I always thought analogue telly and VHS tapes were shit, compared with seeing films at the cinema they looked awful. Digital telly (especially HD) gives the cinema a run for its money.

Freeview HD looks terrible, I can understand why people wouldn't bother with it. Cable looks very nice in HD. I assume satellite is probably OK but I've never seen it in HD.

The optician is talking nonsense. Even if somebody has bad eyes it's still going to look better in HD.


Because you are doing something wrong ?

I refuse to accept that people can't see the difference between the two. They have either never seen anything in HD before or something is wrong with the setup. You don't even need good eyesight to notice the difference.

I get excellent picture quality, so not sure what I'm doing wrong. In the distant past when I tried HD it did seem to break up fairly often. When I have taken the trouble to check it recently, it looks good, but no better than SD - and I don't have the bother of scrolling down to find it. My old box (which gave up the ghost) allowed me to put my favourite programmes together - but I guess that was unpopular with the myriad of other channels which are competing for our business.

Nonsense. Freeview HD looks totally identical to HD on other broadcast platforms. It is SD that is considerably worse on Freeview. So on Freeview if you can't tell the difference between the SD and HD channels you really do need an appointment with the opticians.

It may be specified as 1080, but have you actually been into the menu to see if it is actually set to that? My father's aging TV had a choice of about six different settings and more recent ones will at least give you the option of 1080i or 1080p, although that is one setting where I can't tell any difference.


Freeview HD looks bloody marvellous, with the latest David Attenborough series being exceptional. The football on Channel 5 is now finally worth watching since the channel went HD.

I normally only watch cable, but during the Euros I tried switching over to Freeview HD to see how it looked. On cable I could see the blades of grass and the faces in the crowd, really good HD picture. On freeview it looked OK when nothing was moving, but when the camera panned, even slowly, the whole thing just turned to mush. The difference in detail between static and moving scenes was so distracting I would rather have watched SD.

Strangely it has been set at 1080p since the beginning, I checked again before I posted.

Believe it or not some people don't like HD TV. I can understand this in older people especially. They're so used to standard definition pictures that when they see HD it just looks too weird to them. Over time they may get used to it but I certainly wouldn't force them to watch in HD. If they prefer SD let them watch in SD.

What do you mean by weird?

It's so lifelike they think the events on the screen are actually happening in their rooms.

One thing that does seem to be worse about an HD picture is that it highlights the individual hairs on people's heads too much, even with the sharpness setting right down. That looks unnatural.

Sometimes it looks more real than reality...

My granparents appreciate HD so much more than my mum does, and nearly always think to switch to the HD channel where available, and no, they don't have bad eyesight!

Reminds me of the first time audiences saw film on screen.

BBC Hd seems to be iffy to be honest, channel 4 used to be great, seemed to be sharper than BBC.

My Dad have got a SD tuner TV and is not going to buy a new TV unless this one goes wrong, his view is what is the point since it is off more than on and rubbish in HD is still rubbish.

Sorry this is complete nonsense. There must be something wrong with your set up because HD looks pretty identical on Satellite, Cable and Freeview. SD does look considerably worse on Freeview so you would have to be blind to prefer that. Most modern TV's allow you to have different picture settings on each different source so your picture set up must be different on cable than it is on freeview.

I think it's you speaking nonsense bad eyes ? There are so many eye conditions you can't say they are all going to see better with hd. I will stick with the trained expert, I know that's not popular these days people don't like experts but when they are medically trained and only trying to help I take their advice over yours thank you.

For 4K and even 8K with demo material you can spot people wearing contact lenses. The detail is so good you can see the ridge of the lenses as their eyes move about.

I remember James Martin talking about HD how with SD he could get away without having a shave. Now with HD he said it picks up every detail.
Imagine when 4K and Japan has 8K trialling if I remember correctly, the vanity is going to go through the roof in years to come as these higher HD formats become the normal in households.

I think this is why botox is so rife in the media industry nowadays since you can spot every flaw.

One of the great things about all this will be for video games and spotting things away in the distance before you're on it. More so racing sims.


It doesn't end there either. Sadly most people will likely never care or even get to see it but those that have good TV sets and have had them professionally calibrated the detail in colour is even more. From seeing every shade of dark blacks to extreme whites and even the subtle colours on peoples faces. It brings out the subtle texture. Oily pastel texture, it is so good you are fooled you could almost feel it.

Then of course OLED and HDR. Inky blacks like a printer catridge that looks wet on your TV since most people are used to grey type blacks. Then the crazy details in sun flare and the skies that standard HD TV sets cannot show. Extremely bright natural details.

It is quite jaw dropping seeing it all. Most people will have not seen such lovely colours like this since most are accustomed to heavily saturated colours.

I think that's a good point actually. Whilst movies, action scenes, landscapes and sports can look wonderful in HD, I can appreciate how some might find the HD picture almost unnaturally crisp and sharp. I have felt that way when watching some freeview HD content sometimes. But maybe that's down to the tuner or TV settings.

The other downside of HD is being able to count peoples nasal hairs and lady-taches. Sometimes less is more and SD can be a blessing

My dad was watching a programme about coral reefs and had to open the windows to let all the water out.

I remember the BBC boasting about their new cameras for the Olympics or Commonwealth Games many years ago.

The resolution and colour was indeed apparently better, but there was also a stroboscopic effect on fast moving objects (eg the 100 metres) which completely spoiled it for me.

I can't get how people don't choose the better picture quality of HD when it available to them. But even worse is those people that watch a 4:3 format program or film and stretch it to fill the tv screen to lose the side borders distorting the picture that is just wrong.

pearlsandplums and other people say they don't get the fascination with aspect ratios the problem with VHS is films were largely only available in 4:3 pan & scan atrocities, rather than OAR (original aspect ratio). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m1-pP1-5K8

Don't forget the horrible fish bowls back in the VHS days.