Every High Def Thing You Should Know For 2008

What the heck is Bleep Blop you ask? When I’m speaking to someone and I mention something technological and their eyes start to glaze over, I figure I might as well be speaking Bleep Blop, because I imagine “bleep blop, blop bleep, bleep” is all they’re hearing.

So how do you know if reading a little Bleep Blop each month will benefit you? Take this short quiz:

1. Is your grandmother more technologically advanced than you are?
2. Okay, so you know what an iPod is, but do you know what format the music on it is encoded in?
   (Answer: AAC or MP3)
3. When you go to buy a computer, do you find yourself looking blankly at the sales guy when he mentions things like RAM and monitor refresh rates, and catch yourself saying things like: “Ooooh, that one’s a nice colour, is the mouse extra?”
4. When your partner says: “Honey, can you buy me a subscription to Wired Magazine?" do you think she/he is suddenly interested in becoming an electrician?
5. When someone gives you a DVD, do you immediately stick it in the CD-ROM drive of your computer and then when it doesn’t read the disc, go back and tell them it doesn’t work?

If you’ve answered yes to any of the five questions above… please, read on.

Since it’s a new year I thought I’d compile of list of things that will help you on your way to becoming not so completely technologically out-of-touch when it comes to speaking high def. They say knowledge is power, but knowledge is also the thing that prevents you from looking like a total idiot when someone says “let’s get a Blu-ray DVD” and you think they want to rent the movie Blue Ray (yes, that’s right… Blu-ray is not a movie).

So what do you need to know to get you through the next year? Here are some quick Bleep Blop facts relating to that hot new topic: high definition.

High Def 101

High Definition – What is it? High def (as your peeps call it) is all about how much resolution the image has. I know. Who cares right? Well you might when you see how incredible your favourite movie looks on a big high def screen. Here’s how it works.

Standard TV screens are said to process a maximum of 520 lines of resolution, but in actuality only show 480 lines. What does this mean? The detail of the image, the contrast of the image, and the amount of colours the picture can contain equals 480 vertical and horizontal lines of res.

VHS video contains only 240 lines of resolution. That’s half the amount of information that your standard TV can show… that’s why VHS movies don’t look as good as DVDs… they are missing half the colour, half the contrast, and half the detail.

DVDs are exactly like standard TVs. A DVD shows the same 480 lines (520 max) that a standard TV does. DVDs and standard TVs are a match made in heaven (well, actually… some factory somewhere). So why replace your standard TV with something ‘better’? (Insert real answer: this is how capitalism works folks, they sell it, and you buy it).

High def TVs (whether LCD or Plasma) have even more lines of resolution. They come in 720p, 1080i, or 1080p lines of res. So if you buy a high def TV that is 1080 lines of resolution, you are essentially buying a TV that has double the amount of detail, colour and contrast as your standard TV. That’s an incredible amount of detailed information… making buying a new high def TV a common big ticket item for consumers.

But wait a minute, what about all your regular DVDs? If you view a DVD on a high def TV you are only giving the TV a chance to show the maximum 520 lines of resolution of that DVD, when it could be showing 1080 lines. That’s where Blu-ray and HD-DVDs come into play.

What the Heck is Blu-ray?

Blu-ray and HD-DVDs are essentially the same thing. They are a type of DVD disc that maxes out at 1080 lines of resolution. In 2006 Sony and some other major companies came up with Blu-ray DVDs. That same year, Toshiba and a host of rivals launched HD-DVDs. LG came out with a player in 2007 that can play both types of discs, but most high def DVD players can only play one or the other.

So it’s kind of like the Beta-VHS war of the 80s. At this point Blu-ray is winning in sales. Blockbuster recently partnered with Sony to sell titles of high def discs from the Blu-ray family, and movie studios like MGM are only putting out their titles on Blu-ray discs.

If you plan on buying a high def DVD player, you might want to wait until the war is over and the ultimate winner is announced. Otherwise you may end up like your Uncle Jimmy who is still sitting at home moping with his obsolete Laserdisc collection. (Sorry Jimmy, you should have held out a couple more years for the DVD revolution).

Plasma or LCD?

I mentioned earlier that high def TVs come in Plasma or the LCD variety. This is important. Plasmas are traditionally the bomb as far as picture quality goes. To quote a favourite term of a person I know, the image on a Plasma TV is simply “luscious.” Plasmas have superb degrees of shading between dark and light colours and their screens are just amazing to look at. If you think bigger is better, than Plasmas are the screen to beat for how big they can get, but LCDs are catching up in size. Plasmas are also the champion as far as refresh rates go. Basically if you like to watch sports, if your favourite movie is the Bourne Identity, and you don’t want ghosting between images that have a lot of movement in them, a plasma should be your choice.

The reason you wouldn’t want to buy a plasma TV: your partner plays video games day and night and she/he wants to play them on the new plasma. Like standard TV sets, over-use of the TV, or leaving a static image on the TV for a long period of time, can create what they call ‘burn-in.’ Essentially, you see remnants of your partners video game on the TV when you’re trying to watch your favourite romantic comedy… not cool. Plasmas are also best enjoyed in a dark room, since too much glare on the screen can hinder you seeing the image properly. If you use your video viewing as a way to get into someone’s pants and you like doing it in the glow of your television set, then get a plasma

LCDs are the same technology as your flat screen computer monitor. They have a greater viewing angle than plasmas so that more people, sitting most places in your living room, can see the image. They come in all sorts of sizes from big to really small, they don’t suffer from the same burn-in as plasmas, and they are usually cheaper.

Don’t get a LCD with a low refresh rate otherwise you’ll see all sorts of annoying ghosting when you watch an action movie. With any TV purchase, get the TV with the highest contrast ratio (ask the sales guy), the highest refresh rate, best colour and the best picture quality (use your eyes to determine this).

There’s so much more to know about high def, but those are some of the basics that you should know if you’re considering making the high definition leap in 2008. Most of all, don’t get sucked into the hype. Go high def if you plan to get a high def DVD player, you love widescreen video viewing, you plan on ordering high def TV through your cable provider, or because your standard TV just died. Because there’s more to the Bleep Blop life than just high def (we can discuss that later).