Jonesing for a better TV…

Bigger, thinner, and pricier

The Harris Poll had some interesting HDTV statistics yesterday:

• Almost a year-and-a-half after Blu-Ray won the format war, 11% of US adults own HD-DVD players but only 7% own Blu-Ray players

I own both, although my HD-DVD player is gathering dust in the spare room – I only have a handful of HD-DVDs, none of which I need to watch, and I didn’t want to squeeze another player into the stack of devices cluttering my entertainment system.  I have no plans to purchase Blu-Ray discs, but instead pay a surcharge to rent them, whenever possible, from Netflix.  But the Harris Poll data is confusing, since they also report 9% of US adults own a Sony Playstation 3 (PS3).  Well, those are Blu-Ray players, so why would they say only 7% of adults own a Blu-Ray player?  Perhaps many PS3 owners don’t realize they can play Blu-Ray discs?

• Ownership of televisions that were 36 inches or larger increased from 35% to 42% of US adults this past year
• Ownership of HDTVs increased from 35% to 47% of US adults this past year

My HDTV is only 30″ and is an older flatscreen 16:9 CRT.  So it is deep and heavy, but it also is bright, has fairly accurate colors, and a very wide viewing angle.  I usually sit eight feet from the screen, so standard-definition video sources don’t look grainy and I can tug the couch up closer if I want to see a Blu-Ray, downloaded, or over-the-air HD show with greater perceived resolution.  (My screen tops out at 800 lines, which is fine for its size, although if you move up to 42″ and beyond the full 1080 is preferred.)

I’d certainly like a bigger screen, but I’m still leery of plasmas, especially with Pioneer exiting that market, although some well-regarded Panasonic units have reportedly greatly reduced their lifetime-loss-of-brightness and burn-in problems.  And LCD televisions still suffer from some motion blur as well as color quality and brightness dropoff at large viewing angles.  Without some quality up-conversion, I’m also afraid the things I watch in standard-definition would look lousy on a huge screen.

I’d be more fond of the instant gratification from streaming HD video were it not for the frequent buffering delays, lack of bonus features, and sparse selection compared to discs from Netflix. Some new HDTVs incorporate Netflix streaming, which I can already get through my Tivo HD along with Amazon’s video-on-demand.  And I can also rent videos on my Apple TV, although that has been less satisfying with limited content and some annoying playback delays.  I used to hook my Averatec laptop to the television to watch Amazon Unbox video, but even with my smaller Asus Eee PC that remains a bothersome kludge.  To get the computer image on the TV I have to plop the netbook by the TV, plug in the audio cable and two cables for the video dongle that converts VGA to component video, then plug in the computer to the wall since I will be overclocking it continuously, then tweak the screen settings on the PC and the receiver and the video dongle, all for an image that suffers from blooming and color distortions.  Good grief!  So I’m truly thankful Amazon’s service is on the Tivo now.

Another thing I’d like to do is surf the web on my TV from the couch.  To avoid the above hassle with the netbook, I’ve hacked my Apple TV with the aTV Flash so that I can now surf the net through it, but plugging in my wireless keyboard and mouse causes the overburdened Apple TV to stutter a bit and the CRT image is still rather lacking.  So I find that I’d rather just put the netbook in my lap and use it.

But eventually I will make the jump to a larger HDTV, perhaps 42″ to 46″, with 1080p resolution, good standard-definiton upconversion, and multiple HDMI inputs as well as VGA.  For couch surfing I’d hook that new TV directly to a small dedicated computer with a wireless keyboard and trackpad.  But today a good Samsung LCD TV and Mac mini to achieve the results I seek would cost me about $2,000.  Ouch!  I’ll stick with my CRT and netbook for now.

Eliminating Overscan

Overscan

For years my Samsung TXN3071WHF HDTV has suffered from overscan.  Most cathode-ray-tube (CRT) sets make the image too large to fit on the screen so that the edges are cut off.  Many newer LCD and plasma televisions can disable overscan, but it is common on older CRTs.  Cathode ray tube images tend to “bloom” or expand when bright images are displayed, and overscan makes this less noticeable.

