High Definition TV or capable of handling High Definition
If you thought that HD TV was the best picture you’re ever going to see, think again. The release of 100/120 Hz Full HD TVs gives you a pretty clear idea that the market is moving again.
NXP showed us a chip the Nexperia PNX5100 which really ups the game for HD. Lower down you can listen to the interview with those involved and watch a video of it working.
Continue reading NXP Nexperia PNX5100: HD TV 2 Is Coming: Podcast & Video: IFA
The BBC Dr Who Spin-off, Torchwood, set and shot in Cardiff, Wales, has been sold to US TV network HDNet.
There’s been lots of speculation going around the various blog sites about the release of a new version of Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
Yesterday Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox 360 Elite is a real product and will begin arriving in US stores on 29 April with an expected retail price of $480.
The confirmed spec of the 360 Elite is a combination of a 120Gb hard drive, new accessories bundled in, and to all of those HD TV fans, an HDMI port built in. Oh, and a return to a black case like the original Xbox. Microsoft tell us that the retail price of all of the bundled bits is over $600 if bought separately.
The HDMI port is an interesting move – yes it will make it simpler to get High Def screens connected (if you have a screen with an HDMI in port), but importantly it will let Elite owners play protected HD-DVD discs on the long-discussed add-on HD-DVD drive. HDMI connection is needed for the HDCP content protection scheme.
The hard drive is detachable and will also be sold separately so standard Xbox users will be able to get hold of them too. Expected US price is $180.
Alongside the goodies above are an Xbox 360 Wireless Controller in black and a headset, in … err, black. Do you get the black theme? There’ll be a couple of other new bits available separately too, a Play & Charge kit for the the wireless controller ($20) and a black rechargeable battery ($12)
Peter Moore, Corporate Vice President – Interactive Entertainment Business, Microsoft, turned the hyperbole meter way up to deliver the following, “Today’s games and entertainment enthusiast has an insatiable appetite for digital high-definition content. Xbox 360 Elite’s larger hard drive and premium accessories will allow our community to enjoy all that the next generation of entertainment has to offer.”
It’s worth noting that the first shots of the Elite, while looking slightly underground, are in fact taken by ‘Major Nelson,’ the pseudonym for Larry Hryb, Xbox Live Director of Programming. So ‘leaked’ photos are now coming from official sources!
Images courtesy of Major Nelson
On the day after news of the date of the first English town to start to go full digital on the delivery of TV, we’re reminded by HDforAll that Ofcom currently doesn’t have plans to set aside any of the freed up frequencies for HDTV usage.
Despite a successful trial run in London during 2006, where HD was delivered over Freeview, the only available ways currently to watch HDTV is via Sky satellite or cable.
One of the major reasons that the UK Government, and in turn, Ofcom is so keen for transferring everyone from the current analogue TV service to digital, is that it will free up large swathes of frequency. Ofcom’s plans are to auction this, and other frequencies off to the highest bidder, as we’ve covered a couple of times.
Not wishing to be left out of the HD world, the BBC are also keen to not just rely on Freeview delivering HD and to this end the BBC Trust have been given a provisional Yes for a FreeSat service capable to deliver their HD.
HDForAll are a pressure group made up of TV manufacturers, retailers and public service broadcasters including DSGI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba and BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five. They’re keen to remind people that there’s only a limited amount of time left to contact Ofcom to make their views known on auctioning off spectrum to the highest bidder. Background on this and how to respond are available on Ofcom’s site.
The public appear to be behind having HDTV on Freeview, nearly 5,000 have signed an e-petition (now closed) and there’s another one urging that
spectrum be made available for citizen and community uses – a la open access cable in the US.
A survey carried out at the end of last year, also found that the vast majority of people, no matter what platform they use, want HD to be available on Freeview – 96% of Freeview, 91% satellite and 92% cable users.
Following the trial in London, HD TV over Freeview has been judged as a success after the six months that it’s been running.
The major broadcasters BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five made joint announcements to tell all the good news.
Not surprisingly 98% of the 450 people who took part think that the over-the-air HD service should be available now. Those people can whistle all they want because the bandwidth just isn’t available. Once digital switch over occurs, there might be a chance, if any of it’s left after the spectrum auction.
