should I get a progressive scan player at all? (1 Viewer)

[shankar]

I've been meaning to get a prog. scan player. Then I keep reading that the line doubler in my TN61X81 is so

good that I may not see much of a difference with a prog.scan player. Is that true?

My real needs are for a good player that'll play VCD's CD-R's and preferebly a multi disk changer.

I can get a sony DVD player for free with the sony card points. Should I get the NS700P or a ES series

non-prog scan DVDchanger?

Pl. suggest.

Thanks.

 

[Clinton McClure]

If your monitor can accept a progresive signal, get a progressive player. Your eyes will thank you.

(It might be a good idea as well to go to an A/V shop and check out progressive players and see for yourself before you buy one.)

 

[Marc Rochkind]

I have a Toshiba 56X81 that I used first without and then with a progressive-scan player. There was a definite (although small) improvement, which I found amazing since the picture was already fantastic to begin with.

Considering that these days progressive scan costs very little more, I would definitely get it if I were buying a new player for other reasons.

 

[John Sully]

I have a TW40X81 and have used both a regular (Sony S7000) and now a progressive scan (Denon DVM-4800) player. While the line doubler in the X81 Toshiba's is very good, it lacks 3:2 pulldown detection. This can result in "jaggies" when film sourced material is fed to the internal doubler. A progessive scan player results in a much smoother appearance to diagonals and is worth the extra few dollars it costs to get a progressive scan player.

--John

 

[Nicholas A. Gallegos]

You'll probably want to go with the 700P, because the only Sony DVD player in the ES line is the 9000ES, which is a single-disc player (and it also retails for $1500 or so).

Another good model if you need to get Sony is the 900, which has ES-like construction with progressive scan, multichannel SACD playback, and built-in DD/DTS decoders. The 900 is also a single-disc player. Retails for about $1000.

 

[shankar]

Thank you all.
I'll get the 700P.
Shankar

 

[ciriaco]

I am presently using a Pansonic CV51 5-DVD player and using a Silicon Image DVDO iScan Pro video processor to convert the signal to progressive scan. This is then sent to a Sony 10VHT projector.
I also feed S-Video(satellite) and composite (VHS) through the DVDO.
I don't have'nt have a need for a progressive player since the DVDO does the trick. The added benefit is that I can watch satellite and VHS with better quality. Keep in mind I project this on to a 120" screen.
So, you can go progressive but if you have a large screen and want to enhance the video of VHS and Satellite, a line doubler is something to consider.
Good Luck.

 

[Mike I]

Progressive scan will always give you a superior picture to a hd ready sets internal line doubler evan if the internal line doubler does a 3.2 pull down..

With progressive scan the 3.2 pulldown is accomplished in the digital domain using the frame flags encoded in the dvd's mpeg bitstream..

Advantages of progressive conversion

Line doublers are used in other high-end home entertainment systems to provide progressive scanning. These may be stand-alone devices or incorporated into a digital TV. Impressive as they may be, DVD in-player progressive conversion has three big advantages over line doublers:

1) High precision and stability

A DVD-Video disc mastered from a film holds all the data necessary to produce an accurate progressive image, whereas an external line doubler must take hints from the video source to determine the source material and frame allocation.

2) All-digital conversion minimizes signal degradation

Since the signal from the DVD-Video disc is digital, progressive conversion can be performed digitally inside the player. Signal quality is protected until it leaves the player's analog output. In contrast, a stand-alone or in-TV doubler first receives information from the analog output of the source device then converts this analog signal back to digital for processing. Finally, it must translate the signal back to analog before outputting it. All this back-and-forth translation is much more likely to degrade the signal.

3) Processing is optimized to DVD-Video's high image quality

Line doublers built into digital TV sets are designed to work with a variety of video sources, so their settings are not necessarily ideal for DVD-Video. Progressive conversion is optimized for the high resolution and low noise of the DVD-Video format. This enables the unit to preserve DVD-Video picture quality for display on all screen sizes, from direct-view CRT to projectors.

