What is refurb?

There are a number of reasons why a machine might be marked refurbished. It might be that the item was returned to the store and sent back to the factory. As someone who worked on a return desk, I could tell lots of stories about items that were returned for no reason, or at least no good reason. If the factory determines that nothing is wrong with the item or that the problem can be easily corrected, then they will simply repackage the item and ship it back out as a refurb.

Sometimes an item is marked refurbished because it was damaged in shipping or while on the sales floor, and the damage is only cosmetic. A product can also be sold as refurbished because it was a demonstration unit. Clearance merchandise that hasn’t been sold or damaged can sometimes be marked as refurbished as well.

Whatever the reason it was marked down, refurbished equipment can be a good buy. It helps stores and manufacturers recover the cost of returned items and it can mean a great deal for you.

What you need to watch out for

Most stores have a different return policy for refurbished items. The return may be exchange-only, the window of time for returns may be shorter, or the item may not be returnable at all. Be sure you understand how the store handles refurbished returns and how they may differ from the store’s normal return policy.

Sometimes a store will sell refurbished equipment alongside the new stuff. This is an excellent opportunity to compare prices and return policies. For example, an MP3 player that would normally be $100 with a one month return policy compared with a refurb for $30 and an exchange-only return allowed for one week. Clearly the price is right, and if you aren’t picky, then this might be a fairly obvious choice. But, if you buy the unit and realize later that it doesn’t have a function you consider crucial or it doesn’t perform as you want it to, you might regret spending your $30 on something you’re not happy with.

Buying refurb makes sense when:

1. You’re sure about what you want and know that this model is the right one
2. There’s a deep discount in the price
3. You are comfortable with the return or exchange time frame
4. You don’t care about imperfections or cosmetic damage
5. You’re comfortable with the store’s reputation
6. They have several refurb items in stock, allowing you to choose the best of what’s available

I have purchased many refurbished items over the years. I tend to buy refurbished for items that I want but don’t need. When I’m buying something that I really rely on or a product that I don’t know much about, I tend to opt for new unless the discount is really deep.

The store you’re shopping at also makes a difference. If it’s a store that I shop at regularly, I’m more likely to trust the items they put on refurb. Putting an item on refurb is a judgement call on behalf of the store, and you want to make sure you’re shopping at a place where they exercise good judgement. A store with nothing to lose in terms of their reputation has no incentive to avoid unloading their junk on you.

There have been a few times that I’ve bought a refurbished product that I was unhappy with, but the same could be said of my new purchases as well. It can be easy to blame my dissatisfaction on the fact that the item is refurb, when it just might be that I got suckered by clever marketing on a substandard product.

Buying refurb doesn’t always make sense, but there are times when the deal is too good to walk away.

TV Channel Websites

Many television channels now have websites which distribute television programs over the Internet. Miss a show? Want to catch up before the next episode airs? Check out the channel’s website and you may be able to find the show you missed. The video players used tend to be somewhat clunky and not a very good experience. They’re usable, but only on your computer, not your TV. It’s funny, because these companies are flirting with distributing via the web, but it doesn’t seem like they want to make it so good and so convenient that it detracts from traditional television watching.

The real area where television is getting TV online right is talent reality TV shows. These TV shows are getting very proactive about putting their own content on Youtube. They’ve realized the value of letting anyone get access an entertaining clip from the previous night’s show of a dance, song or stupid pet trick. If someone who watched the show points out that clip to a friend who missed it, the friend who missed it is more likely to watch the show next week. For these televised talent shows which have very short runs to build an audience, free online content is an excellent way to build buzz and sustain interest between their runs.

Subscription Services

Subscription services began by offering DVDs sent through the mail. Pay a monthly fee, and set up a list of movies you want to watch. They mail you a few DVDs. You watch them, and mail them back. As soon as they receive the old one back, they send out a new one. It is an interesting model that challenged the traditional store movie rental paradigm.

Still, if you want to watch a particular movie tonight, a mail-based service doesn’t help so much. The obvious next step would be to offer the same monthly-subscription service, but instead of mailing out DVDs and receiving them back, just deliver the content over the Internet. No waiting, no hassle. It’s even more convenient than the store rental model, as long as you’re willing to watch content on a computer, not a TV. The ideal would be to be able to watch content from the Internet right on your TV. To make that happen for the non-technically inclined, you need some sort of device to gather the content and present it on your TV with all the ease and comfort of your cable service. We call that sort of device a ’set top box’.

