A friend of mine (@echoingsounds) asked if I’d seen ‘Abatoir‘ (I may have misheard him though) to which I answered “yes’ – because I have an I didn’t see the point in lying about such a  trivial thing. He then said “Oooooohhhhhh, wait until you see it in HD!” to which I responded “Why? does it make the story better?”. Completely missing the fact that I wasn’t overly impressed with the film he simply said “No, it just looks amazing”.

Now, my Toshiba TV has some brilliant up-scaling built in and even old DVD’s in SD (Standard Definition [720 x 576]) look great. If you look closely (see below) you can see some pixelation on the edge of Mr Herring’s (@Herring1967) suit and some of the strands of hair aren’t quite distinguishable from each other.

However, it’s very rare that I watch a DVD from such close proximity. Sometimes this might be my view:

Looks fine, doesn’t it? However, in general, this is my normal view:

The extra resolution, on a 42″ TV, is something and nothing. You don’t notice it or need it in normal, everyday use. Anything over 42″, in my opinion, does benefit from HD (although you obviously need a HD source – something else the salesmen never tell the often naive customers) as the pixelation gets to a point where it’s quite distracting.

OK, so, it’s clear I’m happy with DVD’s over BluRay but what about TV? Well, what about it?! I’ve started thinking up more and more random retorts to the Sky HD salesmen in the Kirkgate Shopping Centre in Bradford. Initially I started by being quite polite, “No thanks”, “Not for me” until they started really getting on my nerves by asking me 4 times in the space of 5 minutes – surely a bloke with 2 young kids is quite recognisable after asking them twice in such a short space of time? More random retorts include “I’m a virgin”, “Sky TV is of the devil”, “I already have a credit card”, “I don’t have a credit card”, “Don’t touch me there”, “Stop following me” and “Are you my mum?”. I need to think of a killer retort though for next time… I don’t need HD TV, probably 80% of the country don’t need HD TV. Yet there are a huge number of people forking out a small fortune for Sky HD and Virgin Media HD. In reality though most of the programmes are broadcast in up-scaled SD as opposed to actually being HD programmes. In which case, my TV does just as good a job. There’s an option on Sky HD box to have it display in the EPG which programmes are up-scaled and which are actually broadcast/filmed in proper HD. Last time I looked HD programmes were the minority – admittedly this was about 9 months ago so things may well have changed. The point still stands though that just because you have a HD TV, a HD digi-box (Sky HD, Virgin HD or Freeview HD) doesn’t mean that everything you see is HD.

We use Freeview for our TV – I’m from Yorkshire therefore I’m tight-fisted and, hence, reluctant to pay for extra TV channels that I will never watch. To be perfectly honest most Freeview channels look good on my TV (the ones that don’t are ones I wouldn;t normally watch anyway) – admittedly because of the very good up-scaling algorithms that Toshiba use. The ‘pixelation’ seen with Freeview isn’t so much the fact that it is not HD but more the fact that there are too many channels on a single multiplex. For those who are not aware how Freeview works, basically there are 6 frequencies/”channels” that are broadcast – these are known as Multiplexes (Mux for short). Each Mux contains multiple TV channels which your Freeview device decodes and splits up into the normal everyday ‘channels’ that you are used to. That’s why with a poor signal you don’t lose one channel – you lose a group of channels which are all broadcast on the same frequency. In order to fit more channels onto a single Mux the broadcasters have to reduce the quality of the video and audio – this is most noticeable via ‘artefacts of compression’. Have you ever saved a jpeg photo in really low quality and seen the ‘blocky’ effect that arises? This is caused by the compression used to keep the image file size small. Freeview images are, essentially, lots of jpeg images thrown together to make video and they suffer the same form of compression ‘blockiness’. See below for an example of jpeg compression (click it for full size!):

In the top photo you can make out a lot of the detail, you see nice gradual fading of colours and nice sharp edges. However in the bottom you can see ‘blockiness’ where the compression tries to reduce the number of colours; the end results are that subtle shades are lost, sharp edges become blurred and the picture, overall, looks pretty crap. Now, imagine this in every frame of a video broadcast – you’ve probably seen it yourself if you’ve ever had the misfortune of watching football on the telly. Sometimes the pitch is very blocky instead of a nice subtle, varying shades of green like it should be – this is due to the compression.

