Another problem guys

[pewell]

I am planning on buying this week the Mitsubishi WS65819 set and the Hughes E86 Direct TV receiver. I am being told on another post that this setup only gets me analog tv. How can this be? They are both HDTV advertised and both have HD componet inputs and outputs. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't that equal HDTV!

[zarlor]

Let's see, doing a quick search on the net for the specs of these I see:

The Mits set, is an HDTV ready monitor (no internal HDTV tuner). So you are good there as far as having a TV capable of diplaying the HDTV resoution.

The Hughes E86 is an HD reciever for DirecTV, which means you are certainly good to go for DirecTV HD channels at HD resolution. I also see that is has an NTSC as well as an ATSC (8VSB) tuner, which means if it is also connected to an antenna you could use it for local channels, both analog (NTSC) and Digital (ATSC) for HDTV.

So it looks to me like that other post might be wrong.

[TheBigE]

HDTV - YES!
Digital - NO ( maybe ) :rolleyes:

Not digital (at least not ALL true digital) since you are using Compnent in/out. These connections are analog.

But, that is basically the nature of HDTV right now, unless you can find either a Firewire or DVI-type connection. THOSE takes the digital source and pass it digitally to the display device.

[zarlor]

Well, it is still essentially true that he can RECEIVE a digital transmission. Passing it through digitally is what TheBigE is talking about. However I would say that I seriously doubt you'll see a major difference with the minor analog conversion of the signal between the tuner and the TV. It might be possible on a 1080i set that has 9" guns (maybe), but for most of the sets out that with 7" guns, I can't see that you'll see much difference unless that cable is running in a VERY electronically "noisy" environment. But that's just my opinion on the matter, I'm sure others will feel differently.

[pewell]

Your telling me that you can only get true HDTV from firewire hookups. All these HDTV's that are made with componet inputs don't display true HDTV???

[zarlor]

That's not what we are saying at all! Component inputs provide the HDTV standard resolution of 1080i (or 720p) as does a Firewire (IEEE 1394) connection. The difference between the two is that a Component, or RGBHV (VGA), connection send the HDTV signal in an analog format between components. While a Firewire connection will send that same singal digitally.

All this means is that your tuner, for example, will convert the digital signal it receives into analog to send it to your set. A Firewire connected tuner would not convert the signal to analog but keep it digital that extra little bit of distance. That extra conversion to analog could cause some minor errors/distortions/static/what-have-yous into the final picture you recieve. However the distance your cable is travelling is fairly short so it is not likely you will see much, if any, distortion of the signal.

Remember that HDTV is not, inherintly, digital or analog. The Japanese have the same HDTV format for 1080i that we use, but their original transmission method was all analog. (That may have changed these days.) Digital has some advantages over analog, including things like error correction, that can keep a signal clean throught the transmission path. The longer than signal stays digital and the less conversions it goes through to analog, the "cleaner" the signal will be, since it will be less susceptible to interference.

But Digital does NOT=HDTV and HDTV does NOT have to=Digital.