New Technology Talk

There are a lot of myths surrounding HDTV that are really getting in the way of more people enjoying it. The truth is that while HDTV is a complex subject a lot of the myths make it more complicated and confusing than it has to be. By contrast, Dish Network's HDTV service, Turbo HD, can make it a lot simpler.

One of the biggest myths that's getting in the way of more people adopting HDTV is the misconception that HDTV is a type of TV set and that anything viewed on an HDTV set must be HDTV. This is simply wrong. HDTV is actually a TV format and the HDTV set is the device needed to view TV content in this format. The reason for this is relatively simple: HDTV just has too high of a picture resolution for a normal TV set to handle. While a normal TV set displays 480 horizontal lines of resolution, an HDTV set can display 480 or 720 lines of resolution! More sophisticated models can display those levels of resolution, plus 1,080 horizontal lines of resolution. Considering that you can't cram more lines of resolution onto a TV screen than there are horizontal lines of pixels built into the screen, this should make it clear how limited the functionality of a standard definition 480 lines of resolution) TV set is. So why does an HDTV set and HDTV programming have so many more lines of resolution than a conventional TV set does? It's so that the HDTV set can provide a more detailed picture and look better on a bigger screen. The low resolution of standard def (480) TV will make the picture look grainy when it's blown up onto a big TV screen. This graininess will be particularly evident on a big HDTV screen that has more lines of resolution than it knows what to do with when displaying a standard def picture. With many of the lines of resolution simply left unused a standard def picture can look downright bad on an HDTV set, while an HDTV picture will look really good!

Dish Network and its Turbo HD package will be of tremendous benefit to anyone who is looking for a way to make the picture on their new HDTV set look better. That's because it offers to many different options for subscribers. The most obvious option is to add a Turbo HD package onto one of Dish Network's standard definition packages, but Turbo HD packages can also be subscribed to without any standard def channels. This is especially exciting for anyone who likes to look ahead to the future. After all, in the future HDTV will be the norm and standard definition will fall by the wayside. Subscribing to a programming package that just has high def channels is hastening this step forward.

Once you get past the concept that HDTV is a TV format and not a type of TV set, it becomes much easier to take full advantage of this new technology. Dish Network's Turbo HD service makes the step of implementing HDTV technology even easier.