A Discussion On Poor SD On HDTVs

Scottnot · 08-08-2008, 07:18 PM

Are you sure that you understand??

Quote:

Originally Posted by joekewl1971

I think the black (brightness), and white (contrast, or picture) levels are very important to reduce artifacts. The brighter the picture, the worse it looks. Bring the black down, and you see what detail there is to see.

If you mean "turn the brightness down" to somehow improve the picture, that won't help much.
For any TV in a specific ambient light setting, there is only ONE correct setting for brightness. Once it is correctly set, turning it down will reduce detail in dark scenes by causing the darkest shades to merge together; and turning it up will "lighten" the dark scenes making them appear washed out.
The only proper way to correctly adjust brightness is with a proper calibration disk under normal ambient viewing conditions.

Quote:

I looked at both interlaced and progressive scan before choosing progessive scan. That took me a long time to decide which I liked best.

If you think that you were somehow comparing interlaced to progressive, I'd be curious to know what you were looking at?
In the case of LCD and/or Plasma sets, they are all* progressive scan.

*with the rare exception of a few Hitachi "ALIS" products.

joekewl1971 · 08-09-2008, 01:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scottnot

Are you sure that you understand??

If you mean "turn the brightness down" to somehow improve the picture, that won't help much.
For any TV in a specific ambient light setting, there is only ONE correct setting for brightness. Once it is correctly set, turning it down will reduce detail in dark scenes by causing the darkest shades to merge together; and turning it up will "lighten" the dark scenes making them appear washed out.
The only proper way to correctly adjust brightness is with a proper calibration disk under normal ambient viewing conditions.

Very few people know how to use test paterns, or even that they exist. Where do I get test paterns from my cable box? They are not there.

Many may have thier sets too bright. The bottom line is, does the picture look good? The advice I give helped me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scottnot

If you think that you were somehow comparing interlaced to progressive, I'd be curious to know what you were looking at?
In the case of LCD and/or Plasma sets, they are all* progressive scan.

On this web site people are frequently arguing about progressive scan verses interlaced. You are trying to tell me that it makes no difference? My cable box outputs 720p, 1080i, 480i, 480p, and a couple others. For SD there is extra detail in the progressive. For HD there is better fast motion. I understand that my LCD TV is native progessive. I know that I see a difference based on what I input. It is not all the same.

joekewl1971 · 08-13-2008, 01:03 PM

I was wrong about the test paterns. Wish I had not said anything.

mrhagerty · 11-11-2008, 10:18 PM

Rbinck, or anyone else here.

I read the first article and while very much appreciating the technical side of why SD is going to look like you're living in a Soviet bloc country, I'm puzzled at how the industry innovators at the start decided to simply leave SD out in the cold?

And it's no longer a matter of simply advising folks to upgrade to HD equipment and service. It's the utter failure to encounter the reality that 40 years of television heritage in this country is going to keep SD around for a very long time. And the answer isn’t, “Learn to live without ‘I Love Lucy.’”

So somewhere back when, the movers and shakers let their gleeful high on the new technology get the best of their judgment and innovation, if it comes down to “Sorry about the rest, but, hey, ain’t HD keeno?”

Nor is it a matter of waiting out the eventual demise of general interest in classic television. Even today’s up to date HD news coverage features cut aways to film clips done on VHS or low res digital, and the SD problem lives on and on, despite being as HD as one can get.

And no, I don't care to move another 4 feet back or disable my incadescent lighting, as if TV rules the realm to the sacrifice of everything else.

Perhaps someone here knows the ugly story of how the industry chose to back into the technology with so little care for the enormous demand and unavoidability of status quo of standard def?

Mike
Tucson

aed55 · 12-16-2008, 10:08 PM

Just my 2 cents, but I bought an HDTV to watch HD content. If I only cared about SD, I would have kept my old Sony 36".

I have DishNetwork and I have to subscribe to 100 crappy SD channels in order to get a handful of their HD counterparts. The SD channels are so bad, that I don't even watch them. The local cable service is just as bad, they give you a few HD channels as they say for "free", but you have to subscribe to their equally crappy SD package to get them.

Even though the majority of cable channels are now available in HD, it seems they are impossible to get by themselves. The logic of this evades me.

