Will HD Players show SD-DVD as we've never seen before?? (natively) (1 Viewer)

We all know that SD-DVD never realized its full potential in the progressive video department.

Discs are mostly encoded at 480p but all MPEG decoders in DVD players decode it at 480i leaving us with a variety of good and bad scalers to take that 480i video and take it back up to 480p again. Was this showing us the native 480p on the disc? No way! There were still artefacts galore.

The question is if the HD-players (Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) actually decoded NTSC 480/30p DVDs as 480/30p (and then you tell the player what to do with it from there like taking it up to 1080/30p). I'd assume this would be the best our SD-DVDs will ever look since the P/I - I/P converstions would be eliminated.

What do you think?

Mike

Early feedback on the Toshiba player sounds like upscaling of SD DVDs is similar to existing upconverting players.

Right now I am too bowled over by the Phantom of the Opera HD-DVD in 1080i via component video to spin up a standard definition disc...*

But I'll see what I can scrounge up for a comparision. I have a couple of duplicate SD titles that I can feed through the same video path, the only difference that one player is upscaling, the other is the Toshiba.

And I'll have to do an A/B comparison between Phantom and Samurai--HD vs. SD.

But I've got a lot of play time first! This is the coolest toy I've gotten since the Toshiba 2006 back in 1997!

- Steve

* Yes, that means no ICT flag for Warner this go-around.

Great news, Steve, thanks!

I'm really looking forward to watching PHANTOM in High Def. It was one of my favorite movies of 2004.

Those used to HTPCs with ever improving software, going back to TheaterTek (1.0) a few years back & many others since, with the option of incorporating programs like FFD Show will no doubt tell you "SD" DVD can look so good without throwing money at an expensive machine that will be outdated soon after Santa brings whatever is new on the PC front at that time.

I thought that every DVD is actually encoded at 480i as 480p would be incompatible with the DVD standard and every DVD player out there.

If it ain't HD, it ain't HD.

- Steve

Congrats, Steve!
Have you posted in the "HD-DVD Players at Home" thread?

My .02 cents on DVD playback;
In DVD comparison reviews (shootouts), I've noticed that the player with the better video DAC usually won. The player with a 12-bit/108MHz DAC would review (score) better than a player with a 12-bit/54MHz DAC.

Back in the day (no longer) I noticed that CD (or DVD) players with HDCD filters would out score CD (or DVD) players for audio quality, at the same price points.

It always comes down to execution (engineering). You can have the greatest parts in the world with poor engineering and just have an OK unit or you can have an excellant design with OK parts, that is fantastic.

I look for the HD on DISC players to be very good DVD players for the money.

No, while at DeLuxe in 2003 for the HTF trip, I was talking to a DVD authorer and he told me films were all done at 480p. Then he went on to show me on his computer screen the encoded resolution and there was a little 480p marker in the bottom corner of the screen. I guess I can't get any more closer to the truth than that.

Mike

If only they were all stored progressively. I still run into DVDs that have flagging errors and therefore deinterlacing errors. The most obvious examples I've seen lately were the Futurama seasons where thier mouths would constantly deinterlace improperly while they talked. It's still vital to get a DVD player with a high quality deinterlacer.

If the DVDs were encoded at 480p, how are the images stored? To take the same amount of bandwidth film based material would have to be stored at 480p 30fps which wouldn't work (since every fith frame would repeat). If 480p were stored at 60fps it'd take twice the bandwidth. As far as I know 24fps storage for the HD formats is just now being introduced. The only logical way the 480p frames can be stored is in the 480i 60fps 3:2 format.

Warning! Hearsay & rumours to follow.
I can not prove this without going back to a WSR issue in '98. Which, I am not going to do tonight. So if anyone can dispute this...
Please do.

I believe I also heard DVD was 480p.
The first I heard this, was that some guy's, I mean mates, down under, were doing SDI mods. They took the data straight off the disc. It was promoted as a line doubler.
Again, correct me if I'm in any way incorrect.
And even if you can not disprove it...
Take this with a ton of sea salt!!!

Just an FYI....

The SD upconversion of the Toshiba HD player is outstanding and as good as higher priced players.

Yeah, I heard the upconversion is great. The only real problem with the SD-DVD performance is that does a poor job deinterlacing. So as long as your DVD were authored with all the flags correct, they should look great.

I watched a handful of titles on the A1 before I got my HD-DVD disks last night, the upconversion is excellent. One person over at AVS said it even beats out the highly regarded OPPO.

I watched a few upconverted discs (I actually got my HD DVDS Saturday with the player) last night and think they look terrific! And I'm not having sound issues I've read others are having - the sounds CRANKS out of my bedroom setup unlike any player before.

I'll say that the SD upconversion on the A-1 is fantastic - it blows my last upconverting player out of the water (although that was a cheap Sony, so beating it probably wasn't very hard). I might even go so far as to say that movies like Revenge of the Sith are almost indistinguishable from the HD films I picked up.

I'm almost afraid to put in STAR WARS, lest I see how nasty the transfer really is!

Nah, while some movies look TERRIBLE (behold the horror of Beauty and the Beast!), the Star Wars OT (and Sith) look great. Just don't put in Phantom Menace... not that you'd want to anyway.

Good deal!

John I put in RotS last night and it looks near HD quality, very, very, impressive, too bad it's too painful to sit through.


Jordan, have you spun any Warner HD-DVDs yet? These are the disks that you'll notice are recorded at a lower db and you'll need to up your volume +10 or so to bring your listening level to where it normally is with SD-DVD.