Waveform Review 02: Preface by Dale Cripps
Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 1:17 am
Originally published 12/23/2004, HDTV Magazine, editor Dale Cripps
By Richard Fisher.
Preface by Dale Cripps
From the beginning of my association with Richard Fisher he stressed the importance of following the rules--keeping to the specifications--the standard established for the product. He is equally adamant on what he calls "faithful" reporting about these things. Nothing annoys him more than reading some marsh mellow review riddled with inaccuracies and obfuscations to accommodate a sponsor. He says that does no service to the potential sponsor and certainly not to the consumers.
None of the consumer products of today are developed in a vacuum. Setting a standard is a arduous, painstaking collaborative procedure. Carefully selected parameters are documented using precise terms. Hours, even days of debate go into choosing and voting upon the key words for inclusion in the standard's documentation. The parameters of a product are translated into the electronic values it is to operate under when functioning normally. These electronic parameters are measurable with a scope or other tools. A standard also establishes those things regarding interoperability and compatibility with other components and media.
Richard has many years of practical experience in these matters. I am fully confident we will all benefit from his experience and his genuine passion for creating the best and most accurate image that can be managed with professional controls. Among other things he is a calibrator of displays under an ISF training banner. That means he uses controls in monitors typically unavailable to consumers and with those controls adjusts the monitor to its best operating state.. These controls permit the adjustment of the a monitor so it can be made to accurately reflect the standard. He has taken to heart the lessons handed down by the likes of Yves Faroudja and Joe Kane. For years Yves Faroudja said that he worked no other magic in getting tremendous performance out of NTSC than faithfully following the rules of the standard. To do that he had to choose components which performed exactly to specification with little tolerances allowed. For years those rules were discounted by manufacturers in favor of cheaper components (sloppy tolerances meant lower prices in the analog world). Anyone who has compared a NTSC standard TV you find operating in the average home to a professional monitor inside a well-managed studio knows that a great loss from studio to home has taking place for a long time. Even today with variations in digital devises being de minimus deviations from the HDTV standard continue to show up. Rules are skirted not so much because of a price/performance decision, as with analog, but rather by design. By altering the standard one can change the way an image appears. Making your product look competitive in the showroom comes with a turn of a dial. These visible distinctions would vanish if all monitor makers adjusted to the letter of the standard.
In a free society an independent standard bearer and honest broker of technical facts can be an invaluable asset to a movement. This is especially important when the less-questioning sector of the public enter the marketplace. Of course, not everyone perceives an accurate representation of the standard in the exact same way. Does the color blind fellow get the differences in red and blue? While that is tough this same person may be sensitive to perfectly adjusted gray scale. But those variations in the human visual system should not encourage us to make "no standard" the standard. A reference or standard bearer is like the accurate timekeeper. We don't all abide by atomic clocks but cannot do without them in a modern world. Up until the deployment of the long distance telephone services it was common to find huge timekeeping differences from city to city and region to region. The clock towers kept a city on a local schedule but nothing from the outside synchronized it with other cities or regions. There were frequently half to two hour differences among even the nearest towns. No one without sundial knowledge knew the time past one's own community! Without a standards bearer there is no reference. So, Richard is taking on this role of standard bearer for you. You may think his attention to detail and devotion to minutia is more than is required for your individual satisfaction or decision making. You who are purest may feel conversely that he falls short. I find Richard in the middle and that is where the greatest harmony will be realized.
Being a standard bearer is not easy. Someone is bound to rail against you. Product developers will claim that their choices are better for the consumers because the standard was put together by scientists and the world is illuminated by artists who see through "rose colored" glasses. In something as vulnerable to subjectivity as is the television image all manner of argument can be expected to challenge his conclusions. But what Richard is going to be looking for is how well a product lives up to the potential as it is stated in the standard and not how subjectively pleasing an added shade of "rose" has made the product. We welcome the challenges and I predict we will all learn some interesting things in the process. The payoff to all of this? We hope that all manufacturers find it in their best interest to pre-calibrate (or to make an accurate calibration easily done by consumers or professionals) in all of their monitors and set top devices. This pre-calibration, of course, is sought so that each product will perform as close to the standard as possible while remaining consumer friendly. The people who will seek a $300 HDTV set will not spend another $400 to have it calibrated. They may or they may not push a button that does calibrate the monitor. But they will never push it if the option is not theirs in the first place. If we are to have a uniform experience from the HDTV movement this care and step needs to be taken. It could be that the long-term acceptance by the average consumer depends upon it. It is important that each display produces close to the image that is going to be promoted by Richard, Joe Kane, and thousands of others. The television industry needs to be honest in saying what it is selling. When a manufacturer says it it selling you an HD monitor it had better be fully capable of meeting the standard and pre-set with adjustments to represent that standard. If it has other pre-sets that make it look different in the display rooms, so be it. If it has other pre-sets that make it look better in strong ambient light, so be it. There is no quarrel with that. HDTV is the concept being sold. You must easily be able to identify how much of that concept's standard is in the monitor you may be considering. Anything being sold to you that bears the HDTV label but fails to operate easily and without added cost to the HDTV standard as written is, in the strictest of terms, a fraud and should be addressed by consumer groups who act on such cases. This is one product where 'truth in advertising' is essential to the reputation of the product category itself.
