Anyone familiar with the X360 Samsung LCD?

[pipo]

In other words it seemed very happy to be running at 720P and the image seemed no worse. As a matter of fact it looked damned good and was using almost every bit of the screen for the image.

Just watched 3 different X360 pods using the full screen and I can only second this. It looks fab. I was looking for bleeding in the text (CoD2) but there was absolutely no problem at all: the picture is very sharp.

I still would like to see a native 1280x720 screen though, just to compare it. Problem is, over here there's no LCD with that rez to be found. Only beamers...

 

[randycat99]

Every upscaler (PC image based) I've ever seen loses a degree of fidelity when upscaling. I guess that doesn't show on movie content where the images don't come with that level of fidelity, but it probably will show on computer generated console content. I would expect the upscaled image to lose sharpness over the native 720p image. Something I'd be interested to witness.

I suspect this fidelity loss (or "scaler artifact", if you prefer) also manifests itself as a degree of "milky" characteristic added to the image (much like as if a subtle translucent white "layer" that has been added to the scene).

 

[Kill_Jade]

i saw the kiosk today and the tv looked pretty damn sweet. probably would look even better when properly calibrated.

but umm this is a little OT: anyone here in contact with Marconelly!? i really need to talk to him....

 

[Fox5]

Does 360 have just a VGA out cable or does it have a DVI cable as well? What resolutions can the VGA cable output? I know 720p is the standard for xbox games, but many PC LCD monitors cannot natively do that, they would need a higher res image(such as 1280x1024) with black borders. Is the focus of the VGA cable just for TVs with VGA inputs, or will Microsoft remember all the people with LCD monitors (of all sorts of odd resolutions, from 800x600 to 1600x1200) and their scaling needs?

 

[emacs]

No it's not. The standard format is 1280*720 (the other one is 1920*1080). If you're making a fixed-res HDTV set, why not use an actual HD resolution as the native resolution?

the 16 : 9 aspect is 1.778. 1366 divided by 768 is 1.778 but 1280 divided by 720 is 1.778 as well. it should be noted (probably again) that the vast majority of panels are manufactured by only three companies who, for some reason, use 768 lines.

 

[emacs]

Well, i'm pretty sure 1366x768 panels always scale the 720p image to fit the screen.

the Aquos line of LCDs from Sharp have several scaling options. i purchased the LC26D5U a few months ago (before it was replaced by the D4 and D6) and the panel displays 1.78, 1.85 and 2.35 images very well indeed.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Now, see, scaling. That's another pet hate I have with it. Since widescreen TVs appeared here in Old Blighty, people watch deformed TV. Most broadcasts are either 4:3 or 14:9, but TV's 'Smart' scaling always goes full screen, so people are rendered fat. Yet most users don't correct this and just watch it. And then when there is a 16:9 broadcast sometimes the aspect signal is lost or something and it's letterboxed on all sides, but people can't figure out which button to press (mothers mostly I guess!). All these variations are bad for people. They add confusion and drop average quality. If they want to make a change do it properly. Make sure the end user doesn't have to press a Zoom button to select the right aspect. It's not a difficult technology. It'd only need a bit of agreement. Seems to me technology 'progress'= big fat mess for 10-20 years while dumb shmucks try to get their act together!

 

[scooby_dooby]

My Hitachi is excellent, it knows when you get HD and automatically switches to 16:9, on 4:3 signal it stretches horizontally very slightly, and crops a little off the top and bottom for a nice fullscreen image with no fat people.

So, some TV's are 'smarter' than others.

 

[PiNkY]

Even if you had a 1280*720 panel you'd still not get a 1:1 pixel mapping on analog sources because of overscan.

 

[MrWibble]

Now, see, scaling. That's another pet hate I have with it. Since widescreen TVs appeared here in Old Blighty, people watch deformed TV. Most broadcasts are either 4:3 or 14:9, but TV's 'Smart' scaling always goes full screen, so people are rendered fat. Yet most users don't correct this and just watch it. And then when there is a 16:9 broadcast sometimes the aspect signal is lost or something and it's letterboxed on all sides, but people can't figure out which button to press (mothers mostly I guess!). All these variations are bad for people. They add confusion and drop average quality. If they want to make a change do it properly. Make sure the end user doesn't have to press a Zoom button to select the right aspect. It's not a difficult technology. It'd only need a bit of agreement. Seems to me technology 'progress'= big fat mess for 10-20 years while dumb shmucks try to get their act together!

I agree with you - but most of the problem is with the broadcasters and not the TV manufacturers. A lot of them just broadcast stuff in the wrong aspect ratio either by accident or possibly incompetence/inexperience.

Sometimes they even letterbox or pillarbox the picture at source and broadcast it non-anamorphically. It's great when they show a widescreen movie letterbox it to 4:3 ratio and then my widescreen TV pillarboxes the picture so that I'm watching a postage stamp with a huge black border all the way around...

Admitedly my parents TV was setup wrong when they first got it and I had to set it to auto-change the aspect, but it still gets it wrong a lot because the broadcasters screw up.

 

[MrWibble]

Even if you had a 1280*720 panel you'd still not get a 1:1 pixel mapping on analog sources because of overscan.

Which is really annoying because if you use analog VGA it can perfectly match the signal up to the pixels, so I really don't get why component can't do exactly the same. Strikes me that overscan is just a hangover from the bad-old-days of broadcasting and really should have been shot in the head with HD.

It's true though - if I output the same 1280x720 picture on both component and VGA to the same monitor, VGA is pixel perfect and component is a scaled, offset, overscanned mess... it's not even at the proper aspect ratio anymore either...

Fortunately for my home system everything in the signal path is digital until it gets turned into light.

 

[emacs]

Now, see, scaling. That's another pet hate I have with it. Since widescreen TVs appeared here in Old Blighty, people watch deformed TV

there are some media (DVD films for example) that do send the appropriate signal to the display device which results in the correct aspect ratio. i have several films on DVD that do this. i don't think this behaviour is a standard but if it were it's not followed by most. with my Sharp Aquous, i watch 1.33 content with 'sidebar'. with respect to 1.78, 1.85 or 2.35 it's either 'stretch' or 'zoom'. i think other LCD devices have similar viewing options.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Maybe it's just the UK broadcasts that muck it up? DVD's tend to be okay. I think. I know anamorphics work correctly with autoselection by TV programmes don't. But that's the same for Digital Cable as well as Caveman technology.

 

[MrWibble]

Maybe it's just the UK broadcasts that muck it up? DVD's tend to be okay. I think. I know anamorphics work correctly with autoselection by TV programmes don't. But that's the same for Digital Cable as well as Caveman technology.

I'm getting a lot less problems these days than I used to, so maybe they're getting the hang of it. My PC (driving my main display) is better at spotting changes to the aspect than my LCD TV though. It's like the TV (a similar model Samsung to the one in question) doesn't like it when the aspect changes a lot (for example, during the advert breaks) but it's fine if I flick the channels around.

DVDs do usually seem to get the aspect ratio right, but some are incorrectly flagged regarding the frame-rate. If you have a player that wants to reconstitute the fields back into a progressive picture it can't usually rely on the information in the stream and needs to work it out by analysing the picture.

None of this stuff should be all that difficult...