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I was recently impressed by a HDTV broadcast I saw in Brisbane. The Wellington House & Home Exhibition demoed the Bose Series III Lifestyle 28 ($NZ5500), a Toshiba-based DVD player with media centre functionality. House of flying daggers looked and sounded superb on a large $NZ10000 Samsung "high definition" LCD TV. Although the Lifestyle is a multi-region player (I'll never by region-locked again) it uses yesterday's tech, offering neither HD nor support for higher-capacity optical discs (Blue-ray or HD DVD). My current DVD player, TV, and camcorder are all limited to "standard definition". Would largely garbage free-to-air TV programming justify the cost of making the jump to high def? What equipment would I need and what technology standards should I be mindful of? And, in a Mac-centric home, how much of this would be compatible with my preferred computing platform? Here are the results of my investigations into these surprisingly complex questions: if I have erred please feel free to re-educate me.

Terminology and standards

Firstly the normal PAL television is now considered to be SD, or standard-definition. HD is thus high-definition, and HDTV refers to high-definition television. There are three HDTV formats in common usage: 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Note that:

1. The numbers stand for lines of vertical display resolution;
2. The p stands for progressive scan (the whole frame is redrawn in each refresh);
3. The i stands for interlaced (alternate lines are redrawn in each refresh);
4. Sometimes another number, the frame rate, is tacked on to the end (e.g. 1080i25).

"Full HD" may refer to 1080p, or both 1080i/p depending on who's doing the marketing. Smaller resolution displays offering 720p can still display 1080i/p material, but this will be downscaled to fit the screen (e.g. displaying a 1080i signal on a 720p screen will cause the loss of 55.6% of pixels).

A progressive video source is directly compatible with plasma and LCD displays, which are inherently progressive themselves: they must deinterlace 1080i format video source. Thus 1080p is theoretically better than 1080i, as the displayed image is "cleaner". That said, full HD broadcasts typically use 1080i because it conserves bandwidth. HD DVD and Blue-ray typically output feature movies in 1080p, so a display that supports this will give the best quality image. The bottom line is:

In comparison to the other two HDTV formats, 1080p HDTV has the best of both worlds—it has the spatial resolution of a 1080i signal and the smooth stable image of a progressive scan format.

As you can see in the following image, you get a lot more detail in an HD image than in a standard PAL broadcast or from digital video (DV-PAL) camcorder output:

DTV and HDTV broadcasts

It's important to note that digital TV (DTV) is not necessarily broadcast in HD (e.g. Freeview in the UK is currently SDTV). It's not just about the picture either (and even here resolution is just part of the story), as HDTV improves the sound too (the AC-3 audio codec supports Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound). However, as of this time there are no HDTV broadcasts available in New Zealand:

• Sky plan to launch a DVB-S HD service in 2008, requiring a new set-top box.
• TelstraClear's Digital InHomeTV service over cable (DVB-C) is SD with "CD quality" audio;
• Freeview launched with a SD free-to-air satellite TV service (DVB-S, 576i, MPEG-2), with approved set-top boxes costing $NZ300. A digital terrestrial service (DVB-T, MPEG-4) is slated for early 2008, with anticipated new set-top boxes adding high definition and personal video recorder (PVR) functionality at this time (Note that HD is not expected to come to Freeview in the UK for "some years");
• TVNZ ondemand does not provide Mac-compatible downloads, which are limited to a 7-day viewing licence anyway (some low resolution streaming content is free).

HD television displays

Bulky cathode ray-based TVs seem to be going the way of the dodo (as have CRT computer displays). There are three alternatives to choose from, with more on the differences here.:

LCD:

• These use the same kind of technology as most modern computer displays;
• A Samsung 40" LCD (1080p) will cost $NZ5484.

Plasma:

• Can be expensive;
• Prone to image burn-in (so not ideal for gaming);
• A Samsung 42" plasma (PS42C91HX, 720p) can be had for $NZ3000.

Projection:

• You get a large picture;
• You need dedicated wall space;
• You have to darken room to see the projected image.

Reality check: The BBC say viewers can tell the difference between SD and HD broadcasts once their TV screen size is 28" or over.

Why can't I use my 23" Apple Cinema Display?

It's a good display, with 1920 x 1200 pixels of resolution, 0.258mm pixel pitch, and a 178 degree viewing angle (vertical and horizontal). It has a typical response time of 14ms; I'm told that even LCD TVs with an 8ms response time can show motion blur and cause the picture not to be in sync with the audio. That seems like a staggering claim as DVD playback on my Cinema Display seems flawless. A number of folk have tried to use it as a high def display, usually paired to a Playstation 3. This turns out to be far from simple:

There is no way to connect a PS3 to an Apple Cinema Display with a digital connection (HDMI or DVI) because the PS3 only works with HDCP compliant monitors (which the Apple display is not). You can only connect the PS3 to the Apple Cinema Display using component cable connected to the HDMate [$US350]. This way, you will get 1080i deinterlaced to 1080p and formatted to fit on the Apple Cinema Display.

