Everything looks better in HD… right?

Not sure why your post merits a thumbs down.

I completely agree with you on sound. We have an early 42″ plasma that actually has reasonable sound quality, but feeding Dolby Digital through a receiver and getting the surround sound effects is another world of sound, a door banging behind you, a helicopter flying across the room, being in the midst of the action.

Thank Alfa some think I should have restricted myself to commenting on the actual video formats but the convo is also about your enjoyment of what you watch , that needs sound unless it is a pre- 30,s movie you lose out big time on the actual enjoyment of the film/DVD . I will give you a “thumbs up ” to see how people react.

I agree with Alfa and have neutralised the scoring.

TV sound has gotten poorer because people wanted them thinner and thinner plus any audio enthusiast is expected to be using a surround receiver anyway.

It does indeed, but you might be surprised to see just how cunning some of the algorithms in video editing are becoming. I suspect it won’t be long before we see old, video-sourced material being refreshed at much higher definition. To a limited extent that’s already possible but video editing continues to move in bounds.

It’s very good, and the US shows are normally archived in their original 35mm prints. But there’s still a big market for Star Trek.

We are big fans of Star Trek and have re-watched nearly all the series and films over the last few years. Next Generation is our favourite, but Voyager, DS9 and Enterprise were even better second time around.

We have Star Trek the original series recording at the moment but not on an HD channel. Although the recordings are quite good, I think they would be even better on an HD channel. So we are hoping one of the other channels will show it soon.

I’ve been watching ST Voyager recently on Netflix. I was reminded about why I didn’t really put in in my ‘really want to see again’ category. All series take a while to hit their stride and ST Voyager was no exception. But despite doing what ST has always done well (present current moral issues in a hypothetical future setting) the background knowledge that Kate Mulgrew, portraying the apparently Bipolar Janeway, made life extremely difficult for Jeri Ryan on set because she resented a good looking (some say stunning) woman being brought in ‘to boost ratings’ changes the way I perceive the scenes which involve them both, sadly.

As an aside, ST Voyager used models and not CGI until season 3, when it moved over the CGI. In terms of overall quality I’d place ST-TNG first, ST-DS9 second, ST-TOS third and Voyager last. TOS lost both money and its way in season 3, and the egregious Shatner (unpleasant individual in real life) always seeking the limelight did the franchise no favours.

No, ST:V was the first Trek to use only CGI and no models.

And I agree Kate Mulgrew should not have treated Jeri the way she did. She was particularly upset over Jennifer Lien being fired to make room for a model to bring in sex appeal. For a show that was supposed to be progressive with regards to women, I can understand why KM was so angry, though I can’t understand why she blamed Jeri for it. Fortunately for Voyager fans, Jeri’s performance was absolutely fantastic and the character was written beautifully. They should have fired Garrett Wang instead of Kes. Kes was just coming into her own, and Harry Kim never did anything for the show except detract from it. In fact, if he had been killed off, it would have been the character’s one and only dramatic contribution to the show. But alas.

(No offense to GW, but the character was just a bunch of blah taking up space.)

Star Trek has a history of treating its female actors poorly (Grace Lee Whitney, Gates McFadden, Terry Ferrell, Jennifer Lien) It’s too bad KM chose to make Jeri’s experience on the show miserable in response to their mistreatment of both female actors and characters.

Very philosophical Bishbut and I cant argue with your logic . My problem is I was born with an engineering type critical brain that easily spots small flaws in man made equipment and cant help being irritated by it and wondering how to overcome it. I would love to be born accepting things as they are but not in this incarnation . Without a critical sense we would not get very far in human evolution , tools would not be envisaged , inventions would not be made , we would be lucky to get farther than the wheel. Actually I have small demands on humanity – a small cottage in a country setting with a garden and a small stream nearby, the birds singing in the trees , wildlife all around , a few white clouds in the blue sky , a gentle breeze, vegetables growing nearby . Then I woke up to reality but one of our ex posters has said he is living my dream and -yes – I am actually jealous .

When our CRT TV finally gave up in 2005 we bought a 42″ Pioneer Plasma TV – quite a shock to adjust to such a change! Terrific picture but we to received no HD channels. Then we installed Freesat and compared HD and ordinary. Frankly, the difference was not significant so we never go out of our way to watch HD. Whatever, the picture we get is perfectly satisfactory.

The trouble is, the standards we used to be satisfied with – take cars for example – become eclipsed by higher standards that we now cannot possibly do without. Annual mobile phone change for example. Personally I’m too mean to do things like that; my 10 year old Nokia does what I need and I don’t want to find out I need more. What you’ve never had you’ve never missed? But my new car has head up display, speed limiter, auto hold and parking sensors and I now want those!

I think TV is slightly different. Wide screen was the most important change, because it more closely mirrors how we see the world. But TVs are very different in the way they process the image information and what looks stunning on one TV can appear lacklustre on another.

Last year we bought a 55″ Samsung that was a top of the range model and a W? best buy. The difference between SD and HD on that set is frankly astonishing, but the set’s electronics upscale existing image feeds to close to 4K – its native resolution – so just about everything looks better. In the dining room our Bravia 46″ looks feeble by comparison, and it’s also worth remembering that images shot especially with the 4K market in mind are likely to appear stunningly effective.