It seems like too much changed, too fast. The switch to digital transmission enabled HD capability and in very short order the public was presented with 2 options. If you were not interested in HD content, you just keep your old TV and your viewing experience would basically remain unchanged. However if you were like me and many others, once you saw HD, you were hooked and thus we were thrust into the whole world of HD and SD quality issues.

If only it could have been as easy as the change from black and white to color was, back in the 60's. As I recall, when color capability was first proposed by the TV industry, the only way the FCC would allow them to proceed was to insure existing B&W TV's would be able to process a color signal with no change in picture quality.

vandenberg · 05-15-2009, 06:16 AM

I have a similar problem.

I have a collection of home movies burnt onto SD DVDs. Quality was entirely satisfactory (by SD standards) on my old SD television set, but is poor on my recently acquired 32" LCD HD television.

In contrast, commercial SD DVDs appear to lose no quality when played on my HD TV.

Can this problem be remedied?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winston

I am an SD user who, increasingly, has been invited to friends homes to view their "super deluxe" new HD installations. They rave (as well they must after spending $5,000) while I try to mask my grimace.

Possibly we could ignore poor SD quality arguing that SD is a dinosaur soon to be extinct. But will it really be extinct? I, for one, have a substantial collection of home videos that, now, with the advent of excellent computer editing software (Pinnacle/Avid Liquid) - - that I am finally committing to DVD and distributing to other family members. And while I’ll not take the same ‘approach’ as one other writer to this thread (who sees himself being placed, soon I gather, in a casket) . . . it is possible that SD will be with me the rest of my life (and that of my children?).

So my first inquiry is one of how to display SD images on HD monitors - - with quality. Now let me limit my inquiry - - having read every post to this thread, it is clear that video compression is destroying much of the quality of broadcast video, particularly over the cable and satellite, and once the signal has been destroyed, there is little that we, as consumers, can do to recapture the quality. (And I’d like to thank Moderator Rbinck for his photos that too accurately depict the degeneration of video quality occasioned by compression.).

But as another thread commentator, InterceptPoint, noted, this compression cannot justify the generally poor performance of HD monitors when connected directly to a local source of video (e.g. my home video creations) or to standard SD broadcasts. Clearly, as InterceptPoint put it, there is something else going on.

And the answer may simply be in the scan conversion algorythms used to convert NTSC to 1080i/p. But, again repeating IP, how difficult can it be to multiply 480 lines by 2? I do not expect my SD video to look any better on an HD monitor, but I do expect it to look no worse. We use the term “lossless” to describe compression algorythms that do not destroy the inherent picture information/quality - - in that vernacular, I am looking for a ‘lossless’ way of displaying SD video on an HD monitor (TV). And on a related point, does anyone know of software that can convert SD video to HD?

My second inquiry for this thread is more a statement or rhetorical. It seems (based on my limited observations of DirectTV HD satellite) that the improved quality of the higher resolution is nearly completely offset by the distortions/artifacts of compression. I’m told to sit further from the TV . . . but even at a distance I find the compression to be objectionable. And what’s the advantage of a large screen if one has to sit so far - - that the screen becomes ‘small to the view’?

qiaoqiao · 07-13-2009, 12:55 AM

thinks!I'm not thrilled with the SD quality image on my new system.

ponder · 07-15-2009, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrhagerty

failure to encounter the reality that 40 years of television heritage in this country is going to keep SD around for a very long time. And the answer isn’t, “Learn to live without ‘I Love Lucy.’”

The fans of "I Love Lucy" have nothing to fear just as fans of old silent movies - it was just their time and the medium available to record the presentation.

Not to get the A/V geeks in here all spun up on another "techno-tantrum" but quite simply there will be new stuff "Sourced" with high definition, older stuff that may be "upconverted" (original "Charlies Angels" episodes are downright breathtaking) and I suppose a LOT of stuff will simply remain in its time capsule - with no conversion. I personally consider upconverted older stuff NOT high definition, fantastic looking, but not true high definition (this is where the geeks usually get upset with me) and I reply "Was the scene shot with a high definition cameras with associated engineering?". Some day, even high defintion productions will seem old fashioned.

I actually envision "original format" purists starting to appear on the horizon shortly - just like some audiophiles still want the warmth of a vinyl record and hate "digital across the board" high end audio.

