Karaoke Forums

The installer just left....I had them add HD to my sat TV subscription....I'm watching the Cardinals play right now on HD wide screen ESPN.....I can see the whiskers on the player's faces.....This is SO cool!

Last week I bought a 52" wide screen HD TV and put it in the living room then ordered HD sat TV, then moved the old 60" into the music room across from the dance pole....Now all the music videos on my computer can be played on the big screen and so can karaoke...I'm going to set up a video camera for the dance pole and the karaoke singers to play on that big screen...We can use the picture-in-picture feature to display karaoke lyrics and also show the singer/dancers superimposed with the music videos....This is SO cool!

I know what you mean I got a 42" Plasma and upgraded my satellite system to HD about 8 months ago. Now I'll Watch something on the HD channels even if I don't like the show just for the clarity. Hey More HD Channels Please!!!

_________________
ROBDOG *WOOF WOOF*

welcome to HDTV I currently have a 42 inch Plasma in my bedroom and a 52 inch in the main living room both HDTV plus I work for the cable company so all the channels are free. I too find myself watching whatever is on just for the HD effect. underwater documentarys on the discovery channel make my tv's look like an aquarium ...and porn is phenominal

my next toy is gonna be this travel video unit here


http://skymall.com/webapp/skystore?proc ... 1&iscrssl=


just purchased a new lap top so have ta pay that off first. by the way its a great laptop with 2 gig of ram and dual layer DVD burner with widescreen. great for my karaoke on the go.

THe extra HD channels are comming!.......Just be patient .....

Plasma is good stuff, but DLP is better, but then again Sony's new SXRD is even better than that.....ARRRRGH!....I got tired of waiting for Sony's new tech to come down in price so i bought a standard non plasma non DLP TV last week....At least it is widescreen and HD....And It cost less than a thousand bucks too.....Yeah, i know the picture will degrade in time, but a $200 tune up will fix that.

Once the Sony SXRD stuff comes down in price, I'll get one and move this latest widescreen to the master bedroom.

My son's plasma needs a gas recharge cause it has lost it's pic quality....He is upset at what they want to charge him to fix it...DLP has moving parts inside, so you know what that means in the future, plus it has a very expensive high powered light source that has a rather short life span.....SXRD is the best but it is still too expensive and so far Sony refuses to license it out like TXI did with their DLP stuff....so the price remains kinda high.....4-5 years from now  it will be affordable and that's when I will get one.....Most all broadcasts will be HD by then too.

For now I am extreemly happy tho.

My old 60 big screen needs calibrated and aligned...It's 6 years old and has lost pic quality....$200 will fix that tho...I've already scheduled the guy to come out next week to do the calibration/alignment......200 bucks sure beats buying a new one.

My only complaint about satellite HD services is lack of local HD channels. The loal cable channel has it so I have both services for now. I am going to convert to satellite HD if I can get a decent signal off the air on local HD channels.

_________________

Seize the day and SING!!!

Yep, the tech is in a flux right now....It really is hard to justify buying into it until HD is mainstream...I understand your position fully.

So is the hardware side of it(in flux).....Plasma, DLP and even SXRD tech is leapfrogging so fast that you can't hardly justify the cost to upgrade......It will pay a guy to be patient and wait it out.

Eben, you have some very redeeming qualities....You are a very smart guy.

I didn't even think of porn yet!.....OMG, this is going to kill me!...My wife has a huge collection of porn DVD's.....and we are on our honeymoon seeing as how we got back together last week.....I need to go update my will, huh?

I am not long for this world my friends....I showed the wife where I got 1 mil in life insurance....I explained all she had to do was kill me to collect it, but it had to happen legally....No murder or blood evidence involved.

I like being an old fart who is worth more dead than alive and married to a knockout woman half my age....

I can't think of a better way to go!

Gee, thanks for the complement. I try to learn about everything myself so I can form my own opinion about things rather than going with what others say.

As for your TV, does it accept 1080p signals? It's not yet prevalent but it will be in the future with the release of HD-DVD and Blu Ray players. My TV is a bit older, about 7 years, but it accepts HD signal via component connectors. I am waiting for the 1080p signal TVs to come down on price a bit before replaciing mine. It's the highest HD signal availale right now so I hope patience will pay out. Reality is 1080i is perfectly acceptable but why not shoot for the best.

_________________

Seize the day and SING!!!

Yes, it is a true 1080 line TV....Go to Wally World and look at their 52" RCA projection TVs...It is only $988....It has a built in HD tuner and a standard tuner, all for 988!...It also has a fantastic picture quality and all the nice to have connections front and back...It takes several each of component, S-video and composite, and both digital and analog cable connections....It is the best buy out there for 52"...It also automatically selects tween wide screen and standard screen formats depending on the broadcast....so no fat faced stuff and no letter boxed stuff......I frigging love it!

Eben, go the wally world and audition it.

Here it is:


http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product. ... id=3757031

Yep, checked out the spec on the manual. It is a 1080i but not 1080p. Again, it will be a while before many 1080p programs will be available anyways so it's not a huge loss. It does support 480p and 720p, which is most of the broadcast HD signal so you are set. Again, if I was to buy a TV today, 1080i will be sufficient. My TV is good for another year or two. By that time 1080p TVs will be cheap enough for me to buy so I will upgrade it then. Besides, it does have DVI connector but lacks HDMI connector. My new receive I have has HDMI connector and upconverter built in so I would need HDMI connector on TV and I can connect all my video and audio source to go through the receiver. Some claim that going through the receiver loses quality but it's a digital signal so it should be perfectly fine.

_________________

Seize the day and SING!!!

you dad blasted asian geek know it all!....AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! Stop making me look/feel stupid!

What the heck is the dif tween 1080i and 1080p?!!!

