[sonyuser]

Is it just me or has the picture resolution on my Series II Tivo got worse? I noticed this particularly on this weeks NCAA National Title Game between Texas and USC. I get my local TULSA stations via DirecTV in which this game was a local ABC broadcast over DirecTV. I noticed it showed to be broadcast in HD DLP.

Anyway, the picture appeared to be very BLOCKY with poorer resolution that what I have been used to. Is this something we can expect to see as more and more shows start to be broadcasted in HD while viewing on non-HD equipment?

 

[jdk]

Look more into your setup, it has nothing to do with if the Standard Def (SD) broadcast you're watching on your Tivo. There's also a fair chance that DirecTV is having problems in its reception of your local channel. Believe it or not - DirecTV gets some local channels through an old fashioned antenna, and if their antenna isn't that good, not aligned right, or the tin-foil falls off, DirecTV will get a staticy or ghosted picture - so do you!

The SD and HD broadcasts are completely separate. They occur on different channels, and unless you have a high-definition receiver tuned to that separate HD channel, you're not watching a high-definition broadcast.

That little notice about the HD broadcast you see on your SD channel - usually says "simulcast in High Definition", or if it simply says "broadcast in High Definition" - is a friendly reminder that its available in HD - over on the HD channel.

(OK, the techies will chime in that often, the SD broadcast is derived from the HD broadcast, but I've never heard of anyone complaining that the SD broadcast suffers because it was a downconverted version of the much higher resolution HD broadcast).

 

[rlj5242]

I noticed it showed to be broadcast in HD DLP.

Like JDK stated, it was a reminder that the show was simulcast on another channel in HD. The DLP portion is Digital Light Processing. It's a Motorola product used in certain types of televisions. It is not a broadcast standard. My guess is that the HD broadcast was sponsored in part by Motorola. DirecTV has been known to sponsor the HD portion of games on Fox.

As for picking up the HD broadcast, you would need an ATSC tuner of some type. They are built into HDTVs (not the HD ready models), they are also in HD DirecTV receivers like the H10 or HR10-250 (aka HD DirecTivo). You would also need the appropriate antenna. In your case that would have been a VHF antenna since KTUL-DT (channel 8.1) is assigned to channel 10. That's right, your receiver is smart enough to remap the digital channel back to its analog number and append a .1 (or .2 if they have more sub channels).

(OK, the techies will chime in that often, the SD broadcast is derived from the HD broadcast, but I've never heard of anyone complaining that the SD broadcast suffers because it was a downconverted version of the much higher resolution HD broadcast).

A few years ago, they needed two separate broadcast systems. A different set of cameras, production truck and even announcers for the HD portion. In the last couple of years, they have started taking the HD broadcast, chopping of the sides to make it 4x3 format and sending it out as SD. You don't notice anything different. We HD watchers get to see more of the action since we get the full 16x9 frame.

-Robert