Now, different Mux’s have different numbers of channels and, therefore, different rates of compression – you can only fit so much data into a single Mux broadcast due to bandwidth limitations. Mux 1 with 5 TV channels (BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, CBBC, BBC News, BBC Red Button and a few BBC Radio channels) has noticeably less compression than Mux 2 with 8 TV channels (ITV1, Channel 4, Channel 5, ITV 2, Channel 4+1, More 4, E4, ITV1+1 and a couple of text and radio channels).  [NB: I am in  pre-switchover area so these Mux's and channel listings will differ elsewhere]. HD TV or not, the Mux2 channels will always look worse. [For a fairly concise explanation of bitrates/compression/bandwidth have a read of this from UKfree.tv]. So when a salesman or demo TV shows you a comparison between a Freeview channel and their Sky HD set up you might like to point out that it’s not a fair comparison. They are implying that Freeview is bad and Sky is great – you would see exactly the same difference between normal Sky (not HD) and Sky HD – and seeing as a lot of Sky channels are actually really only SD, are they really any better than Freeview? They are selling you a few channels and programmes in HD but not everything you get will be HD.

I’ve heard a few people say that you need HD to be able to see the real beauty of some of the amazing BBC wildlife documentaries. I beg to differ. On Freeview (SD, not Freeview HD) on my 42″ TV those documentaries STILL looked absolutely stunning – a lot f it is the camera and filming techniques used. Admittedly if it was broadcast on, say, ITV on Mux2 with more channels resulting in more compression then, yes, the HD boys would have a point – the fact is, though, that ITV don’t make nature programmes like the BBC do anyway so it would never happen so it’s a moot point.

After the digital switchover (September this year for me) the analogue channels will be removed which will effectively give Mux’s 1, B, C & D 33% more bandwidth (i.e. they can use less compression) then Freeview video SHOULD look better anyway – i.e. the same as ‘normal’ Sky or Virgin TV. Still no need for HD.

Personally I think that HD is very over-rated. Most people simply do not need it and are buying into the very clever marketing people. The number of channels and programmes broadcast in HD is pretty small too so, in my eyes, not worth the extra cost to get it. There is a plus-side to this though – the more people that use BluRay over DVD, the cheaper DVD’s (both new and 2nd hand) are for me!

There is a theory in Quantum Mechanics (a branch of physics) that matter can both exist and not exist at the same time – this is referred to as a ‘superposition’. Admittedly it is somewhat more complex than that – feel free to Google or Wiki it. Back in 1935 a few boffins got together to discuss this, and other ‘life-threatening’ physics mumbo-jumbo, to which Schrödinger came up with a purposefully absurd rebuttal involving a cat in a box. If the lid is closed and a random event might or might not occur which, in turn, might or might not trigger a toxic spray, then the cat both exists (is alive) and doesn’t exist (is dead) at the same time. As the cat is not visible when the box is closed there is no way to prove or disprove this ridiculous idea. A cat cannot be alive and dead at the same time. In fact, mice can’t either. Moles, on the other hand, could be a different story; I’ve yet to make up my mind.

I believe Schrödinger made this ridiculous proposal to prove a point that just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it can defy all common sense and be both alive and dead at the same time. They never taught you this equation at school but the Law of MaFt states that:

cS > P [where 'cS' is Common Sense and 'P' is Physics]

Times have moved on and we can take this one step further. Advances in technology have given us Soda Streams, digital watches and microwave ovens. The latter is essentially a box with a window (and some radiation). So, can we now prove that matter cannot exist and not exist at the same time? Of course we can! We have a modern box with a window! Can Schrödingers cat in a box be both alive and dead at the same time? Well, let’s take a look…

So, let’s see what happens when we put our modern day cat into our modern day box with the aid of this rather gruesome YouTube video… I jest, of course! But anyway, try it at home with a cat and a microwave (750W: 5 minutes / 850W: 4 minutes; allow to cool for 1 minute) and see for yourself that matter cannot exist and not exist at the same time. A cat in a microwave is alive (4m 23s) or dead (4m 24s) – there is no middle ground. What were they thinking?!