The long term objective we have is to educate the public as to what constitutes a truly superb visual experience and point them to those products that produce that experience correctly. Joe Kane has said in these pages that it is his personal mission in life to educate the public on what makes for a good representation of the HD standard. We have come from an outlaw past where rules became guidelines rather than strict lines. We have to be weaned as a people away from this lawless past in more ways than for just television. But let's start there. The old story in the industry for years has been that no one even adjusts the color on their color sets and people were apparently satisfied with smeary color that was grossly misrepresenting reality. You accepted it as state-of-the-art. But it was a sad state. The NTSC color standard was derisively called Never Twice the Same Color. We have to leave that old outlaw time and take up the new with authority. HDTV is going to be the most important influence we have on life for a long time if we don't let it slide into a shadow of its potential. And why should we? We don't in other visual matters. If I go to the optometrist I certainly don't say, "Just make my prescription so that everything looks as good as I get on my old TV." You demand nothing but the best correction you can have and you should make no less demands in your future decisions for HDTV. Learn from Joe Kane what a good picture is and then you can put on your rose colored glasses if you like--see the world through any filter you find pleasing. But we have to have a right beginning--a reference.
As always, we encourage your comments. This is a collaborative effort among people who have an interest in seeing that our nation is given a spectacular new vision from the expanding HDTV infrastructure. The potential for greatness is still with us and I don't know who should have the right to squander any of that potential? This move to HDTV is not just about the television business or your personal entertainment. It is about how we jointly see ourselves in life and how we better see and construct the life ahead.
Dale Cripps, Publisher
HDTV Magazine
Respect Our Copyright! DO NOT copy and paste this complete review or article to post or distribute. That is a violation of US copyright. Please feel free to quote small passages and please provide a link to the full review. Thank you!
By Richard Fisher.
Preface by Dale Cripps
From the beginning of my association with Richard Fisher he stressed the importance of following the rules--keeping to the specifications--the standard established for the product. He is equally adamant on what he calls "faithful" reporting about these things. Nothing annoys him more than reading some marsh mellow review riddled with inaccuracies and obfuscations to accommodate a sponsor. He says that does no service to the potential sponsor and certainly not to the consumers.
None of the consumer products of today are developed in a vacuum. Setting a standard is a arduous, painstaking collaborative procedure. Carefully selected parameters are documented using precise terms. Hours, even days of debate go into choosing and voting upon the key words for inclusion in the standard's documentation. The parameters of a product are translated into the electronic values it is to operate under when functioning normally. These electronic parameters are measurable with a scope or other tools. A standard also establishes those things regarding interoperability and compatibility with other components and media.
Richard has many years of practical experience in these matters. I am fully confident we will all benefit from his experience and his genuine passion for creating the best and most accurate image that can be managed with professional controls. Among other things he is a calibrator of displays under an ISF training banner. That means he uses controls in monitors typically unavailable to consumers and with those controls adjusts the monitor to its best operating state.. These controls permit the adjustment of the a monitor so it can be made to accurately reflect the standard. He has taken to heart the lessons handed down by the likes of Yves Faroudja and Joe Kane. For years Yves Faroudja said that he worked no other magic in getting tremendous performance out of NTSC than faithfully following the rules of the standard. To do that he had to choose components which performed exactly to specification with little tolerances allowed. For years those rules were discounted by manufacturers in favor of cheaper components (sloppy tolerances meant lower prices in the analog world). Anyone who has compared a NTSC standard TV you find operating in the average home to a professional monitor inside a well-managed studio knows that a great loss from studio to home has taking place for a long time. Even today with variations in digital devises being de minimus deviations from the HDTV standard continue to show up. Rules are skirted not so much because of a price/performance decision, as with analog, but rather by design. By altering the standard one can change the way an image appears. Making your product look competitive in the showroom comes with a turn of a dial. These visible distinctions would vanish if all monitor makers adjusted to the letter of the standard.
