It doesn't even take a video/film professional.

Once you've seen what HD looks like, you'll easily spot when something ISN'T in HD.

The only possible tricky part is trying to determine the difference between DVD on a 480i SDTV, and an upscaled DVD on a HDTV.

I'm so nearsighted that having the bigger picture is the best thing.

Those same people are more likely to be taken in by scientists getting their shot at fame, maybe even fortune, as science is the art of infallibility, perpetrated upon the general public, who know that they are not infallible.

Anyone who gets anything published in any journal anywhere (and there are hundreds of journals, some willing to publish nearly anything mailed to them) can start all of his sentences with "It Has Been Proven By Science..." and thereby rule out any disagreement by anyone except another published researcher.

Politicians, businessmen, clergy, philanthropists, and philosophers are all questioned and criticized, but scientists, rarely, if ever.

It is good to be a scientist!

I am a scientist. I question the study. It sounds like it was crap, as it only showed that people can be influenced by the implied authority of things like posters, signs around a TV, and the unquestioned statements of those perceived as "experts". Allen Funt used to prove this every week on "Candid Camera".

They could not tell "digital TV" from "HDTV", and the likely explanation is that the content shown was better quality then the signal they get at home from their cable-TV provider.

That's just Comcastic! :)

Toss in the classic age-related vision loss, and what I really need are HD medicine bottles.

Of course, I'm not talking about everyone, just people I know personally. But they wouldn't have even been in the store if it weren't for the new thing that everyone else was buying. What would you call that?

Our DVR stores 200 hours in standard but only 70 in HD. And we record everything we watch.

Also, the five cables required for component scare people who don't know their tech and the instead use the one RF cable.

That's just with music, though. Eventually we upgraded and with generator power, we'd sometimes have movie night. Movies would be watched iwth a computer projector (no idea where this came from), a laptop, and computer speakers - the $12 kind. We had to huddle around the speakers to be able to actually hear the movie. Not too shabby for the middle of the rainforest.

At home - it would be hard to deal with. But BF and I are both acoustics people...

Blech!!!

Full disclosure: I have a plasma set. We finally bought a new living-room TV for our christmas present to each other in 2008, and I chose plasma for several technical reasons. I'll pay the theoretically-higher utility bills for the superior picture quality, white-to-black slew rate, brightness, black level and viewing angle.

Also some things shot entirely on digital are in 30fps native, and then converted and provided in 24 fps, because life is cruel.

@dialing_wand: And don't forget those MONSTER cables. They MUST make it sound better! After all, they're 80 bucks and gold plated!

Just goes on to prove that if you THINK it's better, your brain will mangle input to match.

@veronykah: Pretty much. You can't miss what you don't have. People always wonder this exact thing, and I don't get it.

@Saboth: If I went from HDTV to standard def, I could see maybe what I was missing. But since this is not the case, my friends have to watch movies on standard def. The horror!

@MostlyHarmless_Under Influenza: We determined that the largest TV we could get was a 36 inch, and we're probably sticking to a 32 if and when we decide to get a HDTV. Probably 10 years from now, since our CRT TV is still going strong, and I remember my parents bringing it home in the mid-90s!

Basically, if you can read this text without having to squint, your computer screen is an HD display.

Indeed.

I'd notice it if we went back, yeah. It would suck, but I'd adapt pretty quickly, and that would be that.

That's exactly the point. Who has an HD and SD set side-by-side in their living room?

To me a TV is also a display for my consoles. Try playing an XBox360 or PS3 on and SDTV vs. HDTV sometime.

Not to mention that even if your tape heads are clean, the signal-to-noise ration is far lower on a cassette.

@jcazz: Perhaps some of the shows were only broadcast in SD, so whether you were watching it on the HD channel or the SD Channel it didn't matter because you were still watching SD.

Most local newscasts, and daytime programming are still only broadcast in SD, so if those are the shows that she watches, she would never notice a difference because there is no difference.