Just for clarification this is said to be an issue for any external HDTV source:

The Cinema Display has no scaler inside of it and is relying on the video card to give it the exact video resolution and timings it needs. That is why you can not connect the PS3 directly to it, or any HDTV video source.

I say external because you can use it to view HD content from a Blue-ray disk drive upgrade, Internet downloads, TV tuner card, or HDV camcorder (see below).

HD media

According to WB "DVD will look better on HDTVs but it won't provide the highest resolutions." I'm guessing what they are referring to here is that the digital signal from a DVD player is converted to analogue for playback of SDTVs: there is no degradation with a digital-only connection to a HDTV. To get more resolution you need new media.

The first obstacle is the whole Blue-ray v HD DVD incompatible format war. Both formats share the same video and audio codecs, but there are a number of differences:

Blue-ray:

• Blue-ray can store 50GB data on a dual-layer disc, enough for up to 8.5 hours of HD video;
• Blue-ray players currently on sale in New Zealand are the Sony Playstation 3 ($NZ1200, 1080p), the Panasonic BMP-BD10GN-3 ($NZ3000, 1080p), and the Samsung BD-P1000 ($NZ3000, 1080p);
• There are only a handful of titles available in New Zealand;
• Blue-ray discs have region coding, different from DVD region codes—but at least the UK and NZ are in the same region this time;
• Apparently some Blue-ray content is available to rent;
• A $US900 (ouch!) Blue-ray optical drive upgrade is available for the Mac mini (and other Macs/PCs), and is compatible with all DVD and CD recordable media.

Blue-ray divides the world differently from DVD-Video

Update 18.06.07: Blockbuster have chosen Blue-ray for most in-store rentals, which have outpaced HD DVD rentals where both were available.

HD DVD:

• HD DVD can store 30GB data on a dual-layer disc, enough for up to 5.1 hours of HD video;
• Toshiba's HDE1 HD DVD Player sells for $NZ1600. If you already have an Xbox 360 (from $NZ550) you can add a Xbox 360 HD DVD Player for $NZ250;
• There are only a handful of titles available in New Zealand;
• HD DVD discs have no region coding.

Be careful of non-HD players pretending to do HD. For example, I came across a Philips DVD HDD recorder promoting "video upscaling for improved resolution of up to 1080i lines". You can't get more resolution from DVD upscaling.

It's also worth noting that some titles, like Blue Planet and Planet Earth from the BBC, are available in both formats. If this trend becomes widespread we may not have to choose hardware sides. Furthermore, players are becoming available that can handle both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Like recordable players and disc drives, these are presently expensive. However, combo drives for recordable DVD are now standard in Macs, so the same may happen with HD drives in the not-too-distant future.

Update 20.06.07: As with any new technology, early adopters my find their HD titles are incompatible with their HD hardware. Be prepared to apply firmware updates and consider Googling for known issues prior to purchasing HD titles.

A further source of HD movies is the Internet. There are some stunning HD samples available from the BBC Motion Gallery. At the moment Apple offer HD trailers, distributed in both 720p and 1080p versions—but this may yet be expanded to include "real" HD content via the iTunes Store. The 1080p versions (1920 x 1080 pixels) occupy the entire width of my 23" Cinema Display (1920 x 1200 pixels). At actual size, the QuickTime Player window is clipped at the sides and bottom:

Apple's DVD Player seems to have some support for HD playback in Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4):

It's not yet known if OS X 10.5, due in October 2007, will include support for HD DVD and/or Blue-ray.

HDV home movies

First off you'll need a Mac-compatible camcorder that does HDV (720p or 1080i):

• HDV 1080i camcorders use MiniDV cassettes to store 16:9 MPEG-2 video at 1440 x 1080 pixels, with sound as MPEG-11 Audio Layer II;
• Sony's cheapest HDV 1080i camcorder on sale in NZ, the HDR-HC5E, retails for $NZ2000;
• Just like DV camcorders, you transfer video to the Mac via Firewire (i.LINK in Sony speak).