New productions will probably be in high definition but I still envision people (artistic reasons) still using other (older) production equipment..... to each his/her own. Some of the local tv stations seem to be inadvertently trapped in the latter, not able to afford the new equipment yet.

High definition is available if you want it, it's just another medium, not a mandate.

Kent McVety · 08-06-2009, 01:52 AM

Old programs can be up converted to true HD if the program was shot on 35mm film and the film is still available. 35mm film contains more resolution than HD video. The up conversion is actually the film being down converted to HD. I Love Lucy was shot directly on 35mm film. It was not a live broadcast saved on a kinescope. So, I Love Lucy could be shown today in HD by converting the film to HD video.

Kent McVety

Tanzz · 08-28-2009, 09:28 AM

I recently switched from Dish Network to Time Warner. Using my receiver's (Explorer 3250HD) "auto" scaling / conversion capabilities there is an obvious and bothersome flicker. This did not occur with Dish Network's 811 receiver or if I choose not to use the 3250 upconversion-1 feature; opting to manually adjust the scaling between HD and non-HD signals. Will this flickering damage my Hitachi rear projection TV?

BTW, I activated all the possible viewing formats via the advanced HD wizard setup on the 3250hd receiver since all the formats were "viewable". If I'm allowed 2 questions then; would selecting a subset eliminate this flicker?

**PFC5** · 08-29-2009, 02:56 PM

The pause/flicker is the time it takes for the display to change to the different resolution of the new channel compared to the prior resolution for the old channel. Different displays do this faster or slower, so it is something that is dependent on the display design.

I use the pass through and let the TV do all the scaling but it is faster with my Panasonic plasma than with my old display before it. If you let the cable box do the scaling by having everything get scaled to only one output resolution you are having a likely inferior cable box do the scaling and will have more artifacts from this. If you do not see these issues letting the STB do the scaling then go for it. I do notice so I will live with the very brief flicker while the display adjusts to the resolution when changing changes.

You can confirm it is the TV adjusting while in pass-through mode in the STB by switching between 2 channels that you KNOW are the same resolution.

Hope this helps!

Hansen · 09-11-2009, 05:37 AM

Such a great info on HDTVs.Thanks for sharing such wonderful post.

Winston · 11-03-2009, 09:42 PM

Nearly three years ago I posted on this thread hoping to discover how to achieve SD performance on an HD monitor equal to my then-existing SD performance on an SD monitor. A review of all posts since confirms the existence of the problem (low SD quality on HD monitors) without providing much insight or guidance on how to solve the problem.

Does anyone know of any studies/tests undertaken (e.g by Consumer Reports or others) that specifically test for SD performance?

Does anyone own an HD monitor/TV that they believe "has done it right" ==> that they believe reproduces SD source material as well as it is reproduced on a quality SD monitor?

Lastly, maybe approaching the problem from the angle of "not trying" to display SD on an HD monitor, instead, "pre-converting" the SD material to HD in an external 'box" ==> Are there 'quality' scan converters available 'at the consumer level' to perform this function?

And one last 'lastly' - - on a related topic - - I have an application where I would like to display two SD images on a single HD monitor (side-by-side, of equal size). Are there products out there that would permit this combination of two/multiple source inputs?

DTV_Engineer · Yesterday, 02:41 PM

A major factor in how well SD content upconverts to an HD display is how the SD signal is represented electrically. Many people interchange "SD" for "NTSC", but this isn't correct; while all NTSC is SD, not all SD is NTSC (the same applies to PAL or SECAM, but I'll just refer to NTSC for clarity).

If you want to get a video feed from point A to point B -- say, from a camera to a switcher -- there are two decisions to make. First, is the signal going to be analog or digital? Second, are we sending the video as separate components, or as a single composite signal?

The issue of analog versus digital is not that big a deal nowadays; present technology is good enough to withstand a number of conversions back and forth between analog and digital with minimal deterioration.

But when you look at component versus composite systems, here is where the big difference shows up... and if your content is going to be upconverted to an HD display, this is a major driver of picture quality. Sources like cameras inherently create separate RGB components; this is great if you are plugging the camera directly into a monitor, and can run three matched length cables between the two. But in the 1950s there was no practical way to transmit the three separate signals. The solution: combine the components into a single composite signal, NTSC.

