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Home Theater Television: Regular Vs High Definition
Did you know that by the year 2007 everyone must have either a digital television set, or converter box in their homes. This is due to a regulation that was mandated by the Federal Communications Commission stating that all cable companies must be capable of broadcasting digital television. This includes the popular HDTV or high definition television. So, how is HDTV different from regular TV? Listed below are some of the areas that differentiate HDTV from regular TV.
You may have noticed that your computer screen shows a better picture than your television set. While the horizontal resolution for a normal television is something like 500 dots, the resolution most people are using on their computers is as high as 1024 in a 1024x768 resolution setting. This is part of the reason HDTV was formed.
High definition television, which is the highest resolution digital TV combined with Dolby Digital surround sound, has a screen resolution of 1280x720. This means your television picture will have much more detail. It would make watching regular television, similar to using a really old computer. In fact, in a HDTV there are 2 million pixels compared to 210,000 pixels contained in a regular television.
High definition television is able to send more information because it uses MPEG-2. You see, regularly broadcasters use a 6-megaheartz bandwidth. To be able to squeeze the added information into the same 6 MHz bandwidth, broadcasters must use compression software such as MPEG-2. This software accomplishes the task by updating only the pieces of the screen that have changed. Instead of saying “Turn Blue”, “Stay Blue”, “Stay Blue”, it only tells it what to change.
In addition to high resolution, HDTV has a wider picture. You may have noticed on your regular screen that when you want to watch a wide screen film, you are left with two black spaces on the top and bottom of the screen. Regular television is unable to handle the wide pictures so broadcasters are forced to letterbox the picture. This is not the case in HDTV. The aspect ratio in high definition television is closer to the aspect ratio used in theatrical movies.
As mentioned previously, HDTV also contains Dolby Digital surround sound. This creates a CD-quality listening experience. As you watch a movie, you will feel like you are in a theater as the sound envelops you.
Another quality of HDTV is that 5 out of the 6 HDTV formats, use progressive scanning. Regular televisions use interlaced scanning meaning that all of the odd lines are sent alternated by all of the even lines. This is alright in smaller televisions, but can cause flickering in larger screen televisions. Progressive scanning means that all of the lines are updated at one time. This provides a better transition, but does require more bandwidth.
At the moment there are not a lot of high definition television stations broadcasting. However, by 2007 they will be forced to spend the extra money to convert. Until then, many cable companies are already taking the plunge. As you can see, there are many reason to embrace this new technology. The extra cost will be well worth it when you are watching your favorite movie as if you were in the movie theater downtown.
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