King of the Hill makes the high-def leap
By Darren Murph 
posted Feb 9th 2009 5:32PM
posted Feb 9th 2009 5:32PM
[Via AVSForum, thanks Michael]
posted Feb 9th 2009 5:32PM
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So glad to hear this is happening and totally in favour of it. I was watching on tv a very old episode of the Simpons and it just pain looked terrible on my hdtv.
Mind you, it was one of the earlier episodes from the early 90s but still :| It didn't even look clear, the colors were bleeding, etc. I for one, can't wait for sd programming to be gone from the air ways or more sooner every sd program be available in hd.
I thought this one was the last season of King of the Hill. I could be wrong as to why would they go HD now. But then again, maybe they want to go out whit a bang.
I believe its on till 2010 someone said. I thought this was the last season too, but apperantly not. Anyways I watched it last night, seemed decent quality. Not as bright as southpark HD tho.
The intro was cropped since they didn't reanimate it. I watched it and it was pretty good quality. The SD OTA feed was letterboxed. Pay TV companies are simply centercutting the HD feed and downscaling it for SD users. That might make it even worse. The Simpsons will have an all new reanimated intro for their HD debut.
the intro was full widescreen hd for me...
same here
OTA
The intro was in HD but from a 4:3 image cropped to 16:9. People on AVSforum were saying that it was cropped.
sweet but sad this is it last season
I was pleasantly surprised when I watched this last night.
They did a good job upscaling the intro. It's not as good as if they'd reanimated it, but it's still much better than I'd expected.
That's crazy.. This was the first episode I've watched in forever and I was like "dang I wonder how long they've been in HD" it looked great.
This is the last season it was announced fall '08. I assume the season/show will end with the birth of Luanne's baby.
Sweet, time to program my DVR to also record the King of the Hill episode! I'm glad they're bringing The Simpsons in HD since I still watch it, and I watch King of the Hill once in a while so I'd like to see it in HD before it meets its fate :(
King Of the Hill will finish the last season in march! I wonder what took fox so long to switch to HD? Since why HD now the show is going to end pretty soon. They should have done this year ago. I just wished that family guy and american dad would go HD. But seth does not want to the extra work. He got that big contract for reason to show family guy in HD!
Actually...everyone seems to forget that the very first episode ever of American Dad, which aired after the Super Bowl on FOX one year, was in HD. None of them have been since.
Our FOX station in Topeka, KTMJ, sucks big time! They didn't even flip over to the HD signal Sunday night during King of the Hill. For some reason they don't even keep the HD feed running on KTMJ HD unless a show is actually in HD. Even then, like during King of the Hill they don't switch it over to HD! The other night during Hell's Kitchen it started out in HD and then about 20 minutes into it they all of a sudden switched it over to SD the rest of the show. They really, really suck when it comes to HD and every time I send them an e-mail asking why they don't just keep the HD signal going like the other local stations do, or why a show that's normally in HD wasn't in HD, they never respond.
Can someone explain the "hook" of this show?
The few times I've tried watching it, it came off as a cartoon for rednecks, which didn't interest me, so I turned the channel. What have I missed?
wow, now we can see the most poorly animated prime-time show on television with even more clarity.
Case and point: in the screen grab for this article, good job casting shadows on the ground when there are no shadow mattes on the characters or any other object on screen... oh wait, there is a shadow on the soffit of the house... going the wrong direction. brilliant.
This does nothing for me.
^^^ loser
Um, I don't see the point in taking low-grade animation shows HD. Why would South Park, Simpsons, King of the Hill, The Family Guy, etc. look any better in HD when the animation is so crude to begin with? Just seems like a way to get some attention but the reality is that a low resolution show with little to no fine detail will gain no benefit whatsoever from being broadcast in HD. Look at it this way... If a television station broadcast an image of solid blue (no other colors or detail of any kind, just the color blue), then what would be the difference if you saw it in HD or in SD? The simple answer is that you would see no difference whatsoever. Without any fine detail there is no point in doing HD. And since there is no fine detail in these shows at all then what's the point?
Lasts week episode of King of the hill looked very good in HD. I don't get to see real HD animation very often but the details are better. I saw a screen cap of South Park in HD and it does look better. Just having the 16:9 aspect ratio is a dealmaker for me. The promo for the HD episode of the Simpsons episode says HDTV is worth every cent.
Scrubs switched from NBC to ABC and they made the switch to HD. NBC didn't own Scrubs, so they probably didn't feel like investing the money even when the show was on their net.