In a free society an independent standard bearer and honest broker of technical facts can be an invaluable asset to a movement. This is especially important when the less-questioning sector of the public enter the marketplace. Of course, not everyone perceives an accurate representation of the standard in the exact same way. Does the color blind fellow get the differences in red and blue? While that is tough this same person may be sensitive to perfectly adjusted gray scale. But those variations in the human visual system should not encourage us to make "no standard" the standard. A reference or standard bearer is like the accurate timekeeper. We don't all abide by atomic clocks but cannot do without them in a modern world. Up until the deployment of the long distance telephone services it was common to find huge timekeeping differences from city to city and region to region. The clock towers kept a city on a local schedule but nothing from the outside synchronized it with other cities or regions. There were frequently half to two hour differences among even the nearest towns. No one without sundial knowledge knew the time past one's own community! Without a standards bearer there is no reference. So, Richard is taking on this role of standard bearer for you. You may think his attention to detail and devotion to minutia is more than is required for your individual satisfaction or decision making. You who are purest may feel conversely that he falls short. I find Richard in the middle and that is where the greatest harmony will be realized.
Being a standard bearer is not easy. Someone is bound to rail against you. Product developers will claim that their choices are better for the consumers because the standard was put together by scientists and the world is illuminated by artists who see through "rose colored" glasses. In something as vulnerable to subjectivity as is the television image all manner of argument can be expected to challenge his conclusions. But what Richard is going to be looking for is how well a product lives up to the potential as it is stated in the standard and not how subjectively pleasing an added shade of "rose" has made the product. We welcome the challenges and I predict we will all learn some interesting things in the process. The payoff to all of this? We hope that all manufacturers find it in their best interest to pre-calibrate (or to make an accurate calibration easily done by consumers or professionals) in all of their monitors and set top devices. This pre-calibration, of course, is sought so that each product will perform as close to the standard as possible while remaining consumer friendly. The people who will seek a $300 HDTV set will not spend another $400 to have it calibrated. They may or they may not push a button that does calibrate the monitor. But they will never push it if the option is not theirs in the first place. If we are to have a uniform experience from the HDTV movement this care and step needs to be taken. It could be that the long-term acceptance by the average consumer depends upon it. It is important that each display produces close to the image that is going to be promoted by Richard, Joe Kane, and thousands of others. The television industry needs to be honest in saying what it is selling. When a manufacturer says it it selling you an HD monitor it had better be fully capable of meeting the standard and pre-set with adjustments to represent that standard. If it has other pre-sets that make it look different in the display rooms, so be it. If it has other pre-sets that make it look better in strong ambient light, so be it. There is no quarrel with that. HDTV is the concept being sold. You must easily be able to identify how much of that concept's standard is in the monitor you may be considering. Anything being sold to you that bears the HDTV label but fails to operate easily and without added cost to the HDTV standard as written is, in the strictest of terms, a fraud and should be addressed by consumer groups who act on such cases. This is one product where 'truth in advertising' is essential to the reputation of the product category itself.
The long term objective we have is to educate the public as to what constitutes a truly superb visual experience and point them to those products that produce that experience correctly. Joe Kane has said in these pages that it is his personal mission in life to educate the public on what makes for a good representation of the HD standard. We have come from an outlaw past where rules became guidelines rather than strict lines. We have to be weaned as a people away from this lawless past in more ways than for just television. But let's start there. The old story in the industry for years has been that no one even adjusts the color on their color sets and people were apparently satisfied with smeary color that was grossly misrepresenting reality. You accepted it as state-of-the-art. But it was a sad state. The NTSC color standard was derisively called Never Twice the Same Color. We have to leave that old outlaw time and take up the new with authority. HDTV is going to be the most important influence we have on life for a long time if we don't let it slide into a shadow of its potential. And why should we? We don't in other visual matters. If I go to the optometrist I certainly don't say, "Just make my prescription so that everything looks as good as I get on my old TV." You demand nothing but the best correction you can have and you should make no less demands in your future decisions for HDTV. Learn from Joe Kane what a good picture is and then you can put on your rose colored glasses if you like--see the world through any filter you find pleasing. But we have to have a right beginning--a reference.
As always, we encourage your comments. This is a collaborative effort among people who have an interest in seeing that our nation is given a spectacular new vision from the expanding HDTV infrastructure. The potential for greatness is still with us and I don't know who should have the right to squander any of that potential? This move to HDTV is not just about the television business or your personal entertainment. It is about how we jointly see ourselves in life and how we better see and construct the life ahead.
Dale Cripps, Publisher
HDTV Magazine
Respect Our Copyright! DO NOT copy and paste this complete review or article to post or distribute. That is a violation of US copyright. Please feel free to quote small passages and please provide a link to the full review. Thank you!