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* General Computer SIG Comments from Old Blog
John Neustadter Says: September 23rd, 2006 at 9:01 pmeI thought John Schilburg was a very good speaker, and I have no doubt that he knows his subject matter through-and-through. There was absolutely no problem with him holding my attention. John provided good tid-bits of information and interesting stories, but I think he let the group down with some of the audience questions. Several times, the question was asked: What should I buy? He talked a lot in response to the questions but frankly, I’m pretty confused and maybe more confused than before I attended the talk. If the answer is: It’s too soon to tell; it would have been a service to the group for him to say that.
Carl Farley (for Norm Massicotte) Says: September 24th, 2006 at 9:25 pmeThanks to Norm Massicotte, HAL-PC member, for taking these notes…
“I attended one of our HAL-PC Clear Lake club meetings yesterday. The speaker was a former TV broadcast studio engineer, John Shilberg, who is now in business with a partner selling HD equipment to television stations. Very competent individual and very interesting presentation.
John says the HD TV broadcasting industry today is a complete nightmare of different types of HD transmission and the best out today is what PBS uses for their broadcasts. Compare their transmissions with commercial stations and you will see the difference.
As far as what the consumer should have to get the best reception of HD, a 16 by 9 aspect ratio is essential – 16 being the horizontal and 9 the vertical. Otherwise, you do not get the full benefit of the HD broadcast because your set is condensing the signal and eliminating a lot to fit your screen.
On the horizontal, you need either 1920 pixels or 1280. The pixels have a certain size and again if your screen doesn’t accommodate what is broadcast, your picture will suffer.
Maintaining that 16 by 9 aspect ratio or 1.7778 wider than high, the vertical pixels should be 1080 for the 1920 horizontal and 720 for the 1280.
The 1080 vertical pixels are either (i)nterlaced or (p)rogressive. He prefers the 1080p. The 720 vertical pixels are (p)rogressive.
John also added, to get the full benefit of HD broadcast, you need either a 60″ or 50″ set. This of course is the diagonal. Knowing we are dealing with a 16 by 9 aspect ratio, this is where I resorted to some high school algebra to determine how wide and tall your screen should be.
The screen for a 60″ TV would be 52.3 inches wide and almost 29.4 inches high and for a 50″ TV , 43.6″ by 24.5″. i.e. 60 is the square root of 3600 and 50 the sq root of 2500.
One last comment, he mentioned the set should be sized to the room and that the normal rule of thumb for viewing distance was 7 times the height of the screen. For instance if you had a 24.5″ high screen, it should ideally be viewed from 171.5″ or 14 feet away, 17 feet for a 29.4 tall set. You can never put a large screen in a small room and expect good results.”
Carl Farley (for John Schilberg) Says: September 26th, 2006 at 12:12 ameTo John Schilberg…Thanks a bunch for your talk Saturday at HAL PC Clear Lake. It was very beneficial to me in trying to understand what is going on in the HD TV industry. I have composed a summary of what I think you said and would appreciate it if you could look it over and let me know if I am accurate…from Norm Massicotte
(Note *** comments by John interspersed in Norm’s email to John below).
“I attended one of our HAL-PC Clear Lake club meetings yesterday. The speaker was a former TV broadcast studio engineer, John Schilberg, who is now in business with a partner selling HD equipment to television stations. Very competent individual and very interesting presentation.
*** I’m still an FCC licensed broadcast engineer, but I work with over a hundred TV stations instead of just one. You might also add that I’m a proud geek and a vidiot!***
John says the HD TV broadcasting industry today is in a complete nightmare of different types of HD transmission and the best out today is what PBS uses for their broadcasts. Compare their transmissions with commercial stations and you will see the difference.
