| Editorial June 2008
Why Settle for Faux HD?
 "The
war of the high-definition video formats is over. Blu-ray won."
That’s what you hear over and over, but based on
what’s happening in the aftermath of HD DVD’s demise, I wonder if it
shouldn’t instead read: "The battle of the high-definition formats is over.
Blu-ray won. The war has just begun." If you thought things were confusing during the
altercation between HD DVD and Blu-ray, that choice seems clear compared to what’s
now happening.
In last month’s editorial, Doug Blackburn pointed out
that not everything labeled high-definition (HD) actually is. The quality of most
TV signals broadcast, whether over the air or via cable, is way below what it should be.
One night I’ll watch CSI Miami via Comcast cable and the picture will be sharp
enough to write home about. Two nights later I’ll see the original CSI, and
the picture is little better than a standard-definition DVD.
Nor are download systems up to hi-def snuff, though I have
a feeling that so much potential profit is at stake that this state of affairs will
rapidly change as the download movie barons push the technology envelope to improve
quality. But no one knows if downloads will merely "improve," or if the barons
will eventually give us genuine HD. In the meantime, as Doug suggested, HD DVD and Blu-ray
remain the only genuine HD sources for your HD monitor.
But more confusion looms on the horizon, and it can be
summed up in one word: upconversion. This is a process by which a standard DVD or
other video signal is electronically manipulated to increase its apparent resolution. This
is usually done by a chipset in the DVD player, and according to many, the best of these
chipsets is the Reon. Toshiba employed this wizardry in its top-end HD DVD players,
notably the HD-XA2, and the results still look very impressive.
Now on the way is Super Resolution, a new upconversion
system that uses systems developed for astronomy that will first appear in laptop
computers. Side-by-side comparisons of still images are very startling: the SD picture
looks even better than what can be achieved with the Reon chipset. And, as usual, everyone
is hyping Super Resolution’s "near HD resolution."
But the first word in that phrase is near. Neither
Super Resolution nor Reon is actually high-definition. Each creates images that approach
the quality of hi-def, but neither is the thing itself. Think you can’t tell the
difference? You might be fooled if you sit far enough away from the screen, but if you sit
closer, you can clearly see that while the foreground of an upconverted image might look
about as good as those of true HD, the middle ground and background will give the
pretender away.
By no means do I oppose video upconversion -- the Reon chip
has made my large collection of DVDs look a lot better. Because I know that it will be a
long time before many of those titles are released on Blu-ray, and now never on HD DVD, I
welcome the chance to see them more clearly and sharply than before. I bless the Reon chip
-- how did I ever live without it?
But, at best, upconversion can only ever be "improved
SD." It can never be high-definition. And depending on where you sit and the
rest of your equipment, the improvement might not be anywhere near as great as claimed in
ads by the companies trying to sell you their upconverting players. As a reader of a
website devoted to high-end video, you need to be aware of this difference and to tell
others about it, especially salespeople in chain stores such as Circuit City and Best Buy,
who tend to parrot the latest slogans they’ve heard, whether or not they’re true
-- slogans such as "near HD quality," which is invariably shortened to "HD
quality."
And that’s when an exaggeration becomes a lie. You
wouldn’t buy "near gasoline-quality" fuel for your car, or eat "near
food quality" junk. You shouldn’t accept "near HD quality" as anything
other than what it is: faux HD. The war now to be waged is one of getting everyone to be
honest about this, and to realize that unless it’s fed a true HD source, an HD
monitor simply cannot display an HD image.
I was an avid supporter of HD DVD, but given the
current state of affairs, I have a new and simple message: If you’re looking for true
high-definition signals to feed to your new HD monitor, support Blu-ray Disc.
...Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com |
