Myths in HDTV: EDTV Disguised as HDTV

re: Myths in HDTV: EDTV Disguised as HDTV

Wilson J. Picket — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:43:39 GMT

I saw that same ad talked about on HDBeat long time ago. I think it was a mistake, the store is Best Buy but that's obvious from that gross yellow price logo they use.

re: Myths in HDTV: EDTV Disguised as HDTV

Chris — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:28:24 GMT

A 1024x768 plasma HDTV is, in fact, widescreen (16:9) and it is, in fact, an HDTV, as defined by the Consumer Electronics Association. I know it may seem odd that a 1024x768 TV could be widescreen but it is. Ya know how? Rectangular (not square) pixels.

The CES defined an HDTV with the following guidelines:

* Must be able to receive ATSC terrestrial digital transmissions and decode all ATSC Table 3 video formats

* Display vertical scanning lines of 720 progressive (720p), 1080 interlaced (1080i), or higher

* Display an image in a 16:9 (width:height) aspect ratio

* Receive, reproduce, and/or output Dolby Digital audio

The HDTV you so vociferously malign above meets all of these criteria. In fact, 1024x768 is the most common resolution of widescreen 42-inch plasma HDTV sets, made by Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Fujitsu, Vizio and many many others. To date, only Panasonic has come out with a 42-inch plasma set with full 1080p resolution.

In the 50-inch plasma size, the sets use square pixels, and are either 1366X768 or 1920x1080 in native resolution.

You might want to do a little more research before posting inflammatory articles such as this in the future.

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re: Myths in HDTV: EDTV Disguised as HDTV

Wayde — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:27:52 GMT

Thanks for that Chris. And he’s right.

Magnavox themselves call this an EDTV.

http://www.magnavox.com/index.cfm?event=main&cat_id=1&subcat_id=3&product=72

These resolution standards for digital TV are set by SMPTE a trade org that has no regulatory power like the atsc. The ATSC is the government regulatory body that will accept the standards or not. ATSC website has all the information you need on what’s accepted and what’s not.

Document describing ATSC standards for HD, and DTV are here http://www.atsc.org/standards.html

This seems to say ATSC the ONLY requirement for (720P) HDTV is in its vertical resolution requirements for 720p. Shockingly! 1024x768 actually meets the requirement.

You can argue about resolution and number of pixels you’re being short changed. But the long and short of it is that I was wrong. Technically a 1024x768 display can be HDTV. It’s not uncommon for plasma to make sets with square pixels to Plasma sets to give them the widescreen effect. Interesting.

re: Myths in HDTV: EDTV Disguised as HDTV

Chris — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:28:47 GMT

Well, not to be a further pain in the ass... OK, well actually I will be a further pain in the ass. The Magnavox set you're linking to in the comment above is actually an EDTV (42MF7000/17), with a native resolution of 852x480 pixels.

The TV in the ad and in the original article (42MF230A) is an HDTV and is referred to as such by Magnavox. It's too old to have a link on the Magnavox web site (discontinued in 2006), but the specs/description are still up on shopping.com:

http://www.shopping.com/xPF-Philips-42MF230A-37

The replacement model is the 42MF231, and it's here:

http://www.magnavox.com/index.cfm?event=main&cat_id=1&subcat_id=5&product=107

Regards,

-Chris

http://bigpicturebigsound.com/plasma-hdtv-resolution-1176.shtml

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