The HDTV Guy
Working in a video game store I often encounter the HDTV guy. He has some new 65″ liquid plasma television that he wants to brag about. His sound system was flown in from Germany and sounds like a Who concert. He has a million questions about refresh rates and hertz and all kinds of other words he makes up on the spot. He is so concerned with 1080p versus 1080i that he doesn’t even really care about the quality of the game he is buying. As long as it looks good on his mammoth television, gameplay doesn’t really matter.
The HDTV Guy is a new kind of Graphics Snob. Where the old graphics Snob wanted high polygon counts. The new HDTV Guy wants a blazing fast response time and great pixel resolution. He scoffs at your standard definition. If you are not playing in high definition then you might as well throw your television down a well, because it is worthless. If you are not close to a well, you should dig a well, so you have a well where you can then throw your t.v.
You see him in the wild, often in the Blu-Ray movies section checking out aspect ratios and what kind of Dolby Digital is supported. He can explain the difference between uncompressed and lossless audio formats. He will often ask if you have seen “this _____ movie on Blu-Ray?” Even when you tell him you didn’t care for it, he will respond with “but you have to see it in HD.” As if increased resolution can make a terrible movie better. For all of his bluster he has yet to convince me that HD is all its cracked up to be.
I refuse to believe that clarity makes a movie or a game all that much better. For me the HD is like the Cherry on top of a sundae. Sure it is nice and delicious but I don’t hate the sundae without it. For the HDTV Guy the Cherry is all that’s important. For him all that matters is the pixel resolution.
Before HD, I don’t remember a single person that watched a movie and said “Wow that movie was cool, too bad we couldn’t see every blemish on the actors’ faces.” No one cared. Maybe we didn’t know what we were missing.
A wire has been crossed in the brains of a lot of people, and clarity has taken the place of beauty. Increased clarity does not make things appear more beautiful. If something is ugly, no amount of resolution is going to make it look good. In fact, increasing the resolution can often make things look worse. Some of the best looking games understand that the art direction is far more important. Would you rather look at a crystal clear dirty wall or a slightly less sharp sunset? I don’ t think many people drive to the beach to go stare at a wall for a half hour. Games have started to move away from the brown and gray color palette because a dirty wall is still just a wall, even in HD.
Anyone who thinks HD always looks better should try watching the evening news in HD. It is disturbing. You can see all the little stubble marks and pancake makeup. High definition make the news anchors look like early generation Terminators. There is no way you can honestly say that those extra pixels bring anything to the table other than terror, unless you like the idea of getting your news from Terminators. The HDTV Guy doesn’t care if the extra resolution makes once beautiful women appear old and crinkly. The HDTV Guy wants his news delivered at the maximum possible resolution.
The HDTV Guy doesn’t care if he is playing Summer Athletics THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE or Bioshock. HDTV Guy knows that the gameplay doesn’t matter. For the HDTV Guy everything is ‘ahhh-some’ in HD.
In the end, do not pity the HDTV Guy, unless you do it in full 1080p with Dolby Digital 7.1 Surround Sound.
Tags: 1080i, 1080p, bad games, blu-ray, HDTV, hi-res, opinions, Snob
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 9:46 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Jeffrey Abt says:Sometimes HD does make a difference, though. Maybe it was just my set, but when I was playing some current gen games on my standard def TV, I had a lot of trouble making out text. Dead Space comes to mind as the biggest offender for me, it was pretty much unreadable. So, I ended up losing out on a big part of the story because of it.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:Several 360 games have that problem. Dead Rising is the first offender that comes to mind.
Even though I’m not the HDTV guy you are talking about here, for gaming I do really appreciate the difference HD has made in console gaming over the last couple of years.
Going back to older games, it seems strange not to have them in widescreen.
August 7th, 2009 at 1:46 am
Jacob says:Besides having problems reading whats going on in my game, I don’t mind if it looks so amazing I can have a seizure from looking too long or if its blocky and old like nintendo entertainment system. I am playing super mario 64 and it really is on the top 10 list of best games in my mind but also up there is games like fable and call of duty modern warfare I just wish they would make it so people with non HDTV’s can actually read the words because I have a hearing problem and turn on subtitles but that really does not help when I can’t read the words either.
August 7th, 2009 at 4:51 am
Rob says:Although I agree with you that the art direction of a game is more important that pure graphical muscle, if you have a good art style AND HD then it is a definite improvement. Look back at SotC, for instance, and you realise that it still looks really good. However, if that were in high def, it would look immeasurabely better.
HD can’t replace good art direction, but can improve it massively.
With regards to movies, I think it depends on what you’re watching. Picking up The Godfather on BR, for instance, may not make much of a difference, but I cannot wait to see the LotR trilogy in HD – it suits that kind of epic feel of a film.
August 10th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Sean says:Haha, this was a great article because while I do own an HDTV these days, I do still hear that guy at the store. Talking about his dynamic color range and contrast ratio etc. etc…
I do like this part: “For me the HD is like the Cherry on top of a sundae. Sure it is nice and delicious but I don’t hate the sundae without it. For the HDTV Guy the Cherry is all that’s important. For him all that matters is the pixel resolution.”
Although like some of the guys said, it seems more and more games are being made with the 16:9 HDTV in mind as things will tend to get unreadable or hard to see, maybe even some developers making title safe mistakes that prefer one format to the other other.
It is really nice to be able to play 3D games, even from last generation, at a 16:9 screen size. Sometimes I feel nauseous trying to look around a polygonal world in a 4:3 constraint. Maybe it’s just me, but the wider screen really helps a lot because it’s closer to my own peripheral vision. If there’s one thing I love about HDTV is not having to play free roaming 3D games in that claustrophobic box. I guess you can get a widescreen TV without it having to be HD though.
On the topic of ugliness, I went over and over elsewhere about how the SE of Monkey Island added nothing other than higher resolution pixels through the guise of amateur art, but it’s an argument I don’t want to get into anymore. But I definitely think it’s becoming a held view with many that there’s almost no possible way anything in a higher resolution can be be bad.
August 11th, 2009 at 4:49 am
Michelle says:I have to say I sit somewhere in the middle as far as HD is concerned.
I wasn’t too sold on the idea until I experienced Oblivion at someone else’s place on a very large HD tv, it was even more beautiful and I was awestruck, as someone who’d been playing the SD version for quite some weeks I could notice all the intricate details, everything pulled into sharper focus.
I’m not sure I get quite the same impression these days mind you, I think HD loses some of it’s polish when you stare at it day in day out every day.
Ironically you need some good old fashioned SD TV and gaming mixed in to HD to remind you of the extra little finishes that your mind misses from repeated use.
I can absolutely see the point of HD for gaming and movies, but for bog standard TV? ehh, not convinced on that front yet.