Alan C

Amen to that.. I think I said the same thing....

GC8

They can now be bought for less though and the quality is superior, in my opinion.

corradoboy

I fully understand the value and quality, but as production of media, and support and development of the format has now ceased you are buying it just to mop up the remaining titles. In a few months you will HAVE TO buy a Bluray player AS WELL if you want to continue to acquire new disc based media in the HD format. I could just about justify a combi BD/HDDVD player to enjoy the last of the cheap media before the format dies, leaving you still with the ongoing format. The Samsung BD UP5000 can be had from the US for IRO $450, and I believe the US machines are multi-region (A,B,C) unlike the UK machines.

Sonic'

Its already being worked on, speaking to a supplier last week he was saying about the latest thing being worked on is 3D holographic TV's using projectors in the floor and ceiling

Corrodaboy does the quality improve or degrade after the 3rd or 4th glass of plonk ?

I still really need to be convinced on the quality of all of this plasma/lcd stuff and HD/Blu Ray etc but then I have yet to see it up close

I used to be really well up on all the latest technologies and had DVD players and films long before they were even out in this country

Most of the time thesedays I watch films on a projector and 100" screen and the TV in the other living room is a 28" CRT

corradoboy

I'm hoping to add a projector in the not too distant I think I'll definitely need a 1080 source then to get a good 10' image, just need to convince the missuse

spectrum48k

but doesn't 1080i consist of of 540 lines per frame (odd then even) ?

out of interest, can you explain how the 1080p panel takes the odd / even frames, and combines them for a progressive display ? Wouldn't that half the frame rate ?

Diesel

Nothing beats a CRT. End of. All other technologies smear and lag and have digital artefacts. Even bumping it in via component as some one suggests is futile on my big LCD - I can freeze the frame, hence everything abviously goes digital inside it.

Interesting to see the serious purple fringing on the CRT close ups. Think that's a product of the better res an high contrast throwing the camera rather than a display issue.

Every single picture you see on telly is critically assessed using a CRT when making a programme and later when editing it and tweaking the colours etc. Says it all (although £2k 17" LCD panels are stsrting to get there...)

Love me flat telly though - well smart and massive

D

Diesel

Fields mate, fields. 2 fields make a frame. UK TV is 25 frames a secon = 50 fields or 50Hz. Fields are half the resolution of a frame.

These fields are time shifted so if you combine them to display a frame there will be ailiasing (zig zagging) as they are not fields of the exact same image in the same place (unless it is static of course).

All I know is that when you shoot progressively it looks like it reduces the frame rate. Horiz movement becomes more jerky, but static resolution is higher. 'Temporal response' I think they called it on the course I went on, but its getting foggy now and I'm probably not answering your question!!!

D

Alan C

Let me just start this by saying I'm an interested Hobbyist who enjoys the tech side of media handling, so I'm no pro...

Yes, 1080i is made up of two 540 frames. Scaling 1080i to 1080p means the 1080p TV (in this case), assembles (deinterlaces and progressively scans) the two 540 lines. You get no loss of data doing this on a 1080p set. 1080i sets having to scan twice, therefore suffer from artefacts and motion blurring. LCD is inherently slow, so even 1080p sets will suffer from it.

In the UK frames resolve at 50Hz (mains freq). It is therefore equivalent to 1080p at a frame rate of 25Hz (because it takes 2 1080i frames to construct a 1080p frame).

I'll try and explain the scaling (Using some stuff I've kept from my own research)... The scaling chipsets use various algorithms to extrapolate what would best fit into the empty grids or pixels that make up the difference between the various resolutions (480, 720, 768, 180). The scaling is also dependent on the content. For a 1080i broadcast from Sky, the scaling in a 1080p TV needs to (among other tasks) double the scan lines. Whereas with 720p content, it needs to 'fill in' the missing 360 vertical lines of resolution. If you have a 720p TV with 720p content, then you have 1:1 mapping which is called native resolution. A 720p set would need to do a fair amount of work with the 1080i content. Scalers come in different abilities. That's why some TV's are more expensive (and thus better), simply because they use better components. Just like any good quality audio package.