***The “nightmare” is in what you may have to go through to receive the transmitted terrestrial TV signals – and I mean terrestrial transmission versus satellite, cable, or IPTV (AT&T Lightspeed). The terrestrial system is very sensitive to reflected signals – sometimes to the point of completely disabling or seriously ruining reception. ***
***The transmission systems (terrestrial, satellite, cable, IPTV) are agnostic – they don’t care what format you’re using. They’re just going to process it for transmission, regardless of format. The decoding of the format will take place at the receive end. ***
***PBS has done a terrific job of utilizing the digital terrestrial broadcast system to send information and programming to its viewers. It’s the same system all terrestrial broadcasters use, but they’ve done a great job of packing a lot of programming and information into their signal. ***
***In comparing PBS to commercial programming, I think the outdoor and scenic programming goes a better job of “pleasing the eye” than theatrical and sit-com programming offered by the other networks. ***
As far as what the consumer should have, to get the best reception of HD, a 16 by 9 aspect ratio is essential, 16 being the horizontal and 9 the vertical. Otherwise, you do not get the full benefit of the HD broadcast because your set is condensing the signal and eliminating a lot to fit your screen.
***Be careful of using the word “reception” instead of “display”. The 16:9 aspect ratio of the display is a standard that was set long before the transmission and video formats were decided upon. A 4:3 (the older aspect ratio) set will NOT be able to convey HD quality without seriously cropping the image (usually vertically). ***
On the horizontal, you need either 1920 pixels or 1280. The pixels have a certain size and again if your screen doesn’t accommodate what is broadcast, your picture will suffer.
With the acquisition of HD video being done with either 1920 or 1280 horizontal pixels, the display should IDEALLY have the same horizontal pixel capability. Anything less will result in a scaled down rendering of the originally acquired video.
Maintaining that 16 by 9 aspect ratio or 1.7778 wider than high., the vertical pixels should be 1080 for the 1920 horizontal and 720 for the 1280.
***For a progressive display, 720 pixels or 1080. For an interlaced display, “technically” 540 (because only the odd lines are displayed, then the even, then the odd, etc…), but 540 is a spec that you needn’t really concern yourself with because they all basically go beyond that. ***
The 1080 vertical pixels are either (i)nterlaced or (p)rogressive. He prefers the 1080p. The 720 vertical pixels are (p)rogressive.
John also added, to get the full benefit of HD broadcast, you need either a 60″ or 50″ set. This, of course, is the diagonal. Knowing we are dealing with a 16 by 9 aspect ratio, this is where I resorted to some high school algebra to determine how wide and tall your screen should be.
***For example, here are a few plasmas that are considered “HD”:
1) Panasonic TH-37PH9UK – MSRP $1,995 – 37″ Professional Series HD Plasma Display with up to 10,000:1 Contrast Ratio – 1024 x 720 resolution
2) Panasonic TH-42PH9UK – MSRP $2,095 – 42″ Professional Series HD Plasma Display with up to 10,000:1 Contrast Ratio – 1024 x 768 resolution
3) Panasonic TH-50PH9UK – MSRP $3,295 – 50″ Professional Series HD Plasma Display with up to 10,000:1 Contrast Ratio – 1366 x 768 resolution
4) Panasonic TH-65PHD8UK – MSRP $11,995 – 65″ Professional Series HD Plasma Display with up to 8.58 Billion Colors and 3000:1 Contrast Ratio – 1366 x 768 resolution
5) Panasonic TH-103PF9UK – MSRP $69,999.95 – 103″ Professional Series 1080p HD Plasma Display – Full HD pixel resolution of 1,920 horizontal x 1,080 vertical
Of these, only numbers 3 – 4 – 5 are able to display EVERY pixel captured by the 720p HD camera. On top of that, only number 5 is capable of doing every pixel for both 720p and 1080p. ***
The screen for a 60″ TV would be 52.3 inches wide and almost 29.4 inches high and for a 50″ TV , 43.6″ by 24.5″. i.e. 60 is the square root of 3600 and 50 the sq root of 2500.
One last comment, he mentioned the set should be sized to the room and that the normal rule of thumb for viewing distance was 7 times the height of the screen. For instance if you had a 24.5″ high screen, it should ideally be viewed from 171.5″ or 14 feet away, 17 feet for a 29.4 tall set. You can never put a large screen in a small room and expect good results.
Thanks again for the excellent presentation, John. Your long-ago field trip when in high school to where you are today is impressive.