Set Top Box

Devices to make it easier to play content on your TV are becoming common. Starting below three figures, these devices collect video off the Internet and format it properly for your TV. Some of these device-makers have arrangements with subscription services to provide content. So, these inexpensive  convenient devices allow you to watch what you want when you want it without hassle or delay on your TV.

Internet Enabled TVs

Some new TVs that are coming out skip the set top box and build the functionality to pull video off the Internet right into the TV itself. These are TVs that can surf the web and play video content from subscription service providers.

I would be hesitant to jump into one of these TVs with Internet built in too early over concerns about upgradability. The advantage of sticking with a set-top box for now is that if the technology changes or advances, you can just buy a new box and you’ve only wasted the $100 it cost to buy the box. Buying a whole TV that includes a service that becomes obsolete becomes a very expensive proposition. Not that I’m expecting these services to fail necessarily. I would only recommend these devices for early-adopters who need the latest and greatest and can afford to gamble with such a large purchase.

Old Computer Monitors

Most people who remember what computers were like way back in the eighties remember the old green-screen computer monitors which suffered from burn-in. When images were displayed over and over, the light slowly wore down the coating on the screen. Toolbars, the lines around the outside of a window or the lines of a spreadsheet which were almost always on screen would wear the screen out faster.  After several years a faint image of whatever was on the screen the most would be ‘burned-in’ and then was always on the screen, even when the monitor was turned off. Modern computer monitors don’t suffer from burn-in, but still tend to use ’screen savers’, which were originally intended to vary the image when the computer was not in use. They limited the amount of time that the same image was displayed continuously and preserved the screen. Now they just display cute images of cats or scenic vistas.

Plasma Screens

Modern plasma screens suffer from burn-in in two different ways. One is permanent, the other is temporary. If a screen is left on too long, the individual pixels can become charged in such a way that they glow slightly even when they’re not on. This effect is temporary, and fades after a few hours.

Plasma screens can also suffer from permanent burn-in, like the type of burn-in that occurred on old computer monitors, although it doesn’t happen as quickly or as severely as with the old monitors. Burn-in can occur on plasmas when the same image is displayed continuously for long periods of time. Ordinarily this isn’t a problem, because television images are constantly changing, not static images like the outline of a spreadsheet.

There are a few exceptions. When a television displays a computer game, very often the same images are displayed over and over. Sports shows often have a logo displayed in the same position on the screen, and news programs have logos or news tickers that appear in the same position over and over. If these channels are left on for long periods of time, it can result in burn-in.

When to Avoid Plasmas

Ordinarily, Plasma screens should work just fine for normal television. But, there are a few scenarios where an LCD would be a better choice. If you plan to use the screen as an oversize computer monitor, LCD is a better choice. Likewise, you should consider an LCD if you play a lot of video games. If you’re buying a screen for an office, or a sports bar, or a health club, where it’s likely that the same news or sports station will be played all-day every-day, then an LCD television is a better choice than plasma.

The situations under which Plasmas suffer from burn-in are few, and like every technology, the people who design them are working hard to eliminate difficulties like burn-in for newer generations of the product. I wouldn’t advise a typical television shopper to avoid Plasma, in fact I personally prefer the image on a plasma. Burn-in is something to consider, but it is only an issue depending on how you use the screen.

The Switch

The US broadcast system was scheduled to switch over to solely digital transmission on February 17th, 2009. As of March 2007, every TV sold in the US has had to be compatible with the new system.  Many TVs sold before that were compatible with the new system, but many TVs currently in use will not work with the new system. Older TVs require a box to convert the new digital signal back into the old analog signal.

The Delay

This isn’t the first time that the US has delayed the implementation of their DTV transition. It was originally planned for years ago. Once again the date for the transition has been put off. Millions of US households have older TVs, but haven’t taken advantage of coupons to help them buy the equipment they need to be able to watch the new TV signals on an older TV. That’s the reason given for the delay – there are still too many who haven’t gotten ready, about five percent. Really, though, a small percentage of people will not do anything about this problem until they absolutely have to. Procrastination is just too popular. The moment people realize they can’t watch TV anymore, there will be a run on the stores.

