[Closed] HD TV - is it really worth it?

I much prefer it but after a while it's more that it's normal and watching non-HD films, nature stuff and sports looks a bit pants. So you won't go "wow best money I ever spent" every time you turn the TV on but if you watch a fair bit of TV I think it's well worth it.

Can anyone point me to a great TV experience worth paying an extra tenner a month for?

No but I can point you to an okayish "TV experience" that you don't pay an extra tenner a month for:

http://www.freeview.co.uk/HD ?

What size TV do you have now? I find HD looks much better on my 42" TV, but have read it is not so noticeable on smaller ones.

I much prefer HD nowadays and in fact I have become a HD snob as I mostly refuse to watch non-HD programmes.

Nature programmes look great in HD, The Masters also looks great and Gardeners World (I kid you not ;))

defiantly worth it, if you don't plan on ever buying a playstation 3 or a blue ray player don't worry about 1080p sky doesn't broadcast in 1080p nor will they in the near future it's way too expensive. Get a descent 720p TV and as a side note plasma TV's give the truest colour representation also don't listen to the sales men they are usually trying to sell of old stock (not always a bad thing). You can't go wrong with a Panasonic Viera.

We have a 42 inch standard def NEC plasma panel in the lounge and a 37 inch LED Sony HD TV in the bedroom (its a big bedroom). Like you Kryton I'm struggling to justify upgrading the plasma panel in the lounge to HD along with the sky box and AV receiver as I'm not blown away with the HD I'm seeing on the Sony (or any other HD I've seen anywhere else). At the moment I'm contemplating giving 1080p HD a miss and waiting for 4k resolution which will be along in the next couple of years.

I've had Sky HD since it first came out, love it. There has been several improvements over the past two/three years.

Just go in a shop and ask to have a play.

gmandavison - Member

defiantly worth it,

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😉

It depends how much £10 is worth to you. We have it, but we're going to cancel it now I'm not earning as much.

Still have blu-rays and PS3 games in 'HD' though so don't mind much.

What size TV do you have now? I find HD looks much better on my 42" TV, but have read it is not so noticeable on smaller ones.

It's the other way around. On a bigger TV the pixel count still remains 720 or 1080 so the pixels become more prominent unless you move away from the TV. Your room size and the distance you sit away from the TV will determine optimal TV size. I remember going in my neighbours house once and trying to explain why the sky hd on his much bigger all singing and dancing new 55" 1080p tv looked shit compared to my 720p 32" panasonic. If he was a gamer or into films and bought a blue ray player then he would benefit more but he thought Godfather 3 was the best Godfather! 😕

 

I think it depends on what sort of programmes you watch. If you're into stuff that tends to be driven by picture quality such as wildlife showcases then it will make a difference. If you're more into stuff with decent scripts and acting then I don't think it's worth it.

Regarding the Sky £10 per month upgrade fee for HD, for me it was not worth it, at the time I took it out there were only a few chanels that broadcasted 100% of their content in HD, most offered a mixture of HD and upscaled viewing.

95% of our sky viewing is in std quality, sometimes we will swap to the HD format to watch, such as Top Gear or some of the BBC documentaries, but most of the time we cannot be bothered to swap as the standard quality is good enough viewing for us.

If you are using a SD box connected on scart presently, then the New box on HDMI will look much nicer, even on Standard Channels.

(I am on Virgin, but same sort of thing)

I rarely watched the HD channels I had but the box is good. If you already have the HD box but not the channels then (personally) i wouldnt bother for a tenner

If I needed a new TV I'd probably go for it, but I wouldn't buy a new TV for the sake of it. Can you make use of your old TV (kids room etc) cos you'll get *ugger all for a second hand one really.

the darts is ace in HD 🙂

You have to have better eyesight than me to detect any difference on a 32" TV. That's with Freeview HD, though, maybe Sky is better.

slight hijack...
I'm tempted to upgrade my FreeView PVR now that HD channels are available in my area. Does anyone know the quality/resolution of the FreeView HD content? (I've Googled this but not found any answers.)

HD is a misnomer - it should be AD - acceptable definition - and SD is sh1t definition.

