Sony Bravia iPlayer stream

[Andy Bircumshaw]

On 24/4/2011, at 1:39pm, Adam Hawkins wrote:
> ...
> I gotta agree with the above sentiment. I've always found that watching
> low quality video on a TV somehow results in me perceiving it as higher
> quality. This included watching iPlayer through my Xbox on the TV.

I understood (am happy to be corrected as wrong) that one of the distinguishing features of high-end or "name brand" TVs (such as Sony) was that their upscalers were better.

I'm basing this on information gleaned a few years ago, when I bought my Sharp, but in the first years that HD TVs were being sold they were much dependent on SD sources. It's only a decade ago that RGB SCART and 480p component were the best video transports, and many film and video game buffs maintained there were noticeable differences between the display of crappy composite on different systems. One could quite well imagine that Sony have carried this kind of tech over to their newer models.

iPlayer's "high quality" standard def is actually pretty poor, and it's not inconceivable that a little sharpening or whatever would make a significant difference to the viewer. In particular it suffers from blocky and "shimmering" background artefacts [1] - smoothing would probably more suitable in that case, and it might not be difficult to apply.

aB.


[1] If you don't know what I'm talking about here then don't go looking for it - you'll subsequently be unable to stop noticing it, and it'll only spoil your enjoyment of film & tv in the future.