EDTV vs HDTV - how noticable is difference on 100" projected screen? (1 Viewer)

[Will Cunningham]

Hi,

I was recently discussing the differences between EDTV and HDTV projectors. He has an old infocus EDTV projector with a native resolution of 852x480. He is contemplating upgrading to a 1280x720 full HDTV projector. He asked me a question about it and I did not have a good answer so I got curious about it.

He was wondering how detectable the difference is, the thought being that seating distance and the size of the projected image would have a large impact on how sharp the image would look. At almost double the number of pixels making up the image, I have to believe that the difference would be signfigant for HDTV content.

I do imagine that there is a cut-off at some screensize/seating distance combination where the difference is insignfigant, and other combos where it is very obvious.

The particular's of my friends situation is to have the seating at about 12 feet from the screen and for the screen to be in the 80"-100" range. It is difficult to know when to upgrade sometimes, things can be so subjective in this industry that it is hard to seperate the hype from the real deals. As I said before I can't imagine the image not looking better on an HDTV projector...but will it go from "ok" to "spectacular" or will it go from "spectaular" to 'a-little-better-than-spectacular"?

Anyone have any suggestions? I found a couple of articles talking about it refering to 42" plasma's but nothing really about large projected images.

Thanks!

 

[Jim Mcc]

I have the X1 projector hooked up to a DVD player, HD satellite, and an OTA antenna for HD. There definitely is a noticeable improvement between ED and HD. On a scale of 5, I would say it will go from a 3 to a 5. The bigger the screen, the more improvement you will notice. It is definitely worth upgrading to a 720p projector, especially with HD DVD's in the picture.

 

[BrianNorman]

^^^^^^^^^

not what he was asking. from what i have seen in the hd units there is a noticable difference in the hd picture from upgrading to a hd projector, however if you are watching a non hd source the improvement is not that noticable. reason being the same as why upscaling dvd players don't work that well.. it is hard to upgrade a bad signal..

 

[Philip Hamm]

The question is too vague, there are no answers

Will the picture be sharper? Yes. Will he notice on that size screen? Yes. Will it be a big enough difference to justify the expense? Nobody can answer that for your friend.

Personally I have no interest in upgrading my X1, ever. For everything I project I'm compltelty satisfied.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

It all depends on your viewing ratio.

How many screenwidths away will you be?

 

[Will Cunningham]

He should be two screen lengths away. Unfortunately it is a vauge question by nature, which is why it is so difficult to find information about it. I consider the difference between standard def TV and HDTV to be a very dramatic difference. My friend said that he saw a dramatic difference betweeen standard def TV and HDTV signals scaled and displayed on an EDTV projector. He is wondering if he would see a similar jump in quality upgrading from EDTV projector to one that does HDTV natively.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

At two SW, I would say yes. I continue to see screen door/structure visibility on non-softened and sharply focused 720p displays out to about 2xSW, so if you want to avoid that and have an immersive and more natural and film-like presentation at 2SW, I would shoot for a 720p digital display if possible. With something like CRT, you wouldn't need to go as high in resolution because they're softer by nature, and 720p can support maybe 1xSW from CRT while that would way too close IMO for 720p digital.