Will Yourself A Sharper TV Picture

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Got a crappy TV? Want a better picture? Just want it to be better and it will be. This finally explains why people claim they can/cannot see the difference between regular DVD content and HD content. :p

Two groups of 30 people watched the same video clip, individually, on the same television. Half were told to expect a better experience thanks to HD technology, an impression backed up by posters, flyers and an extra-thick cable connected to the screen. The other half were told to expect a normal DVD signal. In questionnaires afterwards, the group told to expect HD reported that they had witnessed significantly sharper, more detailed images.
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Not surprising, things of this nature have more or less boiled down to common sense for most people. Marketing is a powerful thing.

It's still nice to see a study like this done once in a while, if not for just some factual evidence on the matter, then for a little laugh at this psuedo-placebo effect.
 
This borders on the "Placebo" effect, which is nothing new. People will believe in ANYTHING if they truly put their minds into it.
 
Freezebyte said:
This borders on the "Placebo" effect, which is nothing new. People will believe in ANYTHING if they truly put their minds into it.
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Agreed, I've never seen a study where a group didn't lean towards an opinion because they were told that it would be so.
 
Yeah. I'd like to think I wouldn't fall for it though. I (like probably many of other [H]ers) can tell the difference between a DVD and Blueray realllly quick.
 
I think it depends on the tv and the viewer.

Some tv if made right can still output a decent picture.

Unfortunately for experience user that used monocrome, vga, svga, xvga, ss4xxxvga and so on. There is a massive difference.
 
So, how does one will themselves do to this.....without a T.V., as I do not have one?
 
I switch to these new solid gold banana plugs and the sound is like night and day. Now I am how I really feel; like a giant tool.
 
Makes me wonder how many of those people actually watch good high-def content regularly. Most people seem to fall into the "good enough" mindset so the people in the study probably didn't care enough to discern the difference.
 
Mega2 said:
I think it depends on the tv and the viewer.

Some tv if made right can still output a decent picture.

Unfortunately for experience user that used monocrome, vga, svga, xvga, ss4xxxvga and so on. There is a massive difference.
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I mean monochrome, vga, svga, wsvga, xga, wsxga, wsxga+, wuxga, wqxga, ssj4xxxvga.
 
Jakalwarrior said:
Or all those people on their couches who swear they can see the super blu-ray 1080pness.
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??

I went from a SD tv and dvd's, to a nice Sharp 1080p set and a PS3 a few years ago, and the difference was immediately, mind bogglingly noticeable.

I sure as hell can't see the difference between 1080p and 1080i, but going from standard def to HD was "unmissable".

I honestly don't know how anyone could mistake SD for HD after having seen HD for so long.

I'll walk into the living room and the better 1/2 is watching the news on an SD cable channel and it flips me out everytime. I finally bought a Harmony One and favorited ONLY the HD network channels so she doesn't watch that grainy, illegible SD shit anymore :)
 
Makes sense to me. Especially on small screens, the difference between 720 and 1080 is nearly indistinguishable yet I've seen people swear that the difference is so obvious that anyone would be able to tell instantly.

I was at a guy's house last Saturday in fact and he was all talking up about how much nicer the picture was than his old TV and how HD was all that and a bag of chips. But when pressed he couldn't say what about it was better--- just that it was better.

Punchline: when the game was over I asked him what channel it was on--- we weren't watching the game on an HD channel.
 
Way too vague!

I didn't see any specifics, so it's hard to comment on the article. Are we talking about a 40" tv or a 20"? How far away are they sitting from the television? Has every person been exposed to HDtv for a period of time long enough to adjust to the superior picture or did grandma get picked with her dial tv?

Not only this, but I would also bring up the argument of the progression of TVs lately. TVs being used that are 10+ years old isn't so uncommon. The difference of today's TVs to a 10yr/o would be enough to cite a difference.

Anyone able to see the test methodology and setup?
 
ordovician said:
Yeah. I'd like to think I wouldn't fall for it though. I (like probably many of other [H]ers) can tell the difference between a DVD and Blueray realllly quick.
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Things like compression artifacts, dithering, etc, jump out at me in a second. The difference between DVD and Blu ray is night and day to me, even before getting into the whole resolution thing.
 
jflail2 said:
I sure as hell can't see the difference between 1080p and 1080i, but going from standard def to HD was "unmissable".

I honestly don't know how anyone could mistake SD for HD after having seen HD for so long.

