From: wave@waits.media.mit.edu (Michael B. Johnson)
Newsgroups: rec.video
Subject: Re: HDTV Myths (again) - don't believe the hype
Date: 6 Oct 92 19:00:54 GMT
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory

We have a 40" HiVision (the current commercial version of HDTV in Japan)
monitor here in the Computer Graphics & Animation Lab.  It's hooked up 
to our SGI SkyWriter, and is driven in real time.  It's nice, but 
James (Millick & Cameron) is right on the money - it's not even close to 
35mm projected film.  I mean, it's still interlaced, for God's sake!

Please, don't believe the hype.  

The Audience Research group here at the Media Lab did a great study a 
few years back which I participated in (just as a subject, not as  a
researcher).  We (the subjects) dubbed it "the Living Room of the Future".
They built a living room here at the Lab in the Cube, our experimental
media facility (akin to a soundstage at Universal).  They decked it out
to look like the standard suburban rec room, with two important differences.
One wall had four monitors built into it - two HiVision, two NTSC.  The 
other wall was actually rear projected ShowScan.  They showed us the same
program material (shot on ShowScan, downconverted to the other formats)
and had us rate them with little slider thingies.  I can't speak for the 
research results, but my opinion was that the ShowScan was great (although
still not as "great" as I would have expected, oddly) and the HiVision
and NTSC were indistinguishable, but certainly way down from the ShowScan.

(Yes, I know, ShowScan is 60 fps 70 mm, not 24fps 35mm, but I was trying
to tell a story of side by side comparisons that I experienced first hand,
and I haven't been involved in any 35mm vs HDTV standoffs).

When you compare really clean NTSC with really clean HiVision, the main 
difference is the aspect ratio, not the resolution.  This crowd especially,
with an overwhelming population consisting of laser disc owners (arguably
the best that NTSC can do), would, I think, be rather underwhelmed by the
current state of HDTV.

The next time you go to NAB and walk into Sony's booth and go into the back
and enter their beautifully engineered viewing area and are struck by how
good HDTV looks, think for a moment about how good an equivalently clean
NTSC signal would look there, and how good a pristine 35mm print would look.
If you hold each up to the same standard, I believe you'll see a continuum
there, with NTSC at the bottom, HDTV in the middle, and 35mm above it.

- wave



James Millick writes
> |>sbooth@lonestar.utsa.edu (Simon E. Booth) writes:
> :
> : One proposal I had heard of for HDTV is that it would always be 
> too
> : complicated for household use,
> 
> :In France, HDTV television sets have been demoed for more than a 
> :year in most of the bigger TV stores. Their operation is quite 
> :equivalent to normal high-end sets. The HDTV decoder (HD MAC), 
> still :external, is yet very easy to connect, using Scart 
> connectors. The :only problems are the price, and the size of the 
> tv set (mostly the :depth). but since its resolution (something 
> like 1,025 lines I :think) is comparable to 35mm movie film, it 
> could be used to replace :film in the movie industry.
> 
> 	How many times do we have to hear this myth. HDTV *DOES NOT*, by 
> any stretch of the imagination, even begin to equal 35mm film. To 
> quote Jim Cameron 
> 
> JM: Have you seen *any* HDTV system that approaches what you can 
> do with 35mm film?
> 
> JC: You mean in terms of resolution?
> 
> JM: Sure.
> 
> JC: No. No... they'd like to have you think it does, but it's 
> about half as good as 35mm film. It's about half the resolution of 
> a release print, right now, comparing the print to an 1125 line 
> HDTV system. To approach film resolution, you need somewhere in 
> the neighborhood of about 3000 lines, somewhere between 2000 and 
> 3000 lines, depending on a lot of factors... such as how critical 
> you are.
> 
> 
> 	This of course assumes that we have enought bits per pixel to 
> match film, as another netter pointed out, something we don't have 
> yet. 
> No offense to Simon, but I'm really getting tired of hearing how 
> great HDTV is, when it doesn't begin to compare with 35mm film. A 
> roadshow print of OKLAHOMA! in 1954, almost 40 years ago, would 
> eat HDTV alive.
> 
> Jim Millick
> Video Reviewer
> The Perfect Vision

--

-->  Michael B. Johnson
-->  MIT Media Lab      --  Computer Graphics & Animation Group
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