How does this work? At the station level, we would take the three color signals from the camera and feed an encoder that derives a luminance signal and then limits its bandwidth to about 3 megahertz; then derive two low bandwidth color components that can phase-modulate a 3.58 megahertz subcarrier that is mixed with the luminance. Sound ugly? It is, but in the 1950s the big limitation was the all-tube equipment and crude camera pickups, not the encoding scheme.

What's the result? We've taken three color feeds that could easily have had up to 10 megahertz of bandwidth each, and crushed them down to one signal that doesn't exceed 5 megahertz. Goodbye detail! Worse, it's quite easy for a picture to contain high frequency luminance information -- narrow vertical lines will do it -- that interferes with the color subcarrier, yielding moire. That's what you get with NTSC.

But all broadcast SD is NTSC, right? No! Nowadays, it's quite common for us at the station level to have cameras that send component video out a single cable as serial digital data. And our switchers and other processing equipment preserve this component video without ever running it through NTSC encoding. So, what happens when we take this component video and upconvert it to HD (which is also component)? You get a very good looking picture: not as sharp as HD, but far more detailed than NTSC and without any of the cross-color artifacts.

Here's the thing: the first time you encode component video into composite, you degrade the picture enormously by reducing bandwidth and adding artifacts from the color subcarrier. And when you decode the composite NTSC back to component, you again add low pass filtering to the luminance to lose cross-color interference. Every encoding or decoding step you add creates noticeable deterioration. So the big idea is to minimize the number of conversions between component and composite.

At the studio, we do this by keeping everything in component digital form, from acquisition through processing to the transmission gear. In our stations nowadays, the only time our signal is encoded to NTSC is to hand off to the cable company for legacy analog sets. Even our standard definition DTV sub-channels remain fully component.

Of course, this doesn't do anything to help content that was produced elsewhere in composite NTSC facilities... the damage has already been done.

So... how does this apply to a home viewer? Easy: avoid unnecessary conversions from composite to component video. If you're connecting a VCR, use the S-video jack instead of the composite output. If you have a DVD player, use the component YUV output. Many commercial DVDs were authored on all-component systems, and can provide remarkably good picture quality on an HD set if you keep the signal in component form.

Also, as someone else observed, most "classic" programming was actually shot on 35mm film, which a modern telecine can convert to HD video, albeit with gaps on the sides because of the different aspect ratio. Where we're going to be permanently hosed is with early shows that were direct-to-videotape... All in the Family and Carol Burnett come to mind, as they were recorded originally on 2" quad, then on 1" type C tape... both NTSC systems.

Clear as mud?

-- Jeff

11-11-2008, 10:18 PM	#139
mrhagerty My plasma is High Def. Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 7	How Did This Industry Go Off Half Baked? Rbinck, or anyone else here. I read the first article and while very much appreciating the technical side of why SD is going to look like you're living in a Soviet bloc country, I'm puzzled at how the industry innovators at the start decided to simply leave SD out in the cold? And it's no longer a matter of simply advising folks to upgrade to HD equipment and service. It's the utter failure to encounter the reality that 40 years of television heritage in this country is going to keep SD around for a very long time. And the answer isn’t, “Learn to live without ‘I Love Lucy.’” So somewhere back when, the movers and shakers let their gleeful high on the new technology get the best of their judgment and innovation, if it comes down to “Sorry about the rest, but, hey, ain’t HD keeno?” Nor is it a matter of waiting out the eventual demise of general interest in classic television. Even today’s up to date HD news coverage features cut aways to film clips done on VHS or low res digital, and the SD problem lives on and on, despite being as HD as one can get. And no, I don't care to move another 4 feet back or disable my incadescent lighting, as if TV rules the realm to the sacrifice of everything else. Perhaps someone here knows the ugly story of how the industry chose to back into the technology with so little care for the enormous demand and unavoidability of status quo of standard def? Mike Tucson

07-13-2009, 12:55 AM	#142
qiaoqiao What is HD? Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 2	thinks!I'm not thrilled with the SD quality image on my new system. __________________ Spam links to estores are not allowed in signature.