***As I mentioned earlier, the thanks go to you guys and all those who were in attendance. I really have too much fun doing those things! I’m hoping I can come back sometime in the future for another session.
As for the high school field trip, I was truly blessed to have had that happen to me. Four years ago I got a chance to tell the teacher, Miss Schroeder, about what took place on that trip. She had left formal public education by then and worked in the private sector as an instructor but was elated to hear what happened. She said my story was music to her ears, as it would be to any teacher.
Thanks for getting in touch. Feel free to consider me a resource for any future HD questions you might have. And for sure, feel free to call or write before you buy anything HD for your home!
Warmest regards to all the HAL-PC Clear Lake gang,
John***”
Dave Beckman Says: October 30th, 2006 at 2:19 pmeThe discussion about Acronis backup and restore software at Saturday’s General SIG (Reinstalling Windows XP) was particularly interesting to me, as I have been looking for some good software to do just that. I acquired the software after the meeting and installed it, and it does the job very well.
Members of HAL-PC may not be aware that they can acquire this software at a substantial discount because of their membership in a users group. The regular price on the manufacturer’s web site is $49.99, but is available to user group members for $29.99, a savings of $20.
Go to the web site www.ugr.com, operated by Gene Barlow. Gene was involved with user group relations for PowerQuest (producer of Partition Magic and other neat utilities) until it was sold to Norton. He continues to provide support to user groups for other products.
On the ordering page, use HAL-PC for the user group name and the qualifying code is UGHALPC. Gene will respond to your order with an email containing download instructions and the serial number for your product.
While you are on Gene’s web site, look for his tutorials, particularly “Using Acronis True Image 9.0″. This is a 20 page, well-written set of instructions and recommendations of how to set up and use the Acronis software. The software current verion is 10, but his writeup for 9 was still very useful. The installation sequence of events seems to have changed a bit in 10, and I had to type in the serial number rather than copy and paste, but everything else followed along OK. Version 10 has a very “XP” look to the user interface.
September 23rd, 2006 at 9:01 pm eI thought John Schilburg was a very good speaker, and I have no doubt that he knows his subject matter through-and-through. There was absolutely no problem with him holding my attention. John provided good tid-bits of information and interesting stories, but I think he let the group down with some of the audience questions. Several times, the question was asked: What should I buy? He talked a lot in response to the questions but frankly, I’m pretty confused and maybe more confused than before I attended the talk. If the answer is: It’s too soon to tell; it would have been a service to the group for him to say that.
September 24th, 2006 at 9:25 pm eThanks to Norm Massicotte, HAL-PC member, for taking these notes…
“I attended one of our HAL-PC Clear Lake club meetings yesterday. The speaker was a former TV broadcast studio engineer, John Shilberg, who is now in business with a partner selling HD equipment to television stations. Very competent individual and very interesting presentation.
John says the HD TV broadcasting industry today is a complete nightmare of different types of HD transmission and the best out today is what PBS uses for their broadcasts. Compare their transmissions with commercial stations and you will see the difference.
As far as what the consumer should have to get the best reception of HD, a 16 by 9 aspect ratio is essential – 16 being the horizontal and 9 the vertical. Otherwise, you do not get the full benefit of the HD broadcast because your set is condensing the signal and eliminating a lot to fit your screen.
On the horizontal, you need either 1920 pixels or 1280. The pixels have a certain size and again if your screen doesn’t accommodate what is broadcast, your picture will suffer.
Maintaining that 16 by 9 aspect ratio or 1.7778 wider than high, the vertical pixels should be 1080 for the 1920 horizontal and 720 for the 1280.
The 1080 vertical pixels are either (i)nterlaced or (p)rogressive. He prefers the 1080p. The 720 vertical pixels are (p)rogressive.
John also added, to get the full benefit of HD broadcast, you need either a 60″ or 50″ set. This of course is the diagonal. Knowing we are dealing with a 16 by 9 aspect ratio, this is where I resorted to some high school algebra to determine how wide and tall your screen should be.
The screen for a 60″ TV would be 52.3 inches wide and almost 29.4 inches high and for a 50″ TV , 43.6″ by 24.5″. i.e. 60 is the square root of 3600 and 50 the sq root of 2500.
