LONDON - Want to enjoy the advantages of a super-sharp high-definition (HD) screen without buying a new TV? Well, then just imagine you are watching one.

A Dutch study has shown that the people who had been led to expect HD reported seeing higher-quality images.

During the research, sixty people were shown the same video clip on the same television.

Of them half were asked to imagine they are watching a clear, sharper pictures courtesy the HD technology.

The impression was also backed up by posters, flyers and the presence of an extra-thick cable connected to the screen.

And the other half were told to expect a normal DVD image.

The researchers’ aim was to understand how “framing” - what people are led to expect about HD - influences their experience of it.

“Participants were unable to discriminate properly between digital and high-definition signals,” New Scientist quoted Lidwien van de Wijngaert at the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands, as saying.

However, situations similar to the one in the study certainly have an impact on the spread of HD because people are not always able to make such a direct comparison.

For example, they may judge HD after seeing it at someone else’s house, or after paying for an upgrade to their own TV service. In those examples, framing can have a significant effect.

“If we want to understand the diffusion of new innovations we have to understand how they are framed and so far the diffusion of HD has been relatively slow,” van de Wijngaert said.

“We had expected that the difference wouldn’t be perceived very well, but hadn’t expected the framing effect to be so strong,” the expert said.

The effect may be magnified once a person has paid out for an HD subscription, set-top box or television, she adds.

“I think people are very inclined to justify the investment they have made; it’s a normal psychological thing to do,” she added.

The study appears in journal Computers and Entertainment. (ANI)