I had a chance recently to watch a newly installed HD TV. What I found was a mixed assortment of questionable results. First, the true HD channels are astoundingly clear. This is most noticeable in the tiniest details of the image such as small objects or most noticeably, facial lines and blemishes. I am not that impressed because these details do not necessarily add to the scene enjoyment. Rather, they can be distracting by having a hierarchical effect of drawing your eyes to a pinpoint detail to the detriment of the overall picture.
My second problem with the HD format is digital artifacting (over-pixilating) of older broadcasts. This is a matter of timing because majority of the programming available prior to recent HD broadcasts are analogue and since this programming was created in the past, it is unlikely to change. This is most notable (once again) in the small details in an older picture. Because the quantity of pixel information needed to adequately define a high resolution picture is not present, the details become blurry or over-pixilated. This could also result from an inadequate transfer of film based material to digital. Low transfer scans result in pixilation or artifacting of small or moving objects.
These details are often so pixilated as to be unrecognizable which as you might guess, is not a desirable viewing experience. Once again, faces are the most dis tubing because we are naturally, visually drawn to the Human face. Other areas suffer from this but vary from scene to scene depending on size and movement (movement often results in the image blurring into artifacts because a visual detail is changing rapidly without the pixel information to render it from moment to moment.)
One last comment on HD programming. I was very disappointed at the artifacting of text on the screen which looked like a low resolution jpeg. Ugly to say the least. Maybe new fonts will need to be developed to adequately display properly.
So we are caught up in a technical dilemma. Do we buy a HD TV to watch the small (but ever growing) amount of new HD programming and suffer through the pixilating of all older material or buy a conventional television that has a superb resolution for older programming but is incapable of rendering the HD signal? I opt for the older technology for the time being.