Does anyone know the quality/resolution of the FreeView HD content?

same as on Virgin and Sky - which they cripple so Freeview HD looks as good.

Would like to point out that everyone looks very old in HD.

You can see all the wrinkles and trowelled-on makeup

You have to have better eyesight than me to detect any difference on a 32" TV

you need to get your eyes checked, or you have an exceptionally poor TV, or you are sitting miles away from it.

im pretty sure bbc is 1080 on freeviewHD, id have to check it when i get home

but then i think itv 1 is too and the picture isnt quite as good on that

You can see all the wrinkles and trowelled-on makeup

funny thing that you used to also be able to see this with the original Sony Trinitrons and a decent UHF (not freeview) PAL picture.

The difference between a decent UHF PAL picture and freeview is quite startling.

im pretty sure bbc is 1080 on freeviewHD, id have to check it when i get home

1080i according to this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/digitaltv/faq_hd.shtml

BBC picture quality has gone down over time as they apply new 'compression' techniques, but tell us there is no difference.

They originally said DAB couldn't go below 192Kb for quality reasons, but now it is rare to see that high a rate, and then only if you want classical.

Same thing is happening to HD - Sky have demo sites in shopping malls and the pixellation on their displays isn't good.

funny thing that you used to also be able to see this with the original Sony Trinitrons and a decent UHF (not freeview) PAL picture

Not as much. The picture was good, but there just wasn't the information in the signal.

Not as much. The picture was good, but there just wasn't the information in the signal

a damn sight better than freeview though - I remember being able to see the stubble on a BBC newsreaders face, and now you can again!

That's progress for you.

To the OP - if you live near this auction it could be worth looking at this (otherwise stop reading here...):

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sharp-Aquos-tv-and-dvd-player-/300698539827?pt=UK_AudioTVElectronics_Video_Televisions&hash=item4603079733

It is actually a 540P set - Sharp called it optimised for PAL.

A PAL picture is 576 lines - this set would lose the top and bottom 12 pixels and map each line onto the screen with no upscaling nasties.

A 720P picture would be scaled down, but scaling up is where most of the problems lie as you are having to guess at the extra info.

A 1080i picture also mapped straight on to the 540P screen with no upscaling.

The pictures and colours on it were excellent, both HD and SD - mine went to my mate in Cardiff as I wanted to feed it from a computer.

When I went HD I fed my Sony from a Virgin V+ box, which does a good job of upscaling SD (better than the tivo), but it took a lot of adjustment before the upscaled picture was as good as the directly mapped Sharp, and there was virtually no difference on HD pictures unless you sat about a foot away from the screen.

Here are the reviews on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sharp-LC32P50E-Brightness-Contrast-Panel/dp/B000AQ9H2Q

It might not sell on auction as it is low spec, so you might be able to get a good price on it.

Have a viewing first as early versions could have some motion artifacts with certain frame rates, but later ones were smooth. ITV soaps like the bill showed the artifacts up.

Thanks to all for the FreeView HD resolution query.

Don't pay sky £10 a month; just suggest that you wish to cancel and go to virgin coz there HD content is at no additional monthly charge, and their PVR box is better. Then you either get a cheap hd box and all the free to air HD channels activated at no extra cost, or you get to line Branson's pockets instead of Murdoch's either way you are a (relative) winner...

That's progress for you.

We used to have five channels, now we have..about 8 or 9.. so yeah progress 🙂

I've had the HD box for about 3 years but I don't own an HD telly, great box, not bothered about HD, or a TV bigger than 32" either.

Hmmm.

Well, TV cost isn't an issue as the inlaws want to buy it for us as a moving in present to our new house. Father in law is a technophobe internet researcher gone mad so we will get a good one.

I have no issues with our 32" widescreen CRT, its the other £10 to sky I'm thinking about. Thye new place is "Virginilised" with the present owners, might be worth a discussion with the Mrs before we extend our sky contract....

We don't have it (I can't justify the extra £10 a month) but I do have a PS3 and have started buying my kids Blurays of all the cartoon films. We have Toy Story 2 on Bluray and we have seen it lots then at the weekend we watched it at 'grannies house' on video. It almost hurt to watch it there on her old CRT tv via VHS.

