Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Television Media

Do Detailed HDTV Listings Exist? 31

Posted by Cliff from the tv-guide-needs-an-update dept.
nick_davison asks: "Having finally made the move to HDTV, I've been getting up to speed on the usual debates about HDTV (is 720 rows/frame better than 1080 served every other frame, 540 at a time? Is 1080i meaningless if all your signals are 720, and thus 1080 is just having to resample your image? Is 1080i and 720p meaningless if the digital signals bitrate is so low it's garbage anyway? etc). Trying to form my own opinions, I went looking for TV listings that would at least show the resolution of the signal (1080i or 720p) and, ideally, though I guess less likely, the bit rate. What I ended up with was, if I was lucky, TV listings that differentiated HD and non HD shows on HD channels but nothing more. Do such listings exist? Is this something the TV companies deliberately hide? Is there any way to even piece together this information?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Do Detailed HDTV Listings Exist? More

Do Detailed HDTV Listings Exist?

Comments Filter:
  • It looks like it may vary per network and not per show?

    http://alvyray.com/DigitalTV/Naming_Proposal.htm [alvyray.com]

  • Here in Austin... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by caperry ( 31048 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:23PM (#14221463) Homepage
    I don't know about where you are, but here in Austin TX the resolutions are fixed by channel. For example, ABC, NBC, PBS, and WB all broadcast at either 480i or 1080i. The FOX affiliate broadcasts at 480i or 720p. These are OTA only. On the local cable company, everything except FOX and ESPN are upconverted to 1080i - why I don't know. I believe the reason is 1080 is a bigger number than 720 and thus must be better. Finally, everything HD on DirecTV is 720p. Bitrates vary (IMHO PBS usually having the best starting in the evening when they turn off the three other feeds they provide OTA) all the time. The best resource I've found has been the AV Science Forum [avsforum.com] which has a rather large listing of HDTV information for various cities.

    Finally, to add some fuel to the 720p vs 1080i debate - IMHO: it's all about your output device. If your output device is any type of projection (including rear projection TVs) then p is always better than i simply because that's how your device draws the screen anyway. I could be wrong, but at least it seems that way to me.
    • For example, ABC, NBC, PBS, and WB all broadcast at either 480i or 1080i. The FOX affiliate broadcasts at 480i or 720p.

      You're right that resolutions are fixed by channel. (E.g., see here [alvyray.com]). The networks all either chose 720p or 1080i. However, in most areas of the country. ABC is 720p through most of the country, except some areas of Texas. See here [go.com]

      Regardless of the HDTV format being broadcast, all new HDTV receivers can receive both formats. New HDTV televisions will convert any received signal to a forma


      • 1080i is great for slow moving high res stuff, like landscapes and stuff on PBS.

        720p is great for sports.

        I personally want a 1080p native system before I move to HDTV. , or else I will feel that I am being down-sampled when I want 1080i. I feel much better about upsampling from 720p to 1080p.

        Just read there are nice 1080p systems out there if you look. A couple of huge 46" flat screens are out for about $6000. The 1080p projectors are still about $20,000.
        • The latest generation Samsung DLPs are 1080p. (For example, see this page [samsung.com].)
        • The problem is that there aren't any devices that output 1080p. Sure, your computer can do it, but that's about it at this point. Also, the bandwidth necessary for it is higher than the HDMI spec allows. So if any boxes do ever come out that output 1080p, they'll either use parallel HDMI outputs to do it, or another HDMI spec will need to be created.
  • Not easy - you have the resolution/compression the show was recorded in, and then the rez/comp the show was broadcast in. The first is nearly impossible to find out, and for the second you might find out res pretty easy, but comp or bandwidth or bit rate may well be a secret for competitve reasons. Satellite tends to have the worst compression, while cable is decent, and OTA might be the best.

  • While, in theory, I don't see any reason that they can't change the resolution whenever they want to, currently every network broadcasts in exactly one format per channel.

    Fox does everything in 720p. If it's not HD content, they upsample it to 720p (e.g., The Simpsons, advertising, etc.). CBS does 1080i. I'm not sure what PBS uses.

    Personally, I wish they would use whatever is as close as possible to the original format. If it's a movie, then do 24 frames per second without interlacing, one frame per ori

    • Not sure what their reason is, but the reason I would *hate* this if they did it is resolution switching. My projector takes a few seconds to change resolutions (think of a CRT monitor flickering when you change screen resolution). As it is when I change channels I have this effect, if it happened when going into / out of commercial, et cetera, it would be very irritating.

      • My Sony XBR does the same thing.

        For me, the solution was to pass it over to the cable box to handle. I can tell the cable box what inputs my TV accepts (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i) and then it will only send in combinations of those modes. Accordingly, if I switch off everything but 1080i, everything gets upsampled (or, technically, kind of downsampled if a single frame of 720p vs. the 540 of 1080i) in the cable box without the flicker. The TV then never switches modes - it always gets a 1080i feed - and so no

      •     I know exactly what you mean. When I switch from DVD to DirecTV, it rescans the devices to find where the new input is coming from, even though the new input is exactly where the old input was. I have two signal cable run from my equipment over to my projector, but one is only for legacy equipment (PS2), and the SVideo (to the PS2) rarely used. It does the same thing on resolution changes, thinking the old device was detached.