I think the best way to demonstrate the difference to someone is to turn on the Discovery channel when "Planet Earth" is on and just switch from SD to HD without warning. In SD, the images are amazing, but in HD, they come to life.

@MostlyHarmless_Under Influenza: Yup... Every time I go to a big electroncs store, I feel like I need to plunk down for a 50 inch Plasma, then I get home and realize that the 42 inch Plasma I have looks HUGE in my apartment...

@Span_Wolf: There is no 120Hz Content, all content that you see is provided to your set at 60Hz. When a TV has a 120Hz (or 240Hz) refresh rate it essentially looks at the information from the current frame and the next frame and tries to extrapolate and create a frame that represents the difference between the two frames. It is probably easiest to describe by example:

Picture a white background with a red ball in frame 1 located 1/3 of the way in from the left side of the screen. Frame 2 is exactly the same, but the ball has moved 1/3 of the way from the right side of the screen. The TV analyzes those 2 frames and determines that at frame 1.5, the ball is in the center of the screen, so it "creates" that frame and draws it on your screen.

Granted, this was an extreme example as you would never see an object moving that quickly on TV, but when you scale it to reality where an object may move 2 pixels over 60 frames you can see how this might be adventageous.

I personally have never knowingly experienced 120Hz refresh, but I am told that it works well in certain circumstances, but in others, it gives everything sort of a fake plastic look.

@Chmeeee: However, it's marketed as such. 120Hz and 240Hz LCDs are marketed as being able to eliminate blur you often see when watching fast moving action on a regular 60Hz LCD. How much of an effect it has I can't say, but one thing the marketing is geared towards is sports watching.

@GitEmSteveDave_IsWaving:
Sticking with my Blue Blockers.

@Orv: I'm not arguing the early adopter angle. Those asses are the ones stuck with 8-tracks, Betamax and HD-DVDs in their libraries. I was specifically aiming for the die-hard "holdouts". Sorry if I wasn't clear with that.

I have a tiny, old TV. It wouldn't have to be HD for me to see an improvement in picture quality.

(This is the third time I've attempted to make a similar comment. Anyone else having issues?)

It's the same way that shitty products get glowing reviews on TV. People want to say what they are expected to say.

When I'm at other people's houses that don't have HD tv, and we are watching regular movies instead of Blu Ray, I say to myself "Gee, that picture is SO crappy." I don't think I could go back. Each time I watch a blu ray at 1080p, I am continuously amazed.

The point of portable music players is the convenience of not having to deal with thousands of external tapes & cds. And the fast forwarding with tapes or scratching with CDs. And melted tape all over your glove box.

Sure I'll throw my money away on that.

The same thing happens with the size of the tv as well. The 32 inchers look so small compared to the 52 inch ones... but back in your apartment, the 32" TV is going to look big enough. Esp if the apartment is small. And a 52 inch one can end up looking a bit too big.

I seriously question the validity of any conclusions one might draw from this study.

"I say "nuts" to all of you who use that newfangled, "Hi-D" television screens. I still use the original RCA Victor my father gave to me as a wedding gift in 1930, and it even came with a carbon tube phonograph player on the side."

See how silly you all sound when you brag about sticking with obsolete technology? Say what you want about planned obsolesence, as it is a reality these days. Technology improves, people adopt it. It's the cycle of consumerism, and honestly this site wouldn't have much to post without it.

The brain is capable of performing many tricks like this if you can actually make yourself believe in it...

This just seems like the placebo effect in a different environment.

@GearheadGeek: Ugh.. I can't stand that. My mom had a plasma in her living room and the owner of the tv (her stepson) wouldn't let us take it off of "stretch-o-vision" because of the burn in.

Such a lovely tv.. but I hated watching it when I visited them.

I still have a flat faced CRT. Waiting for just the right deal to come along and the money availible to jump on it to upgrade.

@SteveBMD: Actually, tapes have much better fidelity than CDs as long as you keep your tape heads clean. CDs sample analog audio at 44.1kHz/16 bit. Tapes play back analog audio. No A/D or D/A conversion means better sound quality at 44.1kHz/16 bit. If you're sampling the analog audio at 48kHz/24 bit or 96kHz/24 bit you're getting much closer to analog.

