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High Definition Off Air
HDTV (high definition television) is the breakthrough technology that delivers a much better picture and a much richer sensory experience than standard definition television. Watching HDTV, you see the sweat beads on the goalies forehead as he awaits the penalty kick. You hear the sizzling guitar solo ricochet around the room. And you catch every detail in wide screen panorama.
In short, HDTV makes your home entertainment center feel like a theater.
How do you know you’re really watching HDTV? There are four links in the chain: The TV program must be formatted in HDTV, broadcast in HDTV, received in HDTV, and delivered to an HDTV compatible television set.
When you watch TV, you’re really watching dots. These colored dots, or picture elements, combine to create a televised image. With HDTV, you’re watching a lot more of them, up to two million dots, building a remarkably clear image on your screen. That’s nearly seven times as many picture elements as standard definition TV and it’s one reason HDTV looks more like real life.
HDTV brings you a larger field of vision. The standard TV displays images in a dimension of 4:3 (horizontal : vertical). This is also called the aspect ration. HDTV programs play out in 16:9 wide screen aspect ratio, for a more cinematic experience. Movies are no longer “formatted to fit your TV”, so you literally see parts of images and scenes that were missing before.
What makes HDTV more like the movies? It’s not just the wide screen view, it’s HDTV’s capacity for Dolby Digital surround sound, coming at you from every angle. There are 5.1 possible channels in HDTV, 3 in front (left, right and center), 2 in back and one low frequency subwoofer (.1). The result: rich, life like sound in your own personal theater.
Have more questions? Take a look at the topics we just added to the FAQ section.
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