HD & HDTV

"HDTV abbr. high-definition television, using more lines per frame to give a sharper image
than a conventional television.
HDTV (2011) the oxford pocket dictionary [Accessed 26/12/2011].

A bit of history. And what was before.

The Boob Tube as it was known in the early days;Television has crawled its way and has become an integral part of our lives. A long line of inventions and innovations turned the TV to what it is now today. The first appearance of the television came in the late 1800s, when a German Student by the name of Paul Gottlieb Nipkow developed the first ever mechanical television. His device sent signal via an electrical wire using a mechanical spinning disc. The images this device created were primitive and had only 18 lines of resolution. Two separate inventors by the names of A.A. Campbell-Swinton from England and Russian scientist Boris Rosing developed cathode ray tube based televisions which worked in conjunction with the mechanical scanner. The first electronic television made their appearance during 1927, when Philo Taylor Farnsworth made a working electronic television which did away with all mechanical devices. Before HD, what is SD???

SD or Standard Definition as its known is the broadcast standard for both analog and digital television. In analog television terms, these would be referred to as PAL and NTSC (or Secam) while in digital terms it would be referred to as 576i and 480i. Resolution Frame Rate Aspect Ratios PAL NTSC 625 lines 525 lines 25 (50 fields) 30 (60 fields) 4:3 and 16:9 4:3 and 16:9 576i (Digital PAL) 720 x 576 pixels 25 4:3 and 16:9 480i (Digital NTSC)s 720 x 480 pixels 30 4:3 and 16:9

HD. What is it

With technological developments, especially with the development of bigger televisions, a better format was required. Enter High Definiton and HDTV. The format is in the process of replacing all analog and digital SD systems all over the world.

The Standards HD comes in a few flavors. 720 1080i 1080p Resolution 1280 x 720 1920 x 1080 1920 x 1080 Frame Rate 23.97, 24, 25, 29.97, 50, 60 5 (50 fields), 29.97 (59.94 fields), 30 (60 fields/s) 23.97, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 60

The High Definition standard improves on SD in many aspects.

The Resolution

The resolution of HD is much higher than SD and can be upto an increase of 4 fold at the extreme end. Because of the resolution increase, the images appear crispier and sharper that loresolution SD image. Most newer LCD and LED screen are natively HD resolution thus giving perfect picture replication

Scanning System

Before the invention of HD, most CRT TVs displayed interlaced video. Interlaced video frame is built up of two scan lines. The first pass draws everyother line leaving gaps, and the second pass then fills in the gaps. When this is displayed on the cathode tubes, the alterglow of the phosphor and human persistence of vision hides the fact that only half the frame is updated at a time. This 'trick' is used to provide decent picture quality while not using too much bandwidth. Disadvantages of Interlaced. o o o o During fast motions interlaced video is prone to Interlacing Artifacts Improper reproduction of fine details and loss of fine detail Image flickering sometimes happen in larger screens Images have to be sometimes intentionally blurred to counter fine detail flickering

Things have changed. Much much more bandwidth is now available. To Counter these disadvantages, progressive scanning was developed. This technology does not split the image into two interlacing streams, and rather draws the image from the top to bottom sequentially. Advantages of Progressive Scanned Video o No Image Artifacts o No Blurring o Higher Quality Sharper and crispier Images Frame Rate

Unlike SD video which was restricted the format specification of either 25fps or 30fps, HD supports multiple playback and recording frame rates giving maximum flexibility. HD supports 23.976p, 24p, 25i/50p, 29.97i/59.94i, 29.97p, 30p/60i, 59.94p and 60p. The i denotes that the playback is Interlaced while the p denotes that the playback is progressive HD Audio

Dolby Digital AC-3 is standardized as the audio implementation used within an HDTV broadcast. It consists of 6 discreet channels of audio. This is usually involves five channels

working in the normal audible range (20Hz to 20Khz) and one at 20Hz - 120Hz as a subwoofer channel to delever lo frequency bass and vibration effects

HD and 3D

Stereoscopy as its known is the technique of providing the viewer with two separate images for the two eyes, resulting in a sort of a perceived depth in viewed images. In the context of HD, stereoscopy is mainly achieved through the use of active shutter glasses and synchronized display..

