Brian's Brain

This blog post references my article 'Subpar Wars: High Resolution-Disc Formats Fight Each Other, Consumers' Pushback' in EDN's March 2, 2006 edition.

Non-infinite pagecounts sometimes require that sentences-to-sections of my print articles end up on the cutting room floor. Fortunately, the EDN website provides an alternative publishing platform. Such was the case with the first two paragraphs of my first draft for the cover story of EDN's March 2, 2006 edition. Although the edited version of my print article also admittedly 'gets to the point' more quickly, I wanted you to see the narrative of my recent holiday visit to my home town in Indiana, because it helps explain my skepticism that high resolution video will be relevant for the masses. Without further ado:

My wife and I spent a few days' worth of our Christmas 2005 vacation at the home of my sister and her family. Before our arrival and over email, my sister excitedly mentioned the 'high-def widescreen TV' setup they'd recently assembled in the family room. I assumed she'd signed up for a premium cable or satellite television package, along with perhaps erecting a roof-mount antenna for over-the-air HDTV. When we arrived, I indeed found a 42" plasma monitor awaiting my inspection. However, it wasn't a HDTV; instead, it only delivered 852x480 pixel EDTV resolution. And what video sources fed it? A conventional cable television set-top box and a DVD player, both tethered to it via low-end composite video cables.

My sister and her husband are both intelligent people. Like the vast majority of folks, though, they just aren't particularly tech-savvy. When I hooked up the Xbox 360 I'd brought with me to their plasma TV, they immediately noticed the quality difference, as they also did when I swapped out the DVD player's composite video connection for a more expensive component video alternative. Remember, however, that they were still staring at a standard-definition display. More generally, the fact that they thought they were already experiencing a high-quality, high-resolution video presentation before I arrived should be a worrisome warning to computer and consumer electronics suppliers who hope to sell them 'the real thing' in the months to come.

Many consumers incorrectly mix-and-match the terms 'digital' and 'high definition'. In my sister's case, my discussion with her revealed that because she had access to 'digital' video (DVD, and digital cable), she already thought she was watching 'high-def' video, an opinion which will invariably lead to consumer confusion once Blu-ray and HD-DVD roll out. And as my article discusses, I'm not confident that my sister and her family would have noticed a difference between their EDTV and a HDTV even if they were watching a high-def video source such as the Xbox 360....unless, of course, they were in an unnatural viewing situation, such as with their noses pressed up against the display!

My article references a BBC study that quantified the conditions (display size, viewing distance, ambient lighting, etc) under which a viewer could perceive a (fiscally) significant difference between 480-line and higher resolution video content. A.C. Verbeck, the Director of Systems Engineering, at Pixelworks, also spoke at length on this subject at last fall's SID (Society of Information Displays) ADEAC (Americas Display Engineering and Applications Conference), both as it applies to perceived resolution and the degree to which viewers find various classes of image artifacts objectionable. He's provided me with a copy of his PowerPoint presentation and supporting documentation, which I've posted to EDN's site and encourage you to peruse.