Alt text: We're also stuck with blurry, juddery, slow-panning 24 fps movies forever because (thanks to 60fps home video) people associate high framerates with camcorders and cheap sitcoms, and thus think good framerates look "fake".
Heh. Just another example of how computers beat everything.
Last edited by CobaltMouse on Mon Apr 26, 2010 4:06 am UTC, edited 2 times in total.
Agreed. I have never really understood the fuss. To get a real sense of how bad standard TV resolution is try hooking your laptop up to a tv and try to read the text. In most cases this is a laughable task.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin
pyroman wrote:Agreed. I have never really understood the fuss. To get a real sense of how bad standard TV resolution is try hooking your laptop up to a tv and try to read the text. In most cases this is a laughable task.
Well, considering that the NTSC standard that came up with 640x480 came about in 1941, I'd say it was doing pretty well. Yay for backwards compatibility controlling decisions made 50 years down the line!
squareroot wrote:I always thought I must be misunderstanding something - are you saying that a 1080p TV really has a vertical resolution of only 1080 pixels??
squareroot wrote:I always thought I must be misunderstanding something - are you saying that a 1080p TV really has a vertical resolution of only 1080 pixels??
Yeah, it's 1920x1080. Still higher than I run either monitor on individually, but I'm cheap with my hardware.
Ignore this if you are tired of the Free Culture comments, or don't want to read my complaining about video games
Spoiler:
Sadly, there seems to be a push for appliances over computers; game consoles, televisions, the "smart" phones are all trying to push out computers. With a computer, you use any operating system the computer can handle, any programs that will run on it, with any internet service available. That is a lot of power that you have, that you don't have with appliances. Just try and get an iPhone someone other than AT&T.
I went to a video game store a month ago, and I was shocked that only one shelf had computer games. A whole store had PS3, Wii, XBox 360 games, but only a shelf for computer games. Most of those were for MMOs. My guess is that pirating is really doing damage to the video game industry, and it is much harder to pirate games through XBox live than through the normal internet. To be honest, I hardly blame the video game industries at this point. I just wish they wouldn't do stuff like require you to have 3 consoles and copies of the game to play with 2 friends. When I want to play with friends, I want to sit on the couch with them, not by myself, talking on a headset.
Last edited by CorruptUser on Mon Apr 26, 2010 4:20 am UTC, edited 1 time in total.
HDTV makes a lot more sense than surround sound. People seem to like unrealistic echoes right behind their heads and think bass is one distorted frequency boosted 6 or more dB by a port in a cheap box. At least Discovery HD looks good.
I have to admit I haven't been bothered by high frame rates. Anyone have an example of how it bothers you or someone you've known?
What did you bring the book I didn't want read out of up for? "MAN YOUR WAY TO ANAL!" (An actual quote from another forum. Only four small errors from making sense.)
I'm half tempted to just buy a 28" computer monitor for the living room now. 1920x1200 for only $290? (not that I'd go with the least expensive) Of course, if I had that money, I wouldn't be using my 17" CRT monitor right now. Oh, well.
The thing about HDTV, though, is that back in 2004, 1080p resolutions were somewhat new, and were almost prohibitively expensive. Also, there really wasn't too much content available in HD. Nowadays, HDTVs are relatively cheap, and only now is the general public beginning to get one. The ones that are baffled by it are the ones that really have never seen their favorite movie played in HD.
Give it another 5-6 years, and 3D TVs will also become relatively cheap, and there will be a lot more content for that too. People will still be baffled by it, though, because they have yet to experience it.
Also, to anyone who hasn't been bothered by high frame rates: have you ever seen a British sitcom?
Last edited by panoptical2 on Mon Apr 26, 2010 4:32 am UTC, edited 1 time in total.
And conversely, I think we have TV to blame for dragging computers down, somewhat: Widescreen, at least a large enough widescreen, is handy for stacking windows side-by-side, but if you're trying to do anything that's best done with a filled screen (like making Flash cartoons), you get a ton of wasted space. My next monitor will be 1920×1200, God help me, because anywhere between that and what I have now (1280×1024) is pretty much useless. Assuming the drive for "full HD" hasn't made the 1200s go off the market before they become affordable.
Meanwhile, I'm probably never buying a TV. Partly because I hardly ever watch TV, but also because when you add up the cost of a BD-ROM drive and said monitor, it's about half of what most people pay to watch movies in full HD.
cephalopod9 wrote:Only on Xkcd can you start a topic involving Hitler and people spend the better part of half a dozen pages arguing about the quality of Operating Systems.