Note the 1440 horizontal resolution? This is lower than the 1920 pixels of "true HD" because HDV doesn't use square pixels (as per widescreen DV, the pixel aspect ratio is 1.33 instead of 1.0).

iMovie HD, part of iLife 06, allows us to work with HDV (720p & 1080i):

Unfortunately the same is not true of iDVD; although you can import content in HD formats into iDVD, this is downscaled to SD when iDVD produces a DVD. Apple tries to cover this loss of quality by saying that "iDVD converts HDV content to pristine-quality standard DVD format".

Update 15.08.07: Unfortunately this situation has not changed with the version of iDVD included in iLife 08: iDVD will still downscale your HD material to SD.

As an experiment, I imported an Apple HD trailer at 1920 x 816 pixels (H.264, AAC, Timecode codecs) into a 1080i iMovie project and then exported it at full quality (default settings). This produced a much larger QuickTime movie at 1440 x 1080 pixels, using the Integer (Little Endian) and Apple Intermediate codecs. Playback was adversely affected. I hate to think how much disk space I would need to edit a typical holiday video in HD format.

You can of course store HDV clips directly onto DVD media. HDV must be converted to Blu-ray "legal" video before it can be used. Given that you can make 50+ minute HD DVD-compliant disks using 4.7GB DVD-R media and DVD Studio Pro, you should be able to play HD home movies on a consumer HD DVD player.

Personal video recorder functionality

We don't watch that much TV, but I do like the idea of choosing my viewing carefully, rather than watching whatever junk happens to be on. My friend Gavin in Brisbane introduced me to MythTV, a homebrew PVR (or DVR if you prefer) project. More specifically he is using Knoppmyth, which is a customised Debian-based Linux distro optimised for MythTV. I downloaded the .iso and got so far installing it in a virtualised Linux environment, but reading the how-tos it isn't straight forward to configure it for a compatible tuner. I was thinking I could dedicate my long-toothed Dell laptop to the task with a USB tuner, but have doubts that it's up to the encoding challenge.

MythTV running under virtualised Linux on the Mac

Update 19.06.07: For information on a Mac OS X frontend for Myth see here and here. Mythbuntu is an Ubuntu derivative focusing on MythTV. A commercial NZ-made Freeview-savvy home theatre PC called myPVR is based on KnoppMyth. For New Zealand-focused MythTV news, see MythTV NZ.

In any case, I'd prefer a solution that is Mac-centric. Both the EyeTV Hybrid and Diversity look interesting, but Elgato are unclear whether their products will be compatible with DVB-T in NZ (personal communication). The DVB-T signals will be transmitted within New Zealand on TV Band IV and V at 502MHz–806MHZ, and the frequency range of those Elgato tuners is 48–860MHz (VHF and UHF)—which looks like overlap to me. However, if NZ DVB-T broadcasts are to be encoded in MPEG-4, EyeTV does not currently support H.264 (MPEG-4 part 10).

The included EyeTV 2 software will display HDTV 720p and 1080i (not yet in NZ; see above) on Macs with Core Duo processors, such as my Mac mini. It stores approx. 1hr of HDTV in 8GB (yikes!), and lets you output Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. EyeTV is now pseudo-integrated with Front Row, giving access to live TV and recordings. There's a video demonstrating this here.

I like this solution because I don't have to dedicate a Mac to being a PVR; it can continue to serve as a desktop computer. If my mini were spare I could simply buy an HDMI to DVI cable to connect digitally to a HDTV—perhaps with the help of software. HDMI is similar to DVI, but may also include an audio signal. The Mac mini features a combined optical digital audio output/ headphone minijack that can be connected to optical in on a sound system to produce 5.1 surround sound.

Update 18.06.07: While Apple DVD Player and VLC can pass-through AC-3 audio (5.1 DD) from DVDs to optical out, applications relying on QuickTime (e.g. Front Row, iTunes) cannot, downmixing to stereo. Apple should fix this.

EyeTV can export recordings into iTunes, where they show up under "TV Shows". Available to your iPod or Apple TV (see below), I presume they are also thus available to Front Row (which can definitely handle HD playback):

EyeTV has a very elegant interface (© Elgato)

In the US you can download "recordings" of TV Shows and Movies from the iTunes Store, at standard definition up to 640 x 480 pixels. For the rest of the world iTunes makes it pretty easy to convert any video it can read (SD or HD) for use on an iPod, or an Apple TV at up to 720p resolutions (1280 x 720px). The Apple TV option gives a higher resolution picture with a corresponding larger file size, but with the sacrifice of iPod compatibility. For example, a 1080p trailer (132MB, ACC 5.1 48 kHz, H.264, 1920 x 816px) converts to 20MB, ACC stereo 44.1 KHz, H.264, 640 x 272px (iPod) and 51MB, ACC stereo 44.1 kHz, H.264, 1280 x 544px (Apple TV):

iTunes can easily convert video into recommended iPod and Apple TV formats

Beware: I saw disturbing artefacts using the convert to Apple TV option (from DV source), which I presume are related to interlacing.