I'll walk into the living room and the better 1/2 is watching the news on an SD cable channel and it flips me out everytime. I finally bought a Harmony One and favorited ONLY the HD network channels so she doesn't watch that grainy, illegible SD shit anymore :)
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Most people can't even set up their monitors properly. Its weird, like most people are blind or something. :)
 
jflail2 said:
??

I went from a SD tv and dvd's, to a nice Sharp 1080p set and a PS3 a few years ago, and the difference was immediately, mind bogglingly noticeable.

I sure as hell can't see the difference between 1080p and 1080i, but going from standard def to HD was "unmissable".

I honestly don't know how anyone could mistake SD for HD after having seen HD for so long.

I'll walk into the living room and the better 1/2 is watching the news on an SD cable channel and it flips me out everytime. I finally bought a Harmony One and favorited ONLY the HD network channels so she doesn't watch that grainy, illegible SD shit anymore :)
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I agree, SD to blu-ray I can tell a huge difference. From DVD to Blu-Ray though I really can't not from my couch. There are a few scenes were you can pick it out, usually computer animated movies with tiny detail, but for the most part I can't tell until I am within 5 ft of the TV.
 
Master Blaster said:
They call them women.
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I remember having a girl over and, sitting ~6.5 feet away from a 56" HDTV, she couldn't tell the difference between an SD and HD channel as I flipped back and forth between the same program to compare them. I was absolutely dumbfounded since the difference is HUGE. After that, NOTHING surprises me...
 
rhouck said:
I remember having a girl over and, sitting ~6.5 feet away from a 56" HDTV, she couldn't tell the difference between an SD and HD channel as I flipped back and forth between the same program to compare them. I was absolutely dumbfounded since the difference is HUGE. After that, NOTHING surprises me...
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At least you know she couldn't tell the difference between a pornstar's penis and yours:p

Sorry, I just had to
 
The other half were told to expect a normal DVD signal. In questionnaires afterwards, the group told to expect HD reported that they had witnessed significantly sharper, more detailed images.
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Sharper more detailed images as opposed to what? A standard DVD? It doesn't state the parameters of the testing.
I want to know if they showed the HD Group a regular DVD and said that the next viewing is using HD technology but playing back the exact same thing, or if they just sat them in front of a TV and said that they would be watching using HD technology with no prior reference.
 
Really an HD image only starts to become noticeably better at very large sizes like on projectors. If you see a well mastered blu-ray on a 106" image you can see the difference. On a 32" TV, not so much.
 
Read through the PDF that was linked earlier.

Basically, the people were given a questionnaire to rate the viewing experience and those that were told the video was in HD rated the experience notably higher than those that were told the video was SD.

The group of participants that was told that they were watching HDTV indicated a higher appreciation of their viewing experience than the group that was told that they watched a DVD signal
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Out of a group of billions, all were told that an invisible man named God exists who created the entire universe all by himself, and if you pray to him everyday and donate money to your local church he will save your soul from burning in hell for eternity. Most individuals in the group who were told this believe what they are TOLD and do what they are TOLD to do.

Moral of both stories: People are SO freaking gullible :D
 
Thanks for the post Tekara.
This is more about perception than about HD technology, or how gullible people are. I think this is close to the "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better" mantra. They just add HD to gain exposure.

The Emperor’s Clothes in High Resolution: An Experimental Study of the Framing Effect and the Diffusion of HDTV
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This experiment can be grasped intuitively by drawing a simile with the tale of the emperor’s new clothes by Hans Christian Andersen.
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The original video is the 720p HD version. This video uses the H.264 codec with a frame rate of 16.216 per second. The video was converted to a standard PAL DVD format using open source programs.
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From the descriptive data, it was found that 20 of a total of 60 participants owned a flat screen, and 11 participants were expecting to buy one during the coming 12 months.Analysis shows that the experience does not differ significantly between owners of a flat screen television and non-owners, although owners did have a greater belief that HDTV was worth paying extra for
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convexion said:
Really an HD image only starts to become noticeably better at very large sizes like on projectors. If you see a well mastered blu-ray on a 106" image you can see the difference. On a 32" TV, not so much.
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I can see the difference between SD and HD on my 20" monitor as well as my 42" Plasma.
 
I've had a boss at work who ran 800x600 on a 19" monitor with native res of 1280x1024. She couldn't tell that her desktop was not only huge, but also much blurrier than mine.