Cheaper Scalers (and associated components) will produce artefacts that ultimately make the picture appear fuzzy or soft on screen. This is why you'll see differences in Curry's when non HD content is being shown on a high definition TV (cabling length and the various boxes used to pass the signal to many TV's won't help. have a TV on the end of a long chain ans the picture degradation will be shown. That's why they'll show the better TV's hooked to a stand alone Blu-Ray of HD box). Not only does the low-resolution content have to be scaled up to the HD TV's resolution, it also has to be stretched left and right to maintain the aspect ratio.

HTH....

GC8

No: Im buying it (if I do) because the upscaled quality appears to be far better than that of other £60-£80 players. I have little or no interest in HD media. I did clearly state that Id use it only to play my old school DVD discs.

sti-04!!

Si,

I bought the Ep30 a few weeks back & cant fault it. Cost me £60 with two free fims.
On the HD i bought 8 HD films from play.com for £54 last night. The bargains at the moment are immense.

Diesel

Alan! My head is hurting!

In practical terms anything shot 'P' can be jittery if its 'busy' content or beautiful if its pretty static. It can give a filmic look to a pop promo though where you fancy a vaguely 'strobey' effect.

However nobody tranmits anything 'P', so its pretty academic, other than for effect? I have SHOT stuff in 'P' but it never gets transmitted that way as everything in UK is 'i'. Aye?

On topic, 'P' will always look better on CRT as it is less laggy and smeary...

D

spectrum48k

So SkyHD is broadcast in both 1080i and 720p, depending on the program? I didn't realise that.

I wrongly thought it was broadcast in HD at 720p only

spectrum48k

yes "fields" - so a 1080i signal is producing 50 fields and 25 full frames a second and 1080p is producing 50 full frames a second

so does a 1080p panel combine the 1080i fields to produce 1080p at 25 frames per second ? Or does it upscale each field to produce 1080p at 50 frames per second ?

Diesel

SKY decided to use 1080i only (best for sport). You can shoot 720p but the deliverable must converted to 1080i.

On your next question; I dont think so. 1080p @ 50frames sec of full 1080 lines would double the bandwidth needed; on the camera I am using today the menu option is 25p HD or 25i SD. I now need to scratch my head more and leg it out the door!

D

Alan C

I believe it runs the deinterlaced signal at 25 fps.

I'm no Sky engineer either () but I belive most of the content is 1080i now.

Diesel - Agreed. My head hurt too.. even now I struggle with the science behind it, but I do enjoy trying to unravel it all .

'p' content will not be along on Sat or Terrestrial for sometime due to bandwidth issues. But Blu-ray or online content (even cable) will be the catalyst to see the native 'p' format increasing. So your 'p' stuff will be able to get a transmission chanel. What do you shoot BTW?

I think Corradoboy touched on the facts regarding LCD's latency, but the 'i' stuff will be even more susecptible to blurring due to the fact that it has to paint the signal twice to screen. 'p' does it once. CRT's don't have a native resolution (ie they are not fixed to a number of pixels) so are better for showing movement. But LCD or organic screens will reel this defecit in.

Diesel

I'm not too sure about that Alan - 'i' stuff is LESS susceptible to bluring as it has two 'snapshots' of each frame. Panel TV's dont need these separate fields as they can display complete full frame images much quicker than a flying phosphor dot CRT can - but maybe you mean they smear it more as their response rate and smear rate is higher?

What we shot today was std 25i std stuff (and I've got sunburn), but to have 14 x £100,000 each cameras shooting a music event in 1080i is bliss Toys for the boys

D

Sonic'

I thought that there wasnt any difference between interlaced and progressive, as long as you match what you are watching

IE if an interlaced programme is being watched or broadcast then its better to set to interlaced, and vice versa with progressive

Diesel

Progressive has twice the vertical resolution compared to interlaced, but half the effective frame rate. That's the deal you do...resolution versus jerkiness... D

Sonic'

Wasnt DVD designed for interlaced displays but film is shot for progressive

spectrum48k

I didn't realise 1080p ran at such crappy framerate. Just checked some Blu-Ray framerates and its only 24!

As you say Diesel, its a compromise between vertical resolution and framerate. Interesting.

