EDTV vs HDTV
Is EDTV vs HDTV getting you crazy? I'm not surprised. Who can
keep track of all the digital TV acronyms floating around? It's
only going to get more complex. Many people have little
knowledge of these acronyms.
I'll breakdown the technical jargon to make EDTV vs. HDTV as
straightforward as we can. There are several EDTV sets
available. You can decide whether you can live with any missing
features.
Standard TV has 525 lines of interlaced video. Interlacing means
that the video (which is split into 2 fields) gets shown
alternately. Of the 525 lines only 480 have a video signal.
That's the 480i you see floating around in all the EDTV vs HDTV
specifications.
While standard TV has worked well for years TV sets have gotten
bigger and the deficiencies of SD (standard TV) have become
magnified.
There's no question that in EDTV vs HDTV the HDTV (for now) is
the ultimate in PQ (picture quality). HDTV stands for High
Definition TV. EDTV is the 2nd best PQ that we have. EDTV stands
for Enhanced Definition TV.
EDTV has the same 480 lines as SD, but they are progressive
scan. SD uses 480i (interlaced) and EDTV uses 480p (progressive
scan). DVD players uses progressive scan to display PQ and EDTVs
do a great job of displaying them.
Progressive scanning means that instead of splitting the signal
into two fields and showing half the lines at a time, all 480
lines of video are shown at once. That's one of the reasons why
DVDs look so sharp on your SD TV.
So the big question is --which format should you go with-- EDTV
vs HDTV??? Well the truth is it depends upon 3 things......
1)your budget 2)your seating distance 3)your viewing habits
Right now there is very limited TV content available in HDTV
format. So you won't get the full viewing impact of HDTV.
Another factor weighing in against HDTV is how much DVD viewing
do you do?
A controversial point disputed by many HDTV owners is that some
TV experts believe that shows watched from a DVD player on EDTV
displays better.
Why? Because there's no scaling to be done by the EDTV. An HDTV
needs to re-process the signal before it can display it to you.
As said before a DVD player's natural resolution matches that of
the EDTV format.
Perhaps the most important factor is the viewing distance. How
good the PQ is has a lot to do with seating distance. It's a
fact that if you sit 8 feet or more from you TV you won't be
able to tell the difference in sharpness between a 42-inch EDTV
and a 42-inch HDTV side by side.
If you get close to an EDTV say 6 feet or less you start to see
the screen door effect (SDE). That's when you start to see the
actual pixels on the EDTV.
If you watch sports, the Discovery channel and other channels
that will eventually swing into HD programming and you sit close
to you TV then HDTV may be for you.
At this point in time EDTV vs HDTV depends mostly upon your
viewing distance. If you have the bucks or you sit close to you
TV than the EDTV vs HDTV choice is HDTV.
I have both an EDTV and HDTV. The truth is that in most cases
after 6 feet or more I can't see the difference between the two.
Panasonic EDTV's are the way to go in this tecnology.