Is it Political?

There may be a political aspect to the delay. There will be lots of people who won’t do what it takes to get ready, and then be furious that ‘no one told them’ this change was coming. Millions of Americans unable to watch TV a month into his presidency would be a negative hit for the new President’s popularity, despite the fact that he really wasn’t central to the transition. One of the joys of being a politician is taking responsbility for the way things are the moment the term begins, despite the fact he or she likely didn’t cause the situation. Putting this transition off by a few months means that a large mess is delayed, and will not fall right at the beginning of the new President’s mandate. The opposing party is resisting the delay, because they know it’s going to be a mess and they would love to see it land on the president’s desk right away. Anything that happens at the very beginning of an administration is naturally going to linger in the public’s perception. Good news is good. Bad news is bad. Vice versa if you’re the opposition.

The US is not the first country to make the change to broadcast only digital television and will not be the last. It is probably the country in which television has been woven most deeply into the cultural fabric of the nation. The impact of the switch will be felt more deeply in the US than anywhere else, and the impact will be messy.

Normally televisions in North America run at 60Hz, which means that images flash on the screen approximately sixty times per second. New 120Hz TVs double that, which means that the image flashes more often, and should theoretically result in a smoother image. In practical terms, the human brain is not capable of perceiving the difference between 60Hz and 120Hz, so it makes little difference for normal television watching.

Visualizing the Process

Imagine a fan, with a light behind it and slightly to one side, so that when the blades of the fan spin, they cover and uncover the light. Each time a gap in the blades passes in front of the light, the light shines through. If the fan is spinning slowly, then you will be able to see the blades, with flashes of light in between. As the fan spins faster, it becomes harder to see the blades, until they are simply a blur. At this point, the light will still seem to be flashing, but very quickly. If the blades turn fast enough, the flashes of light will come so fast that the light will seem to be a constant, continuous light, instead of a series of discernable flashes. In the same way, a TV that flashes quickly enough will appear to be smooth and continuous, even though it is made up of a series of very quick still images. The threshold at which the human brain begins to perceive motion as smooth is known as ‘flicker fusion’. The point of fusion changes in different lighting conditions, but the point at which the human brain is guaranteed to perceive motion as smooth is around 60 times per second.

If the fan, already spinning fast enough that the light appears to be one solid light was to spin faster, would it make a difference to your perception of the light? No, there comes a point where the light appears smooth, and if the fan spins 10% faster, 100% faster, or 1000% faster, it won’t make any difference to how you perceive that light shining through the blades. Your TV, just like the light behind the fan, only needs to be so fast. Hardcore users might be able to pick up on subtle details which are affected, but for the typical user 120Hz is not going to make a significant improvement in image quality.

NTSC, Film and PAL

‘Frames per second’ indicates how many unique pictures are displayed every second in a video stream. NTSC, which is the standard for broadcast television in North America, displays 29.97 frames per second. So then, if there are only 30 pictures each second, how does the screen flash 60 times each second? Well, remember interlacing (part of an earlier blog post) where only the odd lines are shown, and then the even lines? Cut 30 pictures in half, and you have 60. Progressive video simply displays each of the 30 images twice. Even though you’re seeing 30 doubles every second, the human brain perceives it as smooth motion. Most hand drawn cartoons were 15 frames per second, and they showed each picture four times, which is about the lower end of the limit of this Jedi mind trick that TVs are able to do.

The earliest film images couldn’t get beyond the threshold at which the human brain perceived them as smooth motion, which is why the famous footage you’ve probably seen of a train running down the tracks looks like the image is stuttering or flickering. The image isn’t flashing often enough to seem smooth. Modern movies run at 24 frames per second, which is doubled to 48 frames per second, which is sufficient in the controlled environment of a theatre to appear smooth.

PAL is the standard for video in Eastern Europe and Asia. It displays 25 frames per second, and doubles them for a total of 50 flashes per second. This is a little slow, and can result in a bit of flicker, depending on the conditions. Newer televisions for the Eastern Europe/Asian market also double the Hz for a total of 100 flashes per second, and the difference between 50Hz and 100Hz is noticeable in some situations.

