Revolution will not support HD

That's exactly what I thought when I clicked this thread. But in any case, as much as I would love to blow some cash on and HDTV, it's not going to happen for me for a while. I think that this is the case for a lot of gamers. And I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, I still think that they should (and need) to catch up a bit and support HD, but I don't see it neccessary for the success of a console. If they keep cranking out cheap remakes and focusing on pokemon and super smash bros etc. etc. instead of some new ideas and good platforms. That is what will make or break the console. (sorry to any super smash bros fans but how many times can you fight the same characters on a semi-3D floating level?)

Now... the Revolution could still end up being a little kiddie console. But that'll be a whole different problem.

 

The Japanese have had HDTV since the 1990's...

 

Hahah! Who made the mistake? Nintendo or you two guys?


...word is bondage...

 

And 480p is technically not high def...even though you need a HDTV. It's just non-interlaced low def.

And fucking awful programming.

 

That's not true. The only thing the FCC requires is a digital tuner - sure, a set might be able to receive a 720p signal, but all it has to do to be compliant is downconvert it to 480i.

HD is being pushed too hard, too fast. The FCC is trying to push through an incompatible video standard in about one-third of the time that the current compatible NTSC color standard took to dominate the market. I think this is what would have happened had they chosen the incompatible CBS field-sequential color system instead of RCA's compatible system.

I think it's smart that Nintendo isn't making HD a big selling point. As long as the system has VGA output, then your images will look decent even on an HDTV - most of the problem with displaying SD signals on an HD set isn't the mere resolution difference, it's the use of crappy deinterlacing algorithms, and the fact that you're feeding a composite signal into the set from somewhere. I was at Circuit City day before yesterday, and I saw the same exact SD signal going into several HD sets. I looked at two in particular, and the difference was like night and day. One of them was a Sony set, and it looked perfectly fluid, no deinterlacing artifacts (like it was just bobbing the video and scaling it to the set's 'native' resolution). The other one looked like it had some ugly-ass 'adaptive' deinterlacing algorithm, and I could see shitloads of stray pixels where the algorithm fucked up. Same incoming signal, one set looked awesome, one set looked like ass.

Also, the technical term for 480p is "extended definition". 480i is SD, 480p is ED, and anything higher than 480p is HD (including a little-used 540p variant, IIRC).

 

Damn, beat me to saying 480p was EDTV, not HD ^_^

Good points there. Converting interlaced video isn't easy to get right - 100Hz CRT TVs have become popular in Europe in recent years, and the way some of them convert 50i just ends up as a blurry artefact-ridden mess. And do you know what makes this worse? Games! As video games have no "shutter speed" as such, there is no blurring in motion like you would get when recording something with a video camera. "adaptive" de-interlacers use motion compensation and vector precision and crap like that, but without any blurring they tend to just fudge up totally.

Basically, interlaced video looks fine when kept interlaced, but you're nearly always going to lose something if you convert it.

Also, I think people like the FCC and broadcasters/manufacturers are trying to push this new technology too fast. In reality, HDTV won't become the de facto standard for at least another decade. Take for example the old 405 line TV system in the UK and Ireland - it was replaced by the 625 line system in the 60's, and subsequently 625-line PAL colour in the late 60's (there was no decision on a colour system for 405-line TV, though PAL, NTSC and SECAM were all tested). But the BBC, ITV and RTÉ were still transmitting 405-line services alongside PAL up until the mid-80s! Obviously, it took *SOME TIME* for some people to change over...

OK, we are more used to technological advancements these days - look at how popular DVDs have become in less than 10 years - but still, it's not something that's going to happen overnight. Especially here - we still don't even have DVB-T -_-

 

The FCC is only pushing the switch to digital broadcasting so that they can resell the analog bandwidth to the cellular carriers. It has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with cold hard cash.

 

yup digital is no better or worse than analog, just different.

As for japan i thought they were not really doing the HDTV as much as we are.

And no system yet has put out a better signal than the dreamcast.

 

They've got a few HD channels (BS HD is the acronym... no joke) but I"m nto sure when they started. They are perhaps the worst people at TV.

 

Ha, I enjoy some of the BS HD programming..then again I have a high threshold for boredom and pain.