It's also possible convince Front Row to identify TV recordings or video downloads encoded using non-Apple codecs (such as DivX / XviD) via the addition of the appropriate QuickTime component. DVD Assist (freeware) integrates VIDEO_TS folder, UDF ISO disc images, and transport stream playback into Front Row.

An alternative might be TiVo, which is still "coming" to Australia and NZ. This is a networked subscription-based PVR and media centre in a set-top box, with TiVo Desktop (free) supporting playback from iTunes and iPhoto, and Roxio's Toast 8 ($US70) bringing Mac support to TiVoToGo recording transfer. Or there's also a free recording transfer hack here.

Where does Apple TV fit in?

The Apple TV is a media centre, selling from $NZ500. Apple TV is like three quarters of Front Row. Plugged into a TV it lets you sync and stream music and video from iTunes/ the Internet, and photos from iPhoto/ other applications/ a folder (via iTunes)—but it isn't a DVD player. The functionality is also similar to having a video iPod connected to your SDTV, missing only the streaming live content. Since there's no PVR functionality, no full HD, and no Movies or TV Shows available from iTunes NZ, you might say it's a bit pithed.

Apple TV is designed to work with a HDTV with HDMI, DVI, or component video inputs (and a computer plus network with broadband Internet) and is compatible with TVs capable of 1080i, 720p, 576p (PAL), or 480p resolutions (no mention of 1080p):

Ports on the AppleTV (© Apple, Inc)

You'd intuitively think that you might be able to use an HDMI-to-DVI cable to connect Apple TV to a Cinema Display, even after reading my "Why can't I?" comments above. It turns out that you can:

Plugged into a DVI display, the Apple TV simply recognizes it automatically and sets the resolution to 1280 x 800 [the native resolution of Apple TV's internal video card]. Apple makes no mention that I saw of this video setting, nor any comments about the ability to plug the Apple TV into any DVI monitor supporting that resolution, but it does work.

Here, the Apple TV is doing the scaling that you'd otherwise need the HDMate for. Of course 800 vertical lines is not the 1080 required for "full" HD, and since it's not the native resolution of the 23" ACD the picture will be degraded [bottom lip comes out].

Summary

That friends is the current state-of-play for Mac-centric HD in New Zealand. In summary:

• It's all a tad complicated. Not all "high definition" is created equal, but 1080p is as good as it gets;
• There is no HD broadcast in NZ at present, but it may arrive in 2008 when the DVB-T Freeview service is launched;
• HDTVs are coming down in price, but have arrived ahead of time in NZ due to the lack of HD content (TV or other media);
• Don't assume your high resolution computer display will make a good HDTV display, as mine supports 1080p resolution but I can't use it because of scaling and copy protection issues;
• Blue-ray and HD DVD are incompatible standards but, ultimately irrelevant, once dual-format players get cheap enough (q.v. DVD+/-R/RW). There's also talk of hybrid discs (Total HD) slated for 2008;
• New Zealand may not be the best place to buy e.g. the Samsung BD-P1000 is available from Amazon in the UK for the equivalent of around $NZ1200, a 60% saving;
• TV Shows and Movies downloaded from the iTunes Store would provide an attractive alternative to region-encumbered DVD and Blue-ray disks, should Apple negiotate distribution outside of the US (and HD versions);
• HDV camcorders have arrived ahead of time, given the lack of an easy and cheap means to archive HD video to removable media;
• The most refined Mac-centric PVR option at this time looks to be Elgato's EyeTV paired with their Hybrid tuner (maybe compatible with DVB-T SD/HD, and with current analogue SDTV for sure);
• I hadn't realised just how good Front Row is, until this research prompted me to look at it carefully (a new version is imminent in Leopard).

For now I have an old DVD recorder which I can import from the UK—for which a multi-region hack is now available—so my Region 2 DVD collection can immigrate to NZ (Region 4) and we can record analogue SDTV to DVD-RW. What would be nice is One box to obsolete them all. It doesn't exist, sorry. But if it did, it would feature 1080p output with a 5.1 surround sound decoder; dual DVB-T tuners (for watching one channel and recording another); an electronic program guide (EPG); personal video recorder functions; WiFi network connectivity for EPG/ firmware updates; integration with iTunes/ iPhoto for media centre functionality; compatibility with NTSC and PAL; playback of all CD and DVD (region-free) formats; not to mention Blue-ray and HD DVD playback and recording to at least one format. Plug that into a 40" 1080p plasma TV and I could learn to be a couch potato.