Digital HD broadcasts are an unquestionably drastic improvement over earlier TV technology (especially for sports broadcasts). That is the only clear improvement that the "HD revolution" has brought on, and the increased clarity can be appreciated as well on a standard computer monitor as it can be on a massive, expensive TV. Aside from that, it's been a shockingly effective way to convince people to buy very expensive TVs for no real reason.
As for the framerate issue: I don't know about 60 FPS video looking "fake," but it definitely looks "bad" in a way that's hard to explain. I remember watching a homestar runner cartoon that had to be done in a higher framerate than usual to accommodate for some unique animations, and it too looked very strange and off-putting.
I might be mistaken, but aren't the '3DTVs' going to support 120hz video (i.e. 120fps)? Even when cutting the framerate in half to produce the 3D effect, that'd be 60 fps, which is still a fairly large improvement.
I think a lot of the problems with 60 FPS is actually with the playback portion: It doesn't convert well to 24fps.
However, isn't there something about the color range of HDTVs that is better than computer monitors?
Just because it is not physics doesn't mean it is not science. http://www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com <---- A collection of humorous one liners and science jokes.
Holy crap. Is it really that small? I never really noticed a difference, and if that's the resolution, for a screen that large, I can see why...
Well, off to George Takei's great technological marvel. One of these days I'm going to run the math and see how different the errors actually are for 4 vs. 3 bands assuming an even color distribution and adjusting for the luminosity function. Although it seems like indigo would have been a better choice than yellow.
I'm going to chime in here with the "high framerates don't bother me" line of thought. When I think of a sitcom, I think of a particular style of lighting-- really, that's the flat lighting, or worse, the really (for lack of a better or more educated term) specular highlighty lighting that's always used on Soap Operas. That plus the camera like, never moving. Those are the visual things that stand out with sitcoms for me. For example, the Law and Order series is really good about using more realistic camera angles and they seem to do post-processing to desaturate the image, so it has a more movie style feel. If only most of the actors weren't stiff as a board...
Anyway, personally I'm very glad the standard framerate is up to 60FPS-- it makes movies shot this way *much* more bearable, especially if there are fast action scenes. Also, my computer monitor is a measly 1680x1050; does this mean I'm not "mainstream" enough? I've never found it lacking, and it breaks more websites than it enhances, so it certainly doesn't seem like the computing world is ready for super-huge resolutions yet. (of course, the computer world is probably too busy having multi-monitor wars. Tri-monitor? Really? These people have clearly never used workspaces...)
My CRT screens have been able to do 1200+ lines for more than ten years. Hell, i think they've been able to do it for more than 15. (Time flies when you start to feel old.) I don't see why everyone's flipping out about doing 1080.
The 24 FPS things annoys me too. I had to turn that off on my blu-rays becuase it looks so WRONG to me.
Last edited by Kailen on Mon Apr 26, 2010 4:55 am UTC, edited 1 time in total.
* These senseless ramblings brought to you by Insanity™. If you just can't figure the dang thing out, it must be Insanity™.
I just ran into this for the first time two days ago! I had never really paid much attention to the actual resolution of HDTVs until two days ago when I saw a really good deal on a 720p 22" one that could double as a TV and monitor for my dorm room. Then I looked at the resolution, and realized that my 15" laptop has a higher resolution. Laaaame. So from that perspective, it does seem rather silly how excited people get about HDTV resolutions.
CorruptUser wrote:Ignore this if you are tired of the Free Culture comments, or don't want to read my complaining about video games
Spoiler:
I went to a video game store a month ago, and I was shocked that only one shelf had computer games. A whole store had PS3, Wii, XBox 360 games, but only a shelf for computer games. Most of those were for MMOs. My guess is that pirating is really doing damage to the video game industry, and it is much harder to pirate games through XBox live than through the normal internet.
Actually, Digital Distribution like Steam or those other less convenient services are pushing PC games out of stores. PC gaming is as big as it ever was, even discounting MMOs. Piracy is still pretty manageable.
Anyway, HDTV is still pretty nice. Giant monitors are just also nice, though I just recently upgraded to a 1680x1050. The big deal is that it's all so affordable now, and that TV manufactures have good relations with the people who control 50% of the world's time. Thus containing and delaying the revolution.
GLQuake came out on Janurary 22, 1997. It supported 1600x1200 resolution. Pro Pinball; Timeshock also came out in 1997, and also had 1600x1200. I was using monitors then that were already a few years old.
So yea, 15 years, at least.
* These senseless ramblings brought to you by Insanity™. If you just can't figure the dang thing out, it must be Insanity™.