Yes, I still use a CRT.  While it is a high-definition set with 800 lines of resolution, it lacks HDMI ports and other modern amenities.  Since it is only a 30″ set, I truly don’t need more resolution than that and Hollywood’s refusal to allow DVD upscaling over component video doesn’t really matter to me since a 480p image looks great on a 30″ screen.  The good points about my old CRT are its bright screen, wide color gamut, and broad viewing angle.

I sit about nine feet from the screen, so a 30″ screen is acceptable to me, although I’m told I could go all the way up to a 50″ set showing 1080p images from my Blu-ray player and still avoid seeing pixels and have a far more immersive movie experience. (Here is a nifty graph of screen resolutions and seating distances.)  I’m a single male, so I don’t mind if a 50″ set overpowers my living room, but I’m sure that most 480i images on broadcast television would look pretty lousy at that size and distance.  So I’ll probably wait and purchase a LED-backlit 50″ 1080p LCD television in a couple of years when they will be much cheaper and more video sources are high definition.

Anyway, back to the point.  The factory default for my TV is to overscan and the normal user menus offer no remedy.  The problem has been especially noticeable when using my Apple TV in 1080i mode, with text falling off the sides of the screen.  I also noticed it on election night when viewing HDTV over-the-air digital broadcasts – some of the local race results on the side of the screen were cut off.  I hate overscan, since I want to see every bit of the original image, although it seems many people don’t pay much attention to overscan except on their computer monitors when it is most noticeable and truly annoying.

I did an internet search on my old TV and, voilà, found instructions on how to access its mysterious service menu.  The secret keystrokes of MUTE-1-8-2-POWER on the remote bring up dozens of settings for the picture size, location, distortions, color, etc.  I took the internet’s advice and scribbled down the original settings so I could restore them if need be.

Then I tackled the 480p settings by loading my Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith DVD and activating its THX Optimizer.  That option shows test patterns, including a 16:9 circle and edge boxes so you can eliminate overscan while keeping the screen width-to-height ratio properly balanced.  Playing around with six of the two dozen settings achieved my goal of no overscan while retaining the proper width-to-height ratio.

Then I switched over to my Apple TV in 1080i mode and again fiddled with the service menu to eliminate overscan and keep the image in balance.  Unfortunately I don’t have a Blu-ray disc with test patterns, so I had to do a bit more guesswork on those settings.  If later I notice some problems, I’ll rent a Blu-ray test pattern disc from Netflix and do a more thorough fix.

But for now the overscan is gone and I am a happy viewer.  The entire images are mine, all mine.  And if a cameraman ever screws up and lets a boom mike into the shot, I’ll know it!

Netflix on TiVo

Netflix on TiVo

My purchase of a TiVo HD about a year ago continues to pay off.  Now I can watch streaming movies from Netflix on the TiVo and the experience beats the pants off watching Netflix streaming movies on a computer.  The instant gratification of a decent-quality stream is luxurious compared to the long wait to download a video to my Apple TV or to my TiVo from Amazon’s Video on Demand service, let alone waiting several days for a DVD or Blu-ray disc to arrive from Netflix.

Mind you, I still will insist of viewing great movies on Blu-ray discs I rent from Netflix.  The video and audio quality of an actual disc are far better than the Netflix Watch Instantly stream.  But the Netflix stream is certainly good enough for casual viewing.  It certainly looks okay on my old-school 30″ CRT HDTV, which has 800 lines of resolution.  I would likely be less satisfied if I had the gargantuan 50″ 1080p home theater TV I can’t justify buying (yet).  And the stream is free with my current five-discs-per-month Netflix account, versus having to pony up to rent or buy a movie via Amazon or the Apple TV.