Regards bandwidth, my PS3 is sending 1080p at 60 frames per second to my set (depending on the game) , so it is possible if the content is there.

Alan C

Viewing native resolution on a native set (ie 720p to 720p) will generally give you better results. That's why I'd recommended a 1080p set to view 1080p content from your blu ray etc (plus a 1080p set will reproduce a 1080i signal with no loss of data).

Diesel, this is where my technical vocabulary breaks down. I do indeed mean smearing due to to the various latencies of 'i' and LCD.

I'm aware of 25p or 50i (25fps) for film, but isn't 25i only ~12.5 fps? I wasn't aware of that frame rate for film.

Sonic - 1080i vertical scanning res is lower than 720p. 1080i is 2 x 540 whereas the 720p is practically 720. There's some weird math going on that says it's not quite those figures, but it's as near as. Plus 'i' has all the interlacing frame flicker artifacts to overcome (this is why interlacing is not used on PC monitors).

There are differences between P & I. A Progressive scan image is displayed by scanning each line (or row of pixels) in a sequential order rather than an alternate order, as is done with interlaced scan. In other words, progressive scanning scan in sequential order (1,2,3) down the screen from top to bottom, instead of in alternate order (lines or rows 1,3,5, etc... followed by lines or rows 2,4,6). Progressively scanning the image offers a smoother, more detailed image and is less susceptible to interlace flicker. The primary intent of progressive scan is to refresh the screen more often.

I believe DVD was an is progressive (usually 480p/24 or 576p/25) with Blu-ray now offering 1080p. This was probably why interlaced PC monitors died a death......

We are not entering the limits of my knowledge, and will always bow to Diesels, but this really is good stuff (if you like that sort of thing.... )

Diesel

We have to remember the analogue legacy here. How could film be anything OTHER than analogue progressive - it is a burst of light through a whole film frame...

Its complex whwn it gets to telly, but, film is rubbish on horizontal movement, which is why cinematographers rarely pan slowly left to right. It it is jerky, beautiful, 24P (and this is why we have to speed up the film by 10% to show on telly and achieve 25FPS)

D

Diesel

Now that is bandwith unlimited best use of new technology. Up yours OFCOM

D

Diesel

Yep 1080 P means you are covered

No 25i = 50Hz = 50 image refreshes per second (although at half the V res of any P source)

720P was THE compromise between needing excessive bandwith as in 'the ultimate' 1080P or doubling static V res for certain shots...

Yes, and this is all legacy stuff - panel displays do not have the physics of a CRT and can render the whole frame much quicker than a CRT. A CRT has to physically 'draw' the lines, and this takes time (but is worth it )

UK DVD's are almost 100% authored from a PAL 625 interlaced source. Its getting better though

Got me thinking too mate! I learnt quite a bit from THE guru John Wilkinson (grey beard; knows onions) but this stuff changes so regularly as it is still new technology and few really understand it, including some of the best DOP's I know )

D

Alan C

Just re-read that and it should have been 'now' not, 'not'. Made me sound like a right ****....

Thanks for the confirmations mate..

Diesel

I read it like you meant it mate

D

Ghetto Dude3

mate, run your xbox with a VGA lead and it will upscale your standard dvd`s anyway, saving you from buying the doomed hd-dvd drive

360 can not upscale over component leads due to silly laws and regulations, over a pc lead (ie: vga) they are allowed to upscale


mine is upscaling SD dvd`s to 720p to feed into my samsung plasma and if the content is good quality (ie lord of the rings etc etc) the difference is vast.

i just saved you a few pennies

Alan C

Going back to the original topic, after playing some more on the various TV & HD Box configs, my component side remains noticeably better than HDMI. Admittedly I'm using the out of the box HDMI cable, so a decently screened and made one may make up the difference. I'm probably not going to bother however (unless I can blag one), as I'm more than happy with the Mark Grant Component cable I have.

Diesel

Alan, you might be interested to take a look here http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/dq/p...ery_v01_08.pdf

BBC does not agree with Sony (etc) that some of their HD stuff IS in fact HD! Also those Digi Beta SR record decks are currently 70k. This is where our licence fee goes East!!!

D