The best test is Last Night of the Proms. That exposes differences in processing capabilities and sound output. We use an optical feed into our 9 Channel surround system, and that really does make a massive difference.

Yes – it’s almost a sort of artistic sabotage. I suspect we’re dealing with simple incompetence, though. Very reminiscent of what happened in the early days of shooting ST-TOS when the processing labs kept returning the negatives ‘corrected’ to what the processing team deemed accurate colour rendition. Roddenberry was shooing an Orion girl (green skin) and kept getting a normal pink human returned. But cropping of the 16:9 scenes was simply inept.

I agree with you Sophie. Just because the technology enables something to be done it doesn’t mean it has to be, especially where it is not an improvement.

Using your ears not your eyes Mike -how the acronym is pronounced , HD begins with a vowel sound -aitch but other “H”,s can have -a- before them.

But many of the junior members of our population pronounce the letter ‘h’ as ‘haitch’ instead of ‘aitch’, so what the ‘eck!

We use “a” before a consonant and “an” before a vowel, and before words beginning with “h” when it is not pronounced. So technically I suppose we say a high definition tv, or an HD tv. Aitch is the noun for the letter H.

I ope that’s clear to hall.

Crystal! . . . Except for those who have a ‘haitch dee’ TV.

MIxing too much with the “upper classes ” John ?

I would refer you to my last comment before the one above, Duncan. I don’t think it’s the upper classes who pronounce ‘h’ as ‘haitch’, nor do they drop their ‘aitches’. They are more likely to drop their ‘gees’ as in “huntin’, shootin’, ‘n’ fishin’ “, but I pay little attention to how other people speak or write so long as they make sense.

and they live in Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire. I dislike “could of” and “nucular” – the latter particularly from people in the States whose finger might be on the button.

I’d prefer to see decent TV programmes in any definition before I worried too much about 4K. Whilst I don’t want us to go back to just 3 channels, we have far too many at the moment that would still be rubbish even in 4k.

You dont know how close that “nucular ” finger is near to that button malcolm. Fills you full of “confidence ” doesnt it ?

Perhaps if the button was marked “nuclear” in high definition we’d all be a bit safer? (on the basis they/he/she would not know it was the one to press)

Oh – they can spell it. They just can’t pronounce it. Bit like Bicester, I suppose.

Or laboratory – they can spell that too but say labratory…

Yes, that’s the American pronunciation, more like ‘lab’ra-tory’. The English usually pronounce it ‘luh-bOra-try’.

Duncan – I think the President of America and our PM have to have both a “nucular” finger and a “nucular” thumb on both hands as there are two keys to turn in order to send the command that activates the delivery process [unless they have already turned on one-click ordering, of course].

Vetnary?

And let’s not forget Aluminum… They even changed the spelling 🙂

Yes John and the delivery system has two keys used by two separate officers . The problem with our nuke subs though is that we have to get permission from the USA to fire them as we use US satellite guidance systems .

Yes, Duncan – that’s a good safety procedure. So long as we don’t just launch a Trident on receipt of an instruction from the Pentagon, though, without checking first with No. 10.

A VERY good point John !

Your right Alfa that old co-ax was never meant for HD TV it is very “lossy ” in terms of signal strength . I hope your post is an influence to others that the fault isnt always due to the TV as any TV and or radio is no better than the quality of the aerial and downlead . Good quality co-ax is expensive but worth every penny as I found out with my multi- satellite set up in the back garden . Due to the very high frequency involved cheap cable produced a weak signal I bought a whole drum of very high quality stuff and it made a world of a difference . I installed my own roof aerials years ago with additional masthead amplifiers powered via the co-ax with a special power supply next to the TV .

WX100 is the bare minimum for Sat cable feeds. Makes a serious difference to picture quality.

Even ten metres of the best cable will not be the most significant item on the installer’s bill by a long way!

🙂 True…

As we were paying for HD and not getting HD, Sky didn’t charge us for the visits. When the last engineers came, they didn’t believe the cable would make any difference, but they were amazed at the before and after pictures.

It is easy enough to do yourself if you don’t have heights to contend with and you can reposition your satellite dish which is why we got Sky to do it as they have the equipment. When the dish had to be removed for work on the roof, I used mirrors to reflect the tv so I could reposition the dish. It took a while as you have to wait in between adjustments, but it is possible with patience and without specialised equipment.

But I do agree call-outs are not cheap these days.

Thats what I used when I set out to install my first sat dish -a TV in the house , I now have a handheld TV screened LCD display sat meter (not cheap ! ) that screws into the LNB Alfa.

That was my point, Duncan – make sure the best cable is used: the price difference will be insignificant on the aerial installer’s bill. Good firms will use the most suitable cable – it might be for an aerial not a dish. If the customer isn’t happy with the picture they should not pay. The length of cable required will obviously affect the cost as well as the time to do the job. I doubt if many people have the impressive set-up that Duncan has at his international monitoring station. He truly is the spider in the world wide web. 🙂

You never fail to pull me out my depression John I like it !

Yes Shugg – I share your thoughts. Thank goodness for off-topic chat at times.