There is a lot of miscommunication about what is “HDTV”, especially around claims by George Ou and others about how you can’t talk HDTV without talking about bitrates. While there is a reason for this thinking, the definition of HDTV is really only resolution-based, i.e. any digital video that has a resolution of 720p or more (720p, 1080i, 1080p, etc.) is high def. Period.
Now George and friends DO have a very good point in the following respect: all HD video is not (created or transmitted) equal. If Blu-ray has a bitrate of 40 Mbps and iTunes has a bitrate of 4 Mbps (and they’re both using the same codec - very important since different codecs are better/worse at compression - although I don’t think there are many codecs that would overcome a 10-fold difference) then Blu-ray should absolutely have a much better quality picture than iTunes BUT they are both “HD”. [see also George's excellent Video Quality Reference Table for a list of sources, codecs, resolutions, and bitrates - keeping in mind that only one of those columns relates to the definition of HD and that's the "Resolution" column]
See, here’s the problem: if we start looking at picture QUALITY then we need to consider things like that fact that many (many, many, many) people don’t have the video settings on their TVs in an optimal configuration, those TVs may not be in an optical viewing space, the TV itself may be poor quality, etc. So while it’s great to have some non-subjective measure of quality (like bitrate - with the caveat that we need to also consider the codec), in the end when we’re trying to make an argument about the end-viewing quality we need to just admit that it’s hard to compare.
For example, a very nice and professionally adjusted TV playing back an iTunes HD rental may very well have as good or better a picture than a poorly-adjusted TV playing a Blu-ray disc. That’s all there is to it.
It’s not that what George and others are saying about quality is inaccurate, but once you start introducing variables like bitrate in an attempt to get at the quality issue then it seems remiss to actually ignore the viewing environment and other variables (it’s kind of like moving towards some “SuperHD” resolution even though our eyes may not be able to discern the change). And, really, it’s beside the point if what they’re looking for is a definition of what is and isn’t HD.
All that said, where do you guys think the best quality “HD” is in the decabled world? Let us know your fav sources in the comments!
PS: R.e. Blu-ray - Why is a technology in the 21st century using a dash in the middle of the name? That’s so 1900s 
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Well, right now Apple TV is the only internet fed HD option I have, I also have some OTA HD channels and a well set up Blu-Ray player. Oh, I do have the Xbox as well but that thing sounds like a helicopter warming up so I’m not even going to attempt to enjoy movies on it. The Apple TV is fairly decent half of the time picture wise, they just don’t seem to be very consistent in their encoding as some movies/shows look like non HD and some come close to the Blu-Ray experience. I get a lot of sound issues as well, so much to the point I expect to have to change some speaker levels before finally kicking back and enjoying the movie. I’m no audio/video expert so it’s sort of a pain when I have to spend as much time figuring out if it’s my settings as I do watching the movie. Unfortunately the best HD experiences I’m getting off Apple TV are my wife’s shows like 90210 and Private Practice. I won’t comment on the content but as for the audio and visual, it’s incredibly good!
I’m all for streaming media and downsizing my collection of plastic discs all over the house but as for me, I’m still more fond of Blu-ray when available. I think commandN in HD looks better than a lot of the movies on Apple TV, you guys should give them some pointers.
All in all at least I’m learning a lot about home theater, my wife just wishes I could do the learning beforehand and not when we’re supposed to be relaxing to a show. Looking forward to streaming HD’s future and more form this blog!
I’m pretty happy with the Apple TV HD for the most part, too, Andrew.
Although you might not realize you’ve made a very strong point relative to my post: commandN is NOT shot in HD - it’s just shot (the Toronto parts, at least) on a very high quality SD camera with an oversize chip in it (still 4:3 but bigger than my PD170’s chip). Between this and trying to do our best to encode a very high quality version of the show, lots of people mistake it for streaming HD.
(Although I do resent that commandN can’t really be in the HD podcast sections b/c I think our show looks as good as some of the other “HD” shows there
)
It does look amazing, had me fooled!
Great post Jeff, I know this probably isn’t right place to ask this but I have a quick question to anybody reading this,
What did you do before video was available on the internet, or you got broadband?
I’m just wondering, and thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to answer.
