Who needs 1080p?

[Daan Pol]

I see a lot of discussions about eeking out as much resolution from the hv20 as possible.

Now I can certainly understand having a lot of pixels to play with is going to be mighty usefull, however, how many of you actually need all that information?

I work mostly in commercials and company presentations. Now they are all PAL. We NEVER had a HD assignment, ever. Internally we do everything HD. We love it! We capture at the highest resolution possible, we edit and master everything uncompressed HD even though the final will be downscaled to DVD res. We download all the 1080p trailers and showcases from as many places as possible. HD truly is a dream come true for me and my colleauges. Prefferably watching 3D renders in our self invented 1600p standard (2560x1600) for our 30inch big ass Cinema Display is a wet dream!

However, we don't really need it. The media to distribute HD are still too expensive or not widely spread yet. Take Bluray and HD-DVD. How many people (in the netherlands) have a BLuray/HD-DVD player and a 1080p tv connected to it? I know no one who ownes the right setup to play 1080p either through bluray or HD-DVD. Well maybe the executive of the company we are doing the assignment for has one, and that's about it. No market for us there.

A lot of people bought a nice HD-Ready TV. Well for what HD did they buy it then? Dutch channels don't broadcast it and most of those buyers don't know you need a very expensive receiver and viewer subscription to actually see your new TV in full glory.

So if I make a nice HD movie with my HV20, color correct it, upscale it to 1080p and deinterlace it. It will look marvellous in our studio, but we have no choice but to output a crappy DVD version for our clients because that's the only format they can playback correctly. We don't have a bluray burner, we don't have a HD-DVD burner, and uploading a 1080p movie to a server requires at least a serious machine+monitor to play it back!

So I wonder, are we so different in the Netherlands and is everybody else in the whole wide world equiped with a home entertainment set capable of playing home authored HD material? Or are we just like everyone else and are we making HD movies for just ourselves because almost no one else can watch them?

I am looking forward to your views on this! :hv20-smilie70:

[CJDaniels]

Basic Media Center Computer > 1080P 46" monitor
no? That is my set up.

[12ozLife]

On the computer you don't need 1080 because for most people it's just too big to view on their monitor. But, a HDTV is 1080i/p

Also, I wouldn't render it 1080 unless I have to. For me at least on my setup which is decent. It would take about a week to render 10 mins of footage at best quality at that resolution. Depending on the filters added to the footage and what nots.

[twoneil]

I always capture at the highest resolution possible (1080p), then downscale it to a reasonable resolution such as 720p.
I could be wrong, but I notice that image captured with cameras on higher resolution appears sharper when down converted to 720p than cameras which capture 720p directly. Is it because they do some upscaling to meet their specifications?
Which is why I hardly notice any difference between 1080p & 720p.

[Worley]

In the UK, Sky and Virgin Media broadcast some program in HD, but I don't know if it's 720p or 1080i/p.

The majority of HDTVs support only 720p. If you want 1080 you have to spend a whole lot more money. Personally, I won't buy an HDTV until the terrestrial broadcasts offer HDTV (sometime after 2012, if all goes well) or until Free Sat finally arrives and offer HD broadcasts.

The HV20 gives me the highest possible SD quality (after downsampling) as the best price.

[Daan Pol]

Some good points here, still distribution is going to be a problem I think.

However, Filming in 1080i/p and then downscaling to any resolution looks way better than shooting natively on a lower resolution.

There is one other thing that bothers me, almost nobody is talking about 4:1:1 colors versus 4:2:2 or even 4:4:4 ? We used to work in SD DV and colors looked like ugly blotches of pixels (Color red anyone?). Now my downscaling experience with 1080i HDV material is nonexistent so I was wondering if the 4:1:1 color crap gets converted to 4:4:4 if you use half the resolution?

Thanks in advance.

[SenorKaffee]

I think you need to sell your HD services better. ;)

How about inviting some of them for a demonstration?
Then sell them an HD-option if they want to use their ads on HD channels.

When your material is below about 20 minutes you can burn high-definition 3XDVDs on normal DVD burners.
No investment in hardware or special media needed. 3XDVDs can be played on any HD-DVD player.

@Daan Pol

You should open you own topic for this discussion. In short - YES, downsizing can interpolate the color sampling to full RGB. Unless you save in 4:2:0 format again, of course.

[Daan Pol]

I think you need to sell your HD services better. ;)

How about inviting some of them for a demonstration?
Then sell them an HD-option if they want to use their ads on HD channels.

When your material is below about 20 minutes you can burn high-definition 3XDVDs on normal DVD burners.
No investment in hardware or special media needed. 3XDVDs can be played on any HD-DVD player.