I just watched The Pixar Story, a documentary that isn’t yet available on Netflix disc, with the new Netflix streaming service on the TiVo.  The video stream didn’t have to pause and buffer and only occasionally was I annoyed by macroblocks and other compression artifacts.  It is annoying to have to edit my “Watch Instantly Queue” on the computer rather than being able to edit it on the TiVo, but it could be even more frustrating to try to search for movies and edit the queue using the limited controls on a TiVo infrared remote.  CNET has a good review of the new service.

As Netflix expands its roster of Watch Instantly movies I will probably drop back to a cheaper 3-or-4 discs-per-month account, and I’m hopeful that their deals to get their streaming service on the TiVo, on the standalone Roku box, on Samsung players, and the Xbox 360 means they will survive the eventual death of movies on disc.  I do hope, however, that economics don’t doom Blu-ray discs too early.  Movie theaters are becoming obsolete and until we get larger bandwidth for true HD video streams we will still need Blu-ray discs to show quality movies with appropriate video and sound quality.

Blu Daze

Sony BDP-S350

Sony BDP-S350 at Amazon

Impatient to move on from my HD-DVD debacle, I decided to not wait for the forthcoming Black Friday and beyond price drops.  I just went out and bought a Blu Ray player.

I decided to get some use from my Amazon.com Prime account and bought the Sony BDP-S350.  I paid about $265 for the thing, but rumor says Sears may have it for as low as $180 after Thanksgiving.  If notoriously picky videophile Dan Ramer of dvdfile.com is satisfied with the higher-end Sony BDP-S550, then I’m safe to drop down a notch.   I did NOT want a Sony PlayStation 3, even though many use it for Blu Ray movies, since I don’t play videogames and I love my Logitech Harmony 880 Universal Remote.  The PS3 won’t take infrared commands, costs more, and I’m sure it is noisier.

It seemed best to get a Profile 2.0 Blu Ray player that could take advantage of online content and firmware updates.  I’ll borrow a super-long CAT 5E cable from work for firmware updates.  But the online BDLive content sounds less than interesting thus far and has brought user unhappiness with “frozen” players while content is being downloaded, so I won’t bother trying to get the player a permanent wired connection.  If online extras are ever to matter, Sony and others will need to invest in 801.11 networking for their living room players.  TiVo did it, and so can they, of course.

Mr. Kite in Across the Universe

I’ve only watched one full movie thus far and experimented a bit with a regular DVD.  For my inaugural Blu Ray disc I chose from my local Hastings rental shop the visual and sonic feast of Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe.  (I didn’t yet have my Netflix queue prepared for my jump to Blu Ray.)  The film seemed a good test of the Blu Ray format, and I was quite pleased with the quality of the playback.  The best part of the movie for me was U2’s Bono playing Doctor Robert and then Eddie Izzard’s unforgettable portrayal of Mr. Kite…you gotta see it, baby!

Now, mind you, my HDTV is an older 30″ CRT from Samsung that takes 1080i signals on analog component cables and displays only 800 lines.  At that screen size and resolution, there just isn’t that big a jump in quality from 480p DVD to Blu Ray (or HD-DVD, for that matter).  So why make the jump to high definition?  I love great movies and I want to see them as clearly and with as many fun extras as is practical.  And someday I’ll no doubt invest in a bigger flat screen HDTV that can deliver 1080p images carried on HDMI cabling and also upscale older DVDs.  (My defunct Toshiba HD DVD player and the new Blu Ray one can upscale DVDs, but thanks to Hollywood’s paranoia they will only do so over a digitally protected HDMI cable.)

I was worried when I first popped in a regular DVD, one which had both full frame and widescreen versions of a film.  I wanted to test how the player would handle a 4:3 DVD video on my 16:9 set since some older movie DVDs and most older TV shows on disc use that format.  At first it was squishville with all of the usual horrid distortions when a 16:9 TV stretches a 4:3 image.  On my Toshiba HD DVD player, I had to keep re-entering setup to shift it out of progressive and back into interlace mode on such discs so that my poor TV could squeeze the image back to normal.  I am sick of that stupidity.  But I finally fiddled enough with the video settings on the Blu Ray player so that it properly displayed the 4:3 imagery with pillarboxing in progressive mode, which is a great improvement.  Who knows if the luck will hold on other oddly formatted DVDs, but I have hope.

