Just checked with a local TV executive I know. He said the Taiwan government has still not allocated any frequencies or licenses for HDTV here. Bottom line: unlikely we’ll be watching the Olympics in HD. At least, over the air or via cable. Kind of a shame; the Olympics really could have catalyzed all the long chain of hardware changes needed for a country to step up to HDTV. Olympics is like August 8 - 24. Just not enough time left to buy and install the transmitters, build and ship the consumer HDTVs with whatever tuner standard they adopt, etc.
That leaves us with downloading HDTV rips from abroad, e.g. torrents from h264.eu or hdbits.
Their “Digital” cable TV is just the same analogue broadcast which is of such low quality. When they say digital it’s only the method of transmitting the signal and not the actual broadcast. Defeats the purpose of getting LCD TV’s.
You only get the added benefit of having an electronic TV schedule which you can browse. Woopee…
We bought a new LCD TV a few months ago when my mum came back to TW from Australia. She thought we got ripped off and bought a crap TV because cable TV is still bring broadcast in analogue and the image quality is just horrendous… She was used to the HDTV back home in Australia which is DVD-like.
Taiwan just keeps on getting left behind it’s other Asian buddies like S.Korea and Japan.
It wouldn’t matter if Taiwanese TV came in super-HD, 3D surround-sound with smell-o-vision and bells on - the product is still dross. So I could watch Xiao S bleat on in DVD-quality resolution. So what?
[quote=“Taffy”]It wouldn’t matter if Taiwanese TV came in super-HD, 3D surround-sound with smell-o-vision and bells on - the product is still dross. So I could watch Xiao S bleat on in DVD-quality resolution. So what?
As the saying goes, “you can’t polish a turd”.[/quote]
True… local TV shows… bleh…
but there’s still Discovery, Travel and Living, AXN, MTV, HBO etc… the “western” shows that would do nicely with DVD quality.
[quote=“frokky”]but there’s still Discovery, Travel and Living, AXN, MTV, HBO etc… the “western” shows that would do nicely with DVD quality.
not to mention sport.[/quote]
A fair point, I suppose (although AXN is just CSI 24/7 and MTV bland Mandopop or American “R&B”). To be honest though if I was living by myself I’d just cancel my cable subscription and be done with it - I hardly ever find anything worth watching apart from the occasional thing on Discovery, so I’d be better off renting a DVD when I feel like catching some of that.
I wouldn’t mind if they actually showed sports I’m interested in, rather than baseball or pool the whole time.
On a related note, does Steven Seagal’s face make you want to throw things at the TV? Am I alone in this?
[quote=“frokky”]Taiwan is in the stone ages for TV broadcasting.
Their attempt at “Digital TV?” It’s a joke.
Their “Digital” cable TV is just the same analogue broadcast which is of such low quality. When they say digital it’s only the method of transmitting the signal and not the actual broadcast. Defeats the purpose of getting LCD TV’s.[/quote]
You guys can mock it, but it’s my understanding this is due to sound business decisions. It takes time and costs a lot of money to create substantial good digital content, starting from zero. Presently, in Taiwan consumers can receive over 100 channels of analog at a very low price, so very few are willing to pay more for the meager additional benefits of digital TV and there haven’t been enough people devoting their resources to creating good digital programming (for the limited return they would receive for their work), to change that. Eventually the quantity of digital programming will increase, creating more consumer demand, leading in turn to more demand for those creating the programming. But it will take time. Keep in mind, too, that 50 years ago the Taiwanese were all working in rice fields or shoe factories. Today they lead the world in manufacturing of various high tech devices. And, while DTV may be the way of the future for TV viewing, perhaps it’s not really the holy grail to peace, happiness and satisfaction with life.
Finally, in truth, how many countries are ahead of Taiwan in the level of DTV broadcasting? Which countries?
I noticed in Australia you could choose between receiving every broadcast in either digital or analog. The difference was apparent. The best thing was that on a large wide screen TV everybody didn’t look like midgets.
I was wondering about this HDTV issue, as I cursed my cable company for the eleventh time in a day. My National Geographic gets interrupted by what I can only pressume is a nearby taxi radio dispatch, and my Star Movies sound comes and goes. Such ocurrences discourage me from HDTV ever happening -or at least, happening the way it is meant to be.
My only relief is that M.O.D. recently got upgraded with more channels. Yeah, I got BBC World now and 5 new movie channels, but also 6 “adult” channels -they have their market priorities-. That, and a Baby First TV. Mmmm
In almost three and a half years here, my wife and I have only had cable for about a year, and that was only because it was already installed in the apartment and we thought we’d keep paying for it and see what it was like. It wasn’t worth the money. We moved to a new apartment later, and haven’t bothered with cable. I certainly don’t miss it. But then I’m not that interested in TV anyway. Back in Australia I lived for 12 years without a TV.
I would rather watch DVDs on my 22" LCD widescreen, in any case.
Basically, any and all civilized countries have had HDTV for many years. Japan, Hong Kong, Europe, USA, to name a few. (They also have these things called sidewalks IIRC, rather than moped parking lots).
I will admit though that even in the West, stuff that goes as 1080p often has low quality bits, or for that matter the whole show is low quality. It’ll still take a few years to bring it up to snuff, but all the hardware is in place. My main gripe was that the Olympics were the chance to really jump start HDTV here. Having blown that, I doubt we’ll see it this decade, who knows how long it will take now. Maybe it was another “politics first” decision, can’t have people seeing a 3 week propaganda program (in HDTV) from PRC…
Many l33t torrent sites are going private tracker. hdbits is hard to get on to, and hard to maintain your ratio even if you do. That said, most of these sites are fed from newsgroups anyway, so you can go straight to the source. That might require a giganews subscription. Do any taiwan ISPs carry alt.binaries?
HK doesn’t yet. Singapore will start some HDTV later this year. Japan it’s not all providers most are MPEG2 NTSC. Japans HDTV you will see at TV shops here look for the BS1 sign on the TV it’s the HDTV Japanese satellite. Many Taiwanese install that here for their parents / grandparents.
Europe and the USA has more but it’s not a much as people assume.
As for watching the Olympics in HDTV there are already several over the air free channels available in HDTV.
But many of the digital MPEG2 programming is in full PAL 720 576 resolution are also DVD quality transmissions. It’s just that Taiwan is still stuck on low resolution formatting.
SO for the moment you are better off with a CRT for cable TV.
