The world of the couch potato guru has gone High Definition mad. It’s nothing to with sexually transmitted diseases – that we know of. It’s actually a new way to watch the telly. HD has been around in the US and Japan and this year Blighty will gets it’s first HD broadcast. And the experts are saying “It can be compared to the switch from black and white to colour.”
Hold on a teeny tiny second, bucko. A better comparison would be between that old camera phone you had and your new 5 mega pixel one. The HD picture is around four times more detailed – that’s about it. Drawbacks include – you’ll need a new set-top box, flat screen TV, more expensive subscription, a surround sound system and an HD-DVD player to ever get the best out of it all. Ready?
It’s not all bad news, though, as the Beeb want to show World Cup 06 in
HD – and remember that machine that let you pause and rewind live TV?
Sky’s HD version can do that too.
HD is also going to be broadcast in
Dolby 5.1, meaning the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan will thrill
you again with bullets almost literally ricocheting around your living room. And don’t
forget the PS3 and Xbox 360 are both HD games consoles – could this
fact alone persuade you to get HD ready?
More pixels,
better sound and more colours, in short it’s better than going to a
cinema (and without those dreadful adverts about illegal downloads) but will cost almost as much as buying your local multiplex – maybe something to admire from afar until the price comes down,
unless you have a Swiss bank manager or are planning to ram-raid Dixons.
Top five stuff we’d like to see in HD
1. World Cup 06 and all sport from then on
2. Porn. Oh come on – deep down you know you want to
3. All nature programmes
4. All music videos, they’re going to look bang-on in HD
5. The new Transformers movie and, to a lesser extent, all other movies
Top five stuff we never want to see in HD
1. Trauma Uncut
2. Creep – if you’ve seen it you’ll know what I mean
3. Celebrity FAT Fit Club
4. Titanic – nothing to do with HD, we just don’t want to see it again. Ever
5. Any Darren Aronofsky film (Pi, Requiem for a Dream). Our minds! Our fragile minds!
[story by Alex Evans]