In Japan, all analog (NTSC) TV broadcast will cease by the summer
2011. Development of digital TV related technology and products
is very fast for makers to win the race. One day about five months
ago, I strolled along a TV shop as a routine work to check what's
new in the products. I walked by the big screen corner and was
enchanted by a new product for its sharpness of the picture.
Later on, I bought the 42" LCD TV and a digital HDD-DVD recorder.
1) Digital broadcast
There are now two main ways of broadcasting digital contents:
Chideji (terrestrial) by 17 Mbps and BS/CS (satellite) by 24 Mbps.
Note that the bandwidth is NOT used entirely for a program.
Other additional services like sub channels, firmware downloads,
data distribution, bi-directional, subscription management etc.
share it. Both terrestrial and satellite use MPEG2-TS as the
broadcasting format.
2) New anime shows of HDTV format
Most of new anime shows of this season are produced and aired
in the HDTV format. The image quality varies, though.
Even some of them have other problem. For example, you can watch
"xxxHolic Kei" in TBS and BS-i. In TBS, the show is in 4 by 3
window and I see thick black belts both left and right sides of
the HDTV set. In BS-i, it has 16 by 9 window and no filler belt
is seen. I see extra part of the image in the both sides instead.
In case of "Soul Eater", however, I don't see a significant
difference between TV Tokyo and BS-J.
When I watched "Oh-Edo Rocket" a year ago, I found ****ning dust
in Gin-san's dark background on the HDTV channel while it was
barely visible on the NTSC channel.
In terms of the image quality, my personal picks are "Macross
Frontire", "Soul Eater", "Toshokan Sensou" and "Nabari no Ou".
3) Old series
I'm happy to have reruns of some old series on digital channels.
"R.O.D TV", "Gunslinger Girl" (first season), "Inuyasha" and
"One Piece" for example. I also tried "Neon Genesis Evangelion",
but I didn't find any advantage in the quality of image over DVDs.
However, if you compare DVD to analog TV of Eva, the merit of
the digital broadcasting is quite obvious.
4) Digital audio
Wowow has been producing HD anime shows with 5.1ch audio for
years. I think it was especially effective in "Ghost Hound".
If you have a good speaker system, you can fully enjoy the
merit of digital audio. Currently, no TV anime show has 5.1ch
audio. Kawamori-san, do you have any plan to upgrade the audio
of "Macross Frontire" to 5.1ch, please?
5) Big Screen
When I watched an HDTV program on my new big LCD TV for the
first time, I was shocked by its poor color. Now I know that
my LCD TV needs 10 - 20 minutes to warm up to produce best
color image. I spent hours to adjust the image and color
mapping and I finally got the picture that satisfies me.
Still, I prefer the color of the old 32" tube that the new
LCD TV replaced.
My LCD TV is double speed (120 frames per second) full HD with
many enhancers and NRs. My sister was surprised and said, "whao!
this looks much like a big photograph than a TV."
However, I sometimes observe flaws espacially in SD contents
and quick motion pictures. I suspect that this is caused by
either the interlace to progressive enhancer or the double
speed processing. When camera is panning, the picture loses
sharpness and I see tiny B&W stripes on moving parts of the
picture. Maybe, I should blame the recorder I'm always using.
6) HD-Rec, obsolete
Maybe, I'm one of a thousand owners of To****ba RD-A301 in
this planet. It's the only HDD/HD-DVD recorder that can use
a DVD-R/RW to store full HD programs. You can use a single
layer DVD-R to store a 25-minute program in raw TS format,
or two 25-minute progrmas in shrunk (TSE) format at 12.0 Mbps
mode. You can change the bit rate in TSE mode. Less Mbps
means more programs on a DVD-R. In 9.6 Mbps TSE mode, you
can store three 25-minute programs on a DVD-R and still the
image quality is much better than NTSC. The difference is
more obvious on a big screen. I've heard that the target
TV size of HiVision was 40+ inches originally.
Fortunate or not, HD-DVD format became obsolete and I was
able to get the recorder at about 35% cheaper than a comparative
Blu-ray product of Panasonic. RD-A301 became a collector's
item. But frankly speaking, it's a good product. Dual digital
receivers, HDMI connection, Internet connection, electric
program guide, easy to use, frame-by-frame editing, 300MB HDD
etc *plus* HD-Rec.
I don't care much about the compatibility because my five
year old Pioneer HDD/DVD recorder doesn't have a flawless
compatibility to Hitachi's or To****ba's. I'm quite happy
to be able to store a full HD program in a DVD-R.
--
/ I****kawa Kazuo /
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