Sooo... (HDTV in Europe/UK)

[London Geezer]

If you like dvds a lot a big screen hdtv with a momitsu v880 dvd player which upgrades 480 dvd signals to 1080i is pretty sweet.

Its not as good as real hd but its better than 480p dvd... Id look to momitsu when hd dvd comes out and I bet they will have component out for it in 1080i.

They better or panasonic will get an awful nastygram about my component in only hdtv 47".

You have a CRT? The fixed-pixel formats (like DLP and LCD) have their own scalers built-in. Our 720p shows everything at 720p no matter what format you throw at it.

Yeah but the final quality largely depends on what the signal goes through before reaching your display. That DVD player looks like it does a very good job at upscaling the 480p picture up to 1080i, better than the display's own circuitry usually does.

 

[RussSchultz]

Yeah but the final quality largely depends on what the signal goes through before reaching your display. That DVD player looks like it does a very good job at upscaling the 480p picture up to 1080i, better than the display's own circuitry usually does.

Would you rather have your $100 DVD player doing upscaling or your $3000 TV?

Why scale twice when you can scale once?

(But, then again, my HDMI DVD player is sending to my TV at 1080i )

 

[Geo]

Isn't DLP a back-projection and projector technology?

Yes yes yes my god i though i was going mad. So DLP aint flat. But i keep reading Plasma is on the road for extinction... Google might be our friend but some articles i find around the net sound a bit strange to me...

One of the cool things about DLP (yes, I'm a recent convert with the typical zealotry that implies. ), aside from NO BURN IN like you get on a CRT, which is particularly a pain in the ass for dealing with all the 4:3 content you are still going to want to watch, is that the bulb is user-repleacable rather easily. Should last three or four years, then a $200 replacement and the TV is good as new. Try that with CRT or plasma.

And did I mention NO BURN IN? No god-awful stretch mode for 4:3 to avoid burn-in? No angst when you notice that even tho you've been using god-awful stretch mode to avoid BURN IN, that at a certain angle you can now forever see the CNN or FOX logo in a corner of the screen? Oh, I did? Good.

 

[London Geezer]

Would you rather have your $100 DVD player doing upscaling or your $3000 TV?

Why scale twice when you can scale once?

(But, then again, my HDMI DVD player is sending to my TV at 1080i )

I really don't think it's a 100 quid DVD player, but you're right i guess. By the time i have a HDTV i'll have a HDDVD-BlueRay-Hybrid-format-not-sure-what-it'll-be-called player so none of that will matter

 

[London Geezer]

The thing I love about DLP/LCD is NO BURN IN, so you don't have to fuck around with stretch mode (an iq abomination, imho) in order to protect your investment. Oh, and the new one is a table-top model that weighs 150 lbs and fits nicely in a corner (back is corner-shaped), and replaced (We moved 2,000 miles and sold it rather than move it) a 250lb 55" CRT HD that was a huge rectangle monster.

One of the cool things about DLP (yes, I'm a recent convert with the typical zealotry that implies. ), aside from NO BURN IN like you get on a CRT, which is particularly a pain in the ass for dealing with all the 4:3 content you are still going to want to watch, is that the bulb is user-repleacable rather easily. Should last three or four years, then a $200 replacement and the TV is good as new. Try that with CRT or plasma.

And did I mention NO BURN IN? No god-awful stretch mode for 4:3 to avoid burn-in? No angst when you notice that even tho you've been using god-awful stretch mode to avoid BURN IN, that at a certain angle you can now forever see the CNN or FOX logo in a corner of the screen? Oh, I did? Good.

So what's the Burn-in situation with these new DLPs?

 

[Geo]

So what's the Burn-in situation with these new DLPs?

Great! Thanks for asking!

[Okay, maybe you've had to live with stretch mode for a couple years to have an. . .uhh, emotional understanding, of the issue.]

 

[London Geezer]

So what's the Burn-in situation with these new DLPs?

Great! Thanks for asking!