Other results of interest include 90% of the trialists felt that the public broadcasters should be responsible for HD development.
It’s clear that once people get their hands on HD, the desire becomes strong, illustrated by their wish to see at least 7 channels, or ideally 10.
Simon Fell, Director of Technology, ITV Consumer was upbeat, “We have conclusively demonstrated that HD services can run effectively alongside standard Freeview broadcasts. All major technical hurdles are behind us, and collectively we can focus on potentially providing services for the forecasted sales of 10 million flat screen TVs by 2010.”
Five percent of those who took part in the trial didn’t think that the HD experience matched up to their expectations. Many others who have HD screens have said the same as some broadcasters compress the images they’re sending out, to ensure they get as many channels into their bandwidth as possible.
Sony and Sky are tying up to show the UK’s first HD advert tonight.
You may well have seen a lot of the build-up for Sony’s latest advert – the one with the paint. It’s the follow-up to their coloured balls advert shot in San Francisco.
Appropriately the advert is for Sony’s Bravia range of HD TVs. Shot in the somewhat less-glamorous location of a disused tower block in Glasgow, Scotland, it shows 70, 000 litres of coloured paint exploding up the side of the block of flats.
Shot over 10 days and with a crew of 250 people, the paint was mixed on site by 20 people. The clear up took 5 days and 60 people.
Behind the scenes footage of the shoot has been circulating on the online video services for about two months now. The wobbly camcorder shot material lends itself to looking like it’s been shot by your ‘man in the street,’ but given the size of the campaign, it’s more likely to be seeded by Sony or their advertising agency, to try and create a build up of interest.
Here’s the finished results.
It makes total sense for Sony to shoot this ad in HD given they’ve been pushing HD for nearly 3 years in Europe – initially through their professional arm that sells the cameras. Given their zeal in this area it makes you wonder why it took so long for an HD advert to come out from them.
The launch of this first HD ad follows a major marketing agreement between Sky and Sony to promote HD.
The HD advert will shown on Sky Sports HD 2 tonight during the Chelsea vs Barcelona football coverage.
A survey released by Best of Stuff suggests that nearly a third of Brits own up to 15 gadgets.
The survey revealed that 30 per cent of those interviewed were the proud owners of 15 gadgets or more, with 60 per cent spending a hefty £5000 on gadgets every year.
Not surprisingly, mobile phones topped the charts as the ‘most treasured gadget’, with 34 per cent of respondents insisting that they simply could not live without one.
The trusty ol’ gogglebox came in a close second with 27 per cent of the vote, and 46 per cent of those surveyed reckoned that the fabbest new innovation in the market is HDTV.
Brits were found to be most excited about Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation 3, with 44 per cent getting moist at the thought of its launch next March, while Nintendo’s Wii was dampening gussets to the tune of 24 per cent of the vote.
But it’s not all love-love-love in the world of gizmos, with 40 per cent of respondents declaring themselves disappointed with their gadget’s battery life, pointing the finger of blame at MP3 players, laptops and mobile phones as the worst offenders.
Samsung is getting ready to unveil what it reckons is the first 70in HD (high-definition) LCD (liquid crystal display) panel.
Due to be announced later this week, this mother of all HD screens will measure a full 5 inches wider across the diagonal than the current largest high-definition LCD panel in use.
Samsung also say that their wall-filling slab o’screen will support the so-called 1080p ‘full HD’, which makes up 1,080 horizontal lines of resolution and progressive scanning.
The declamatory display serves up a hefty 1,920 by 1,080 pixels resolution, supports a massive 1.07 billion colours with video signals reproduced at 120Hz, compared to the 60 Hz of conventional Full HD LCD panels- this higher speed lets moving images be reproduced with much higher clarity.
Samsung will be wowing the crowds with a prototype at the IMID (International Meeting on Information Displays) 2006 technical conference that is taking place later this week in Daegu, South Korea.
Executive Vice President Kim Sang-Soo of Samsung Electronics was ready to parp his company’s PR trumpet: “Our new 70-inch LCD is not only significantly larger, but also sets a new benchmark of excellence in terms of video image reproduction, viewing angle and image quality. We’ve designed it to dramatically enhance the large screen LCD TV user’s viewing experience. ”
Naturally, the pricing will be in the ‘arm & leg’ department, but even those with chequebooks vast enough for this beastie will have to wait, as the monster screens aren’t expected to start shunting off Samsung’s assembly line until the first half of 2007.