One Good Reason for 120Hz

There is one clear situation in which a 120Hz TV makes real sense. When a video camera is pointed at a TV, a 120Hz display will appear better than a 60Hz display. If the TV you are recording with a video camera is displaying 60Hz, and the camera is recording 60Hz and those two devices are out of synch at all, then the image will look blurry or only partially there. That’s because the exact moment that the camera records a frame is out of synch with the exact moment that the TV is displaying the image to be captured. With a 120Hz TV, it’s putting out way more information than the camera needs to record a smooth image, so it looks better.

The Bottom Line

Should you buy a 120Hz TV? Well, there’s nothing wrong with 120Hz. Only the newest and best TVs available right now have it, because it’s new. When I was working in retail, however, I often had people coming in and asking about 120Hz, and a few who insisted that any TV they purchased had to have it. For typical viewing, 120Hz makes little difference, and you have to be paying very close attention to see the difference. It is technically a better television, but the human brain is not capable of perceiving the difference under normal conditions. If you’re buying a television, this is one of the last criteria that should influence your decision. Nice to have, but certainly not critical for the average consumer.

Contrast ratio is a comparison of the highest and lowest values a screen is capable of producing. It tells you what range of brightness a TV is capable of displaying. It should tell you how subtle a TV’s picture will be.

Contrast ratio is important. The difficulty is that there are several different ways to measure contrast ratio. Each of them operates on a different scale. The lowest contrast ratios you’ll find these days are around 1000, and the highest are around 30,000. Does that really mean that one is 30 times better than the other? No. Because these values were produced using two different testing procedures. The lower one is a Static Contrast Ratio and the other is a Dynamic Contrast Ratio.

Static Contrast Ratio

A Static Contrast Ratio is a measure of how bright and how dark a TV can be at the same time. The TV displays a picture in which half the screen is pure white and half the screen is pure black, and then they measure how well the TV is able to show them. The trouble is that the dark half of the screen is affected by the light half of the screen. Little bits of light are reflected back onto the screen, or else the individual dots of light aren’t sealed well enough not to transfer light from one side to the other. The bottom line is that the dark half of the screen isn’t as dark as it would be if both sides of the screen were dark.

Contrast ratio is not only a measure of what the screen can do technically, but how well it’s constructed. A screen that’s built really well will insulate itself from itself so that light doesn’t transfer. It’s like a ‘pocket coil’ mattress. When the commercial shows a bowling ball falling on a bed that’s designed not to transfer motion, the other side of the bed isn’t disturbed, but you pay more for the better construction that doesn’t transfer the motion, just like you pay more for a screen that doesn’t seep light from one side to the other.

Dynamic Contrast Ratio

A Dynamic Contrast Ratio is the same thing, but instead of measuring dark and light at the same time on the same screen, a dynamic contrast ratio measures first dark, then light, sometimes on the same unit, sometimes using two separate units for each measurement. A dynamic contrast ratio produces a much higher number, because there is no bleeding of light, which results in much darker blacks.

A Dynamic Contrast Ratio is only a measure of what a TV is capable of producing, not a measure of how well it is constructed. A Static Contrast Ratio measures both at the same time, and is a much better test. Obviously, there are many factors which go into how these tests are performed, and how well the engineers are able to finesse the conditions to improve the results makes a big difference. Contrast Ratio should be viewed with the same skepticism as the gas mileage ratings that car companies put out. Those tests are performed in optimal conditions, and will not accurately represent real world experience.

At least for car manufacturers, though, there are rules to the test. For contrast ratio, the manufacturers can devise pretty much whatever test they want, and then tell you nothing about how they conducted the test, just throw out a number without context. Because of this, you shouldn’t pay attention to what the box says about contrast ratio unless it specifically states whether it was a dynamic test or a static test. If you’re unsure, ask to see the manual. Sometimes more information is given in the manual about the type of test performed, but remain wary of the contrast ratio written on the box. It’s probably just marketing hype.

Pyrrhus of Epirus

Pyrrhus of Epirus was a Greek general who attacked Roman Republic forces around 280 BC. He won the battle, but won very narrowly and couldn’t effectively hold on to what he had taken. Today we call a victory that doesn’t actually result in a positive benefit a ‘Pyrrhic Victory’. Winning the battle and then having to limp home leaving the prize behind isn’t very satisfying.

