Medium Def TV?

[ElGuapo]

Hey, I figured you guys would know the real story on this. I was shopping for a HD setup the other day and I couldn't find ANYTHING affordable. I was kind of getting bummed when the salesguy told me about MEDIUM Def TV. Said I could start out with that and kind of work my way up. He said they were out of MD setups but they'd be getting more in.

So what about it?
Is MD worth it?
Is it upgradable like he says?

[FTBoomerIII]

Never heard of it

[OccamMD]

Never heard of MD, but what he may mean is a TV that cannot actually output a 1080i signal on the monitor/display. Although this is the case with many if notmost HDTV's at the moment. What is important is that it can accept 480i,480p,720p and 1080i. If not then a setup like the old DTC100 STB will work in that they rcv 1080i, but only put out limited like 480p (in their case it was a little different, 540p).

[passedpawn]

Never heard of MD, but what he may mean is a TV that cannot actually output a 1080i signal on the monitor/display. Although this is the case with many if notmost HDTV's at the moment. What is important is that it can accept 480i,480p,720p and 1080i. If not then a setup like the old DTC100 STB will work in that they rcv 1080i, but only put out limited like 480p (in their case it was a little different, 540p).
Well, said, OccamMD. I don't know of any rear projections that are capable of true 1080 resolution. Maybe they are out there. Most of the fixed pixel displays also have something less than 1080 x 1920.
I would love to have something that was capable of the true resolution of HD. Mine looks really good right now, though, so I can wait. Also, much of the material is ruined by the subchannel multiplexing and poor compression. This will likely get worse as the network advertising goobs figure out what to do with the subchannels.

[bdraw]

There is no official MD standard.
Who knows what they guy was referring too. I wouldn?t buy from him.

Passedpawn
Don't be such a pessimist. We only have one channel in Tampa that multicasts and they usually don't show but a few hours a week of HD.
Now I agree with you about compression. I haven't seen one 1080i program with a lot of action not show signs of compression.

[passedpawn]

Passedpawn
Don't be such a pessimist.
I can't imagine a local broadcaster who wouldn't use the bandwidth to show 4 channels instead of 1 HD one. Really. I would guess the only reason the digital stations are not broadcasting the subchannels is that the extra effort is not warranted by the very small audience, and there are no advertising dollars yet. When digital TV is more mainstream, I would bet the national networks each set up a 24/7 news channel. This would allow them to compete with cable news (CNN/MSNBC), and keep their advertising revenue. Local broadcasters will show this news on the subchannels. Maybe weather, too. Years away, thankfully.

I know I am probably coming across as being really negative, but I'm not. I just think this makes good business sense. I would hate to see it.

[videoholic]

You'd have to assume that a medium definition tv is 480p. That's all I can think of.

[brennt]

As videoholic points out, 480p may be what he was referring to. However, 480p is usually referred to as "enhanced definition" not "medium definition".

I use a front projector, the Infocus X1. Its native resolution is 800 x 600. It accepts HD inputs of 1080i and 720p and scales it to the native resolution. The resulting image is quite impressive, but to say it is HD is inaccurate, as would be to call it SD. Would you call it "Medium Definition"? I wouldn't, although it may also be something of the sort that the sales person was referring to. I think I would prefer to call it "scaled high definition".

[bdraw]

As videoholic points out, 480p may be what he was referring to. However, 480p is usually referred to as "enhanced definition" not "medium definition".

I use a front projector, the Infocus X1. Its native resolution is 800 x 600. It accepts HD inputs of 1080i and 720p and scales it to the native resolution. The resulting image is quite impressive, but to say it is HD is inaccurate, as would be to call it SD. Would you call it "Medium Definition"? I wouldn't, although it may also be something of the sort that the sales person was referring to. I think I would prefer to call it "scaled high definition".

Is it 600p or 600i?

CEA allows sets with active interlaced vertical resolutions of 810 and progressive vertical resolutions of 540 to also be called HDTV instead of EDTV.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=311486

[brennt]

[quote=brennt]
Is it 600p or 600i?



It is progressive. However, since it is native 4:3, when the input is 16:9, it will only use 450 vertical lines for 1080i and 720p material.

I have a Dish Network HD receiver that is set to 16:9 mode and I set the projector to 16:9 mode. That should give me a native 450p picture. I haven't tried this, but it is possible to set the receiver to 4:3 and the projector to 4:3. Perhaps doing it this way, I would end up with a 600p cropped image. Hmmm, I will have to try that and see what the PQ is like.