[Okay, maybe you've had to live with stretch mode for a couple years to have an. . .uhh, emotional understanding, of the issue.]

Oh, forgot to ask... What the hell is stretch mode?

 

[RussSchultz]

Oh, forgot to ask... What the hell is stretch mode?

Making a 4x3 image fill up the whole 16x9 display.

Some people are really irritated by the bars on the side. *shrug*

 

[London Geezer]

Oh, forgot to ask... What the hell is stretch mode?

Making a 4x3 image fill up the whole 16x9 display.

Some people are really irritated by the bars on the side. *shrug*

Oh right... Well i'm a maths person, mess up proportions and i crash. So for me it's black bars all the way.

 

[Geo]

Oh, forgot to ask... What the hell is stretch mode?

Making a 4x3 image fill up the whole 16x9 display.

Some people are really irritated by the bars on the side. *shrug*

Well, not quite. See, with the older CRT RP tech you're warned to avoid the bars on the side for extended periods of time in order to prevent. . .oh, you guessed. So you get the choice of the-unnameable-horror or stretch-mode.

That's why those bars are gray instead of black on the CRTs, it is supposed to slow down --but alas, not avoid-- you-know-what. I love the black bars on my DLP.

 

[Ty]

Oh right... Well i'm a maths person, mess up proportions and i crash. So for me it's black bars all the way.

And the quality of the stretch mode varies widely amongst different brands and even stretch modes.

For instance, some stretch modes try to stretch the edges of the screen more and the center little or none at all - so because the camera is aimed at the center of your screen and thus your eyes), you don't really notice things stretched to hell much.

 

[Geo]

Oh right... Well i'm a maths person, mess up proportions and i crash. So for me it's black bars all the way.

And the quality of the stretch mode varies widely amongst different brands and even stretch modes.

For instance, some stretch modes try to stretch the edges of the screen more and the center little or none at all - so because the camera is aimed at the center of your screen and thus your eyes), you don't really notice things stretched to hell much.

That's the one we always used. Sounds great in theory.

Try watching a CNN or Fox or business channel continuous scroll across the bottom tho. Or a sporting event like basketball or football (long pass, punt return) where you have a lot of long horizontal action.

Tho I did occasionally snicker to my wife that many of these anorexic hollywood hotties would be absolutely mortified to see their ass in stretch mode when they are at the edge of a shot.

 

[pax]

If you like dvds a lot a big screen hdtv with a momitsu v880 dvd player which upgrades 480 dvd signals to 1080i is pretty sweet.

Its not as good as real hd but its better than 480p dvd... Id look to momitsu when hd dvd comes out and I bet they will have component out for it in 1080i.

They better or panasonic will get an awful nastygram about my component in only hdtv 47".

You have a CRT? The fixed-pixel formats (like DLP and LCD) have their own scalers built-in. Our 720p shows everything at 720p no matter what format you throw at it.

Yeah but the final quality largely depends on what the signal goes through before reaching your display. That DVD player looks like it does a very good job at upscaling the 480p picture up to 1080i, better than the display's own circuitry usually does.

Oh my tv doesnt upscale but my sat tv receiver does but the 480p signal it gets is so bad it doesnt help out in that respect.

Might not need such a player as the momitsu if your tv upscales.

My tv is a rear projection panasonic 47".

 

[Tahir2]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21597

I posted links to a Plasma that has hi definition capabilities and will most likely be better than the Sony you may have seen londonboy.

Also posted links to the Samsung DLP screen which is 50", HDTV ready, and available now for about £2300.

 

[Geo]

The Sammy DLP's are well regarded.

Now that I've sung the praises of DLP, I will say anyone who is thinking of buying one needs to spend some time figuring out if they will see/be bothered by "the rainbow effect" some people see (and some don't). If you're one of those fast-twitch 120fps-is-soo-much-nicer-than-115fps types you might be driven batty by Rainbow Effect (it comes from having a spinning color wheel doing the heavy lifting on making color).

