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SILICON
CHIP
www.siliconchip.com.au
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD
Production Manager
Greg Swain, B.Sc.(Hons.)
Technical Staff
John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.)
Ross Tester
Jim Rowe, B.A., B.Sc, VK2ZLO
Mauro Grassi, B.Sc.(Hons.)
Photography
Ross Tester
Reader Services
Ann Morris
Advertising Enquiries
Glyn Smith
Phone (02) 9939 3295
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glyn<at>siliconchip.com.au
Regular Contributors
Brendan Akhurst
Rodney Champness, VK3UG
Mike Sheriff, B.Sc, VK2YFK
Stan Swan
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Publisher’s Letter
High-definition TV in limbo
until the Olympics
This month, we highlight the end of analog television broadcasting (planned for December 2009) and
outline what you can do to pick up the High-Definition
TV broadcasts that are now available. In brief, if you
want to keep watching “free-to-air” TV, you have three
options. The first and most expensive is to purchase
an HD TV, either LCD or plasma display. The second is
to buy an HD personal video recorder (PVR) and hook
that up to your analog TV set and third, the cheapest option, is to purchase an
HD set top box (STB) and hook that up to your analog TV.
We would recommend one of the latter two options to most people because
they will save a lot of money. Most people have two or more quite useable analog
TV sets in their home and they should be capable of giving many more years
of service. So there is no hurry to go and buy the latest HDTV. Remember that
whatever HDTV set you buy now will be much cheaper in a year or two and
that is particularly important to the majority of people who make most of these
purchases on credit and then take years to pay them off. Better to save your dollars now and then buy a bigger and better HDTV set for cash in a few years’ time.
People may wonder why they should buy a high-definition PVR or STB when
they only have an analog set with a picture quality that is well below the state
of the art. Why not just wait until the end of analog broadcasting and then get a
PVR, STB or whatever? There are several reasons. The first is that the networks
are now broadcasting some programs only in HD format and a standard definition STB will not pick them up. Second, an HD STB will provide a composite
video output to allow an old analog TV to show the program, even though the
picture quality will no better than if you watched a DVD through the same set.
In spite of the above, it has to be said that the current selection of HDTV programs is very limited and generally not worth watching. Most of the time, the
programs on the HDTV channels are identical to the standard definition (SD)
programs on the same networks. The only networks that bother to put out useful
programs are the ABC and SBS. (By the way, all those people who reckon that
they cannot pick up SBS will have no problems when they go over to digital
reception – see next month’s issue).
Many documentaries on SBS and ABC are magnificent on the big screen and
they are even better in HDTV, with far more visual impact than on a small screen.
As far as commercial network programming is concerned, the quality of all
digital programs, whether standard definition or high definition is generally
woeful, unless you are interested in sport. Even then, while the video might
be good, especially on a really big screen or projector, some of the commentary
can be utterly banal. In fact, in my own home, the comment which applies to
most commercial network programming is that it probably causes brain damage!
In truth, while some programs are very good, most digital TV air space is wasted
and probably will remain so until the Beijing Olympics in August this year.
Leo Simpson
ISSN 1030-2662
* Recommended and maximum price only.
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