Clarity Of Ubc In Bangkok

[Old Man River]

I don't know if this is the right place for this question, but you guys seem to know a whole lot more about these things than I do.

I have a home theater, which includes an expensive overhead projector and a 120 sq. inch screen. The projector is capable of handling high definition tv sources, but I realize they don't exist in Thailand. The company I bought the projector from tells me that since Thailand uses the PAL system, they can only set up the projector for 625 lines of video resolution as it relates to receiving UBC cable. They say that UBC can generate 700 lines, but it doesn't look good unless on a 200 sq. inch TV screen or larger.

Is this correct?

Thanks in advance.

[Tywais]

Don't know where he got that information but it is wrong. PAL standards are fixed at 625 lines (25 frames / sec) while NTSC is 525 lines (30 frames/sec).

Video Resolution - An Overview

[Old Man River]

Don't know where he got that information but it is wrong. PAL standards are fixed at 625 lines (25 frames / sec) while NTSC is 525 lines (30 frames/sec).

Video Resolution - An Overview

Thanks Tywais. I knew you tech types could be of help to us finance guys who are clueless on these things.

So, as long as I get an analogue signal from UBC, I can only get 625 lines or resolution. However, should UBC (at some point) send a digital signal, then the lines of video resolution would be higher, correct?

[Tywais]

Thanks Tywais. I knew you tech types could be of help to us finance guys who are clueless on these things.

So, as long as I get an analogue signal from UBC, I can only get 625 lines or resolution. However, should UBC (at some point) send a digital signal, then the lines of video resolution would be higher, correct?

Correct but it is a major upgrade in technology and investment so don't know when it will happen. Interesting that in the US in a few years all TVs and transmission have to be Digital.

"Analog NTSC transmissions are mandated to cease in the United States by February 17, 2009."

[opalhort]

I was under the impression that UBC is already broadcasting digital via cable and sat.

Whenever we have a problem with our analogue cable they try to persuade us to upgrade to digital, which we don't want to do yet due to the additional costs.

A neighbour of ours has digital cable and the pic quality is by far better than ours.

opalhort

[monty]

UBC will not look really good when using a projector.

They use pretty hefty compression (more channels per satellite transponder=lower costs), meaning slow moving images will look pretty good, but in fast moving scenes quality reduces dramatically with lots of compression artefacts.

UBC themselves claim their transmission is of VCD quality, although resolution is definately higher then standard vcd (352 X 240 for ntsc or 352 X 288 for PAL).

As a comparison dvd is 720 X 480 resolution, while HDTV is 1280 X 720

[LivinLOS]

I use a PC based scaling system and some directshow filters to clean the signal up (look at AVSForum and Dscaler5 if your interested) but even with some denoise and sharpen filters it still looks pretty bad..

AXN and some of the others have a ghosting and smearing that is really awful on a big screen.. I was pillarboxing my UBC 4:3 feed inside my 16:9 panel simply to make it smaller and less offensive.

And the lines of rez they are listing are not lines of TV picture but contain signal data also.. IIRC NTSC is 480 and PAL is 525 lines of active rez. Thats nto so bad though (a good crisp R1 DVD is only 480p but looks crisp and clean) its the piss poor compression, floating white levels, botched color values, botched sound levels.

Even a single keen amature could sit there and color balance UBC's programming better than they do and standardise it accross them all.. Sad.

[solo siam]

Hey Los,

I project an 80" in the bedroom and am happy with the picture, I feed an S-Video lead into a Marantz SR5600 which upconverts it to component which I then feed the projector.

It's actually the best UBC picture I have seen barring LivinLos's system above, although I don't get ringing, colour smears or ghosting, his picture is sharper though and less soft.

I figured that it's because I'm NOT using a high def projector but an 840x480 projector.

The UBC image is a 576i image if I'm not mistaken.