Whether the Australian Government used it or not or allowed it to be included in the definition of HD here, Worldwide the definition includes 720.
It is not really standardised as anything more than a higher resolution than SD. But by convention 720 is where HD starts and certainly in the IT sector 720 is considered HD. So they came up with different naming for resolutions that are higher than 720, such as Full High Definition (FHD) which is 1920 X 1080 often just referred to as 1080. Then there are 2K (2560 X 1440 or QHD), WQHD (2960 X1440), 4K (UHD), 8K. Though Rec.2020 (ITU-R Recommendation BT.2020) defines the last two resolutions as as Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV).
Then in 1936 the BBC commenced regular transmission of what is termed high definition TV service
We would no longer call what was transmitted then as HDTV, but it goes to the core of the issue of what really HDTV is. As I said before we now consider HD to start at 1280 X 720 (720). Due to no standard other than using words that say āa higher pixel count than standard definitionā is high definition, anything higher than SDTV could be termed HDTV
So the Australian Government were correct when they labelled 720 as HD. Just in some other places in the World they were already using FHD such as in Japan from the early 1990s and correctly also calling it HDTV. Even the 576 could be called high definition, just that no one in IT would use that term to describe it.
In digital broadcasting world-wide, 720 certainly IS considered high definition. Not as high as 1080 for sure, which what we now think of as the lowest HD resolution. But 1080 was only really possible once MPEG 4 became generally used and supported for compression.
But only in Australia it seems was standard definition 576 PAL considered HD by the Government in allocating channels to the broadcasters in the switch to digital TV.
True, and silly me, what I meant to write about was that they also labelled 576p as HD, and I believe were the only government anywhere to do that. Happy to be corrected !
I agree it was an abuse to use 576 when by convention everyone else that matters accepts that HD starts at 720. To be honest is it unusual for a Government to legally term something as meeting some quality? But everyone else knows it is legal but still a misuse of what everyone else uses. Hence the MTM NBN can be called super speed when it allows traffic at 25/5 while the rest of the World thinks 100 Mbps is closer to what Super Speed should be, and the World is moving on to 10 Gbps while we think 1 Gbps is ultra high speed.
I will say slippery is the slope that leads to hell (or ridicule) and some Governments can seem to place themselves well and truly on that decline.
My posts have drifted very far off from the problem issue of this topic. I felt that some comments needed responses, now that it has been debated I am not going to add further distance to what the topic was asking. Thank you all for bearing with this divergence and I now return you to your regular programming.
The issue was that when the Gov handed out spectrum in the UHF radio band to each broadcaster, they had enough bandwidth for up to 5 standard definition channels using MPEG 2 compression as was used at the time. One of which could be called HD. A bit of marketting spin to get Australians to adopt the change to digital TV.
The broadcaster could, if they wanted to, actually use one channel to send true HD format, but that would have cut into their bandwidth for other channels. So they all chose to use all 5 channels, rather than lose them. Even if it meant in the early days one got the same content on multiple channels.
Now that MPEG 4 compression has come along, HD streams use no more bandwidth than the old MPEG 2 did on SD.
Watching current favourites Damsel or Oppenheimer on Netflix is most definitely not the same as watching it at the cinema. At the latter I get the full screen experience (& Oppenheimer in particular was all the more powerful for it). Which in my opinion is how a movie should be viewed for best viewing impact. On any device. Currently these very ācinematicā movies are letterboxed quite severely on Netflix. As are so many others. How on earth is that better!? (Refer to Techradar article posted by @mark_m. ) It seems a very backward move to me.
Anyway the point I was trying to ascertain at the very beginning is that it looks likely Netflix has seen fit to recently take away the option of changing the aspect ratio. Of anything. Without any notification or explanation this was going to be the case. Suddenly the options were just greyed out.
So the upshot is, if I can no longer view movies/ shows as I used to on Netflix, then I am one very unhappy subscriber. And will consequently rethink my subscription.
BTW, Netflix issues aside, Iāve certainly learnt a lot from all the responses received . Thanks to all.
Itās better than 480i, which is my understanding of SD - but Wikipedia currently refers to 576i as SD. Looking at Wikipediaās revision history, 576i was considered SD in the oldest captured history (September 2006), so it was definitely not considered HD when Mr Turnbull was the responsible minister.
Wikipedia only has a subset of its total history unless one wants to click page by page through the history of an article that has been modified many times, so I checked the Internet Archive. Its first capture from Wikipedia was in July 2004, and while that first version does not have the same level of detail it confirms the 576i was SD as at article creation.
BTW Iād be interested to know, given you above comments, if you could change the aspects which would you choose:
just make the picture edges, as seen in the cinema, fit with the edges of your TV screen. Remember that this will result in picture distortion once you choose an aspect where the relationship of picture height to width differs from that at the cinema, or
Keep the height width ratios the same but just enlarge the image until the height fits your screen. in this case you will loose functional part of the width on both ends of the screen, so if something happens at the edge of the screen shoot youāll loose it.
Which would you choose, because you cannot have both.
The alternative may be to ask how big a budget and wall space can one afford.
EG Epson EB-L570U Laser Projector 5200 Lumens 4K
History suggests that the greatest demand for large screen TVās is for viewing sport. Nearly all of which is recorded in the near universal TV 16:9 aspect ratio. Can we expect large screen TVās to continue to grow until they can fill the extents of any wall? In which instance even with a letterbox effect it will be impossible to display any larger scene than the width of the viewing room. Should a smart TV smarts include replacing the dark bands with a user selectable blend of neutral colours that matches the wall and surrounds?
I have just used Netflix on our Sony and do not have the issue you are describing, it appears this might be an LG issue rather than Netflix. A few TV set manufacturers get the app from Netflix and then adjust it to suit their systems. Often this is why you buy a TV and eventually the apps stop working. The TV set company just cease to update the app.
There are several topics related to the apps on Smart TVs. Often the recommended way to avoid the obsolescence is to use a connected device such as a Chromecast or an Apple TV or other similar devices.
Some search results that also include Netflix use in some
If the format issue began about a month ago, I may be affected also. However, my TV is a Toshiba about 15 years old and I stream Netflix via my Mac and an HDMI cable. I can no longer go to a full screen view of most of the newer programs without a portion of the picture disappearing off the right hand side of the screen. Iāve had to adapt to watching with my Mac taskbar visible across the top of the program. Grrr!
If you have good internet in your apartment, get yourself an Apple TV box and download app the apps for the FTA channels. You can also download the apps for various streaming services too, if you wish, but with the FTA channel apps, you will have not only their live TV, but a wide selection of channels and programs from their back catalogues too. I sorted my apps on the Apple TV box so that all the FTA apps are together in a group, and the streaming apps are together in a separate group. It makes it quicker to find what I want to look at. You would only have the one off cost of the Apple TV box if you just download the FTA apps.
Yes, but if you accessed Netflix content, with the app on your Apple box rather than on the TV itself, how does it go as far as formatting go? Are you stuck in letterbox format?
I was happily watching free to air tonight, and everything fitting nicely into full screen, and low and behold, a few ads came on in letterbox format. What? I can only assume these were ads filmed in wide screen greater that 16:9. Why? Who knows.
Donāt think so. Mind you I have been out of Netflix for 2 years and only came back to it yesterday, watching the 3 Body Problem, and it was letterboxed. But I didnāt find it to be unduly distracting. I expect Oppenheimer and most movies to be letterboxed.
Iāll edit this or post again if other stuff is full screen or whatever. My TV is about 12 years old, a Samsung which is not smart by my standards or any other, I suspect. A few useless apps none of which are streamers.
. Thanks to all.