High Definition Anyone?

All that talk about HDTV really left me confounded. Where is this all leading to? Let us get the sequence right, like the evolution of the homo sapiens. First it was simple black and white television. hen came addition of colour and most of us thought that was maximum where the TV was going to go to. But no! Then came flat screens. It improved the viewable area available to the viewer. I guess evolution has to go on, so next thing that came was even more interesting. The manufacturers wanted to bring the director's vision of a movie to the viewer. This brought in the 16:9 ratio. Now we had two types of boxes. One the normal box type, which is 4:3 scan type and the other one looked like an elongated rectangle; the top and bottom sides normally longer than the side bars. This was 16:9 format which brought the wide angle cinematography as envisaged by the director of a movie, directly to the viewer. This coincided with the influx of the DVD and the large proliferation of 5.1 channel decoders. These are two entirely different technologies and need a full featured description by themselves. Here I will just elaborate upon the HDTV. By this time, a great amount of reasearch into display types has brought to fore the technology of Plasma and LCD. The good old CRT had limited number of days of survival it seemed. I presume if you have been watching TV for long enough, you know what CRT and LCD or Plasma means. If you do not, well, better do not bother reading ahead. These technologies ushered in the era of High Definition Television. So what exactly is a HDTV?

High Definition Television is the new video "standard" that will resolve 1,125 lines instead of the traditional 525 lines of the NTSC standard. Simply put, your normal idiot box 4:3 scan type TV, which brings images in the NTSC color format, has 525 horizontal scan lines. HDTV aims to almost double these number of lines to 1125. You get the estimate? Once a picture has double the number of lines, it is going to have better resolution. Thus HDTV promises better resolution and depth. High definition television is the highest form of digital television. It has a 16:9 aspect ratio, which is the same as a movie theater screen. This is possibly HD’s biggest selling point. The other is the resolution. High definition is the best available picture on a television. It comes in three different flavors: 720p, 1080i and 1080p. What do these intriguing numbers mean? Coming up shortly.