Probably has a lot to do with my satisfaction. I've never hired a calibrator to come out and tweak it, but others say that you'll be amazed at how much more visual quality is to be had by doing that.

-gb-

You know that's not a bad idea. I should probably do the same thing. I just bought a Sony 50" RPTV and an upconvert dvd player. I just watched Transformers on it and it looked really good, then I watch football in HD...not so good. On the wide shots it looks great , but when they cut to the other cameras for some reason there is a lot of artifacting?

I still prefer watching everything on my new HD tv compared to my other SD tv's.

When your neighbors rave about their Super Mega Dooper HD TV and invite to over to see it in all its glory, you will be underwhelmed since you are able to see all the imperfections of cramming overcompressed MPEG2 into inadequate bandwidth. You will be bemused and somewhat perplexed at the endless rapture your neighbors have for the televisual behemoth in front of you. However, you will quickly realise that whereas you are viewing the offering as an interested by-stander with no stake in the equipment, your neighbors have paid a pretty penny for it. At first, they could see all the weaknesses but, fairly quickly, their brains invoked the buyer's remorse rejection filter that truly makes them believe the picture quality is much better than it really is.....

I had the opportunity to see a Sony 52 inch LCD, and switch back and forth between Cable HD broadcast and over the Air broadcast of the same football game. The over the air was definitely much better ! Assuming you can get a good signal, it doesn't make sense to me to get HD cable, for local broadcasts, at least.

About HD and smearing, and such, in general, I think we as one who have experience in trying to make the best image, tend to exagerate what Joe Consumer will think... they could give a hoot about occasional smears on fast pans, etc. The only persons that wrecks the experience for them is those of us who insist that the picture should be better...

Second, that smearing and pixel activity was probably there in our lower definition TV, too, but it was just to low of a definition to see it :)

That's why I still have SD for Dish Network. I'm fortunate to live close enough to Dallas such that all the major networks are available OTA.

EXACTLY!

That is so true, if you want to have fun, just ask one of the 'sales managers' to plug your dvd up to a tv. It's funny to watch them sweat.

The lack of bandwidth is the primary reason why Fox and ESPN are consistently better in showing sports than NBC. 19Mbps -- and cablecos usually do not allocate full 19Mbps for their HD channels -- is simply not enough for action-packed high-detail 1080i feed. 720p looks much better in this regard, and it is progressive too. I am glad that ESPN chose 720p.
Digital smearing, macroblocking and mosquito noise are inherent issues of digital TV. Analog HD would be so much better in quality, but it would be too expensive and number of channels would be tenfold less. Consumers want more channels for cheap, they don't care for sheer quality.

You have got an HDV camcorder instead of HDCAM or HDCAM SR. You thought that 25 Mpbs was good enough for you -- a professional -- for the price you were ready to pay. ATSC committee thought that 19 Mbps was good enough for general public. Seems that they were right.

From a consumers perspective, all I know is that the HD image I receive is miles better than what I had on the same cable service in SD. My wife is the primary watcher, mostly soaps, and I've seen some of those daytime shows and one daytime show in particular (don't remember the name -as the stomach churns, whatever) was like watching native HDV directly from the camera! For that reason alone I've generated enough keep her happy brownie points. (That stuff is hard to get BTW :)

I also get internet from the same cable and happy to live in a low tech, retirement area, with very few neighbores sharing the bandwidth. So this news is met with mixed feelings. That is, I may find that as my neighbores are forced to upgrade or switch, the quality of my service may degrade.

To Greg's comment, I spent a LOT of time tweeking the adjustments on my 60" Sony LCD before getting it to look halfway decent. The out of box settings were no where near what they needed to be for my taste/viewing environment. I couldn't quite bring myself to spend another 2-300 bucks for a professional calibration though. I think most people buying HD sets today just bring them home and plug them in. My biggest pet peave is when I see people watching a 4:3 broadcast stretched to widescreen mode - drives me crazy!

Er... is it a praise, considering that HDV is cheap consumer format? Soap operas have no fast movement, no detail, shallow DOF and are often shot in 24p. This stuff compresses well.

One thing that puzzles me is that they use a lot of trucking in new shows, very subtle trucking, but almost in every scene. Apparently they think it makes the show look more like a real movie. It usually does not, it makes me physically sick. Also, this introduces additional strain on MPEG encoder and requires additional bandwidth. But in all other aspects these new HD shows are done so well, without underexposed or overexposed spots, with LOTS of color (sometimes it is totally weird cast) but without blooming. They set up lightning for every scene even if it is only a three-second one. The image of these new shows looks like cream on my calibrated Panasonic plasma, sometimes I watch them for sheer visual pleasure without even caring for a plot. A totally different experience compared to old-school analog TV.

I bought Spyder 2 colorimeter for only $60 and calibrated my plasma TV myself. Granted, rear-projection TV requires more work than direct-view LCD or plasma.
I got a feeling that modern TVs are made to stricter standards than before. Also, there is usually a setting called "normal", "natural" or "cinema". This one is usually the closest to truthful representation.