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In Reply to: John C.-Aussie- Ranking of video sources.... posted by Estes on August 12, 2001 at 07:45:23:
HiAnother inmate has emailed me with TV off air coming first and satellite coming second so your experience is not uncommon. Our problem is we live in the shadow of a hill which a 45 foot tower only partially overcomes. We still can get VHF via this tower and my trigonometry tells me that the top of this tower has a direct line of sight. However UHF gets a big blank despite efforts using a cherry picker (an unstable platform I do not enjoy using). We finally got a reasonable picture with UHF from a repeater station in the city about 8 miles away but it is low powered so heaps of arial amplification and a very high gain antenna has been necessary. Because of this it is subject to minor interference.
Your point about the quality of broadcast is very valid even on satellite. Given the best material the satellite broadcast here can be as stunning as our best DVD or LD, reflecting your comments on depth and life like colour.
Maybe the satellite signal here is better because it is digital and is not not primarily for consumer use but carries all signals for two national broadcasters (our government run ABC, the equivalent of the BBC, and SBS who broadcast foreign films and items of more interest to Australians of different ethnic origin) to rebroadcast on UHF + feeds to the commercial stations which we cannot see. Consumers in outback Australia use the service as we do. Reception from commercial sources on this satellite are blocked if there is an equivalent local UHF or VHF service.
So we can directly compare the satellite reception to the rebroadcast local one (differs in news broadcasts but otherwise the same).
Regarding the experience of PAL vs. NTSC I must retract claims the PAL has superior whites and colour. A couple of nights ago we looked at a 4:3 formatted laserdisc of "Out of Africa" and the colour, the definition and the whites were the equal of anything ever seen on PAL from any source. We followed this with a PAL DVD and, by comparison, it was no better than UHF with washed out colour and poorly focussed images.
My conclusion is now that it the primary video material was in NTSC (the case with the DVD referred to above) then it is best to buy the NTSC version. Conversely if the original was in PAL, as with BBC and most European productions, then the PAL version is to be preferred. It seems than the commercial transfer of masters from PAL to NTSC or vice versa is not always done carefully. Care or carelessness of transfer probably explains why broadcasts are so variable. Video made by our ABC broadcaster on videotape (using PAL) and broadcast on satellite has brilliant technical quality although the entertainment value is another debate :-(
So, I continue to be highly impressed by the HLD-X9 and what it can do with top LD software and how good the best DVDs are but continue to be irritated by the enormous amount of crappy quality software released due to poor/careless transfer.
Bottom line, given a well produced documentary or movie, home theatre can be unsurpassed for entertainment. It is mind boggling to think one can, at the flick of a switch or two, move from the misery of world news seeing events as they happen, to an engrossing and well acted movie, to the Bolshoi Ballet, to a Cher concert, to Covent Garden for opera, to ...... I am adament top audio is required for maximum enjoyment of all the above but now find audio only pales in significance in this house.
Apologies for the rambling, this hobby horse bolted a bit!!
John
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Follow Ups
- Re: John C.-Aussie- Ranking of video sources.... - John C. - Aussie 15:39:00 08/12/01 (3)
- Re: Ranking of video sources.... - Estes 20:01:50 08/12/01 (2)
- I'm jealous of ... - John Coulson 20:17:06 08/12/01 (1)
- Re: wine - Estes 05:42:46 08/13/01 (0)
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