One last comment, he mentioned the set should be sized to the room and that the normal rule of thumb for viewing distance was 7 times the height of the screen. For instance if you had a 24.5″ high screen, it should ideally be viewed from 171.5″ or 14 feet away, 17 feet for a 29.4 tall set. You can never put a large screen in a small room and expect good results.”
Go here for more:
http://www.hal-pc.org/%7eslcweb2/MonthlyPresent/0609WelcomeTV.html
September 25th, 2006 at 1:36 pm eCorrection
The spelling is John Schilberg
and John is an FCC licensed broadcast engineer
September 26th, 2006 at 12:12 am eTo John Schilberg…Thanks a bunch for your talk Saturday at HAL PC Clear Lake. It was very beneficial to me in trying to understand what is going on in the HD TV industry. I have composed a summary of what I think you said and would appreciate it if you could look it over and let me know if I am accurate…from Norm Massicotte
(Note *** comments by John interspersed in Norm’s email to John below).
“I attended one of our HAL-PC Clear Lake club meetings yesterday. The speaker was a former TV broadcast studio engineer, John Schilberg, who is now in business with a partner selling HD equipment to television stations. Very competent individual and very interesting presentation.
*** I’m still an FCC licensed broadcast engineer, but I work with over a hundred TV stations instead of just one. You might also add that I’m a proud geek and a vidiot!***
John says the HD TV broadcasting industry today is in a complete nightmare of different types of HD transmission and the best out today is what PBS uses for their broadcasts. Compare their transmissions with commercial stations and you will see the difference.
***The “nightmare” is in what you may have to go through to receive the transmitted terrestrial TV signals – and I mean terrestrial transmission versus satellite, cable, or IPTV (AT&T Lightspeed). The terrestrial system is very sensitive to reflected signals – sometimes to the point of completely disabling or seriously ruining reception. ***
***The 18 formats are video formats. A few of them are 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i. Here’s a link to a table that shows all the variants: http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html ***
***The transmission systems (terrestrial, satellite, cable, IPTV) are agnostic – they don’t care what format you’re using. They’re just going to process it for transmission, regardless of format. The decoding of the format will take place at the receive end. ***
***PBS has done a terrific job of utilizing the digital terrestrial broadcast system to send information and programming to its viewers. It’s the same system all terrestrial broadcasters use, but they’ve done a great job of packing a lot of programming and information into their signal. ***
***In comparing PBS to commercial programming, I think the outdoor and scenic programming goes a better job of “pleasing the eye” than theatrical and sit-com programming offered by the other networks. ***
As far as what the consumer should have, to get the best reception of HD, a 16 by 9 aspect ratio is essential, 16 being the horizontal and 9 the vertical. Otherwise, you do not get the full benefit of the HD broadcast because your set is condensing the signal and eliminating a lot to fit your screen.
***Be careful of using the word “reception” instead of “display”. The 16:9 aspect ratio of the display is a standard that was set long before the transmission and video formats were decided upon. A 4:3 (the older aspect ratio) set will NOT be able to convey HD quality without seriously cropping the image (usually vertically). ***
On the horizontal, you need either 1920 pixels or 1280. The pixels have a certain size and again if your screen doesn’t accommodate what is broadcast, your picture will suffer.
With the acquisition of HD video being done with either 1920 or 1280 horizontal pixels, the display should IDEALLY have the same horizontal pixel capability. Anything less will result in a scaled down rendering of the originally acquired video.
Maintaining that 16 by 9 aspect ratio or 1.7778 wider than high., the vertical pixels should be 1080 for the 1920 horizontal and 720 for the 1280.
***For a progressive display, 720 pixels or 1080. For an interlaced display, “technically” 540 (because only the odd lines are displayed, then the even, then the odd, etc…), but 540 is a spec that you needn’t really concern yourself with because they all basically go beyond that. ***
The 1080 vertical pixels are either (i)nterlaced or (p)rogressive. He prefers the 1080p. The 720 vertical pixels are (p)rogressive.