My wife is a TV engineer, and she can see it at times but it doesn't bother her. Only way to know for sure is spending time with the exact model you are thinking of purchasing. She saw it much more in some other models at the showroom.

 

[JaylumX]

If i remember correctly before the BBC premiere or more accurate fueled the digital TV revolution, there was internal debate as to whether there should be HiDef broadcast. It all came to nowt however since HiDef nicks about 4 times more bandwidth than normal broadcast. They could do it but that would have reduced the number of channels available since airwaves or whatever its called bandwidth is pretty scarce. Until the UK broadcast find a way to get superior compression without loss of image quality or increase the bandwidth we may not see HDTV for a long time. And even when it starts getting integrated the move is gonna be slow. Just look at the Digital revolution over here. It took a while to get there but its still not enough and ITV Digital did not help matters at all.

 

[London Geezer]

If you're one of those fast-twitch 120fps-is-soo-much-nicer-than-115fps types you might be driven batty by Rainbow Effect .

Well i guess i'm safe then, can't get any more batty than i already am

 

[RussSchultz]

If i remember correctly before the BBC premiere or more accurate fueled the digital TV revolution, there was internal debate as to whether there should be HiDef broadcast. It all came to nowt however since HiDef nicks about 4 times more bandwidth than normal broadcast. They could do it but that would have reduced the number of channels available since airwaves or whatever its called bandwidth is pretty scarce. Until the UK broadcast find a way to get superior compression without loss of image quality or increase the bandwidth we may not see HDTV for a long time. And even when it starts getting integrated the move is gonna be slow. Just look at the Digital revolution over here. It took a while to get there but its still not enough and ITV Digital did not help matters at all.

ATSC (HTDV in the US) doesn't use 4x the bandwidth for HDTV vs. NTSC. It uses the same bandwidth, better. Matter of fact, within the same 6Mhz of an NTSC signal, 2 1080i signals can be broadcast.

 

[JaylumX]

If i remember correctly before the BBC premiere or more accurate fueled the digital TV revolution, there was internal debate as to whether there should be HiDef broadcast. It all came to nowt however since HiDef nicks about 4 times more bandwidth than normal broadcast. They could do it but that would have reduced the number of channels available since airwaves or whatever its called bandwidth is pretty scarce. Until the UK broadcast find a way to get superior compression without loss of image quality or increase the bandwidth we may not see HDTV for a long time. And even when it starts getting integrated the move is gonna be slow. Just look at the Digital revolution over here. It took a while to get there but its still not enough and ITV Digital did not help matters at all.

ATSC (HTDV in the US) doesn't use 4x the bandwidth for HDTV vs. NTSC. It uses the same bandwidth, better. Matter of fact, within the same 6Mhz of an NTSC signal, 2 1080i signals can be broadcast.

Hmmmmm.....Either we brits are behind or the broadcasters don't feel that the British public is in need of HDTV [the latter feels more plausible considering that we Brits are generally tight-fisted...i'm no exception]. Mind you when i read the article it was around 5 years ago, maybe things have changed now and have a better compression format. Eitherway it was good to know that from you brother.

EDIT: I just noticed something. You mentioned the 1080i. Do you yanks broadcast in progressive Scan mode as well or just interlaced, just to quench my curiousity.

 

[Geo]

Don't you Brits have to pay a license to watch TV or somesuch? I rather suspect this comes into the equation. Someone must have figured out to support the transition (both types of broadcast being made, and a substantial investment in new broadcast equipment, camera, etc) you'd have to raise the rate on everyone's license by "x" for "y" years to make the conversion --and then immediately had heart palpitations at the result. Visions of unrest in the streets, governments falling, etc.

Broadcast is typically 1080i. Tho I seem to recall reading somewhere an ABC guy holding out for 720p. Or was it 1080p?

Edit: Oh, ABC did go for 720p --http://abc.go.com/site/hdtvfaq.html

Edit2: Some analysis: http://www.satelliteguys.us/archive/index.php/t-38184.html