08-29-2009, 02:56 PM	#146
PFC5 Super Moderator Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 28,325	The pause/flicker is the time it takes for the display to change to the different resolution of the new channel compared to the prior resolution for the old channel. Different displays do this faster or slower, so it is something that is dependent on the display design. I use the pass through and let the TV do all the scaling but it is faster with my Panasonic plasma than with my old display before it. If you let the cable box do the scaling by having everything get scaled to only one output resolution you are having a likely inferior cable box do the scaling and will have more artifacts from this. If you do not see these issues letting the STB do the scaling then go for it. I do notice so I will live with the very brief flicker while the display adjusts to the resolution when changing changes. You can confirm it is the TV adjusting while in pass-through mode in the STB by switching between 2 channels that you KNOW are the same resolution. Hope this helps! __________________ Denon AVR-887 Klipsch RP-5 Pwred Towers (mains) (525 watts peak each 12"Subs) All Klipsch RC-25(ctr),(2)SS1(surr),(2)SS1(rearSurr) Toshiba (2)HD-A20,PS3,BD35 For SACD/DVD-A Samsung HD-841 Panny 50pz80u plasma SETTINGS RCA HD50LPW162 50"DLP w/HD2+ SA 3250HD 47" LCD+Yamaha5790+HD-A1(bedroom) Harmony 680 + (2) 670s (amazing remote/support) Game room with Onkyo receiver & B&W Speakers The_Cable_Game Take the high ground and be happier

09-11-2009, 05:37 AM	#147
Hansen My plasma is High Def. Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 8	Such a great info on HDTVs.Thanks for sharing such wonderful post. __________________ TRAVAN Tapes LTO 3 Tapes, VXA Tapes LTO 3 Tapes,sdlt tapes LTO 3 Tapes

11-03-2009, 09:42 PM	#148
Winston Personal Video Editing Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Chicago Posts: 2	SD Performance Study? Scan Converters? Nearly three years ago I posted on this thread hoping to discover how to achieve SD performance on an HD monitor equal to my then-existing SD performance on an SD monitor. A review of all posts since confirms the existence of the problem (low SD quality on HD monitors) without providing much insight or guidance on how to solve the problem. Does anyone know of any studies/tests undertaken (e.g by Consumer Reports or others) that specifically test for SD performance? Does anyone own an HD monitor/TV that they believe "has done it right" ==> that they believe reproduces SD source material as well as it is reproduced on a quality SD monitor? Lastly, maybe approaching the problem from the angle of "not trying" to display SD on an HD monitor, instead, "pre-converting" the SD material to HD in an external 'box" ==> Are there 'quality' scan converters available 'at the consumer level' to perform this function? And one last 'lastly' - - on a related topic - - I have an application where I would like to display two SD images on a single HD monitor (side-by-side, of equal size). Are there products out there that would permit this combination of two/multiple source inputs?

08-13-2008, 01:03 PM	#138
joekewl1971 High Definition is the definition of life. Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 595	I was wrong about the test paterns. Wish I had not said anything.

12-16-2008, 10:08 PM	#140
aed55 High Definition is the definition of life. Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 173	Just my 2 cents, but I bought an HDTV to watch HD content. If I only cared about SD, I would have kept my old Sony 36". I have DishNetwork and I have to subscribe to 100 crappy SD channels in order to get a handful of their HD counterparts. The SD channels are so bad, that I don't even watch them. The local cable service is just as bad, they give you a few HD channels as they say for "free", but you have to subscribe to their equally crappy SD package to get them. Even though the majority of cable channels are now available in HD, it seems they are impossible to get by themselves. The logic of this evades me. It seems like too much changed, too fast. The switch to digital transmission enabled HD capability and in very short order the public was presented with 2 options. If you were not interested in HD content, you just keep your old TV and your viewing experience would basically remain unchanged. However if you were like me and many others, once you saw HD, you were hooked and thus we were thrust into the whole world of HD and SD quality issues. If only it could have been as easy as the change from black and white to color was, back in the 60's. As I recall, when color capability was first proposed by the TV industry, the only way the FCC would allow them to proceed was to insure existing B&W TV's would be able to process a color signal with no change in picture quality.