 

[ciriaco]

You have given me a better appreciation for the progressive scan DVD player versus the stand-alone line doubler.

Before I make my next DVD player purchase I will probably do a side by side comparison. If I go the progressive DVD route then I can just pass VHS and Satellite through the doubler.

Thanks!

Ciriaco

 

[shankar]

Folks,

I finally ended up buying the Toshiba SD3755. I watched 5th element and Everest. It was an awesome picture.

BTW, are there DVD's that are specifically marked prog. scan or all DVD's prog. scan??

 

[Bob McElfresh]

In simple terms: all DVD disks can output Progressive video.

The rows of video are stored as ... rows. A progressive player will pull the rows in natural order: 1,2,3... A ordinary/interlace player will pull the rows in 1,3,5..2,4,6... order.

 

[Dalton]

Shankar,

Look for dvd's that say "Anamorphic Widescreen" or "Enhanced for 16x9 tv's" on the back of the case. These dvd's look the best with progressive scan DVD Players.

 

[JohnHN]

With progressive scan the 3.2 pulldown is accomplished in the digital domain using the frame flags encoded in the dvd's mpeg bitstream..

I wish this were true but it isn't. Take a look at
Link Removed
When progressive players first became available, it was widely reported that players would be able to reconstruct the progressive image simply by reading the flags. This turned out to be false because flags were and are screwed up. The very best deinterlacing solutions -- Sage, SI -- are cadence reading, not flag reading, more or less the same as in your TV. The DVD player still has an advantage in principle because it is doing everything before any analog conversion. So you can hope to see fewer artifacts (mainly a reduction in moire) and possibly higher resolution (the resolution advantage is unfortunately, nullified in currrent model Toshibas, like mine). In practice, the benefits for current model HDs are modest; not zero but not huge like with models a year or so ago. Of course, this depends on the particular TV and DVD player.
I frequently read people claiming big benefits, but with current model HD sets from most manufacturers I am skeptical. The claims are sometimes apples and oranges (the new player in progressive mode vs. the old interlaced player). Sometimes the claims are so strong (elimination of frequent combing or jaggies) that I wonder whether the person's set or DVD player were properly configured. For example, the TV set's deinterlacer could be in forced video mode. The jaggies could be anamorphic downconversion artifacts if the interlaced player was set to 4:3 instead of 16:9, and so on.

 

[Bill Lewis]

Well hey, I was ready to shell out the $$ for a progresive DVD, but now I'm not sure again. My new Sony 40" Wega has a built in line doubler and 3:2 pulldown capability. Will there be a noticable difference between an interlaced and a progressiver DVD player when viewed on the Sony? I am so confused!

 

[JohnHN]

Just getting a new DVD player may be a big improvement, they are evolving rapidly. And if you get a new DVD player, why not make it progressive? But given the timing -- it is already mid March and the new DVD models will start to appear in June and July or so -- you can afford to wait.

As to whether you will see a big difference, the only real way to answer that is to see for yourself. Borrow a progressive set from a friend or go to a store with patience and expertise (some of them don't even know how to wire their equipment together) and switch between progressive and interlaced on the same DVD player. Make sure that everything is set up correctly. Because of differences in black level between interlaced and progressive, you may see differences in color saturation etc; ignore that (those differences just mean that you have to calibrate differently for interlaced vs. progressive).

Instead, look for artifacts; the Secrets article linked above gives you some ideas. The Superspeedway example works well in the sense of showing deinterlacing problems. Another (not on the list) is the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the car drives up to the Ryan farm; the grill tends to break into moire. And another are the CGI shots of Rome in Gladiator, especially the shot that follows nut boy looking at his model of the colliseum.

For resolution, you need to look at resolution patterns on Avia or Video Essentials. Don't just look at normal images, it's too hard to be sure with those. Some people compound this problem by pausing the image, which is terrible because pausing the image changes the way it is displayed.