Video Asylum

Posted by petew (A) on May 23, 2005 at 15:15:42

In Reply to: Need advice .. buying a pre-progressive scan TOTL DVD player, good idea? ... posted by bjh on May 2, 2005 at 12:54:33:

the thing that matters is the bandwidth of the output...

and long as you have (at least)the component output you are good to go.

from there, you may go to an A/V receiver to do your signal switching, and that receiver might have the scaler/line doubler built-in (many new ones do), that will take the signal up to 480p, 720p, or 1080i...

or, new video displays (TV, monitor, plasma, LCD, projector, whatever) will most likely (almost certainly) have a built-in scaler/multiplier that will upgrade(or downgrade) the source to the native rate of the display.

The most important issue is signal bandwidth...at any point...outputs, inputs, switching, cables, you want to be in the 100 MHz or more.

the technology is so good these days, and so cheap, that it's really not a worry when or where you do the signal processing.

I use a dinosoar DVD player myself, an ancient 45 pound Dennon 5000 series (origional $2500) that sends out a 480i signal on component outputs. The scaler on my Panasonic 42" plasma screen does an excellent job of converting that signal to a 480p, which just happens to be the native rate of the plasma.

the result: since all DVDs are max'ed at 480p, and my native rate is 480p...my DVD movies are indistinguishable from 1080i (full-blown high-definition)...actually, a little better (for technical reasons, the "480p" 42" plasma screens are the best of all worlds for video...spending more for HD will give you a more "accurate" picture -- and show you all the flaws and errors in the source and every place along the way: effectively: garbage in/ high definition garbage out).

there is another issue though...the "red chroma bug". it's a software/chipset thing that was a glitch with nearly all the DVD players built up until now...

try not to worry about it...nobody would know it was there if people like me didn't tell them about it.

I've been going back and forth trying to decide if I need to get the latest 45" Shape LCD with an Honest-to-God 1080p (you saw that right...the native rate is 1080P!!) display rate.

The thing is...my "old" 480p plasma looks better in a side-by-side. Hard to believe, but you have to see it with your own eyes--most "in-store" comparisons are on displays that are not professionally "tuned"...they are shipped "hot" to look brighter under the vast flourescent lighting of a showroom....but let's not go there now...

a plain-vanilla 480p 42" plasma just blows the doors off everything out there, even now(except for deep black definition, where on-fashoned CRT still rules the roost. If Film Noir is your passion, stick with the CRT displays).

Some day we may get real 1080i, or even 1080p source material...like live Olympic feeds via satelite...

...then I'll spend the bucks for HD.