Originally Posted by Draug
It is so funny ... or maybe interesting ... or maybe downright sad?!?
Those of us old enough to have experienced and remember the infancy of High Definition, know and understand just how bad picture quality is now. It is awful! Unfortunately, being that we are a massive minority of the market, no production company cares.
IIRC, it was around 2002 when HD was in a similar place to 4K now, except nobody had HD TV's, while now almost half the consumers have a 4K TV. My brother and I were very early adopters of HD, as we lived together, and both had new jobs right out of University. Money to burn! We paid nearly $10,000 for a 42" 720p plasma TV and wall mount. Absolutely astonishing, looking back! At that time, Shaw cable had ONE HD channel; they would grab whatever HD content they could, from any network, and put it on that channel. For many months, it was basically only Jay Leno (NBC) and Monday Night Football (ESPN). It gradually expanded, and I remember when they put the fist hockey game on; you could see the texture of the fabric on Broduer's jersey, you could see what the fan in row 6 had for toppings on their nachos. It was literally as good as being there, but better, because the camera can zoom. On the normal high level view camera, you could 100% easily see the namebars on every jersey as they rushed through center ice. And that was with only a 720p TV and a down-converted 1080p HD signal.
Unfortunately, as more providers starting offering HDTV, they eventually used those enhancements in Technology to provide more quantity, rather than more quality. Instead of adding to their bandwidth capabilities while offering more HD channels, they started to digitally compress the HD broadcasts in order to fit them into their same supply networks. Awful! Fast forward 10 years or so, to about 2012-14, and we ended up with hundreds of HD channels, with the bandwidth and quality of Standard Definition. But we all had huge 50+ inch TVs. Essentially, the consumer traded picture quality for size; we ended up with a 65 inch screen that had the same fidelity as our old 27" tube TV's. And, sadly, the average consumer didn't even realize it!
After that, you get into the streaming generation. Even more compression is required to stream to every device over the internet, more and more channels and services are added, all in the name of how 'convenient' it is to stream. But the quality is down right horrific.
The cost of current 4K equipment is down right cheap. Everyone should have it. But we don't. Myself, I still have a 15 year old 65" high end plasma TV because it honestly looks close enough to the same as a high end 4K setup; solely due to garbage in equals garbage out!!!
As consumers, I wish we wouldn't stand for it. Until the profits are there, any provider will obviously cut every corner they can and pass it off as convenience! Truth is, we should have both supremely high quality and convenience!
LOL! What a rant! Struck a nerve I guess, on a totally distracted day, waiting for the first Battle of Alberta in my adult lifetime!
All that being said, is there anyway to get a true 4K broadcast of the Flames / Edmonton games? I'm hoping that they would be compressed less, and would look a lot better on my 1080p display, than the current Sportsnet HD channels offered.
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