Video quality is a tricky thing especially because it’s hard to asses. HD, high-definition, encompasses a multitude of standards with the declared goal of upping the general video quality. Resolution, video codecs, audio codecs, all are involved in this.

Consumers are widely familiar with the formats of 1080i (192×1080 pixels, interlaced), 1080p (1920×1080 pixels, progressive) or 720p (1280×720 pixels, progressive). On the audio side we have Dolby Surround, AC3, high sampling rate formats such as MP3, AAC or FLAC.

Once equipment is up to standard, all should be ok, right? Wrong. Marketing and technical specs aside, not much of what we actually receive can be defined as “real” HD. Real HD is often shown in the marketing process as an image of great contrast, vividly colored, great sharpness without image noise, etc. You can see it in most shops. It should be and it is achievable but the fact is, there are many obstacles that lead to us not getting HD quality even when we are told that we do.

What I mean is: there is a great difference between technical specs and actually seeing the HD. Why? Let’s assume that you have a great 52 inch Full-HD (1080p advertised), a top Blu-Ray player that outputs each and all standards, a top-notch HDTV box and even a great mediabox ready to serve you all the juicy downloaded HD MKV you got. But …

- a Blu-Ray disc you just got displays noisy image, no contrast and the sound seems muffled. It feels even worse than the DVD or VHS versions. Why? Thing is, if it’s a movie not shot directly on digital, remastering the video and audio will simply be filled with compression artifacts or other kinds of artifacts from the digitization process. Eg: the video is 1080p, the sound is Dolby, technically all is perfect the experience is still crap because the original material was bad.

- a TV station boasts HD, but with the exception of a couple of movies, you never see or hear the amazing sound you know you’re supposed to hear. Why? Simply the rest of the shows are not shot/processed in raw HD format. Anytime a compression takes place, quality loss occurs. If they play a Blu-Ray movie straight from the disc, that might do. If they shoot a show on tape, digitize it and output the compressed result, not even Chtulhu can fix that so you see a perfectly sharp image.

- the video file you just downloaded boasts 1080p and actually has the right resolution. It has 8Gb but the image is crap, even though it does seem to be a real rip. Why? If it’s a WMV or ancient ASF format files, your answer is right there. Those formats lose any quality whatsoever. If it’s an MKV, bear in mind that MKV is just a container. It’s all up to the codecs used and whatever settings were using when the rip was made. Too much compression and the quality goes to hell.

- you have a file that’s lossless (over 16Gb MKV, AAC 7.1 sound, video done with ffdshow at top quality) but I still can’t see or hear the dreamed quality. The source was a real and new Blu-Ray. On a second thought, not even the Blu-Ray seems to look or hear right. Why? Connectivity. On your computer, you need the right codecs installed, with the right settings, your monitor needs a DVI or HDMI (the only difference is that HDMI can carry sound at the same time), your sound card needs to be able to handle uncompressed audio and have a digital output. At the same time, your speakers need to be able to render the proper frequency range (low bass, higher high-rage). Same goes for your various players or media stations: sound needs top connectivity and rendition capabilities. Ditto for video.

- I watch HD content online but it’s not as good as my own Blu-Rays. They have the same resolution but not the same quality. Why? Very few online content providers stream real HD. This is mainly because of traffic limits on the hosting service, bandwidth limitations either on the hosting service or the client. Also, online content is always compressed and encoded somehow, which always entails loss. Pirate services simply upload movies or TV series episodes re-encoding them (necessary for flash players in browsers, for example). There is always a loss of quality.

There is a lot of room for hampering the final quality of the video. Despite claims, having a system up to technical video standards does not ensure an actual HD experience, despite marketing. Thus, in 75% of cases, the HD-compliant equipment you have, it is useless. Despite being capable of rendering a top-notch image, your TV is likely to rarely (if ever) receive the properly formatted video to render. Whether the sources don’t produce real HD content (pointless to deliver a HD stream when the content wasn’t HD-produced), or they don’t deliver HD-produced content to HD standards, or your peripherals interfere, a real HD experience is hard to achieve.

The lines of communication are simply too long. If you take any recent Full-HD Avatar Blu-Ray, plug it in a Sony or LG recently-built player and play it via a HDMI cable to a Bravia TV, then you have all the chances of a great experience. Introduce any new elements and you’re already taking chances.

Tacitly, however, the consumers don’t seem to care. Not that they are to blame for taking convenience over quality. It’s simply too much hassle on everyone’s part to ensure true quality from one end to the other. HBO produces HD content, delivers it via various HDTV carries to a billion HDTV boxes into a billion HD entertainment systems. I can’t envision how anyone could ensure quality over all this chain.