms. MPEG2 is very old, and by today’s standards really poor. H.264 can deliver the same quality picture as MPEG2 in less than half the bandwidth, and we will see further improvements with H.264 alone.
2. Higher bandwidth allocation per channel. This will require a lot of pressure from consumers and possibly some legislative changes, but as consumers get more educated about HD and start demanding better quality from their television providers, I believe things will improve… with time :).
September 5th, 2008 at 8:41 am
The only thing that I am not seeing in the comments is that the compression algorithms can change. I have always been depressed by the compression that turns a beautiful HD waterfall scene into a frothy mess of little cubes on screen. Same with a rainy day or in the case of the Olympics anything moving quickly across the screen will leave a bunch of compressed pixels in it’s wake. But I have been noticing more and more that a new form of compression artifacting seems to be emerging. I have noticed it occasionally for a long time, but it was revealed to me in the images of the diving board divers before they dove at the Olympics. As they bounced getting set for the dive their skin would stay static as their heads moved up and down. It appeared as if the compression was attempting to reuse as much of the previous frame as possible and details that were close to the previous frame were left untouched. Thus it appeared as if the details in their cheeks remained motionless as their eyes and nose moved up and down around their cheeks. Quite disconcerting. I have noticed it in the past as people turn to look left and right on screen seems like their cheeks don’t move initially.
Am I the only only one noticing this?
-Randy
September 5th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Randy Spencer – you wouldn’t happen to have one of the 120Hz LCD displays with the “Auto Motion Plus” or “Smooth Motion” or other “120Hz processing” turned on, would you?
One thing I did not cover in my post (since it was already so long) was how the higher refresh rate (120Hz) displays can actually introduce even more artifacts to an already poor quality signal!
The reason for this is that almost all 120Hz refresh displays offer some sort of “smoothing” processing. In actuality, what this processing does is interpolate new frames that never existed before!
In essence, let’s say that you begin with a 1080i/60 broadcast HDTV signal. That signal has 60 fields and 30 full frames. The signal is first de-interlaced (often poorly) into 1080p/60. Then the “smoothing” processing goes to work. It takes those 60 frames (which now have compression artifacts as well as de-interlacing artifacts) and it essentially “guesses” and makes up 60 additional “new” frames that are inserted inbetween the existing 60 frames to create a total of 120 frames for the 120Hz display.
The problem, of course, is that those newly interpolated frames contain even more artifacts. And because the processing is attempting to “smooth” the image, what it does is analyze any movement and then inserts an image inbetween the two existing frames. The result is what is commonly called the “triple ball effect”. Where a single, moving object ends up appearing as a “trail” of three objects.
So in effect, 120Hz processing can wind up making it appear as if there is MORE motion blur and persistent images!
Thankfully, virtually all displays that have some sort of “120Hz processing mode” also have the option to turn that processing OFF. And that is exactly what you should do if you have such a display.
Do not fear, the display is still refreshing at 120Hz. It’s just that with the special processing turned off, it is no longer “guessing” and interpolating “new” frames that were never in the original signal. Instead, it will just repeat the original frames as many times as needed to properly display the image.
The Samsung A650 LCD that I mentioned has 120HZ refresh and “Auto Motion Plus” 120Hz processing. Turn that OFF for the best picture quality ;)
September 5th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Thanks guys, lotsa interesting information.
Think there’s any chance I could get a patent on interpolation? It seems to be a rather useful concept.
And I must say I was shocked (shocked, I say!) to learn that Cali has been blocking the view of a greenscreen this week.
September 5th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Keith, Im sure that if you came up with a specific algorithm for a form of interpolation that you’d be able to get a patent for that specific algorithm, but not for the idea itself, since, obviously, it’s already a known and used concept :)
September 7th, 2008 at 1:53 am
I quickly came to the site to clarify the clarity issues of the Olympics that were mentioned in this podcast, but I see that everyone beat me to it. So I won’t kick a deadhorse to much. The “digital noise”, artifacts, and macroblocking that you see in the Olympics broadcasts are exactly what was mentioned before me….the typical 19Mbs bitrate starved HD broadcast standard. It’s a sad truth that the national HD broadcast standards were far to rushed and under deliver in the area of bitrate. Some of our favorite shows can better hide these issues that plague live 1080i sporting events by delivering the content in 720p at the same bitrate (“Lost” for one on cable ). Slightly softer image but smoother and nobody is aware of it because your set-top box continues to feed your TV a 1080i signal regardless. Sadly the highest quality HD content you will currently ever see is Blu Ray. A 50Mbs stream at pure 1080P and often uncompressed master audio. Digital, on-demand, downloadable content is the future….but it is a long way away from ever matchng a 50Mbs Blu Ray stream. Sadly though quality is never the deciding factor of the masses. Flat screen technology is not the current consumer standard because it was a higher quality format then CRT and tube based sets. Its the standard because its cool and stylish…not better. Watch HD on a 32inch 16:9 Sony XBR tube television and get ready to be blown away! No pixel refresh issues, no resolution issues, and no interpolation issues. I digress…don’t get me started on the current state of the Youtube quality generation. And Randy…you might be catching, for some reason with your set the sad signs of poor and long GOP Mpeg2 compression. MPEG 2 compression is based on a I, P, B compression structure. The I frames (intra frame) represent a full frame…let’s say a full JPEG frame. Then between that I frame and the next I frame are a series of P and B frames. These frames are motion and color estimates of what might happen between the first I frame, or “key frame”, and the next. The distance between these full I frames is called the GOP structure. The longer the GOP the more estimation and the higher compression…the shorter the more full I frames there are and less compression. So your observation of carry over bits of information is entirely correct. Now in defense of awesome Cali…the better the pixel refresh rate the smoother the motion and less smearing for sure….but sadly it won’t save our Olympic bitrate starved broadcast.
September 7th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
We can blame the local affiliates, but unless someone here has seen the feed from the Olympics coming into the affiliate, we can’t be certain the problems were not caused by NBC trying to shove so many channels out through their limited pipeline out of China. Primarily to make a buck from putting more stuff online, but not letting you watch stuff they were going to broadcast that night, even though you could go to cnn and find out the results already.
I will admit I don’t watch a lot of sports – does this problem exist when they have the US gymnastics finals?
September 7th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Oh Yeah! It is in almost all Sport feeds. I work as a Post Production artist in broadcast and once you have seen the beauty of raw uncompressed HD …its just sad to see the highest quality output the public will see of your work at 19Mbs.
September 7th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Hi Cali,
I like the new layout, except it’s not iPhone friendly in my opinion. Try it, you will probably see what I mean. You have to zoom in on the Direct Download links to get a video to play. Gets to be a pain after awhile.
The other comment is I think the mini feeds are too short and if you are going to continue this, maybe you could offer one at the end that has them all in one video.
Thanks
September 7th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Sorry, couldn’t delete my comments. I accidently put this in the wrong place.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
[url]http://www.techradar.com/news/video/hd-dvd/blu-ray-will-be-dead-by-2012-here-s-why–464705[/url]
May 8th, 2009 at 1:52 am
UZAd4e comment4 ,
December 26th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Thanks for this great article. this is exactly the thing I needed to see.