On topic though, I'm pretty sure the most 'scientific' way to do this study would be to do comparison tests and not just one tv with one image... I.E. side by side sd vs hd (or whatever they were comparing).
 
rhouck said:
I remember having a girl over and, sitting ~6.5 feet away from a 56" HDTV, she couldn't tell the difference between an SD and HD channel as I flipped back and forth between the same program to compare them. I was absolutely dumbfounded since the difference is HUGE. After that, NOTHING surprises me...
Click to expand...

Sounds like a keeper. :D
 
This was not a very good study at all. This was really more of a psych study then tech. It is a case of the Emperor's New Clothes. Show them the same DVD and call it HD, most people are going to admit they were stupid and couldn't tell the difference. To be honest some of the so called HD stuff I have seen is really the same as the DVD version. Alot of the early stuff released on HD wasn't even remastered and they just put the same info from the DVDs onto the new media.
 
The paper was a psych study. It really didn't concern itself with peoples ability to determine if material was HD at all. Instead it focused on how much the subjects enjoyed the material and determined that by simply calling the material HD was enough to result in the subjects enjoying the video more.
 
convexion said:
Really an HD image only starts to become noticeably better at very large sizes like on projectors. If you see a well mastered blu-ray on a 106" image you can see the difference. On a 32" TV, not so much.
Click to expand...

I can tell the difference on my 37." I can easily tell if its on a SD or HD channel when I turn it on.
 
Daemas said:
At least you know she couldn't tell the difference between a pornstar's penis and yours:p

Sorry, I just had to
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We're talking CLARITY here not size :p

convexion said:
Really an HD image only starts to become noticeably better at very large sizes like on projectors. If you see a well mastered blu-ray on a 106" image you can see the difference. On a 32" TV, not so much.
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Sure, if you're
1) Blind, or
2) Sitting 30' away from the screen

Your statement makes zero sense since the point it becomes "noticeably better" depends on far more than just screen size, including (perhaps most prominently) viewing distance.

SolidBladez said:
Sounds like a keeper. :D
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Haha hell no! That's the kind of girl who bitches every time you buy a new gadget because she can't appreciate the difference and thinks it's a waste of money :p
 
12 feet way from a 40" TV, with a High quality DVD, on a good player, upscaled to 1080p,
Most people would think it was HD.

12 feet way from a 40" TV, with a poor quality Blueray DVD of an old movie,
People would would doubt it's HD
 
rhouck said:
I remember having a girl over and, sitting ~6.5 feet away from a 56" HDTV, she couldn't tell the difference between an SD and HD channel as I flipped back and forth between the same program to compare them. I was absolutely dumbfounded since the difference is HUGE. After that, NOTHING surprises me...
Click to expand...

Some channels are hard to tell any difference, some have none. You may be broadcasting in HD but the show might not be HD.. case in point, Heros on the HD channel looks good but the commercials look like grainy crap where on the SD channel both look the same grainy crap.

/Love my Samsung 48" 1080p Tv and PS3, the difference between SD DVDs and HD BR is huge even with the PS3 up-scaling the DVD.
 
convexion said:
Really an HD image only starts to become noticeably better at very large sizes like on projectors. If you see a well mastered blu-ray on a 106" image you can see the difference. On a 32" TV, not so much.
Click to expand...

The difference between a DVD and HD is immediately noticeable from about 8 feet away on my 24" computer LCD.
 
The anti-Blu Ray/HD people are getting to be as bad as the anti-Vista retards. A scaled DVD does not look like HD. You can't get more pixels out of nothing.

Yeah, an old movie ported to Blu Ray probably isn't going to look a whole lot better than the DVD version, but that doesn't mean HD isn't worthwhile for new content.
 
Tekara said:
The paper was a psych study. It really didn't concern itself with peoples ability to determine if material was HD at all. Instead it focused on how much the subjects enjoyed the material and determined that by simply calling the material HD was enough to result in the subjects enjoying the video more.
Click to expand...

this
 
This test is no different than the Windows Mohave test Microsoft did.

It's called playing on people's emotions and I'm pretty sure you could have substituted a banana for the TV test and told some people they were eating a regular banana and some people that they were eating a new "extra delicious" banana and the idiots eating the "extra delicious" banana would have a better "experience". I'm pretty sure we didn't need another useless psych test to show us people base their decisions on emotions rather than fact much of the time.
 
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