Samsung 70in HD LCD TV Specifications
Display size: 70″
Resolution: FHD (1,920 by 1,080 pixels)
Mode: a-Si
Brightness: 600nit
Contrast ratio: 2,000:1
Number of Colours: 1.07 billion
Color saturation: 92%
Response time: < 8ms
Viewing angles: 180° top, bottom, left and right
No. of polarizers: 1
Terminology
Full High Definition (FHD): The FHD requirement for a wide screen (aspect ratio of 16:9) is 1,920 pixels across by 1,080 rows high (the highest resolution available).
Polarizer: A multi-layered optical film is placed at the front and back of the LCD panel as a filter that only allows light waves of a certain rotation to pass through.
Nit: Not something that crawls around your barnet but an abbreviation for the measure of brightness properly called candela per meter square (cd/m2).
One of the challenges facing Stephen Carter’s replacement as head of the UK communications regulator Ofcom, is how the frequency spectrum released by the move to digital terrestrial TV will be allocated. Not only is the decision crucial for Ofcom, who must reconcile both the requirement to allow the market to operate while taking into account the British citizen, but it also figures in the BBC’s strategy around the impending licence settlement and the organisations’ worldwide ambitions.
Although the World Cup has not been the High Definition eruption many in the electronics retailing sector had hoped for, there is now a realisation in the industry; that the move to adoption of flat screen TV displays has started in the homes of Great Britain.
How will displays receive the content to create the impetus for a large scale take up? The likely options are; Cable under what is expected to be a Virgin branded offering; Sky who are pushing HD to protect and grow their revenue; the BBC who are committed to both an alternative to Sky on Satellite and providing their content on all viable platforms and broadband, which looks increasingly viable by virtue of higher transfer rates to the home, along with improved digital compression technologies.
The issue for Ofcom is, should the frequency spectrum vacated by analogue TV go to the highest bidder (which on past experience looks likely to be mobile communications of some sort), or should it propel TV into the HD age with the potential benefit for the UK’s important media industries?
France, slower off the blocks in moving to a Digital Terrestrial TV service, with its’ amusingly acronym-ed TNT, has a solution that builds in HD capabilities, and for sure the UK will not wish to be seen falling behind mainland Europe.
And where does the BBC anguish become an issue? Well, if the only methods of receiving HD are by commercial operators Sky and Cable, how does the BBC reconcile the cost to all viewers when only a subset can receive it? The BBC is terrified of losing arguments that could justify a decrease of its universal fee, or marginalisation of its place as a leader in the deployment of advanced distribution and production technology. They’re actively lobbying to make sure that new frequency plans allow for both mobile TV and HD terrestrial.
Given all this, it looks like Stephen Carter could be showing admirable timing skills in vacating the OFCOM hot seat.
The BBC is making its first steps into the super-crisp world of high definition television (HDTV) with transmissions of Planet Earth and Bleak House in the new format at the end of this month.
The transmissions – the first free-to-air HDTV shows in the UK – will be available to satellite and cable viewers armed with an HD-ready television set and a decoder (or set top box).
Cable company Telewest are already screening hi-def BBC shows, but things should heat up in the summer when Auntie Beeb starts to tempt sports fans with HDTV transmissions from this summer’s football World Cup and Wimbledon championships.
HD TV broadcasts can also beef up the whole big match experience by incorporating 5.1 surround sound and displaying the (Rooney-less) stadium action in widescreen.
The BBC will limber up its HD programming by broadcasting a promotional preview for users of Sky’s electronic programme guide on 11 May, with Bleak House and part one of Planet Earth following on 27th and 29th May.
“These are small but exciting first steps in the BBC’s ambition to offer the option of high definition to all in the future,” said Jana Bennett, BBC director of television.
“We really feel that high definition will be the standard definition of the future,” she added.
Although high definition broadcasts contain four to five times as much picture information than a standard television signal, BBC research has found that you’ll need a giant sized screen (28 inches/69cm and up) to really notice the difference – so there’s not much to be gained by watching it on your dinky portable TV.