Can your sexy $4,000 LCD/plasma TV get HD content?

Ok, so you just went on a water-only diet and walk-only policy to save enough dough to get that slim, sexy $4,000 LCD or plasma TV. You probably got it because (1) you want to invite your sexy date to your home and need a better reason than coffee, tea or me (2) your existing CRT TV looks like your grandmother and you want your TV to look like Eva Longoria or Cameron Diaz. Most probably, you didn't get it because you wanted to watch HD TV.

But if you did, or you now want your four grand to be future-proof, you are probably asking yourself now - can I get HD content to qualify for the trial (although this qn is a little too late since they have probably closed entries for the trial). More importantly, can you get HD content, if and when, StarHub and MediaCorp, roll out their commercial HD services.

The answer, unfortunately is not so simple. In fact, there is no clear answer. Which is the reason why I started this blog dedicated to HDTV in Singapore.

What the heck is HD video anyway?
It's basically your next-generation video format. You know VCD and DVD? HD is basically even better than DVD quality. How much better? It's hard to describe. You need to see it to appreciate it. But compared to your standard- definition TV signals right now, the gap is even further. So a HDTV is a Tv can display HD content. Unfortunately, it doesn't end there.

To be able to watch HD content on your TV, four criteria must be met - the content must be created in HD format, the broadcast must be transmitted in the same HD quality, your must have a HD set-top box and your TV must be able to receive the HD signals.

To be almost guaranteed of getting high-quality HD content on your TV, you basically need to fulfill three requirements: (1) your TV has the minium HD resolution (2) your TV has a HDMI, DVI or component video port to connect to the set-top box (3) your TV is HDCP compliant. I will explain each of these in detail

Minimum resolution of 720p
Basically, to receive HD content on your TV, you need a TV that can AT LEAST support what is called 720p. This is the minimum resolution, there is also 1080i and 1080p. These numbers refer to the number of vertical lines that your TV can support. If you are familiar with PC monitor's screen resolution, it is the same as your 640x480, or your 1024 x 768. Unlike your analog Tv or your traditional PCs which display pictures in the 4:3 aspect ratio, HDTV displays images in wide-screen format or 16:9 aspect ration. That means either 1280 x 720 (720p) or 1,920 x 1,080 (1080i and 1080p)

Now, for the mainstream LCD TVs today, the resolution is 1336 x 768, which means it can support 1280 x 720, and therefore it passes the first critera (Comment: It would make sense to make LCD TVs at 1280 x 720 to be in sync with the signal, I have no idea why its at a higher resolution. However, since the TV resolution is higher than the signal (both the horizontal and vertical pixels) you should not see any degradation in video quality as the Tv adjusts to fit the signal on its screen.)

Downgrading in quality of your HD content, even if you have a "HD TV"
Plus why you need to know about HDCP
The second criteria is for you to have HDMI, DVI or a Component Video port. These are the holes in your Tv where you connect cables to your set-top boxes and HD DVD players in the future. This is where it gets complicated. Both HDMI and DVI are digital connectors while Component is analogue.

Now, the Hollywoods and other content producers are terrified of something called piracy. They are afraid that without any content protection, HD content will be distributed freely and illegally over the Interent. So they want to stop that by putting what is called High Definition Content Protection (HDCP) into their content to stop these intellectual property thefts. Ti make these work however, the Hollywoods need the support of the equipment makers, i.e. the set-top boxes and TVs. For the device makers, they will obviously want to have as little content protection as possible, because they don't really care whether piracy exists (unless you are like Sony which also makes movies) as long as their devices sell. Heck, the more piracy, the more people will buy devices in fact.

So there is a war going on. What is happening now is that the content producers are already creating content with HDCP built-in, but they have yet to be able to force the broadcasters to turn-on HDCP in their set-top boxes. However, if Hollywood wins, then your HDTV which is not HDCP compliant will, in all likelihood, not be able to get the HD video in its full glory. Therefore, the third criteria is that your HDTV must be HDCP compliant.

Since the Hollywoods can only control the newer digital interfaces (HDMI and DVI), HDCP only applies to these connectors. When your non-HDCP TV gets a HDCP activated stream, chances are you won't be able to get the stream, you will have to connect via your analogue Component video cables.

The million dollar questions is - when this happens, will your HD content be downgraded to 480p which is normal DVD quality?

This is an e-mail which a friend of mine who is a StarHub trialist received with regards to his query on this matter:

With regard to your enquiry, we would like to inform you that ourset-top box
is HDMI/HDCP and it should be fully comply to TV with HDMI or DVI/HDCP. At
present, the HDCP is not triggered till there's a need, so most ofthe TV will
not be affected. However, if it comes to a time that thisis triggered, then
those TV's without HDMI/HDCP should see the warning message below. Also, the
viewer still can switch over tocomponent or composite output for viewing, as
they are analogtransmission to the HDTV.HDCP

WarningThis material is copyrighted and your display is
unable to handle its protection properly. Therefore,you will not be able to
watch the program usingHDMI. To watch this material, please use analternative
type of video output connection fromyour set-top box, e.g. YPbPr (Comment: YPbPr means component video)

What this means is that for StarHub's HDTV trials, the stream is already with HDCP, but StarHub don't need to trigger HDCP for now. But later, if it should (due to content makers push), those without HDCP will have to stream via component, which could lead to quality degradation.

I raised this issue at the press conference today and spoke with experts who indicated that there will be little degradation at all even when used over component video. This is correct, if HDCP is not triggered, but I doubt it is accurate if HDCP gets triggered. StarHub and MediaCorp should take this trial period to test out this issue.