VHS vs Beta

In the late 70s, Videotape devices were introduced, and they became very popular in the 80s. The two main contenders were VHS from JVC and Beta from Sony. Beta was clearly superior technologically, but VHS was cheaper and while Beta was establishing itself as the choice of the elite, VHS won the day by grabbing 70%+ of the market share, soon making Beta irrelevant.

The Birth of the DVD

A new battle started in the early 90s with formats for video discs. The obvious idea was to create something the same size as a CD which could hold enough information to store a movie, and several companies had ideas about how to do that. Thanks to some behind-the-scenes wrangling by some IBM executives, the two competing formats were brought together at a very early stage and were merged into a single format, taking the best parts of each of the original two formats that were being developed, and the result was the DVD.

A minor skirmish broke out when recordable DVDs appeared. The two camps divided into DVD-R and DVD+R, but devices soon came out which would read both, and the format war was aborted by device manufacturers who gave people the option of using either format. The DVD is a huge commercial and technological success, so it only makes sense that large corporations would learn this lesson from history and act cooperatively to develop a new format to replace the DVD, right? Not so much.

HD-DVD vs Blu-ray

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were two competing formats to replace the DVD, which only offered Standard Definition resolution. Sony designed Blu-Ray and Toshiba developed HD-DVD. Both did essentially the same thing: playback high quality video by offering much more storage capacity. But, they couldn’t play nicely. Sony had learned a thing or two with Beta. Sony priced its products competitively, built its new video game system around Blu-ray, and made back-room deals with other movie companies.

In early January 2008 HD-DVD was defeated when Sony got official backing from a strong majority of movie studios with exclusive deals. The HD-DVD camp declared defeat by cancelling an event at a major trade show. Remaining HD-DVD stock was sold off at fire-sale prices.

You would think that was the end of the story, but no. Sony learned the importance of the battle from previous conflict, but apparently it hasn’t read about poor old Pyrrhus. A year after the death knell sounded for HD-DVD, Blu-Ray still hasn’t gained enough market share to be considered ‘locked in’ as the logical replacement for DVD. Blu-Ray isn’t competing with HD-DVD anymore. It’s competing with DVDs, which have dropped dramatically in price. Why buy a Blu-Ray when DVDs are ‘good enough’ and dirt cheap.

Where is Blu-ray At?

Blu-ray has been in development since the late 90s and it’s been on the market since 2003. That means they’ve been working on it for 10 years and selling it for 5, but it still hasn’t achieved significant market penetration. As 2009 arrived, there were a virtual chorus of bloggers predicting the marginalization of Blu-ray. Worst of all, when I talk to people about Blu-ray, I still have to explain what it is most of the time.

Personally, I don’t see any other obvious options on the near horizon, so I think it’s too early to call for the marginalization of the format, though that’s likely to change by the end of 2009. There are several scenarios that seem possible to me, but it’s hard to say which one will win out:

1. Sony will read all the bad press and lower licensing fees making it cheaper to buy the players and discs. This will close the gap between the cost of buying DVDs and Blu-rays, and the market will take off, because most people will pay more for better quality, but not a lot more. When it’s less than a $50 difference per player and a $5 difference per disc, upgrading to the better version becomes a no-brainer and Blu-ray becomes the new standard, replacing DVD.
2. Sony won’t get it and will leave the expensive fees in place, because they feel they have the right to make some serious money off Blu-ray as the prize for killing off its primary competitor. Another format (probably some sort of downloadable content) will come in and steal the market away from Sony, leaving Sony to gnash its teeth in dismay yet again.

Whatever happens, there’s already a lot of content available for Blu-ray drives. They also play DVDs and CDs, so it’s not like you’re going to get stuck with an obsolete product if you buy one. Blu-rays are coming down in price and as of this writing they’re still the best (and pretty much only) way to watch commercial content at 1080p on your fancy new television set.

I don’t see buying a Blu-ray player as a bad investment, unless you spend too much. Fortunately, they are getting more reasonably priced. But you should know that if you buy one in early 2009, you’re still an early adopter and the format’s future is murky. It may turn out that Sony has expended great effort to vanquish a foe for a prize they can’t hold on to. That right there is the definition of a Pyrrhic victory.

