SD look better on HDTV than regular TV?

[Ed Sarkissian]

Hi, I'm just curious... will something shot in SD (ie. a dvd) look better on an HDTV just because it's HD? I assume it would because of progressive scanning. But then how does the difference in resolution work? I'm trying to think it through... 525 lines of resolution that would have to 'expand' to at least 720 lines...

Ed

 

[MarkG]

I haven't looked at SD on an HDTV, but certainly SD video played back on my PC monitor at HD resolutions looks awful; generally video always looks better at native resolution than scaled up (and sometimes better than scaled down, e.g. converting interlaced 1080i footage to progressive 720p).

 

[BenB]

I've been researching this a lot for my own use, and for my students (I teach DVDSP). Here's the deal:

TRUE HD broadcasts on an HD TV screen look better than anything in the world!

SD on an HD screen looks like CRAP! In fact, if you leave the screen in 16:9 mode, although it streatches out the image to fill the screen, it actually clears up the SD picture. But then everyone looks werid on screen.

I now know several pros, such as myself, who produce HD material, and have both an HD and SD TV screens side by side in their dens. Or just refuse to do HD until someone straightens out the mess it made of "standards".

 

[BenB]

There are many reports that have been published showing that SD on an HD screen looks worse than on a regular SD screen. There are a variety of technical reasons for this, such as HD screens can't match the active line count of SD, for starters. Several consumer organizations have done tests, too, and come to the same conclusion.

I have checked this on 6 HD TVs of family and friends, and not a single HD TV screen can show SD as well as an SD screen.

 

[MarkG]

I have a 1920x1080 LCD TV at work now, and SD doesn't look too bad when scaled up so long as you're at a reasonable viewing distance. It looks pretty horrible close up though, and still worse than it would on a CRT SDTV.

 

[BenB]

It all has to do with SD and HD being drastically different numbers of scan lines. HD screens have too many, and have to up-rez SD, it can't play SD in it's native mode. And we all know what happens when you up-rez a low quality image...

HDTV's can't readjust to play only the native number of scan lines SD was created at, thus, the lack in quality.

And every time I walk into someone's house, and see SD broadcasts in wide screen mode, and they say, "Oh, that's how it looks in HD, isn't it better?", it makes me want to, well, first of all puke, second of all, give up on the human race as an "intelligent" form of life.