08-06-2009, 01:52 AM	#144
Kent McVety High Definition is the definition of life. Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 57	Old programs can be up converted to true HD if the program was shot on 35mm film and the film is still available. 35mm film contains more resolution than HD video. The up conversion is actually the film being down converted to HD. I Love Lucy was shot directly on 35mm film. It was not a live broadcast saved on a kinescope. So, I Love Lucy could be shown today in HD by converting the film to HD video. Kent McVety

08-28-2009, 09:28 AM	#145
Tanzz My plasma is High Def. Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 6	I recently switched from Dish Network to Time Warner. Using my receiver's (Explorer 3250HD) "auto" scaling / conversion capabilities there is an obvious and bothersome flicker. This did not occur with Dish Network's 811 receiver or if I choose not to use the 3250 upconversion-1 feature; opting to manually adjust the scaling between HD and non-HD signals. Will this flickering damage my Hitachi rear projection TV? BTW, I activated all the possible viewing formats via the advanced HD wizard setup on the 3250hd receiver since all the formats were "viewable". If I'm allowed 2 questions then; would selecting a subset eliminate this flicker?

Yesterday, 02:41 PM	#149
DTV_Engineer Broadcast Engineer Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Central New York Posts: 14	Composite versus component SD A major factor in how well SD content upconverts to an HD display is how the SD signal is represented electrically. Many people interchange "SD" for "NTSC", but this isn't correct; while all NTSC is SD, not all SD is NTSC (the same applies to PAL or SECAM, but I'll just refer to NTSC for clarity). If you want to get a video feed from point A to point B -- say, from a camera to a switcher -- there are two decisions to make. First, is the signal going to be analog or digital? Second, are we sending the video as separate components, or as a single composite signal? The issue of analog versus digital is not that big a deal nowadays; present technology is good enough to withstand a number of conversions back and forth between analog and digital with minimal deterioration. But when you look at component versus composite systems, here is where the big difference shows up... and if your content is going to be upconverted to an HD display, this is a major driver of picture quality. Sources like cameras inherently create separate RGB components; this is great if you are plugging the camera directly into a monitor, and can run three matched length cables between the two. But in the 1950s there was no practical way to transmit the three separate signals. The solution: combine the components into a single composite signal, NTSC. How does this work? At the station level, we would take the three color signals from the camera and feed an encoder that derives a luminance signal and then limits its bandwidth to about 3 megahertz; then derive two low bandwidth color components that can phase-modulate a 3.58 megahertz subcarrier that is mixed with the luminance. Sound ugly? It is, but in the 1950s the big limitation was the all-tube equipment and crude camera pickups, not the encoding scheme. What's the result? We've taken three color feeds that could easily have had up to 10 megahertz of bandwidth each, and crushed them down to one signal that doesn't exceed 5 megahertz. Goodbye detail! Worse, it's quite easy for a picture to contain high frequency luminance information -- narrow vertical lines will do it -- that interferes with the color subcarrier, yielding moire. That's what you get with NTSC. But all broadcast SD is NTSC, right? No! Nowadays, it's quite common for us at the station level to have cameras that send component video out a single cable as serial digital data. And our switchers and other processing equipment preserve this component video without ever running it through NTSC encoding. So, what happens when we take this component video and upconvert it to HD (which is also component)? You get a very good looking picture: not as sharp as HD, but far more detailed than NTSC and without any of the cross-color artifacts. Here's the thing: the first time you encode component video into composite, you degrade the picture enormously by reducing bandwidth and adding artifacts from the color subcarrier. And when you decode the composite NTSC back to component, you again add low pass filtering to the luminance to lose cross-color interference. Every encoding or decoding step you add creates noticeable deterioration. So the big idea is to minimize the number of conversions between component and composite. At the studio, we do this by keeping everything in component digital form, from acquisition through processing to the transmission gear. In our stations nowadays, the only time our signal is encoded to NTSC is to hand off to the cable company for legacy analog sets. Even our standard definition DTV sub-channels remain fully component. Of course, this doesn't do anything to help content that was produced elsewhere in composite NTSC facilities... the damage has already been done. So... how does this apply to a home viewer? Easy: avoid unnecessary conversions from composite to component video. If you're connecting a VCR, use the S-video jack instead of the composite output. If you have a DVD player, use the component YUV output. Many commercial DVDs were authored on all-component systems, and can provide remarkably good picture quality on an HD set if you keep the signal in component form. Also, as someone else observed, most "classic" programming was actually shot on 35mm film, which a modern telecine can convert to HD video, albeit with gaps on the sides because of the different aspect ratio. Where we're going to be permanently hosed is with early shows that were direct-to-videotape... All in the Family and Carol Burnett come to mind, as they were recorded originally on 2" quad, then on 1" type C tape... both NTSC systems. Clear as mud? -- Jeff