Sharper, brighter, crisper, but is HDTV better?

Senator John McCain, here talking to Barbara Walters on "The View," looks even older than 71 in high-definition. (Globe staff photo illustration)

I lost my high-definition virginity to "The View."

I'd seen the morning cluck-fest a hundred times before, but never like this, as crystalline and bright as a chandelier. In the table's mirror-like sheen, I saw reflections of the ladies' heads, like trees on the surface of a lake. I could almost smell the Lemon Pledge. Above the table and its happy coffee mugs, I could precisely locate the gap between Whoopi Goldberg's front teeth. I could isolate each of her dreads. I clearly saw that Joy Behar's mouth had been very freshly smeared with red, and that Elisabeth Hasselbeck had wisely put lines of mascara under her small eyes, to define. Look, there, in Hasselbeck's cleavage: a teeny, tiny cross.

My eyes tingle just remembering it all. Unaccustomed to the full disclosure that comes with HD's very many lines of resolution, its onslaught of visual data, I was blown away. If TV is like a drug, as some say, then I think HDTV must be like crystal meth, delivering a rush of hyper-clarity and sharpness straight to the head. "The View," the tennis players in the French Open, the gang on "How I Met Your Mother" - in HD, they all seem to be in "Toy Story," or some other Pixar animation. They appear more real than real. The phrase "eye candy" should have been invented for this TV delivery system, as it adds a sheer glaze of sugar to every image it conveys.

But I wonder: Is high-definition TV Too Much Information TV? When we watch a boxing match, do we really want to see every single drop of blood and sweat glistening in the klieg lights, sailing across the ring? Do we really need to see the "View" ladies, during a spat about Barack Obama, develop a veneer of perspiration, or glimpse the beating-hot overhead studio lights in the shine on guest Salman Rushdie's bald dome?

By February 17, 2009, the FCC has mandated that all TV broadcasts must be digital only. Analog TV transmission will be dead. And with that imminent and essential technical change will, undoubtedly, come the sale of even more HD-ready TV sets (which require a digital signal), more shows broadcast in HD, more raising of the definition bar. Those who already watch HDTV tend to be passionately in favor of it, and see it as the way of the future. And the truth is, if you watch HDTV and then switch back to SDTV - standard definition TV - you're left feeling visually unsatisfied. It's as if you've lost your prescription glasses. Years of "normal" TV imagery suddenly seems blurry, subpar, for Luddites only.

The dazzle is profoundly seductive. Newly in HD, the Weather Channel is a psychedelic show that might have passed muster at a Grateful Dead concert at the Filmore in the 1960s. The hues on the national map are finely variegated, the states literally pulse with turbulence, the storms - scary red blotches - creep up on regions like a skin rash. It's quintessentially trippy. So are the opening credits of Showtime's "Dexter," an artful, in-your-face montage that slyly turns morning rituals - frying eggs, shaving - into nefarious doings. National Geographic's HD channel transforms nature into nature, as does the brand new Planet Green, an environmentally conscious entertainment channel. On HDTV, all the organic beauty of the world becomes italicized.

On news channels such as CNN, the detail is not only arresting, but potentially influential in a time when age, skin tone, and bags under the eyes are all fodder for voters and bloggers. Watching the talking heads on "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer," their faces like peach-colored flesh balloons, you may find yourself counting the white hairs in Senator Christopher Dodd's eyebrows and the lines in his forehead. Or perhaps you'll ponder - consciously or subconsciously - Governor Mark Sanford's rampant sun damage. And Senator John McCain? Through the lens of HDTV, rumors of his senior status are not exaggerated. He's 71, but with his jowly disfigurement and his chalky skin enhanced by the HD screen, he looks 80. HDTV is a veritable Democratic tool, making the Republican candidate look worse than he probably does in person.

But I do wonder: Is HDTV so much better, or just different? HDTV is a visual style, one that, for me, is not necessarily more accurate or honest or true than others. HDTV doesn't give us the real so much as the hyper-real, an artificial heightening of reality, the turning of a clarity knob. It's like trompe l'oeil - a finely wrought illusion of reality. If Whoopi Goldberg or Senator Dodd were sitting across from me, they probably wouldn't seem quite so "real," so extremely defined, so shiny and crisp. The same goes for the awesome nature programming that makes you feel suspended in a jungle-like virtual reality. It's greener than green - and not like looking out your window. Sports events, too, are more intense than being there. The ball is unmissable, the stadiums spectacles of hats and signs and, of course, ads.

SDTV does for us what our consciousness does naturally - it filters out the unnecessary. There are noises I don't need to hear, smells I don't need to smell, visuals I don't need to focus on. SDTV provides an alternative viewing experience from HDTV, one that does not overstimulate the eyes with detail, resolution, and, in the case of a show like "The View," meta-information about eyeliner and hair gel. It's an aesthetic option - a less insistently revealing mode - and not a less legitimate one than HDTV. As TV viewers prepare to buy new television sets to adapt to the digital changeover, they need not feel inferior if they don't choose to go high def. Like the difference between Impressionism and Surrealism, it's a matter of taste.

HDTV offers great potential to storytellers who want to utilize every inch of screen space. Watching "How I Met Your Mother," I couldn't help but keep an eye on the extras at MacLaren's bar, pretending to be jovial patrons. What do extras talk about, I found myself wondering. Eventually, as HDTV becomes the norm, the creators of TV - not just the makeup artists and lighting designers but the writers, too - will be able to take advantage of the corners and the periphery of the screen, so that backdrop mini-dramas might somehow relate to the whole. Maybe there will be clues in the corner of "Lost," or slapstick jokes in the corners of "Scrubs," or ironic titles on the bookshelves in the back of Dr. House's apartment. TV story lines could become more like interactive games, allowing us to look further into every scene.

But remember, HD also offers enormous potential to advertisers, some of whom are already capitalizing on the technology's eye-grabbing abilities. Advertisers are increasingly colonizing formerly underused areas of screen space for logos and signs, aware that the HDTV viewers of a sports event are far more aware of stadium billboards than both SDTV viewers and those actually at the game. The CNN-style graphic glut of screen info-motion - the crawls and financial tickers and bugs - is ripe for further exploitation, more product imagery amid the breaking news. If HD eyes are going to be a little more alert than SD eyes, they're going to be more vulnerable to sales-related input.

Commercials in HD are outrageously - almost terrifyingly - alluring. The sweeping image of the "shrimp and scallops with a refreshing honey citrus glaze" at the Red Lobster is obscenely moist, and the car commercials are dazzling displays of steel. While advertising an SUV in the glories of the wilderness is not a new concept, the wilderness in those HD commercials - the majestic mountains, the tree branches almost in 3-D - go further than ever in making us forget about the environmentally unfriendly aspects of SUVs.

HD is likely on its way toward normalcy, as the prices of HD televisions drop and the number of HD channels and Blu-ray high-def DVDs rises. Just as vinyl has given way to CDs and other digital formats in the past two decades, SDTV will be subsumed by HDTV. But as music lovers return to vinyl in droves, we need to keep in mind that some things are lost in the shift to HD - that HD is not automatically the best because it is the newest or the clearest. HD is commodified realness, the world tweaked for effect.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.