Human depth perception happen when two separate images from our eyes are processed by our brain. To generate two separate images, a HD TV must refresh a picture at twice the normal rate (Around 120Hz.. 60Hz being normal); which is then filtered out by the shutter glasses, and the separate left eye and right eye images are delivered to the respective eyes. HD device connections

Few cabling and connecting systems exist for HD interconnects. o Component Video

Component cables are a Video Only Cable that uses three separate RCA or BNC connecters to ferry the signal from playback device to display. The biggest drawback in Component video is that it DOES NOT support any HD Content Protection and the lack of any audio connectivity. o DVI

DVI or Digital Video Interface is cabling system which is widely used for the connectivity of computer displays. DVI is also used as a connector for HD devices and supports HDcontent-protection. The drawback of DVI is that it also is a video only connector and does not support any audio connections. o HDMI HDMI, or High-Definition-Multimedia-Interface is one of the best and easy connectors to be used in a HD setup. HDMI is a digital only connector that fully supports hi bandwidth transfer of full resolution uncompressed video, hi definition audio and 3D signals. HDMI is also one of the most preferred cables to be used on consumer devices because of its simplicity, and fully supports DRM implementations

o DisplayPort Designed by the VESA to be a compliment to the HDMI interface, to which it owes a lot of similarity, the Displayport connector is a hi bandwidth digital device interconnect cable. It can be used to transmit digital video, audio and data,

HD and DRM

HDCP or High-Bandwidth Copy Protection is a technology introduced into mainstream HD hardware to safeguard and protect intellectual property (such as Movies or TV programs) from being copied and played on un-authorized hardware. To idea behind HDCP is to eliminate the possibility of intercepting digital data midstream between playback device and display. This way, no recorder can make un-authorized copies of any copyrighted materials such as a blue ray disk. This technology is much like a secure internet connection, where a set of secure keys are exchanged between the playback device and display device. If an un-authorized device such as a recorder is connected, the device will not be able to hand over the correct key, which will not allow the media to be played.

HDTV What is HDTV Once upon a time, at the time of our fathers, when someone goes out to buy a TV to a vendor, he would have been presented with TV sets ranging from 14 all the way to around 28. And these would most likely have been bulky CRT units. This would be ok as the TV stations at the time would be broadcasting a PAL signal with mono audio. Things have changed a lot since then. Now Television sets come in all types and sizes. Plasma panel TVs, LCD TVs and LED TVs are available in an assortment of sizes ranging from 28 to 56. Standard Definition TV was not meant to cope with the new technologies that came about with the new TVs. Therefore a newer more advanced and evolved technology was required to make use of the larger screen and display technology that are around. Enter High Dynamic Television. The latest standard in broadcast technology HDTV is geared more towards the newer display devices and is designed to give the user a more rich and vivid media experience. Difference between SD-TV and HDTV Higher Resolution

As mentioned above, HDTV is a fourfold higher resolution that PAL or NTSC. Hens sharper and crispier images. Aspect Ratio

The aspect ratio for HDTV is always 16:9, whereas SD video is mostly 4:3. Because of the wider screen, most movies would play utilizing more screen real-estate and minimize cropping. Signal Type

HDTVs use an HD signal. Therefore the images are always noiseless and less susceptible to outside interference. Further, problems which plagued SDTV such as ghosting and fuzzy images are no longer an issue. Audio

SDTVs almost always use analog or stereo audio. The HDTV system is capable of delivering higher bitrate multichannel such as Dolby 5.1 audio, thus resulting in clearer end immersive audio.

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