@Daan Pol

You should open you own topic for this discussion. In short - YES, downsizing can interpolate the color sampling to full RGB. Unless you save in 4:2:0 format again, of course.

Alright very useful info thanks! Will open up a topic about this later, just needed some quick answer :).

We do show all of our clients our HD work. Wip out some 1080 3D renders and everyone goes down on their knees for you. However, we can't promise them anything if they then play that stunningly detailed HD material on an old DVD player connected to a crappy old 4:3 beamer.

Problem is, I am one of the few people in our area that has a HD-DVD player (connected to an Xbox). If our clients wanted a nice HD projecting solution we'd have to hire them a very expensive setup, HD beamers for big rooms are REALLY expensive. And since all our clients are Really trying to cut costs on about anything telling them a $3000 a day HD rig is going to look better than a $200 a day SD projecting rig isn't going to cut it. Really really frustrating I know but that's harsh reality for us :(.

[SenorKaffee]

I mean - they don´t have to rent the hardware from you when they order a HD production? I only see a connection there if you do presentations.

If you handle projection, too - do all of them need cinema-grade projectors? What about using "prosumer" hardware for projection? Does it really have to be "Brand X"? A cheap XBOX or a cheap Taiwan HD player that can read 3XDVD will also do the job as fine.

[Daan Pol]

I mean - they don´t have to rent the hardware from you when they order a HD production? I only see a connection there if you do presentations.

If you handle projection, too - do all of them need cinema-grade projectors? What about using "prosumer" hardware for projection? Does it really have to be "Brand X"? A cheap XBOX or a cheap Taiwan HD player that can read 3XDVD will also do the job as fine.

Prosumer beamers are okay pricewise 720p is affordable, 1080p not by a long shot. Unfortunatly we do not always control the way of presentation, most of our films are presented in other countries or rooms we do not have acces to beforehand (because it is someone elses office). So compatibility goes over quality, what use is a presentation if it won't play on a el cheapo DVD player?

Add that up to the fact people ALWAYS cut costs on things like HD first because that seems ridiculous to them.

I am planning in buying 2 720p beamers and creating a stereography cinema just for myself. My main specialism is 3D animation, since it is really easy to get 2 nicely sequenced images out of that just right for stereography is a big bonus. Now imagine awesome 3D together with a some dual hv20+35mm footage composited into one Stereo movie. If I would present something like that I could get any assignment I wanted. Problem is they can't take a DVD home with them and see the awesome Stereo 3D, they'll have to come over to my place to see it! Same goes for 1080p in many cases. They can only see it on our stuff, not on theirs so what real commercial benefit has it? I'll have an awesome time watching it, the rest of the world will never experience my work because they can't play it... :hv20-smilie119:

[JoeInBH]

In the States, HD has taken off relatively well (unfortunately, I don't really have a good point of comparison). A good percentage of all TVs sold are HD (1080i/p or 720p). I bought my first HDTV about 6 years ago and immediately started watching HD on it. We have had HD (1080i or 720p) broadcast over the air for several years and the cable and satillite services all offer HD packages of at least 10-25 channels of HD. 6 years ago, maybe 10% of my television viewing was HD. 3 years ago, it was closer to 50%. Now it's about 60-70%. Bottom line - a significant percentage of Americans are used to watching HD and are disappointed when good content is not available in HD.

BluRay and HD-DVD are in their early stages here, but a complete switchover to the new technology already appears inevitable. Players and burners are each in the $500 range, but have been dropping quickly. Blank BluRay media costs about $25 per disc (ouch!), but that's also going to drop in time. My brother (who is much more of an early adopter than me) bought both BluRay and HD-DVD players so he could watch movies released in both formats. All the PC sellers are marketing (and selling?) PC's with BluRay or HD-DVD burners included. I expect it will take a year or two before prices drop to the point where I start looking to purchase a BluRay burner for my PC.

It's not quite yet a must-have technology for the average consumer, but in the States at least, plenty of people who aren't CEO's have jumped on to the BluRay or HD-DVD bandwagon. Given the marketing and penetration I see right now in the States, the switch to BluRay and HD-DVD is inevitable. Personally, I think both formats will co-exist, like DVD+R and DVD-R, while others are taking sides in a "format war."

I'm not a professional video guy - just an amatuer making home movies. To distribute material to friends and family, I used DVD right now. But I'm archieving everything in HD and when people visit, I output the HD back to tape on my HV20 and show it on my HDTV. Like I said, in a year or two, I expect everything will go straight to BluRay.