Mono, Stereo, Surround

A sound signal that only has one channel is called mono. A sound signal that has two channels is called stereo. A stereo signal, because it can deliver two different sounds to two different speakers, can give a sense of left and right.

Surround sound uses more than two speakers to give a greater sense of physical space, which can be very effective in increasing the dramatic experience of a movie. A 5.1 surround system places three speakers in front of you, two speakers behind you and a sixth speaker that only delivers deep bass. The human ear cannot interpret direction based on very low sounds, so bass doesn’t count as a full channel. That’s where the ‘.1’ comes from. Most DVDs offer audio tracks mixed for both stereo and 5.1 speaker configurations.

What difference does it make?

Because 5.1 audio offers more options for where the sound can come from, a sound can be directed to the front or back, as well as side to side. This means that if a character in a movie hears someone sneaking up behind them, the crunch of a shoe on gravel can be heard from behind, giving you the same experience as the character and heightening the reality.

A 3.1 audio system doesn’t have the rear speakers of a 5.1 audio system, just 3 front speakers and a bass speaker. A 7.1 system has all speakers of a 5.1 system, with additional side speakers.

Most large HDTVs come only with stereo sound. Some smaller screens come with 3.1 or 5.1 audio built in. The assumption is that if you’re only buying a small screen, then saving a few dollars by bundling together the TV and improved audio makes sense. For a larger screen, the assumption is that you’re more likely to want to spend serious money on a serious sound system, so why waste money putting in audio extras when you’re just going to replace them?

If you primarily watch TV shows, then you probably won’t need anything more than the stereo sound that comes with the TV, as most of them only offer stereo sound. If your focus is watching movies, though, then buying a better audio system will make a huge difference in the quality of the experience. TV programs don’t often have the time and money to invest in optimizing the sound experience for multiple speakers, and even if they did, the vast majority of their audience has only had stereo broadcast options up until now. Movies, on the other hand, have the luxury of budget and time frame that allows them to optimize the experience for better sound systems.

Wireless Rear Speakers

A thome theatre with Wireless Rear Speakers transmits audio to the rear speakers by a radio signal. This means that you don’t need to run wires from the Home Theatre System to the back of the room. You can plug the rear speakers into a power outlet at the back and they will automatically connect themselves. Most rooms are easy to run speaker wire in, just by tucking the wire underneath the baseboard. If there isn’t an easy way to run wires because of the layout of the room or the way its finished, spending a little more for wireless speakers may be a good option for you.

‘Wireless Ready’ usually means that the Home Theatre System is able to transmit wirelessly to rear speakers, but the speakers that come with it are not wireless speakers. This gives you the option to buy wireless rear speakers, but you’ll have to pay extra.

How much will it cost?

You can get a basic Home Theatre System for several hundred dollars that will make your movie watching experience much better. For a truly immersive experience that heightens the feeling of being there, you can easily spend several thousand dollars on a high-end audio system. If you have the money, then spending as much or more on the sound for your TV than you spent on the TV itself just might make sense.

Why is there an ‘i’ or a ‘p’ on my resolution? That letter at the end of the number refers to whether a television signal is ‘interlaced’ or ‘progressive’. To give a full explanation, I’m going to give you some history. If you’re not interested in the history lesson, all you need to know is that interlaced is lower quality, because it only displays half the screen at a time (odd lines, even lines, odd, even, etc). Progressive does a full screen every time.

Where’s My Ray Gun?

When TVs first came out, they used something called a Cathode Ray Gun to paint dots of light on a glass screen. If you think about an ink-jet printer, it worked something like that but with dots of light shot from inside the TV onto the back of the screen, not drops of ink on a page. That’s why we still call an old style television a ‘CRT’ which stands for Cathode Ray Tube.

There were a lot of challenges for engineers designing the first TV sets to overcome. One of those was that the guns they first built were a little slow. Painting a full screen of dots, the gun had to move really, really fast. It was hard to build guns that would hold up to that kind of speed over a long life span. So, to make it easier on the guns, instead of painting a full screen 60 times per second, they painted two half-screens thirty times each, alternating between the odd lines and the even lines. This meant that the gun didn’t have to move nearly as fast, and they could build more reliable sets with decent picture quality.

