I know a guy with the dish network. I think he is a crazy, if you like looking at dishes just go into the kitchen.
Posted on 05/28/2007 7:39:42 AM PDT by george76
physicist says multiple factors affect picture quality.
If you own a high-definition TV, don't read Edward Kelley's new tipsheet for folks in the market for plasma, LCD and other high-end displays. He doesn't want to ruin your day.
Kelley is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Flat Screen Display Laboratory in Boulder. He wrote most of what one in the industry called "a bible" for the industrial testing and certification of flat-panel screens.
Kelley's tipsheet opens sternly, with an all-caps warning.
"SOME PEOPLE HAVE FOUND THAT THE FOLLOWING MATERIAL HAS REDUCED THEIR ABILITY TO ENJOY THEIR FLAT PANEL TELEVISION," it reads, adding, "YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!"
Kelly, 58, has six small NIST labs at his disposal, from the cavelike Black Lab full of spectroradiometers, photometers, cameras and other equipment to a machine shop where he makes his own lamps and light sources to shine on various screens. The most striking device, a 6-foot-diameter blue orb called an integrating sphere, could be Mork from Ork's second car.
Don't ask Kelley to recommend a specific brand or whether to go with LCD, plasma or micromirrors. He concentrates on how to properly measure the performance of any sort of display in terms of color, brightness, grayscale rendering and other factors. Plus, he says, different environments call for different screens.
Manufacturers buying millions of displays a year rely on standards Kelley developed, refined or verified "in his darkrooms and labs and caves,"
"NIST is a servant to industry."
Kelley has been an innovative servant. Among many other things, he developed a globally recognized test for display-screen quality using a plastic-foam beer cooler, which remains a Black Lab fixture.
"This is called redneck metrology,"
(Excerpt) Read more at rockymountainnews.com ...
• HD-ready is not HD. HD-ready televisions can display high-definition TV signals, but many fall short of the 1920-by-1080-pixel screen resolution of true high-definition TV.
• Get more tips. Download Kelley’s tipsheet at pdl.nist.gov/tips.html
Source: Edward Kelley, Nist
Hell... I’m still using a SONY Trinitron purchased back in 1980.
ping
Pinging the list.......
I have no clue how many pixels my Vizio 42” LCD has. It works fine.
>> pdl.nist.gov/tips.html
Hmmm... that link doesn’t work for me (wants authentication).
And I can’t seem to find it on the NIST main site.
Bummer!
Despite - or perhaps because of - his immersion in flat-panel display technology, Kelley doesn’t own one.
“I’m waiting for them to come down in price and go up in quality,”
me too
wants authentication
> HD-ready televisions can display high-definition TV signals, but many fall short of the 1920-by-1080-pixel screen resolution of true high-definition TV <
I doubt seriously that many people will ever be able tell the difference between a 780p picture and a 1080i picture, unless viewing on a 50” or bigger screen, from a distance of five feet or less.
(The 780p images on my 42” screen look great even from four feet away, and I can’t imagine needing anything bigger or with more resolution — short of operarting a full-sized movie theater!)
I have yet to see an LCD or plasma screen over 30” that doesn’t look distractingly pixelated.
That’s including the most recent, most expensive models priced $3000 and up.
DLP looks much better, if you don’t mind the extra bulk in your home. (I do.)
The audio is going on it though... and I’m debating whether to invest in its repair.
My 52” Plasma is absolutely incredible. Stunning. Even six months after I purchased it, I continually marvel at the quality. It is mounted on the wall, about 12 feet from the sofa, with a viewing height of 5’ at bottom to 7’ at top, with a slight downward angle. The slight downward angle points at the viewers, and keeps the screen free of dust!
I get the rainbow effect with DLP... so In my case it looks like crap..
I ended up buying a 30" JVC with a CRT. It blew away all the other units at the store and was on sale because they were phasing out CRTs.
According to Consumer Reports the only regret most had was not getting a bigger screen.
Sears carries a couple of HDTVs that use CRTs. They look great, but they weigh a ton.
Mine is only a little newer, but they both are dinosaurs that will no longer function without assistance after next year, when HD becomes the only kind of signal available over the air. Keeping these sets in operation will require a converter box, and will show your picture in the “letterbox” format with much of the screen unused and the rest at about one third the resolution available.
bigger is better ?
Can't resist. Ex-cable operator here, sold the operation in 1999 and two years late quit television altogether. Even then, the 'comedy' wasn't funny, the 'news' was painful to watch, 'entertainment' was just propaganda of some sort. Ain't ever going back.