Netflix on TiVo

Before settling on the Sony BDP-S350 I had given some thought to buying a Samsung unit that could stream my Netflix Watch Instantly movies.  But their silly player also wanted a wired Ethernet connection and I wasn’t about to bother pulling wire into the living room nor was I going to invest in a new wireless router and separate wireless bridge to get a fake “wired” Ethernet connection in the living room.

Now it seems that problem will be solved, since Netflix and TiVo have each bought a clue and teamed up.  By early December I should be able to watch my Netflix Watch Instantly movies on my TiVO HD, which has a wireless connection.  The quality won’t compare to that of the Blu Ray player, but the instant gratification will come in handy.

So about a year after wasting my dough on an HD DVD player, I’m finally Blu.  Now if only CBS would get off their collective butts and put the Remastered Star Trek out on Blu Ray.  And we need all of the new Battlestar Galactica on Blu Ray, and Vertigo, and…we get the picture, don’t we?

Galactica Unboxed

Early this morning Amazon’s Unbox service delivered the Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Premiere He That Believeth in Me to my Tivo for $1.89, after it first aired the night before on cable television’s SciFi channel. NBC Universal’s deal provides its programming to Unbox the day after an episode airs.

This is the second time I’ve used Unbox, and I was happy with the result. The show was a bit clearer than it was when I used to watch the SciFi channel on analog cable TV, and it was commercial-free. Waiting one day for the show doesn’t bother me much.

Amazon Video on Demand

I heard that SciFi allowed you to watch the episode online on their website earlier on Friday, before it aired (!). And you can still watch it there or on hulu. I suppose that will appeal to some. But when I go to the web and start watching the episode, the compression needed for online streaming is obvious. Jerky video with obvious macro blocks is not what I want to see and I certainly don’t want to sit in front of my computer to watch TV. I can hook up my laptop to the television via a video converter, but that is a pain to set up and the visual quality is not nearly as good as watching the Unbox episode on the Tivo.

Previously I had rented the movie Blades of Glory with Unbox on my Tivo, and it too looked fine and was delivered in a timely manner. My Tivo HD allows you to watch a video before it has been completely downloaded, but you still have to wait for enough of the video to be loaded so that you don’t get an interruption while watching.

For someone like me who watches relatively little television, buying TV episodes for download is a welcome alternative to paying much more for a monthly cable subscription. I just wish Galactica was also still available on the Apple TV so I could compare that experience to Unbox.

I presume we’ll have broadcast television and cable television for decades to come. But I expect more and more people will choose to pay to download shows they really want to watch on their own terms. We used to call the prospect of video downloads “convergence” but it really seems more like “divergence” – you can now legally watch shows multiple ways: cable or broadcast TV (which you may well record for convenient viewing with a DVR), online website-based streaming with commercials, downloaded files from Unbox or Apple without commercials, DVD sets after each season, and so forth.

What will be interesting to see is how video downloads affect Blu-Ray. Will folks pony up the money for players and rent or purchase Blu-Ray discs for their superior video and audio quality? Or will many remain content with downloading movies from Apple’s iTunes, Amazon’s Unbox, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 movie downloads, and other online services via some sort of set-top box, gaming console, or DVR?

I do plan on purchasing a Blu-Ray player eventually and renting Blu-Ray movies from Netflix. But the standalone player market is not mature enough yet. Prices are too high and features missing unless one is willing to buy a Sony Playstation. And I don’t want a videogame console that lacks infrared remote control for use with my Logitech Harmony remote. For now I’ll watch some old HD-DVDs and regular Netflix DVDs on my orphaned Toshiba HD-DVD player. Then I’ll rent any recent TV shows I want that aren’t available via over-the-air digital broadcast from Apple’s iTunes on my Apple TV or Amazon’s Unbox on my Tivo.