Sorry Jeff, you can have you post back now, Thanks
@Steve I really wasnt into anything on TV before I had broadband. Then a friend recommended House and I wathed pretty much all of the current season online and things just took off from there. I still watch House today.
@Jeff Awesome write up. I agree with everything you are saying. People are all about more. Therefore if something has a higher bit rate then it must be better than one with a lower bit rate. Who cares if you can’t tell the difference right? A lot of people are confused about what HD content is. Correct me if I am wrong but I thought I saw something somewhere that stated OTA HD is not always HD, it depends on the broadcaster and signal quality.
@SteveintheUK Before the internet I would just borrow movies from everyone kind of like a social library of movie trading. If I missed a show I liked to watch then I would just chalk it up to being SOL.
I use TVersity. I haven’t actually used in about 6 months but I used to be pretty active with it streaming to my Dlink DSM-520. I had set up a windows service that would open happyfish and download all my podcast when the RSS was updated. I guess I just got tired of the problems associated with wireless streaming. I was actually thing about re purposing my regular Xbox to a media center with XBMC.
A couple of links for you to check out:
http://www.room362.com/archives/265-TiVo-for-the-Economically-Unstimulated.html
http://lifehacker.com/5138423/cut-the-cable-for-good-with-boxee-and-apple-tv
It really is all about bit rate. The job of a codec is to allow the transmission of the information content of a signal at acceptable resolution at a manageable bit rate. We trade bit rate (bandwidth) for resolution (picture quality).
A good HTDV is able to display a 1920×1080 image 25x per second. That’s a 2 megapixel image every 40 milliseconds. Assuming a 16-bit color depth in three colors (I have no idea what the real color depth is), that’s 2.4 gigabits per second. A Blu-Ray disc can carry a lot of data, but not that much.
We have no choice but to squeeze the data. That leaves us talking about bit rate.
We went through this with audio. A CD can carry uncompressed music at 1,400kb/s, but we prefer MP3-encoded music at 128kb/s. But it’s impractical to carry HDTV uncompressed at all.
I think the important thing about bitrates is that they can vary by source, and generallly consumers will have no idea. This enables providers to cut corners by squeezing it down to noticably lower-quality video while still calling it HD. Just as there’s a standard for the resolutions of HD, there should be corresponding bitrate standards, so consumers can be assured of consistent experience.
I agree that there are a lot of variables in TV settings, but we’re talking about a basic infrastructure thing that should be defined and consistent.
Have you tried the Torrent Episode Downloader (TED) http://www.ted.nu/ yet Jeff?
I know the question about downloading torrents in Canada and legal aspects are still in question. But it is worth a look… Very nice bit of software that can really allow you to automate your downloading of TV shows.
@SteveInTheUK: I just relied on the trusty old TV antenna to get my video fix back in the day. Only got cable (outside of my parents’ house, and even then we went for years without cable) when I moved to Vancouver for grad school.
@Neondog82: I just take HD to mean that the video is encoded at 720 lines of resolution or more - any other definition is fraught with even bigger problems than this one
. Thanks for the links, too - I had seen the Lifehacker article (forgot to post a link here, d’oh!) but the other article is good too.
@sidelobe: Definitely not arguing that bitrate is not important or that we can even consider using uncompressed video in almost any application, so I do agree with your comments. I have to say in this day and age that anyone that is very into music should be looking beyond MP3s @ 128kbps (although this has become kind of standard through iTunes, that is hopefully changing with the plethora of iTunes Plus content now being released). I always encode using AAC at 256 kbps. That said, I wouldn’t bother encoding at that high a level if all I ever used to listen to music was the built-in speakers in my iPhone
. Good quick math example, too, showing what the raw data would look like for video.
@anony mouse: Totally agree. At the very least, all these companies should be publishing details about the quality of their transmissions.
@Joe Dawson: I have heard about this but not tried it. I’ll check out the link - thanks!
[...] One of the questions I get all the time from people interested in decabling is whether they’ll be giving up HD content after having invested in their nice new big-screen TV. The answer is maybe to some degree but less and less as time goes on (e.g. iTunes Store has HD content, along with some other content providers - with the caveat that all streaming HD is not created equal). [...]