This question is such a softball that I would never trust a salesman to answer it, so i 'll ask my friends, here.

Is there any advantage to HDTV when the program is not HD?
Do some sets "improve" standard definition signals? Do all HD sets do that? Is it proprietary?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

If the program is not broadcast in HD then the picture can actually look worse.

The stations broadcasting them digitally helps some but the problem is the TV attempts to translate them into HD and interpolates the signal.

If you have ever copied an old VHS format tape into CD or DVD format you can see the "pixellation". Same thing happens to HD.

You can compensate for it, somewhat by changing the format on your set but it still will look fuzzy or somewhat out of focus.

The TV will clarify the signal but unfortunately the new technical standards don't jive with the old analog format. Kinda like playing tennis by ping-pong rules.

It will do the same thing "upscaling" DVD players do; zoom the image to fill the screen.

The picture will only look wore if you're standing too close to the set. Standing that close to a tube doesn't look so hot either. From a distance, the HD screen shows SD content very well but the picture isn't any better than on a tube, in my opinion. If you have no HD content to watch, I would wait until the prices come down more.

The power consumption is almost certainly lower than for a tube of the same size, but that's probably not a major concern.

The quality of SD on a HDTV is dependent on the interpolation capability of the TV. I've looked at a variety of different TV's, projectors and outboard processors and most of the time, the outboard boxes do the best job of up-converting. Although, many TV's and projectors do a pretty decent job.

I have a Sony Bravia and it's scaling kind of annoys me because I'm aware of it so I have it set to aviod scaling. That way, the ratio of broadcast pixles to display pixles is always 1:1 or as close as possible. When I switch to a SD channel, it simply puts black bars on both sides of the image.

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-Evan


Benz Fleet:
1968 UNIMOG 404.114
1998 E300
2008 E63


Non-Benz Fleet:
1992 Aerostar
1993 MR2
2000 F250

I can't answer apples to apples.

SD looks very good on the 50" plasma. The previous TV was a 20+ year old 36" SONY.

You would need fairly large black bars on all sides of the image to display the SD signal in its native resolution on any HD screen.

A 1080p screen should display the 425-line SD display better than a 720p screen, as the interpolation is trivial for the former. But unless you want to watch BlueRay video disks, you will find no 1080p content at the present. That will almost certainly change in the future.

When the set upconverts SD it has to "fill in the blanks", essentially "make up" pixels to put into the extra scan lines. This issue is very important (IMHO) but is not officially addressed by anyone as far as I know. I think CR does have a column for "SD picture quality" but I am not sure. Sales people have no clue about it since they make their money hyping the other end rather than addressing the reality that half of what you will watch is SD. I had a Sony Bravia and I thought it did an amazing job of this, better even then the broadcasters. For example, when I would watch the Simpsons broadcast in SD and upconverted by my set it looked good. When I watched an SD rerun of the Simpsons broadcast in HD and upconverted by the station, it had strange patterns at all the edges of everything, around everone's heads for example. The only way to compare is to get the store to switch on some SD so you can see how the sets handle it, but they either don't know how to do this or won't. My local Video Only store did switch some on for a while for me.

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1998 C230 330,000 miles (currently dead of second failed EIS, yours will fail too, turning you into the dealer's personal human cash machine)
1988 F150 144,000 miles (leaks all the colors of the rainbow)
Previous stars: 1981 Brava 210,000 miles, 1978 128 150,000 miles, 1977 B200 Van 175,000 miles, 1972 Vega (great, if rusty, car), 1972 Celica, 1986.5 Supra

I also have a Bravia, and agree that it does a fairly good job with SD content. However, it cost a lot more than competing brands of the same size. I bought it because the color looked better to me and not because of SD concerns, but I'm very happy with it.

I just went back and looked at the TV and I have it set on "normal" which displays the format as it is broadcast not the resolution. I got it bas-ackwards. 4:3 has the bars and 16:9 does not.

What I was trying to say earlier was the stretch to fill the screen was what was annoying, not the interpolation.

__________________
-Evan


Benz Fleet:
1968 UNIMOG 404.114
1998 E300
2008 E63


Non-Benz Fleet:
1992 Aerostar
1993 MR2
2000 F250

Exactly why I am asking here. i do not trust the sales people to
1) KNOW their product, or
2) Tell the truth.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

After about 15 min selling flat screen TV's, sales people learn that if they say "this upconverts SD content very well" they get a blank stare. Where as if they say "This super deluxe ultra high definition TV set has umteen gazillions of lines of super resolution and if you put a gold plated monster cable on it then it will blow your mind out" then they get a sale. So it is not really their fault. They sell to stupid people so they have to sell stupidly.

__________________
1998 C230 330,000 miles (currently dead of second failed EIS, yours will fail too, turning you into the dealer's personal human cash machine)
1988 F150 144,000 miles (leaks all the colors of the rainbow)
Previous stars: 1981 Brava 210,000 miles, 1978 128 150,000 miles, 1977 B200 Van 175,000 miles, 1972 Vega (great, if rusty, car), 1972 Celica, 1986.5 Supra

I do not subscribe to the concept of communicating to the lowest common denominator. I expect knowledgeable sales people who speak English. I will probably not be shopping where the stereos are blaring New Age at 120dB.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

The best place I found was Video Only if you have one. They had a couple of very knowledgeable guys.

__________________
1998 C230 330,000 miles (currently dead of second failed EIS, yours will fail too, turning you into the dealer's personal human cash machine)
1988 F150 144,000 miles (leaks all the colors of the rainbow)
Previous stars: 1981 Brava 210,000 miles, 1978 128 150,000 miles, 1977 B200 Van 175,000 miles, 1972 Vega (great, if rusty, car), 1972 Celica, 1986.5 Supra

That is why I bought the Bravia at WalMart. I first went to Best Buy expecting help from the sales people, and boy was I disappointed. If I had to do all the work myself anyway, I might as well go to WalMart, so I did.