At any rate a stop to the local electronics store seems to show that practically all new TVs sold here SEEM to be HD TVs at least, though I really didn't bother to look and it doesn't mean old TVs aren't still in active service.

 

HD has been around in Japan since at least the early 90's - MUSE discs (a variation of LaserDiscs) were 1080i, but it was probably analogue video, and god knows how much HD TVs cost back then.

And looking at the Japanese Panasonic site, it seems they still make non-HD TVs - look here:
http://panasonic.jp/43_video/line_up/index.html
I can't see any mention of "hi-vision" or anything higher than D1 (480i) on any of these.

 

Only this year have they started to really advertise HD TV in Japan. you'll still be able to watch normal TV though. Japanese TV uses two different waves UHF and VHF. As far as I know in the UK we only use UHF. This is a pain in the arse because you need two aerials (antennas). Analogue TV will be around fora while still in Japan since they have only just started to make mobile phones with built in TV and FM radio (Both in stereo too :9 )

Yakumo

 

*sigh* I think its pretty cheap of nintendo by not suporting HD.... We used SD long enough its time to push HD. I think nintendo is making an big mistake, ah well they always been strange...

with an japanese of american gamecube you can't connect an normale rgb lead, with the european no s-video lead. European cube games don't support progressive scan. Nintendo really has to stop fooling around.

 

You mean.... Japanese cell phones have analog tuners? :smt1069
That would be so frickin' leet, as those are usually quite big devices requiring lots of shielding. And here in Holland we use VHF as well as UHF, and as far as I remember nobody requires two antennas (though we use cable mostly, without separate "boxes" like the US though).

 

Actually, it's both, depending on the circumstances.

With a pristine signal, a digital broadcast WILL look cleaner and sharper than an analog broadcast. Number one, analog is limited to RF, which we all know is worse than composite and line level audio, whereas a digital signal can originate as composite, s-video, or component, and you'll retain most of the quality.

With a lot of interference (or an extremely low bitrate) then digital begins to lose. In the case of interference, you'll have a viewable analog signal long after the digital signal drops below the threshold and blacks out. In the case of a low bitrate, you see excessive macroblocking and edge artifacts, where the codec is trying to squeeze out too many bits.

Digital video done right is not even comparable to analog video (analog component notwithstanding). But when digital video is done wrong, it tends to fall apart faster than analog.

 

As In bloody sky digital....

 

And Cable (NTL), and freeview, they all suck donkey dick!

 

Well, I've got a mixture of good and bad channels. For example, channels like Biography, History International, and HBO are awesome quality, being originated as a component signal and using a very high bitrate. Other channels are like Nick GAS where the bitrate is so low that the quality is absolutely horrible on anything but a completely still image. Some channels are even originated as composite, which wreaks havoc on a low-bitrate codec, as it tries to keep up with the chroma crawl. Oddly enough, the Jewelry Channel (home shopping) has one of the better quality signals from a technical standpoint, with zero chroma crawl.

But anyway, this is digressing from the topic at hand, since the Rev would not use HD broadcast standards anyway, so discussing digital compression is irrelevant. Any game console would only use an HD interconnect, since most every HD set I've seen has direct video inputs in addition to an aerial input (and then of course there are the HD monitors that aren't really TV sets until you buy an ATSC tuner).

The fact of the matter is that if SD signals look like shit on your set, it's your set's fault, not the fault of the SD signal. As I said earlier, I have seen HD sets that merely bob the image, and produce a much better result on virtually all footage. Most manufacturers seem to think, however, that they need ugly-ass adaptive and motion compensative deinterlacing algorithms for SD inputs, and as a result SD signals look like shit. I watch interlaced SD material with my laptop on both the built-in LCD and external monitors all the time at resolutions higher than 720x480 (including 1440x900, which surpasses the resolution of 720p sets), and with DScaler's bob algorithm in conjunction with ffdshow, the video quality is superb, and just as smooth with 60fps material as an actual SDTV. This applies both to material ripped from DVD and material recorded on my cable DVR (both analog and digital stations) and then captured via an analog-DV converter.

 

I'm sorry if I misunderstand (highly probable due to time etc.) but RF, composite, S-video, RGB, YUV, etc. are all analog. They are ways of transferring the signal *into* the TV, the actual broadcast is another thing altogether.