HD Snob

I am lucky to have a advanced setup at home for the viewing of TV and Movies, in fact it brings a lot of enjoyment to myself, friends and family. The centrepiece is a Samsung 46 inch LCD TV, TV coverage arrives via SKY-HD, Games & Movies are delivered via a playstaion 3 and finally High quality audio blasts out of a Yamaha Sound Projector Soundbar and Subwoofer....all great right? Well yes but also there is a downside.

You become a HD snob, standard definition TV now does not quite cut it for me,a classic example is the current British Open Golf Coverage on BBC-HD. Clear crisp coverage, showing the exact detail of every drive, iron shot, chip and putt. The players swings are shown in their full glory when the x-mo coverage is shown, however HD coverage stops at 6pm and to carry on watching the completion of the rounds you have to switch to a Standard def BBC channel. What a difference ! once you have been watching HD all day long, SD turns into a cavalcade of blurred edges, invisible ball flight and fuzzy players from long distance shots.....awful. In fact the quality really detracts from the content.

In fact Sunday lunch with my parents has transferred venue recently so myself and my father can watch the Sunday sporting events on my home setup, the 32 Inch standard def setup at my parents place just does not cut the mustard anymore.

I have seen the recent developments in 3D TV at the local pub, provided by SKY, 100 grown men in a pub wearing sunglasses watching football with rather unconvincing depth did not appeal that much. It looked to me if the players were rather like 2D cutouts moving on a 3D pitch, thus i can't see me being a 3D snob (yet)......but i just can't take SD TV anymore......spoils the whole viewing experience as you are constantly shocked by the HD differential.