Very provocative news folks, DVi (digital video interface) hits DVD in June! (1 Viewer)

[Inspector Hammer!]

For those of us with HD monitors that feature a digital-in terminal, get ready to be excited, Samsung is releasing a line of DVD players in June that will feature the DVi interface that will upconvert DVD from it's native 480p to 720p and 1080i!

Best thing about this is, to me at least, is that no digital to analog conversion will take place before the image reaches your monitor, the process will take place solely in the digital realm, which will translate to a dvd image that will be purely digital, imagine seeing DVD in it's original digital form!

The cable required for this is a 29 pin cable that will deliver the signals in full bandwidth and uncompressed! Also, and this is a relief, the players will also feature a progressive DCDi package by Faroudia, i'd hate to give that up and I know you would too.

I have no idea what this means for the future of DVD, but it should make the wait for HD DVD a hell of a lot more tolerable I think. I can't wait to see what this does for my DVD's folks! I'm all over this player when it's released, it's going to retail for 349. plus change and the only DVi cable i've seen is from Monster and starts at 80 bucks for a three footer, 100 bucks for a 6 footer, and 130 bucks for a 13 footer which is what i'll need, but no sweat.

I've always sucked at delivering news here, most of the time it's old news or someone has beaten me to it, but I wanted to share anyway just in case ya know.

 

[MikeM]

Honestly, I don't think you'll notice any difference at all.

Most HDTV ready displays can already do this upconversion for you. Thus, the only real difference will be the "potential" for a quality bump with all the video being converted in the digital domain.

I call this a "potential", because I have a HD Display with DVI input, and a HDTV decoder box (Sony HD200) which can output in both DVI and Component out. The summary was that I couldn't tell any difference at all between the output of DVI and component, on HD material which was "low-res" at either 480i, 480p, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a quality bump, but in my experience, it just didn't happen.

 

[John-Miles]

DVI is an evil marketing tool designed to control your viewing habits. it will just end up costing us all more money in the end.

and the big push for dvi? so that signals cannot be copied blah so what happens when someone makes a HD-DVD burner that features DVI? or when god forbid video cards come out with DVI???? OMG we woudl ahve wasted all this money for what?

sorry my rant is over, sounds like a cool player John, but i wont be buying one.

 

[TimG]

Well, it will have more impact for those that have a projector with larger screens then it will for rptv owners and direct-view sets. That being said I am going to get one when they come out. Will only run it to the Sony 32 inch, as my projector won't take dvi. The difference has been compared to using a progressive player instead of an interlaced one on a HD ready tv, small difference, but noticable. We also don't have a progressive player yet, so it is worth the extra money to upgrade.

TimG

 

[Jerry Gracia]

Most HDTV ready displays can already do this upconversion for you.

Mine doesn't.

 

[Rachael B]

Does DVI only carry the picture info, or does it carry pic and sound, or can you choose? It would not be optimum for me to use DVI if the sound went to the monitor.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

DVI will only carry the video signal, not audio. A newer revision of DVI called HDMI will be able do both. So how do you like that? Your DVI-capable devices are already getting obsoleted before you even use DVI.

Anyway, I agree that DVI probably will make no noticeable/useful difference for a large majority of HDTV owners. Probably, only users of very large displays w/ long cable runs and/or video setups that use deinterlacing/scaling/upconversion on the display side will benefit. These would include fixed-pixel displays, CRT displays that force upconversion and probably also the zooming/scaling of non-16x9 images on 16x9 displays.

In large part, Samsung is probably pushing DVI on the new players to compliment their line of DLP-based RPTVs.

Admittedly, DVI will likely become more of a factor for PQ as the industry progresses in its adoption of fixed-pixel display technologies.

_Man_

 

[Thomas_Berg]

DVI is an evil marketing tool designed to control your viewing habits. it will just end up costing us all more money in the end.
and the big push for dvi? so that signals cannot be copied blah so what happens when someone makes a HD-DVD burner that features DVI? or when god forbid video cards come out with DVI???? OMG we woudl ahve wasted all this money for what?

