To HD or Not To HD

The progression from VHS to CD to DVD, and now to HD-DVD and Blu-ray media has coerced most consumers to consider a display upgrade. High-Definition (HD) has been thrust upon us, and it's time you gear up for this digital revolution in home entertainment. When buying an HD-based display (either an LCD or Plasma), for most people the choice boils down to "the largest that I can afford," or "the best that money can buy." So, the big question is, is bigger always better? Resolution is one of the most important factors for shifting to HDTV (HD television), which is why it is also the most misinterpreted, or misguided term that drives users into buying a product of a particular brand. In our quest for an HDTV, we forget the most crucial factor - application.

So, what is this resolution, and how does it affect us?

The resolution of a flat panel TV screen is the amount of vertical and horizontal dots or pixels (picture elements) that join together to create the display screen. More the number of picture elements, that much more data can be added to the image, thus giving you better image detail, color, contrast, etc. The viewing area of the screen can be increased as well, depending on the size of an individual pixel. With the increase in size, and a greater number of physical pixels in that size, videos will appear richer and smoother over longer distances as well.

If you've visited a television showroom lately, you would have noticed most televisions labeled "HD Ready." The fact that a product bears the label "HD-ready," does not necessarily mean that it can display the full picture resolution possible from an HD source. Most HD-ready sets do not have enough pixels to give true pixel-for-pixel representation without interpolation. For a television set to be truly high-definition, it has to support 1080p resolutions wiz. 1920 x 1080 pixels. Some of the TV sets that can do full HD are the Mosel Blaque series of Samsung, Plasmas from LG - like the 71py10, or the KLV-40X200A LCD TV from Sony.

In our race for buying an HDTV, we fail to notice a crucial aspect of television called application. If you buy a 1080p television, you also need the input source of that television to be capable of doing HD resolutions so that they can be displayed on the screen pixel-by-pixel for optimum clarity. According to most usage models, a television is either connected to your friendly cablewala or uses some form of satellite-based service like DTH, or Tata sky; it can also be used to connect external players to watch movies, or consoles to play games. Additional video input sources like a handycam can also be connected to preview that last family vacation you shot. If we analyze each of the above usage models carefully, then we can conclude that in order to play most of this content in full-screen mode, it has to be interpolated or upscaled up to 5 times the resolution, or even more in some cases that results in severe loss of quality when compared to even standard-definition televisions.

While HDTV is definitely the future of television, I feel it is yet not ready for mainstream use. If you are a budget conscious person like most Indians, wait till the prices fall and the availability of HD quality cable broadcasts, or movies that come in the HD-DVD or Bluray format which are still not available in India through any form of retail stores. For gamers, HDTV is a worthy buy only if you own a PS3 and play games like Gran Tourismo HD, Virtua Tennis 3, Ridge Racer 7, and NBA 2007 which can be played at 1080p resolutions. Most other games are 720p and the consoles like XBox 360 can do only 1080i natively.

While HD is the future of audio-visual home entertainment, in its current form, HD is not ready for mainstream use yet.