Two words: seating distance. A 24" display at 2 feet looks larger in your field of vision than 70" display at 8 feet. Then there are the technical issues of making a display that big. Also, if you are wondering what it takes to produce content at higher resolutions, like IMAX (6K, IIRC)...well, ILM has a 5700-core dedicated render farm. Yes, fifty-seven-thousand. And that is not counting the artist's workstations. That's just the render mules.
But on the subject of backwards-compataiblity-ass-hattery, it's 59.94fps, not 60fps.
thegamefreak0134 wrote:I'm going to chime in here with the "high framerates don't bother me" line of thought. When I think of a sitcom, I think of a particular style of lighting-- really, that's the flat lighting, or worse, the really (for lack of a better or more educated term) specular highlighty lighting that's always used on Soap Operas. That plus the camera like, never moving. Those are the visual things that stand out with sitcoms for me. For example, the Law and Order series is really good about using more realistic camera angles and they seem to do post-processing to desaturate the image, so it has a more movie style feel. If only most of the actors weren't stiff as a board...
Anyway, personally I'm very glad the standard framerate is up to 60FPS-- it makes movies shot this way *much* more bearable, especially if there are fast action scenes. Also, my computer monitor is a measly 1680x1050; does this mean I'm not "mainstream" enough? I've never found it lacking, and it breaks more websites than it enhances, so it certainly doesn't seem like the computing world is ready for super-huge resolutions yet. (of course, the computer world is probably too busy having multi-monitor wars. Tri-monitor? Really? These people have clearly never used workspaces...)
</nerdrant>
Also, first post. Yay!
Less effective when you want to do several things at once. For instance, I regularly write papers, research said papers, and watch TV at the same time.
I doubt it was a framerate thing, but the shooting for The Dark Knight seemed.. Almost amateur? Something about it just looked off. Bothered me the entire movie.
I had a excellent 19" CRT that did 1600*1200 at 85Hz a few years ago, it was a sad day when that monitor started failing. Right now I'm running dual 1680*1050 monitors and they are barely high enough resolution for me. I hate that HDTV's are now pushing computer monitors to be 1080 pixels high, with an aspect ratio of 16:9. I find those monitors too wide, and I would make far better use of vertical real estate at that point. A 1080p screen is just a little too narrow to use effectively in portrait mode as well.
thegamefreak0134 wrote:(of course, the computer world is probably too busy having multi-monitor wars. Tri-monitor? Really? These people have clearly never used workspaces...
Fine if you can get the whole app on to one screen, and don't need to look at a second window constantly. That's not a luxury you get with some things:
Shadic wrote:I doubt it was a framerate thing, but the shooting for The Dark Knight seemed.. Almost amateur? Something about it just looked off. Bothered me the entire movie.
Anybody have the same feeling?
Some of that may have been the use of IMAX cameras for some scenes, but regular cameras for others. I doubt the mix produced a consistent look throughout, and you probably picked up on the subtle differences, which I agree had a slightly irritating effect much like the uncanny valley effect.
Also, on the subject of the comic, I've been making these same complaints to the ill-informed since before anyone I knew had an HDTV. I still don't. I have a 1080p monitor only because my 1600x1200 CRT's green spectrum sadly died. As stated by someone else, the field of view at 2 feet is significantly more expansive than anything but an IMAX screen.
I came here to read a cool post, a witty dialogue, a fresh joke, but stumbled upon a "bump"... Way to go, jerk...~CordlessPen
It bugs me that a lot of people who don't use computers much associate quality with screen size. A lot of the people I've talked to would say that a giant CRT TV is "better" than my laptop's screen simply because it's bigger. Yet, if you hooked my laptop up to that TV and tried to read anything, it would just be a blur. Yet, they insist that they can "see stuff better" on big screens.
The same people can't accept that fact that most laptop screens are, in fact, HD. A lot of laptops screens are currently 1280x800px (16:10) - perfect for 720p content. Though there aren't a ton of laptops that actually have 1920x1080px resolutions, almost all laptops are well suited to view HD content (a lot better than some people's giant TVs).
Another one that bugs me is when people see a small screen (like a 12.1" laptop or a cell phone), they say "Oh, I couldn't read anything on that, the screen's so small!". But if they just tried, they would realize that the resolution is more than high enough for comfortable reading.
And yeah, 24fps is pathetic. People would be upset if some video games ran at such pathetic frame rates, yet, for some reason, it's perfectly acceptable for Blu-Ray movies, the so-called "Best way to experience movies at home. Ever". Yeah right.
All I really want is an HDTV receiver with a monitor out. An SVGA monitor out. I have at least three monitors sitting around the house, and at least two sets of computer speakers not being used. An HDTV receiver with a 1/8" stereo plug. Is that so much to ask?
by CobaltMouse » Mon Apr 26, 2010 3:57 am UTC 