DVI has become a standard feature on most gaming video cards since October. my GF4 ti4200 has VGA, DVI, and s-video outputs.

until recently, i had a large 19" CRT monitor that used the VGA output from the GF4, and i thought it was great. then, i moved to an 18" LCD that had both VGA and DVI inputs. i stuck to VGA for awhile, then out of the blue decided to try the DVI cable. all i can say is WOW! i really didnt expect much of a difference, but the video really is crisper and the text appears much cleaner than before. DVI is a good thing and will offer us (in the HT field) a way to improve the quality of our visuals by keeping them in a truly digital form from disc to display.

component video will always be good, but IMO, DVI is the future of display connectors.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Actually, he's more concerned about DVI/HDCP than DVI itself. I don't think you'd really want DVI/HDCP on your computer either, but the MPAA is pushing for that also(!). Their paranoia about piracy and desire for complete content distribution control are driving all this.

_Man_

 

[John Kotches]

John Williammson,

DVI is a 29 pin cable, not 15 pin.

DVI single link cables come in three forms:
DVI-D, has pins for digital transmission only.
DVD-A, has pins for analog transmission only (quite rare).
DVI-I, has pins for both digital and analog transmission.

Here's a look at the various types of DVI cables, courtesy of DataPro's website:




Regards,

 

[John Kotches]

Man-Fai,

This depends on where DVI is used.

If the use of DVI is strictly for a source --> display path I have no problem with that.

If you look at the latest gen OTA Box from Samsung (SIR-T165), it has Firewire for capturing OTA to a PVR and/or a D-VHS deck and DVI as a display interface.

The same is true of the HD-PVRs shown by Dish Network at CES 2003.

So if used strictly as a display interface, I think it's an excellent solution.

Regards,

 

[Dwight Amato]

I have to admit, I do not understand the use of this product. I do not see how adding information that is not there, even in the digital domain, can give you a 'better' picture. I have heard several people complain about Toshiba's upconverting all 480P signals to 540P. This is one of the reasons I went with my Panny over the Tosh, I wanted to see the movie without any added nonsense.

I could see if your set converted everything to 1080i, like the JVC's, where it would be better to have the DVD player do it in the digital domain. The only other reason I could see using this DVD player to display Avia or Essentials to calibrate your 1080i settings. Beyond that, I hardly see how the picture will look better.

When I take my HD Tuner and take a regular 480 signal and upconvert it to 1080i, I do not see any difference at all. I bet if I had the right equipment to measure I would see a worse picture in fact (artifacts, etc).

Give me a true HD DVD, and give me more HDTV programming. Enough of this up converting...

 

[Michael Mathius]

Here is some more information about this player.

And here is some more info about its big brother.

Since I don't have $1500 to spend on a dvd player I will definately be getting the 931 instead.

 

[Han]

Not to generalize too much, but I will. Shouldn't Samsung concentrate on reliability in their products rather than features? Everytime I turn around, Samsung is pushing something *new* that other companies haven't rolled out yet. Then I flip to one of those sites with a bunch of consumer reviews, and those products get a higher percentage of complaints than other manufacturers typically get.

 

[Brent Hutto]

Shouldn't Samsung concentrate on reliability in their products rather than features?

Microsoft has a few billion dollars in the bank arguing against that theory...

 

[Todd_RIC]

Brent... that's WAY too funny. ;-)

 

[Ian Montgomerie]

Don't expect DVI to do the same for the looks of a DVD as it does for a computer video card. Computer video cards push out much more data - higher resolution plus higher refresh rate. They push analog cables much more toward their limits.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

This is what I want from this player, the ability to see my dvd's digitally and uncompressed. That's all I ask, so as I said i'll be getting this player for those two reasons alone.

 

[Craig_Kg]

Has anyone here considered digital projectors? DVI would mean that there is no D->A->D processing from the player to the projection device (LCD or DLP).

 

[Ray Chuang]

You might want to know that there is a competing standard for digital signal connections to a large-screen TV that uses the IEEE-1394 (aka. FireWire) connection.

I actually prefer the IEEE-1394 connection since you only need a single thin cable (much thinner than the DVI cables I've seen) to connect your HD tuner, HD-DVD player, or HDTV satellite receiver to the large-screen TV. This sure cuts out on the excessive tangle of wires, a big problem with setting up home theater systems.