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Definition Transition - Are YOU HD?

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It just occurred to me - after reading an interesting article on EG, that thumbs might be an ideal place to throw a totally casual question out there.

The article is basically saying that the majority of customers either don't understand or can't use HD properly. By can't understand, I mean they use an HDTV with a composite cable for example.

I imagine most people here are tech savvy, so if you have got a new console, then you ar emore likely to be playing HD. Would this be correct?

Personally, I think I waited a few months before getting a 360 when they came out, and then got an HDTV at the same time so I could fully utilise the console.

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Yes, I'm in a shared house with one of each major console and a HD TV. I felt very, very cynical about HD until I moved in and saw bluray films running on a housemate's 37" screen, and shortly after he found a dirt cheap but excellent ex display plasma on ebay for the living room.

A previous thread on HD here also helped me to understand that this isn't just a step change that manufacturers can repeat ad infinitum, but that HD standards mean we're at a point where, depending on screen size and distance, we can put more detail through a screen than the eye can perceive.

Anyone that doesn't understand HD should be made to play Dead Rising on a giant, standard def TV :P

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A previous thread on HD here also helped me to understand that this isn't just a step change that manufacturers can repeat ad infinitum, but that HD standards mean we're at a point where, depending on screen size and distance, we can put more detail through a screen than the eye can perceive.
Yeah, but what's considered normal screen size is probably only going to increase. I really don't think video walls are going to be considered far-fetched a couple of decades from now. Here, at least, before HDTV, a 25"-28" CRT screen was quite normal. Today, 42" is the new standard (and 50" isn't a crazy proposition) for a living room screen, and that's still with most people watching SDTV and DVD. Using some reasonable logic, you could say that with each jump in resolution, "normal" screen sizes double. So, when 8k (or whatever) is being rolled out, people will be watching their Blu-rays on 100" screens.

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Yeah, I've been HD for a few years. I can very easily see how general ignorance might result in a lot of people not being properly kitted up though, and I think at this point there needs to be a more concerted effort from various parties to educate consumers.

For example, consoles and cable/satellite boxes should tell you when first turned on that the picture will be much sharper if you can plug it in via a HDMI cable, and then show a happy little picture of one. Consoles absolutely fucking should come with them (WTF, Microsoft and Sony?), and any TVs sold should clearly outline that they're designed to be used with a HDMI cable and not a legacy cable (even my Panasonic VIERA had nothing like this).

At least when things are installed professionally consumers do tend to get educated. For example, the delivery man actually explained to me the whole HDMI thing when he brought the TV — but I think it's a stretch to think every store will have such well-trained blokes. And when I had Sky HD installed, the engineer hooked it all up with HDMI and explained the importance of it. But when consumers are left to their own devices it's clearly going to be a mess.

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It's amazing how reluctant manufacturers are to including HDMI cables with their products, especially Sony with its PS3 who would still presumably want the customers to buy lots and lots of Blu-Ray movies.

I have a neat Full-HD (1920x1200) monitor which I can easily hook my PS3 to. Unfortunately the television at my parents' house, where the PS3 (most of the time), an old Macbook Pro which amazingly still got repaired for free, and 5.1 surround system are, was bought when LCD-TVs were somewhat new so it is only 32 inches, isn't Full-HD and only has one HDMI port.

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A short time after I got my 360, around 3 years ago, all I had was a SD tv and CRT monitors on the PC. I got the VGA cable, which was kind of expensive but well worth it. €30 for an upgrade from SD to 720p is excellent. I still recommend this solution to people who want a cheapy way of moving their 360 to their bedroom but don't want to buy a new television. PC monitors are by far the most common HD-capable displays around, especially for students.

I got a 24" Samsung LCD TV a year and a half ago, was €400 or so and I use that for everything (it has an awful lot of inputs on it, I have 5 consoles and a PC plugged into it with no switches).

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Yeah, but what's considered normal screen size is probably only going to increase. I really don't think video walls are going to be considered far-fetched a couple of decades from now.

Sure, I expect and want this. If there's ever a day when I can paint something that emits RGB light on a wall and it forms an ad-hoc address space to turn itself into a usable display, that will be a happy one.

I think passing this threshold of detail in living room based screens was an important change though, one I didn't understand at all by marketing for it, but by seeing it and discussion among other reasonably technical people. People seem to either not understand it and consequently not be bothered, or not understand it and get it anyway because they think it's probably good so they can show off :finger:

I did know someone with a 360 and an HDTV, who was using it with the switch on the component lead set to SD. He was pretty surprised when I changed that and he saw the difference, and for some reason thought he'd already been playing in HD :hmph:

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Been HD (well 26" 720p bravia) since april 08. It is well worth it, christ even my wii is on a component cable (for better colours and 480p).

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I have this cheapo TV that's just under HD resolution or something, but it looks fine with most 360 and PS3 games outputting at 720p.

Last week I spent a tenner on some cables and sound jacks and hooked my PS3 up to my monitor and was horribly disappointed (though it's still better than the TV). 720p looks like fucking shit, I wasn't aware just how High a Definition I played PC games at. I always wondered why I'd get framerates<60 on games like Far Cry 2 at 1400x900 and the console versions were only slightly slower running, but it was because they run at a crap resolution!

