Hi all,

2008/6/25 plus8 plus8 <...>:

Sterling Times <2@slewis.biz> said:

Which produces the best definition:

[a] a modern digital 720 line set; or

This is a hard question because of the fact that all digital video is compressed and can suffer therefore from loss of quality regardless of the number of lines.

[b] an 819 line analogue (SECAM) set from the 1960's (my granmother used
to watch Montecarlo TV at her home near to Nice on VHF). The quality
then was outstanding.

The big thing these days is that the 720 or 1080 line picture can be interlaced or non interlaced. Without going into too much technical detail, non interlaced pictures produce by far the most pleasing quality, and a lot of HD output is transmitted at 720p (non
interlaced). There is AFAIK at the moment no 1080p (non interlaced) content on any UK platform,but BLU Ray disks support this format and this is by far the best you can get these days. Going back to 819 lines, this will have been interlaced and as such probably better
better than standard 625 lines but not as good as either 720 or 1080. Sorry this took a mouthful of stuff to explain.

How long is a piece of string....

I work with Hi Definition telly which has 1080 lines but is only
transmitted on HD sat and possibly cable.

Most HD content is 720 lines, with some 1080, as I understand.

TV people have convinced
themselves that cheap handy cams like the Sony Z1 "Hi Def Digital Video"
are the gift from heaven. The technology inside them is fantastic, but
all they do is produce cheap TV sh**te.

Don't quite understand your point here, how can the technology be fantastic but it produces s**te TV. It's one or the other surely.

The yanks have always produced better quality viewing, the content maybe
crap, but the pictures are always great.

Disagree about the 'always'. You have to be kidding here... NTSC(525 lines) is vastly inferior to PAL (625 lines) and our colour TV
certainly in the analogue domain has always been far better quality
than the US. These days there's little difference with HD defining a common standard. But I'd agree that US TV content is not to many people's tastes, although again there are some great programmes (or is that programs) from across the Atlantic. All subjective of course!

I bought my old mum a Sony flat screenTV recently , the first thing I
saw was an old movie 'The Bridge on the River Kwai ' nearly 50 years
old, shot either on 35mm or 70mm film. The picture quality was stunning
after all these years.

If that's been properly converted you will get stunning quality – even better if it's digitized to HD standard.

I agree that it's the content that really counts.....

—Regards,

Geoff