  • Tuner Card if nothing else (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anti_Climax ( 447121 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:27PM (#14221530)
    My roommate's media computer has a HiPix DTV-200 HD Tuner, and the on screen display shows the video dimensions, bitrate, signal quality and HD Format. You might be able to use one of these if you can't find the listing info you're looking for. Though you might be able to get more info on AVSFourum.com rather than slashdot though. Best of luck to you

  • Early Adopter Blues (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Even though you write you "finally" switched to HD, you are still an early adopter. Early adopters almost always have the blues because they pay more to get less, but earlier. TV networks and other providers are still weighing how much of their bandwidth to use for what kind of digital broadcast. They can, I believe, divide their total bandwidth up however they like. Here (San Francisco) the Public TV station, KQED, is broadcasting five lower-bandwidth channels simultaneously, so each cannot be of the highe

  • TitanTV (Score:5, Informative)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @03:08PM (#14221953) Homepage Journal
    TitanTV [titantv.com] gives me details.

    Examples in L.A. area:

    Alias
    The Horizon (New) 12/14/2005 10:00 PM, 1 hr
    Syd is reunited with Vaughn after being kidnapped and hypnotized by a familiar face, who has a vested interest in her future---and in her unborn child.
    Cast & Credits: Jennifer Garner, Ron Rifkin, Victor Garber, Michael Vartan, Carl Lumbly
    Drama/Action
    TV14, English, 2005
    HDTV - presented in 720p (Dolby Digital)

    --

    The Late Show with David Letterman
      (New) 12/14/2005 11:35 PM, 1 hr
    Stephen Colbert; a holiday toy demonstration.
    Talk/Other
    TVPG, English, 2005
    HDTV - presented in 1080i
  • People buying HDTV sets today are very much early adopters, and with that comes the growing pains of new technology. There's no guarantee that the MPEG-2 implementation used by present ATSC tuners will even be the standard in a few years; broadcasters are lobbying for more efficient codecs, and even pay service OTA.

  • Bitrates? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Trip Ericson ( 864747 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @04:33PM (#14222848) Homepage
    There's really no way to deal with listing of bitrates, since the amount of bandwidth given to the stream varies by station.

    For example, NBC29 (WVIR in Charlottesville, VA) dedicates the entire 19.393 MBPS to their NBC-1080i broadcast, while my local NBC station (WSLS in Roanoke, VA) reserves a small amount for a radar feed and serves the rest (in the neighborhood of 16.5 MBPS) to HDTV.

    Further, some stations that broadcast more than one stream do what's called stat-muxing, short for Statistical Multiplexing. This means that when the HDTV feed needs the bandwidth, it is given to it and the other streams are cut down, then when it's not needed anymore, it is given to the subchannel, so there is NO set bitrate. This is done dynamically as it is transmitted, so in a high-motion scene it may draw 18 MBPS, but then change to a scene of someone sitting in a chair talking and drop to 12 or 13 MBPS.
    • I was curious as to whether or not there were any resources for finding out which stations do what - like your example of WVIR vs. WSLS.

      Also I heard that DirectTV, at least in some markets, has dropped some of its 1080i signals from 1920x1080i to 1280x1080i with the excuse that most HDTVs only natively support 720p (downscaling 1080i as needed) and thus 1280 horizontal is sufficient and lets them compress further, fitting more channels on to a single transponder which, from what I have read, costs satelite

      • Re:Bitrates? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Trip Ericson ( 864747 )
        Well, the rule is NORMALLY this:

        1080i:
        Everyone except ABC and Fox stations and other properties, such as ESPN.

        720p:
        ABC, Fox, ESPN. Dunno for sure about DirecTV, but it would make sense as they're owned by Fox.

        Now there are exceptions, such as WVEC-13 (ABC) in Norfolk and WFAA-8 (ABC) in Dallas doing 1080i instead of 720p. All Belo stations are doing 1080i, even if they're ABC (they're upconverting it).

        On the other hand, WHRO-15 (PBS) in Norfolk and WCBI-4 (CBS) in Tupelo, MS doing 720p instead of 1080i.

        Mo
        • 720p is less likely to "pixelate" in high motion.

          There is the trick, what most people don't realize is that 1080i is actually only able to capture motion at 15 fps. because at 30 fps, 15 are the a frames, and 15 are the b frames. The reason Motion pictures worked so well with 24fps is because movies have alwys used a 'progressive' display technology.

          There is also a 1080p format, but unless you pay as much on a tv set as a car, you won't be getting one of those (unless it's a PC monitor) anytime soon. Sinc

  • HD Sports Guide (Score:3, Interesting)

    by angle_slam ( 623817 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @08:32PM (#14225082)
    If you're interested in sports, check out HD Sports Guide [hdsportsguide.com], which shows what sports are available in HD and in what resolution they will be aired.

  • HDTV Galaxy (Score:2, Informative)

    by net_oholic ( 222829 )
    HDTV Galaxy [hdtvgalaxy.com] gives listings for shows being broadcast in HDTV, and gives the resolution. I find it to be fairly accurate.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • In Australia it is upto the network to decide what they broadcast in. We have 5 networks in my City and 4 broadcast in 1080i and one broadcasts in 576p. The 7 network calls one of its streams HD but i don't think 576p should be called HD as it is the same resolution as it SD channel only it is progressive rather than interlaced. The progressive channel definitely looks better than the interlaced channel. We don't get an 720p broadcasts at all. In fact not many of the PAL HD TV sets support 720p at all. HD h

Slashdot Top Deals

Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, In kernel as it is in user!

Close