We got my mother-in-law a 32" Sanyo Picture tube TV that has a regular tuner and a Digital Tuner which can receive broadcast Hi-Def (720p & 1080p) . The High-Def is awesome since it is an analog screen. She gets the network and PBS High Def channels for free plus many other digital channels that are not on cable or available to normal antennas.
Oh, goodie, now I get to watch 95% of the trash on
TV in high resolution. Can’t wait for the “view”,
WW Mania, CNN, Nancy Grace, meaningless sporting events,
poorly written dramas, childish comedies, cartoon like
CGI dominated blockbusters so I can see the makeup lines,
wrinkles, false teeth, lift lines, so much better.
Oh, goodie, now I get to watch 95% of the trash on
TV in high resolution. Can’t wait for the “view”,
WW Mania, CNN, Nancy Grace, meaningless sporting events,
poorly written dramas, childish comedies, cartoon like
CGI dominated blockbusters so I can see the makeup lines,
wrinkles, false teeth, lift lines, so much better.
Better we be led by NIST than Joe Kane, Jim Burns or Joel Silver—or for that matter, Microsoft or Apple.
When tv broadcasts are shoehorned into the new 16x9 format, what will be done with the 60 years (1997-2007) of tv programming in the old 4:3 dimensions? Are they going to chop off the top and bottom of the screen image? Stretch the image? Or fill the margins with black bars or worse yet, advertising?
No they will just block it to a 4:3 dimension. My 52" Sanyo has the option of displaying 4:3 or 16:9. Don't buy a HDTV without this feature. If it will only display 16:9, 90% of all movies will look real bad. It aint worth the money....unless you like watching stretched out fat people.
They will put bars on the sides, and if you are still using an old set with a converter box, the picture will be shrunk on all 4 sides. Your converter box (like my HDTV) MIGHT have an option to expand it to fill the screen in this circumstance, but since the picture was “pre-shrunk”, the resolution will be much lower.
This is Bullshit* and it frosts me every time I see this statement in whatever form.
NIST is a servant to the consumer, the ultimate beneficiaries of his work; no consumers, no industry, and industry has neither the means nor the long-term commitment to research and standards.
Same with taxes... It's as silly as saying that government taxes BIG TOBACCO. Silly season again. The consumers ultimately pays for everything.
So am I.
I know a guy with the dish network. I think he is a crazy, if you like looking at dishes just go into the kitchen.
Kinda like watching Starwars at the movie theater sitting in the front row?
Fantastic Post BUMP!
We’ve got a 27” Sony Trinitron XBR, about 20 years old. The color recently went out. New tube TVs don’t have the features of my old warhorse, so I took it in for repair. It cost $125 for a new thermistor and it’s as good as new.
I’m still drooling over large high-quality LCDs with a good 5.1 sound system. My wife says I have to drool for another 6 months or so.
You said: I get the rainbow effect with DLP... so In my case it looks like crap..
***
I heard a lot about rainbow effect before I got our last TV to install in our finally (after 18 years) basement. We looked around a lot and settled on the Mitsubishi 52” DLP and I couldn’t be happier. I never saw the rainbow effect on any DLP tvs, and I understand it only appears for some people. We are VERY pleased with this set. even non-HD digital programming is great, but HD programming is fantastic, especially golf and NASCAR. I am no big fan of NASCAR, but when you see it on HD you can’t pass it by.
The price difference between DLP and plasma and LCD made up for the depth increase.
>>The correct URL is:
http://www.fpd.nist.gov/tips.html
<<
I wonder how many people can quickly and easily get that PDF up on their TV in 1080p to start with?
And for that matter there are 3 different grades of 1080p (1080p/24 1080p/30 and 1080p/60)
By far the biggest problem I’ve noticed is the input, not the TV. Regular DirecTV and regular DVDs vary between pretty good looking and wretched.
I just upgraded to a Sharp AQUOS 46” 1080p (the new and improved 46) last week. It is a “true” LCD HD 1080p. Very nice display.
“I just upgraded to a Sharp AQUOS 46” 1080p (the new and improved 46) last week. It is a “true” LCD HD 1080p. Very nice display.”
I paid $1,099. I’m watching Fox News. No HD there.
I wish Canon could settle their dispute with Nano-Proprietary so that they can begin production on their SED TVs. If this technology is made available, we will see High Definition like we have never seen before. Contrast ratio will be 100,000 to 1.
Cool, they have all those tests in an open FTP folder
ftp://ftp.fpdl.nist.gov/pub/
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