Standard Definition TV

Never use HD unless the Chanel is only available in it, I think it’s **** and it fills the drive up when recordings are in HD plus I can’t tell the difference

 

And stood at back ont tele. Wit ariel (if a fork dint work.) in the most uncomfortable of positions. Not daring to move if thi mam was watching Coro.

 

Spec savers?

 

This is the most Alan Partridge thread in ages!

 

You were probably watching it on a much larger screen than you used to. So the image would have been distorted.

I had the same thought recently though albeit in a slightly different circumstance. I've found myself digging out all my old PS1 & PS2 games. The PS1 games in particular look dreadful in comparison to the PS4. I remember Gran Turismo coming out in 1997 and it being dubbed the most realistic looking game ever. It doesn't even look remotely realistic anymore.

 

Not just B&W . I remember pre 1963 that we had 405 lines ... 2 channels... ITV and BBC. Since TVs in the '50s and early '60s were incredibly expensive and unreliable, like most people my parents rented and the early ones had a 10" screen and took the valves (yes valves!...I kid you not) an age to warm up (any gimmers like me remember the white dot that you could see centre screen on the CRT for ages after you had turned the TV off)?
When 16 inch transistorised TVs came along the screen looked huge but were so unreliable that half the time they broke down and you ended up with a temporary old 10" when the repairman took your rental away to fix... often for several days at a time.
Anyway I digress... BBC launched BBC2 in 1963 with 625 lines. Our rental had a clunky switch that changed between BBC1 &ITV on 405 lines and BBC2 on 625.
I always remember Wimbledon when, on BBC1 you had all on to see the court lines never mind the ball . Tey broadcast simultaneously on BBC1 and BBC2 and the difference was considerable. I remember my mum walking into the room when we first got 625 lines (for Wimbledon) and my mum looked at it and said "Good God I can see the ball!). Only lasted for a few days though as it broke down and we had a 10" replacement for the 2nd week!

Our first colour TV was so large it came in a big wooden cabinet with folding doors. The screen was so dim that you really needed the curtains closed to watch it in daylight. Sunday football highlights on ITV (Goals on Sunday) with Keith Macklin in winter often had to switch to B&W at half time as the tube cameras at the ground were not good enough under floodlights to manage colour. Everything went purple.

 

Watching SSN in SD on my 49in 4k TV and it looks terrible. As though its a stream that is struggling for bandwidth.

 

Pre video recorders Kinescopes were used to 'save' broadcasts- basically a film camera focussed on a studio monitor- Sound recorded separately then sync'ed with the film post production.

When video reorders arrived in the 70s things improved slightly but magnetic tape e.g. U-matic (think of a commercial version of Betamax) in cassettes is still analogue and the storage medium (even when stored at low temperatures) does degrade. BBC also had a habit of 'wiping' i.e. deleting recordings to re-use tape so countless programmes have been lost forever.
Major sound recording studios used to employ someone to wind and rewind multitrack master tapes of albums periodically on a scheduled basis to prevent something called 'print through' ( where tightly wound tape could pass the magnetic pattern onto the next adjoining layer of tape on spool over time causing a faint 'echo' to degrade the recording especially on 'silent' passages.
Still all pretty remarkable when you consider audio and video tape is basically a film of metal oxide As one engineer once put it succinctly, "just think when you turn on your tape cassette player you are listening to rust"
Obviously analogue and digital are Worlds apart so expect archived materials for current times not to degrade. Some historic footage does undergo remastering from analogue to digital and complex processes do improve original images but they can only do so much. As they say..."You cannot polish a t*rd"

 

Now we have finally sufficient bandwidth (30Mb/s) here in our rural setting, this year we upgraded the projector and SS receiver to 4K ones as they had finally become affordable. I recently bought a 4K Amazon Firestick and also upgraded Netflix sub to 4K. (Prime here is only 30 euros a year)

On our 49" 4k TV we could not see much difference between HD and UHD (4K) but when you switch to the big home cinema screen the detail on 4k content (particularly the 'blacks' - additional detail in shadows and night scenes) as well as enhanced colour spectrum is considerable. No comparison with 'pseudo UHD ' (upscaling) we had before . Surround sound quality is better too.
I am not totally sure anyone watching on a anything up to 60in would see that much difference between HD and UHD though.

Like you say though bandwidth is critical as anything below about 24Mb/s constant causes streaming to compress back to HD. Fortunately, recent upgrases for us means the service is stable at aorund 30Mb/s Still awaiting our 1Gb fibre to home connection due later this year.

 

I think you can notice black backgrounds a lot more when in HD compared to UHD/4K. Tends to be quite pixellated.

 

I still can't tell. Stick em side by side and then maybe but not when watching one or the other