I'm thinking I got suckered cause I got my 1080's confused...and that was real easy cause I am too stupid to know the dif

Stop making me feel stupid!

Eben, I might have 1080i where yours is a 1080p, but I guarantee my stuff is bigger than yours!

...Oh, and while I am at it, make sure you stay away from my wife.

Analog TV: Today’s TV system using radio frequency waves to transmit and display pictures and sound.

Digital TV (DTV): Television delivered and displayed using radio frequency waves that contain information that is digitally encoded for improved quality and efficiency. DTV comes in three levels of picture quality, as described below.

Standard Definition TV (SDTV): Basic digital television transmission that may be displayed with fewer than 480 progressively-scanned lines (480p) in 16 x 9 or 4 x 3 format. 480 interlaced (480i) is the quality of today’s analog TV system. SDTV provides 150-300,000 pixels. DTV comes in three levels of picture quality, as described below.

Enhanced-Definition TV (EDTV): A better digital television transmission than SDTV with at least 480p, in a 16 x 9 or 4 x 3 display and Dolby digital surround sound. 480p is the quality used by most DVD players. EDTV provides 300-400,000 pixels. DTV comes in three levels of picture quality, as described below.
 
High-Definition Television (HDTV): The best quality digital picture, widescreen (16 x 9) display with at least 720 progressively scanned lines (720p) or 1080 interlaced lines (1080i) and Dolby digital surround sound. HDTV provides 900,000-2.1 million pixels. DTV comes in three levels of picture quality, as described below.
 
HDTV Monitor (sometimes called HDTV Ready): A set that can display HDTV programming if you have a separate HDTV tuner, HD cable set-top box or HD satellite set-top-box receiver.

HDTV Tuner (also decoder, receiver, set-top box): A device capable of receiving and outputting HDTV signals for display. May be stand-alone or integrated in the set.
 
Integrated HDTV: An HDTV that has the digital tuner built into the set. It does not need a separate set-top box to receive over-the-air DTV signals.
 
Plug-and-Play or Digital Cable Ready: A DTV or other device for digital cable customers that plugs directly into the cable jack and does not require a separate set-top box. Plug-and-play TV owners must obtain a CableCARD from their cable company in order to view scrambled programming services.

Interlace Scan: A way to scan vertical lines onto a TV picture by scanning all the odd lines first, then filling in the even lines (this happens instantaneously).
 
Progressive Scan: A way to scan vertical lines onto a TV picture by scanning all the lines consecutively (progressively).

MrOctober, you dad blasted causasian geek, you are making me look stupid!

Seriously, so I have a 'progressive' scan 1080 tv, but a better one would be 'interlaced' scanned?

I guess I need to go google the info you guys gave me so I can catch up. I wanna be a geek too.

I'm thinkin this board needs an Experts Corner.....A place where folks like Eben and a few others can answer questions related to karaoke electronics and other hi tech stuff.....Let's face it, electronics is already half of karaoke and it is quickly gaining share.....The board owner might want to break the tech discussion up into several sections.

We have some very highly educated folks here who have lots to contribute.

No Keith; you want 1080p   but you got a nice TV you wont realize the difference


Interlace Scan: A way to scan vertical lines onto a TV picture by scanning all the odd lines first, then filling in the even lines (this happens instantaneously).
 
Progressive Scan: A way to scan vertical lines onto a TV picture by scanning all the lines consecutively (progressively).

This is the old TV I just moved to the music/party room.....It had a really clear pic the day I bought it....I need to get it recalibrated...It will be worth the 200 bucks to do that....It still has a very sharp focus, just that the blues are too bright and tend to bleed over into other colors.

http://www.p4c.philips.com/na4/9/9p6034 ... ss_aen.pdf

When I sold computers, we had "interlaced" and "non-interlaced" monitors, and it's basically the same thing.  According to the info I saw, a non-interlaced, or now, progressive-scan, screen is the better choice.  Even though it's not perceptible, an interlaced scan has a flicker that can be tiring to the eyes with long-term viewing.  

_________________
[glow=white][scroll]Live, laugh, and love today--just in case tomorrow doesn't make it[/scroll][/glow]

Well, almost the same thing. Interlace displays every other line every 1/60th of a second. So, odd lines get displayed then 1/60th of a second later even lines get displayed, repeat. The progressive is where the entire frame of information is displayed every 1/30th of a second. On the paper it looks the same but for HD signal, it's can be different. Human eye can, at least for some people, discern movement down to 1/30th of a second. For some people, the interlaced display seems a bit "jagged" because the information is alternated and it seems a bit disjointed, if that explains it. The progressive signal seems clearer and smoother.

When the original TV signal was invented, they chose to go interlace because they did not have the technology to send a frame  given the signal bandwidth. They chose 1/60th of a second to send each alternating lines because the US was using 60Hz AC power. So, they interlaced one frame into two sections and sent it over so that a full frame can be displayed every 1/30th of a second. By comparison european nations use PAL, which is based on 50Hz AC signal. Initially they felt that 1/30th of a second was good enough to show smooth motions between frames.

Which was fine when the TV had only 425 lines. When the new HD signal came out with 1080 lines of information, the difference between the interlace and progressive became a lot more prominent. So, all the HD signals are sent via progressive today, 480p or 720p. Because of the bandwidth limitation, 1080 signal was interlaced initially but now the technology is catching up so 1080p is becoming a standard for the highest signal.

Bottom line, I am planning on moving to 1080p as soon as it's affordable.

_________________

Seize the day and SING!!!

I should get HD.  I need a realistic sexlife.

I never thought of the advantages,  the bigger the analog set was, the more noticeable the resolution lines became making anything larger than 27 inches pretty unappealing. Digital HD sounds great tho.

_________________
Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".