What will happen to our current DV footage?

[Edwin Hernandez]

With the world going HD, what will happen to our current footage when viewed on an HD monitor?

A- Will it look like crap?
B- Wil it be watched the same as we do now, but using a smaller area of the screen?
C- Will the HDTV switch to standard definition when it detects a DV signal?

-EDWIN

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

With the world going HD, what will happen to our current footage when viewed on an HD monitor?

A- Will it look like crap?

More or less, yes. It sure isn't pretty. Take a DV tape/camcorder to your local Best Buy, and connect to a 1080 monitor. You'll immediately see what it looks like. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

B- Wil it be watched the same as we do now, but using a smaller area of the screen?

Same size area as the HD is.

C- Will the HDTV switch to standard definition when it detects a DV signal?
nothing to switch to. The resolution is the resolution whether it's 480, 576, 720, or 1080.

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Edwin Hernandez

With the world going HD, what will happen to our current footage when viewed on an HD monitor?

Depends on the monitor.

A- Will it look like crap?

Not necessarily. On my XBR960, progressive-scan DVDs look absolutely gorgeous. A professionally-telecined hollywood film on progressive-scan DVD is not easy to distinguish from a native HD broadcast for a lot of people. But the XBR is a CRT-based display, not a pixel-based display like an LCD monitor.

Over-the-air standard-def broadcasts are hard to watch though, as compared to HD broadcasts, I will say that. In fact, for OTA broadcasts, I'd agree with Douglas and say "yes".

B- Wil it be watched the same as we do now, but using a smaller area of the screen?

No, it'll be displayed full-screen. On a pixel-based display that means scaling the image.

C- Will the HDTV switch to standard definition when it detects a DV signal?

Depends on the TV. A CRT can do that. An LCD or plasma or other pixel-based display will have a native resolution which cannot be switched, so it will instead scale up the video so that it fits the TV's resolution.

Which is basically what it has to do with high-def anyway. Unless you're talking about a CRT, one form or the other of high-def needs to be scaled: 1080i needs to be scaled to display on a 720p-native LCD or plasma (which almost all of them are), 720p would need to be scaled to play on a 1080-native display.

Standard-def would need to follow the same route.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

I'd expect well-encoded/high end DVDs to look great on a sub 40" display, especially one as sweet as the XBR960, yet on a 12' screen projected from an AE700 (Panasonic projector) 20 feet back, there is a lot left to be desired. The projector looks terrific when fed 720 or 1080 from an Avelink or straight off an HDV and HDCAM deck.
I'm looking forward to seeing how the new SXRD 50" displays look. Waiting for our local dealer to get them in stock.

[Laurence Kingston]

I've had a HD TV for a couple of years now and yesterday was the first time I ever saw HD footage on it (I just got a Sony HVR-A1). IMO SD doesn't look any worse on an HD monitor than it does on a SD monitor (aside from the fact that a lot of cheaper LCD HDTVs look a little washed out). The problem is that once you've seen HD, SD is hard to look at. A lot of HD uprezzers, whether they are in the DVD play or in the TV, handle 24 better than 60i. On a good DVD player/hd TV setup, plain old SD Blockbuster DVDs uprezz to look just gorgeous! Regular 60i video still looks like it always did, not any worse, but certainly hard to look at once you get used to HD.

Back to your original question, no your SD stuff won't look worse. It will just seem that way.

[Kevin Shaw]

Good SD footage looks okay on a decent HDTV until you compare to HD footage played at full quality, at which point it gets difficult to go back to watching SD. People will continue to enjoy SD videos in terms of the content, but they'll gradually come to consider them dated and blurry dated compared to HD material.

When you play 4:3 SD video on a widescreen HDTV, you can typically set the display to either (a) play the video at its proper ratio with black bars on the left and right, (b) stretch it sideways to fill the screen, or (c) enlarge it so it fills the screen from left to right with the top and bottom parts chopped off. On my HDTV I usually use the stretching mode, which looks odd at first but you get used to it eventually.

You have to feed an HDTV a signal it can understand using some sort of standard connector, which for DV cameras may mean using your A/V to composite (RCA) connector cable. When you deliver an SD signal the HDTV upsamples it to high-definition display using some sort of scaling technique, which can work surprisingly well for good SD material.

[Stephanie Wilson]

Edwin,

Broadcast television will make the same leaps with HD as it currently makes with the THREE STOOGES films or I LOVE LUCY b&w video or any other older than dirt format. It may not look great and it may not fill the screen, but if it's good entertainment it WILL be broadcast, no matter what the current format.

IMHO,

Steph[/QUOTE]

I don't know that this analogy can be faithfully applied as these shows were displayed at the same resolutions as SD television is today.

In Barry's example, he's viewing on one of the finest televisions available, but it's still not at the native HD pixel display in either vertical, horizontal, nor actual pixels. I'll grant that many purchasers of HD displays won't be buying 55/62/70" displays, but if they do, the SD looks pretty poor even by normal standards, and once viewed against HD, it's horrid. It's not like you'll have aliasing or anything like that. Maybe the 3 larger displays I've viewed this on are just all bad. I dunno. Looks really washed out and thin on all three, particularly the SXRD 70".
Is it horrible, unlivable, can't-watchable? No, of course not. The best way to find out is to take a DVD of your best-shot media and look at it on a true HD display. Not an older plasma, but one of the newer, 1080p-capable displays from Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Panasonic and at native display sizes. Preferably rear projection or LCD. CRT if you can find one on a show floor.