Imagine if your inkjet printer worked like that. What if it just painted the odd lines, and then rewound it back to the beginning and printed all the even lines the second time through? It wouldn’t be able to match all those lines up perfectly on the second pass, and you’d get spots where two dots that were supposed to be side by side would be on top of one another or too far apart, resulting in a jagged image. Same with TV. Interlaced images are often jagged. They’re aren’t as clear.

Lacking Upgrade Mobility

It worked, and it was good enough, but the problem is, once you standardize on something, it can be hard to change. Eventually they could build reliable screens that could handle progressive images, but if they switched all the broadcast, cable, and satellite systems to a progressive image, it would mean that all the older televisions would no longer work. If they changed the system, people who just bought a new TV the year before, expecting it to last for 15-20 years would be understandably upset.

The solution, of course, was to build a new televisions that could play both interlaced and progressive signals, and that’s what happened. The first time that people were able to actually get commercial content that was progressive was with DVD players. When DVD players first came out, there were interlaced and progressive models. Today, virtually every DVD player sold will display a progressive signal.

So, old Standard Definition television comes in two flavours, interlaced 480i and progressive 480p. The new higher definition standard 720p does not come in an interlaced variety. The highest level of resolution, 1080, does come in both 1080i and 1080p. This is somewhat confusing, I know.

The reason why 1080 comes in both flavours is that a true 1080p signal is a LOT of information. Broadcast systems and even the cables which run between your TV and other devices simply weren’t able to handle a true HD signal. That’s why all HD broadcasts are still at the time of this writing either 720p or 1080i, not 1080p. The infrastructure to deliver that much information isn’t in place yet and won’t be until TV broadcasters switch to an entirely new system which can handle the new requirements.

The DTV Transition

When that happens, old TVs built before the new standards were in place (March 2007) will stop functioning without a special device to convert the new type of signal into the old type of signal. As of March 2009, anyone in the US who wants to watch TV will need a converter box. In Canada, the transition to all digital isn’t scheduled to happen until 2011. Some countries have already made the transition, and others are on track. You can check your country’s progress on the Wikipedia Digital Television Transition page.

The US first tried to mandate a switch over to all digital years ago, but abandoned the attempt when it became clear what a mess it would be, and extended the deadline several times. The North American television system is complex and involves a lot of different companies working together. I don’t know how things will all work out, but I have two expectations:

1. It’s going to be messy. The system is too big and there are too many cooks in the kitchen for a smooth transition.
2. It’s going to get fixed before too long. There is just too much money at stake for the big companies that run TV to let chaos reign for an extended period of time. The US government has required the change. While big TV companies may have been too lazy to get all the work done in advance (let’s hope I’m being pessimistic), as soon as they start losing money, expeditious action will surely be taken.

Digital

HDMI cables are the best option available for connecting your TV to Disc players, cable boxes, satellite receivers or gaming systems. HDMI stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface. An HDMI cable will carry a 1080p signal and 5.1 surround sound audio together on a single cable, without losing any audio or video quality because the cable is digital.

Digital audio cables transfer audio (not video)  in a digital format. If you have a home theatre system (external speakers), it is best to run a digital audio cable from the television to the stereo system.

Component

Component cables are the second-best option if HDMI is unavailable. These cables are a bundle of five wires that have RCA plugs on the end. RCA plugs are the type that you might use to connect parts of a stereo system together that plug into the little red and white donut-shaped holes on the back of your CD player. The five wires in a component cable are divided into three for video (Red, Green and Blue) and two for audio (usually Red and White). The video wires transfer red, green and blue video signals separately and the audio wires transfer left and right audio. Because the video colours are kept separate, or in components, they produce better images than composite cables, which mix (compose) all three colours into a single signal passed over a single wire.

Composite

Composite is a word used to describe a variety of cables. Coaxial cable is the old style of television cable with the screw-in end that you attached to the back of your TV on the threaded silver post that stuck out the back. RCA cables that had three wires (Red, White and Yellow) passed audio on the red and white wires, while all the video passed through the yellow wire. S-Video had a round plug with four wires positioned inside. All of these cables are called composite, because they combine the three colours into a single wire. They should be avoided if at all possible, because they do not produce as good a picture as the newer styles of cable.