Are You For Real? (In HD!)

(Insert cultural reference/pun regarding "fire", here)

How many of you are flipping out?  Is your screen on fire?  IS ANYONE GOING TO CALL 911?  Of course not.  Anyone would be able to distinguish a screen and real life…right?

Turns out that’s not always the case.

A woman in Zurich called the police last week claiming that her TV was on fire.  I hope you can see where this is going.  When investigators got there, they literally put out the fire with the push of a button:  BY CHANGING THE CHANNEL.  Yes, that’s right, the woman thought that the beautiful, crystal clear HD picture was nothing but the real thing.  This sounds absolutely ridiculous but it brings up an interesting point.  Is HD TV too real?

More after the jump.HD television has more impact than you may think, especially in the political sphere.  Believe it or not, these are two articles on how John McCain’s age became a bigger issue because HD televisions were able to more accurately display what he looks like, see here and here.  It’s getting harder and harder to just toss on some makeup and look perfect.

It seems as though (at least via one person) Hollywood doesn’t dig HD, though.  That article is from 5 years ago, stating the increased difficulty of looking good as the cameras get more complex and the pictures get clearer.  Think about where technology has come since then.  The actress, Melody Thomas Scott, from The Young and the Restless is of course referring mostly to soap operas.  The shows generally rely on close-ups, indicating how this new technology may have been an impending issue.  It seems, however, that the show was the first daytime series to broadcast in HD.  Hmm…

It turns out that there’s someone to blame (or praise, depending upon your feeling).  Samsung has created a technology called Auto Motion Plus which makes things, well, more real (Have a quick search and look through the forums if you want to know more).  Usually, we are able to tell the difference between Law & Order and your 5th grade video project.  That’s because the show is filmed with a set of characteristics underneath the umbrella term filmizing.  This makes the images appear to have been shot on film, as opposed to recorded by a video camera.  Auto Motion Plus attempts to completely undo that, making everything a little too real at least for my own liking.    As the images get sharper, it looks like the line separating real-life and television is ironically becoming blurred.

-Avrin