My wife doesn't "see" the difference between SD and HD. She kept watching and recording shows on the SD channels until I hid them in the receiver's channel lineup!

I just do not understand how people cannot see the difference!

@Preyfar:
I think that's why I like it- It puts a whole new perspective on horror and action films.

I kind of wish that I had an SDTV for watching content that is only broadcast in SD (at least through my cable provider), as a good SDTV will out perform (nearly) any HDTV when displaying SD content.

Obviously the majority of the sheep who were told it's HD believed it was. If they were allowed to compare side-by-side, the results would have been very different.

@Moosehawk: also a bit of a waste I would think

* Unless you're one of those smug Mr Fancy Pants Audiophile types with your cool ipod and "digital" music. If you want to throw your money away, that's fine with me!

The nuances of color seem better to me on the CRT. I guess if you look hard you can see more detail on the HD, but the real question is would I get any more enjoyment from it? I say no. Not to mention my 32" TV is much bigger than a 32" HDTV I am not sure what size I would need to get the equivalent, but I am thinking 42 or more. Meaning my $600 CRT TV would cost well over a thousand. I am keeping it.

If you sit far enough away from SD on a smaller size set it looks "really detailed" but in reality is not.

Recommended seating distance for HD on a 65" RPTV is something like 10 feet. So a 42" would need something less, maybe only 7 or 8 feet. Wonder if they sat their testers that close or not.

From what I can see-- a large number of people with HDTVs just watch stretched out SD and think they're getting HDTV- I've been at a couple friend's house and switched them over to the HD cable channels (usually higher up) for a sports event and seen the shock and awe.

What they dont explain is was the picture shown actually in HD or not ?? if it was not I really dont see how 30 people were duped , maybe if they were all 80 year old ladies with bad eyes. This article lacks information about the study.

@hewhoroams: 120 HZ isn't really something that's going to make an impact on watching football. The purpose is to reduce the uneven motion that LCD's cause in slow cinematic panning and similar movement.

I see lots of HDTVs displaying SD stretch-o-vision because they "don't like them black bar thingies on the sides" and people with HD sets on SD cable or satellite boxes, or connected to HD-capable boxes with S-Video or composite cables.

I have a feeling this would work pretty well on people who don't have, or don't regularly watch HDTV, but after getting one myself, I now can tell *instantly* whether a broadcast is HD or not.

That said there are two reasons you might want an 120Hz display.

1. 3D, the new shutter glass 3D TV technology requires a 120Hz display so it can show you a frame for your left eye and one for your right at 60Hz each.

2. Movies. Most feature films are recorded at 24Hz which has been the standard for film projection since the industry first started including sound in their films. Since the film is running at 24 frames per second and your TV shows 60, your TV has to convert the source material to show it. The way most TVs do this is show some movie frames multiple times. The best way to do this would be repeat frame based on the ratio of 60 to 24, but 60/24=2.5 and you can't show half frames. So instead you often see 3:2 pulldown which shows 3 of one frame, then 2 of the next.

With a 120Hz TV you don't have to do this uneven pulldown technique for film since 120/24 = 5. In this case the TV just shows each frame 5 times and preserves the entire 24FPS experience of film.

If you want more details see [en.wikipedia.org]

(FYI it's Hz not MHz, I don't expect to ever see MHz TVs since 1MHz would mean 1,000,000 frames per second which is a bit overkill.)

Wouldn't work for me. I have a 67" DLP and the HD is amazing. Going to my mother's house, she has a 42" HD-Compatible that she doesn't run HD on and it truely makes a difference, even in standard definition programs.

I believe I do see that kitty in HD! Amazing!

Isn't this the premise of The Secret?

On a related note, I've also done this with the 120mhz and 60mhz with NFL football and seen absolutely no difference at all. Had about 5 people over who couldn't tell the difference either.