You can see why I gave up on this thread:
Originally Posted by 2Bdecided:
“A normal human eye should be able to see some difference between pristine SD and pristine HD 14.5 feet from your screen. Broadcast SD is far from pristine, making the difference more obvious. You might not care about it, but the difference should be easily visible at 12 feet.
You'd need to be 8 feet away to fully appreciate your 720p display.”
Originally Posted by Faust:
“2Bdecided ... With HD v SD the comparison is PQ. You yourself admit the viewer isn't going to see the benefit from a 42 inch 720p TV viewed from 12 feet. ”
The wilful misunderstanding is breathtaking!
However, a couple of things have come up that need to be corrected.
FIrst, calibration is a (very largely) objective procedure. The goal is to get the display to be as close as possible to an agreed standard. It's not a matter of some settings being better for some people than others. There is only one correct setting. Faust, when you got your set professionally calibrated, did the calibrator say, 'what do you think? I can make it a bit brighter/more colourful if you like?' No.
But also despite some apparent agreement earlier on we are once again back with this:
Originally Posted by
Faust:
“
There again it could just be that all of you are very suggestible subjects and being told you should see a difference you can then see said suggestion. Plenty of evidence for this phenomenon. Can you prove a negative?
”
This is simply untrue, if by that you are once again saying that HD is the emperor's new clothes, and by that you mean there is no objective difference between HD and SD at agreed distances. As has been explained, there is a well defined relationship, with well defined margins for error, between distance and perceptibility of detail for SD and HD pictures. This can be empirically proven by objective, repeatable tests of subjective picture assessments. (Look up for instance DSCQS if you're interested.) Your normal viewing distance falls in the range where differences should be detectable.
Senses such as vision typically fall within a Gaussian distribution, as has already been explained. It seems that, if you discount all other variables such as the TV's performance, as you have, you are placed somewhere on the less acute part of the curve. This is not not-normal, but you keep coming back to the suggestion that everyone else is imagining it as if you can't bear the thought that you can't distinguish detail as well as some others. But from what you've said, you can't. This really isn't a problem--you won't be alone--but saying that everyone else is merely suggestible
is a big problem.