So, in conclusion, my cat in a modern-day-box will be dead anytime soon thus proving that Quantum Mechanics is a load of confusing tosh invented purely to give physics geeks something to do at A-Level and an excuse for BBC Four presenters to bring their pets to work.

Try to prove me wrong and I will turn the tables to prove I am both right and wrong at the same time.

Thanks to:

Huge thanks to Kathy at JunkDrawerBlog for permission to use the ‘cat in a microwave‘ photo. It’s not a real cat by the way!!

So Monday and Tuesday of this week have been spent juggling work, phoning the police, phoning insurance companies, phoning and emailing O2 and getting used to my T-Mobile G2 Touch as a temporary measure. Today is Mrs-MaFt’s birthday and if she doesn;t like the Happy Meal toy I’ve bought her then I reckon things can only get worse…!

This morning I had this in my inbox:

Hello MaFt

Thank you for your reply.

Your order xxxxxxxxx has now been amended for the HDD0133. All been well will be despatched this evening for delivery on Monday/Tuesday of next week.  Could you please ensure that they will be someone their too accept and sign for the goods.

If you require any further help or assistance please do not hesitate too contact us back by return of mail.

Kind Regards
::name removed::
CCL Returns Department.

There are, technically, no spelling mistakes in there; so well done in that sense! However, I count 5 grammatical errors where the wrong word has been used. For someone speaking on behalf of a big company you’d think they would at least try and give a good impression!

I honestly wouldn’t normally nit-pick to this degree but 5 errors in such a short email did make me laugh!

MaFt

The actual decorating wasn’t too bad except for one sheet of the paper having brown marks on it and a big white patch meaning we ran out of paper…The shop where we got it from has run out and won’t get any until the end of this week – so there’s currently half a wall unpapered!! We decided that on the outside wall we would put up some polystyrene veneer just to keep it a bit warmer and reduce any dampness. The only thing being that when the paper was put over it and it dried it peeled the veneer off the wall and seems to have shrunk the paper (leaving gaps between the sheets)… Wallpaper paste doesn’t keep it down so we’ve had to resort to Pritt-Stick to keep it down!! There’s still a bit of a gap which we’ll have to put a bit of paint over (if we can find a good match) – not ideal but it’s better than pulling the whole lot off!

To finish the room off we got Mini-MaFt a racing car bed – you should have seen his face, he was soooo excited!! The bed was easy to put up until it got to putting on the stickers. There were 3 massive sheets with the vinyl stickers on them – none of which really matched the pictures in the instruction book and they all seemed too big anyway! Even more annoying was the fact that they were not even cut! So not only did we have to decide how we were going to stick them on, which we would use and which would would leave off, we also had to cut the flippin’ things out as well! It took a while, but it looks good!

Anyway, ack to work, I need to check stock levels of wallpaper and try find some paint!

MaFt

I actually toyed with the idea of actually starting some work but after about 2 seconds I thought ‘sod it’ and went back to bed for a couple of hours!

MaFt

* my phone which now looks rather swish thanks to the awesome free UI, called ‘.Home’ from PointUI.

Been stupidly busy sorting out poorly kids and poorly me as well as trying to get stuff sorted for the Christmas play I stupidly agreed to do…

I’ve been pretty busy with work stuff to – lots to do with PocketGPSWorld.com as usual but I’ve also recently finished the Migrant Workers Information Bradford site as well as completely redesigning the Jalapeno Drums site. The Jalapeno one is still showing the old site while we wait for domain names to be switched between hosts etc etc – all great fun…! I’ve also updated the portfolio part of my site at MaFt.co.uk/design so it’s not been a total loss!

That’ll do for now, I’ll try post more in the near future!

MaFt

—————-
Now playing: Bowling For Soup – I’m Gay
via FoxyTunes

Pretty, aren’t they? Shame we couldn’t get the car out though…

MaFt