But I still wouldn't pay the £10 for 'a bit better' picture. I'd pay £10 a month for 'a bit better programming' though.

We used to have five channels

Virgins Tivo box is quite nice - plus 27 HD channels on the XL package which is £45 a month plus line rental, with 30/60 Mb broadband.

I like HD for good films.

That's it.

Sky TV is awful and depressing.

I have no issues with our 32" widescreen CRT, its the other £10 to sky I'm thinking about.

Wait - you know HD won't show up on a CRT telly, don't you?

Of course molgrips. I mean I have no urge to replace the TV, I'm happy with it.

But becuase it doesn't fit very well in the TV space in the new place (from a depth perspective), the inlaws want to buy a new slim one.

I'm wondering then that whilst I'm getting my Sky account transferred I should tick the HD box.

Virgins Tivo box is quite nice

We have Tivo with a 46" TV. It seems to do a pretty good job at up-scaling the SD channels/ I struggle to tell the difference between the normal and the HD channels unless I go right up to the TV.

My 9 year old says "why isn't this in HD?" if we watch normal channels. He can definitely tell the difference. As can I. Wife though, she couldn't care less - don't tell her its £10 a month, will ya!

Maybe I just need glasses.

Wait - you know HD won't show up on a CRT telly, don't you?

that's only true because no one makes a CRT for that res anymore - I've seen a 1280 Sony Trinitron CRT but it was ages ago.

have we had this yet ?

[img] [/img]

If you have sky+ already you could get a freesat telly to get the freesat HD telly and use one of your cables to get the feesat. I didn't like the fact that sky wouldn't give you the free HD channels.

HD is good, especially on wildlife / big landscape programs.

Makes you realise how 'dirty' normal transmissions are, although there are rumours that they deliberately de-grading the normal channels.

We weren't making use of the Sky package so went freesat and bought a Humax box. Apart from a couple of bugs with the Humax box (which you learn to live with) I've no regrets.

Perhaps not worth paying £10 a month extra unless you get some decent channels, BBC being one of them.

If you like football its definitely worth it.

Not worth it on anything much smaller than 32" IMO

If you like eurosport, their HD is massively better than their "normal" but our telly's to small to see a difference with other HD vs normal (eg BBC)

28" TV here, got HD and you can tell the difference but it's not that noticable on a smaller TV

I instantly know if the daft bint indoors has recorded something in SD that should be in HD. The sound quality is a giveaway as well as the picture.

I found Die Hard 4.0 a good Sky HD reference film - I've had people round and shown it them and they have literally been blown away by the PQ that you can actually get on a TV.

As an aside, I upgraded to a 40" 1080 telly frmo a 32" 720 one - the sole reason was for Playstation games. Telly was fine, the images on the games were fine but I just couldn't read the text and those little maps in the corner of the screen and stuff.

We had the sd skyplus box. Called up to cancel as we could've get freeview hd and pay less each month.
They gave us a free hd box (about £100 at thetime) and a free hd package. When the first bill came in it had an extra £10 on for hd, fek that, got on to customer service. Cue a long and drawn out coupla conversations explaining what I'd been promised, they maintained they can't do that so asked to get put through to complaints but complaints dept doesn't take new comPlaints over the phone (wonder why??).
Had to email them and wait on them getti g back to me. Which they did about a week later (v poor IMO), after being passed to someone who eventually understood it when I spelled my surname (H A N N) was told they couldn't give me the hd pack for free but would let me have the box for free and give me a tenner off my monthly pack for 6 months..
Get the freeview hd channels, money off and the free hd box.
My wife notices the difference and her eyesight is pretty poor. I would recommend getting hd in whatever guise you can, but if possible get virgin and don't give your money to Murdoch.
Failing that call sky once a year and threaten to cancel or downgrade and you'll get money off or something free for a while.. That's how everyone I know has had a complaint dealt with, even my mum.

We've got a Freesat HD+ box. After the novelty wears off - it just wouldnt be worth paying any extra (although it's free for me) in imho. Getting some programmes like BBC / ITV natural history in HD is great - but for some weird reason these look better in SD too?

Blu-rays are noticably better than dvd's imo, worth all the HD kerfuffle.