I refer to the letter Plasma and LCD TV buyers beware!

While the message contained in the letter is well-intentioned and of public interest, it is technically inaccurate.

What the writer means to say is that the source for the visuals on display in an electrical store is from a high-definition (HD) source. HD content is available up to1080p, which is 1080 horizontal lines of resolution being refreshed progressively.

DVDs are not HD sources, as the resolution is typically at 480p for NTSC DVDs. Rather, they are considered standard-definition (SD).

Unless the DVD is played on a player with a digital connection like HDMI to the TV, it would then be on an analogue connection. This negates the writer's argument between analogue and digital sources.

SD content/broadcasts are what we Malaysians are getting from Astro, free-to-air TV broadcasts and DVDs.

Astro’s signals between the satellite and the dish/decoder are heavily compressed digital broadcasts, while the output from the decoder to your TV is analogue.

Due to the heavy compression (to cram in more channels?), the quality is abysmal with lots of visual artifacts.

On SDTVs like the ‘old-fashioned CRT TV’, it is not so noticeable, but connect Astro to your new full HD TV, and Astro's quality (or lack of) is there for you to see in all its stunning glory.

Amazingly enough, free-to-air channels via your TV antenna (which are analogue) actually look better as they do not suffer from digital compression!

On another point that the writer makes, 4:3 content like Astro when stretched to a 16:9 wide-screen, will yield images that are horizontally stretched. This results in images that are wider than usual, not ‘thin and tall’ as stated.

Viewers can overcome this by viewing the 4:3 content natively, resulting in vertical black bars on the sides, or reducing the amount of horizontal stretching and cropping the top and bottom of the images with your TV's display settings.

This however is far from being an elegant solution though. As stated, what we need are HD broadcasts, from both free-to-air channels and Astro.

But being that we are in Bolehland, I cringe at the mere thought of how much Astro would charge for HD broadcasts.

For more information, check out this Wikipedia link Digital television in Malaysia