Batman, for instance, looks like he's made from duplo blocks because it runs at low res and without any AA from what I saw. Shatter looks second closest to "great", but it's not quite there. Wipeout HD was the only one I tried (and I had a go on loads of my games) that looked properly lovely. As in, beautiful, smooth lines AA'd to the max and crisp as anything. Ratchet and Clank looked blurry because it was low res smothered in AA, and the same goes for Killzone 2.

HD my arse.

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I have this cheapo TV that's just under HD resolution or something, but it looks fine with most 360 and PS3 games outputting at 720p.

Last week I spent a tenner on some cables and sound jacks and hooked my PS3 up to my monitor and was horribly disappointed (though it's still better than the TV). 720p looks like fucking shit, I wasn't aware just how High a Definition I played PC games at. I always wondered why I'd get framerates<60 on games like Far Cry 2 at 1400x900 and the console versions were only slightly slower running, but it was because they run at a crap resolution!

Batman, for instance, looks like he's made from duplo blocks because it runs at low res and without any AA from what I saw. Shatter looks second closest to "great", but it's not quite there. Wipeout HD was the only one I tried (and I had a go on loads of my games) that looked properly lovely. As in, beautiful, smooth lines AA'd to the max and crisp as anything. Ratchet and Clank looked blurry because it was low res smothered in AA, and the same goes for Killzone 2.

HD my arse.

Did you not consider this could be because of several factors, one of which is that your monitor is not at a good ratio for console games, you are making the monitor scale (which unless its a really good one it won't be able to) adding in an extra 180 horizontal lines and 120 horizontally.

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The stretch isn't noticeable at all. Wipeout had no problem and the XMB looked great. The monitor itself is lovely, Samsung SyncMaster 932GW apparently, so honestly, I can't see it being a problem with 16:10. Stuff is just low ass resolution because the monitor is so high itself.

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Stuff is just low ass resolution because the monitor is so high itself.

But that doesn't make any sense. Low resolution material shown on a higher-resolution display would be less pixelated, but smaller, if the displays were viewed at the distances where they both would appear equally large (i.e. closer to smaller monitor) and if the monitor did not upscale the material.

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But that doesn't make any sense. Low resolution material shown on a higher-resolution display would be less pixelated, but smaller, if the displays were viewed at the distances where they both would appear equally large (i.e. closer to smaller monitor) and if the monitor did not upscale the material.

Maybe I just sit really close to the screen and know nothing about the technical side. It's not the scaling going wrong though, just most things run in 720p.

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The stretch isn't noticeable at all. Wipeout had no problem and the XMB looked great. The monitor itself is lovely, Samsung SyncMaster 932GW apparently, so honestly, I can't see it being a problem with 16:10. Stuff is just low ass resolution because the monitor is so high itself.

it is actually 14:9 unless the pixels are of abnormal size. XMB and the xbox dash will always look good at any aspect ratio but games do not adapt so easily. Does the PS3 have borders when played on said monitor? if not of course it will compress to the correct aspect ratio, after upscaling. Picture it this way: get an image which is 1280 by 720, then enlarge it to 1600 by 900, then the image needs to be squashed horizontally to make it fill the monitor, so of course it will be blocky and ugly. There may well be an option to make it have the optima resolution, like on the 360 though, which should produce better images

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If your monitors resolution is higher than 720p (1280x720) and there are no black bars around the picture, it's upscaling the resolution. This always looks bad.

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I think I have a HD TV. At least, it has one HDMI input (used by the XBox 360 Elite, which came with the HDMI cable I think). I haven't really payed attention to what HD, or HD-Ready or Full-HD or any of that actually means. The TV was won at some raffle and not bought. Maybe I'd have bought one by now if we hadn't won one, or maybe I'd be still playing on an old CRT.

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If it has an HDMI socket, it will be HD-Ready at the very least, so you will be getting 720p minimum.

just checked the Xbox settings, the resolution is 1280x768 (says HDMI-A)

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I've been HD since about September '05. Got a 28-inch 1920x1200 LCD monitor which had component inputs. I then got a 360 the next summer and have never run it on anything else. Looks great with the PS3 through HDMI too. The only issue is finding a place for the Wii sensor bar, but I can work it out whenever I want to play.

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I had been sort of gaming in HD previously, using my 22" Samsung monitor with VGA cables for the Wii and 360. This past week, I took the full plunge and got a 32" 1080p Samsung tv and it's amazing. Picked up a cheap HDMI cable to go with it and I will definitely never go back. Haven't played the Wii on it yet, guessing I will need to pick up the component cables for it to look any good.

One thing I couldn't believe was what DVDs are like on this TV using my 360 as a DVD player. I watched Star Wars last night and I don't even think bluray could improve how it looks.

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You will be astounded again with BR. I was given Planet Earth BR for my birthday a year ago. It's another level of clarity above DVD.

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I have HDMI running through my 360 to a 32inch 1080i. It makes such a big difference, I couldn't imagine not playing in HD.

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Before I saw HD I heard people describe it like, "Ooh, it's like looking out of a window -- it's THAT real!". Needless to say I was disappointed when I actually saw it.

Now I tell people it's like putting on a pair of glasses when you didn't know you needed them. It's more like, "Oh wow, I can see loads more detail now". You don't really want to take them off again.

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