Some HDTV Myths Dispelled

I'm a big fan of Mark Schubin because he's an undisputed historian of television technology and has a tongue-in-cheeky way of cutting through all of the clutter to focus on the most important aspects of whatever topic he's reporting on. In an October 2004 article in Digital TV Magazine High & Why, he mentions that the average American at the average American viewing distance of 9 feet can't see more than the 480 active lines in standard TV resolution on a 42-inch widescreen TV. He backs this up in a May 2005 article in Videography Magazine What IS HDTV Anyway, when he mentions a Consumer Reports study of plasma televisions that showed high-definition video content looking just as good on the best standard-definition TV sets as the HDTV sets! What makes HD look so "good" regardless of your TV set is that the design of HD cameras and lenses increases the human perception of "sharpness" based on having more contrast over the range of detail resolution. Note that at typical PC monitor distances (3 feet or so), HD resolutions do make a perceivable difference though. He goes on to say that in psychovisual studies, the perceived resolution of 1080i is about the same as 720p. Also in an August 2005 Television Broadcast Magazine article Cameron Diaz Looks Fine On HDTV, he says that the 1953 NTSC color standard actually offers a greater range of reds (0.67x/0.33y) than HDTVs (0.64x/0.33y). Finally, in that same article, he talks about tests performed by CBS in movie theaters, where projector mechanical jitter and weave reduced the perceived resolution down to just 875 lines in a Hollywood auditorium. Great stuff.