***Refer to the table shown at http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html to see all the variants, too. ***
John also added, to get the full benefit of HD broadcast, you need either a 60″ or 50″ set. This, of course, is the diagonal. Knowing we are dealing with a 16 by 9 aspect ratio, this is where I resorted to some high school algebra to determine how wide and tall your screen should be.
***For example, here are a few plasmas that are considered “HD”:
From the Plasma link at: http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/cat_displays.asp
1) Panasonic TH-37PH9UK – MSRP $1,995 – 37″ Professional Series HD Plasma Display with up to 10,000:1 Contrast Ratio – 1024 x 720 resolution
2) Panasonic TH-42PH9UK – MSRP $2,095 – 42″ Professional Series HD Plasma Display with up to 10,000:1 Contrast Ratio – 1024 x 768 resolution
3) Panasonic TH-50PH9UK – MSRP $3,295 – 50″ Professional Series HD Plasma Display with up to 10,000:1 Contrast Ratio – 1366 x 768 resolution
4) Panasonic TH-65PHD8UK – MSRP $11,995 – 65″ Professional Series HD Plasma Display with up to 8.58 Billion Colors and 3000:1 Contrast Ratio – 1366 x 768 resolution
5) Panasonic TH-103PF9UK – MSRP $69,999.95 – 103″ Professional Series 1080p HD Plasma Display – Full HD pixel resolution of 1,920 horizontal x 1,080 vertical
Of these, only numbers 3 – 4 – 5 are able to display EVERY pixel captured by the 720p HD camera. On top of that, only number 5 is capable of doing every pixel for both 720p and 1080p. ***
The screen for a 60″ TV would be 52.3 inches wide and almost 29.4 inches high and for a 50″ TV , 43.6″ by 24.5″. i.e. 60 is the square root of 3600 and 50 the sq root of 2500.
One last comment, he mentioned the set should be sized to the room and that the normal rule of thumb for viewing distance was 7 times the height of the screen. For instance if you had a 24.5″ high screen, it should ideally be viewed from 171.5″ or 14 feet away, 17 feet for a 29.4 tall set. You can never put a large screen in a small room and expect good results.
Thanks again for the excellent presentation, John. Your long-ago field trip when in high school to where you are today is impressive.
***As I mentioned earlier, the thanks go to you guys and all those who were in attendance. I really have too much fun doing those things! I’m hoping I can come back sometime in the future for another session.
As for the high school field trip, I was truly blessed to have had that happen to me. Four years ago I got a chance to tell the teacher, Miss Schroeder, about what took place on that trip. She had left formal public education by then and worked in the private sector as an instructor but was elated to hear what happened. She said my story was music to her ears, as it would be to any teacher.
Thanks for getting in touch. Feel free to consider me a resource for any future HD questions you might have. And for sure, feel free to call or write before you buy anything HD for your home!
Warmest regards to all the HAL-PC Clear Lake gang,
John***”
October 30th, 2006 at 2:19 pm eThe discussion about Acronis backup and restore software at Saturday’s General SIG (Reinstalling Windows XP) was particularly interesting to me, as I have been looking for some good software to do just that. I acquired the software after the meeting and installed it, and it does the job very well.
Members of HAL-PC may not be aware that they can acquire this software at a substantial discount because of their membership in a users group. The regular price on the manufacturer’s web site is $49.99, but is available to user group members for $29.99, a savings of $20.
Go to the web site www.ugr.com, operated by Gene Barlow. Gene was involved with user group relations for PowerQuest (producer of Partition Magic and other neat utilities) until it was sold to Norton. He continues to provide support to user groups for other products.
On the ordering page, use HAL-PC for the user group name and the qualifying code is UGHALPC. Gene will respond to your order with an email containing download instructions and the serial number for your product.
While you are on Gene’s web site, look for his tutorials, particularly “Using Acronis True Image 9.0″. This is a 20 page, well-written set of instructions and recommendations of how to set up and use the Acronis software. The software current verion is 10, but his writeup for 9 was still very useful. The installation sequence of events seems to have changed a bit in 10, and I had to type in the serial number rather than copy and paste, but everything else followed along OK. Version 10 has a very “XP” look to the user interface.