Quote:
I think that HDNet over-cranks the contrast just to make it eye-popping, but it works


Wild guess: HDTV can support far more contrast than traditional television. However, when you're producing television that needs to go out as old-school NTSC as well as new-school HDTV, you tend to be conservative. You don't want any out-of-gamut colors in your low-def, and you want the high-def to look the same. Ergo, no eye-popping contrast. HDnet has the distinct benefit of not giving a whit about low-def. They master everything for high-def, exclusively, pushing the medium as far as they can. The results, often, speak well for themselves.

When I first got HD going, I got sucked into some Japanese video from Discovery-HD that showed various street festivals, fireworks, and so forth: total, pure, unadulterated eye candy. Who knew that my "HD-ready" set could pull off something like that? The Athens Olympics coverage, similarly, had vast eye-candy appeal, but I ended up watching the video from all the weird channels like CNBC so I could see something other than swimming and gymnastics.