1080p Question (1 Viewer)

[timNGY]

Panny 900 owner here. When the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD players come out in the near future, can they be hooked up to the current 720p LCD/DLP projectors? Will they be able to downconvert or only output 1080p? Thanks.

 

[Shane Harg]

Yes. It will all be done by HDMI 1.3, which is entirely backward compatible and through which your projector will communicate with the player telling it, in effect, that it can only accept a signal of up to 1080i. Most likely, however, you will be able to set your player to send the best signal your projector can accept.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Of course. I don't know why Shane mentions HDMI version, that's not relevant. Your display should scale everything to it's native 720p rate just fine, and in addition the players should have downscaling capability as well. It's really no different than current HD 1080 sources into your display.

 

[Shane Harg]

It is my understanding that the signals will be output from Blu-Ray and HD players via HDMI 1.3 only. I could be mistaken, but since the Panasonic is only 1.1 compatible, it would then become very relevant.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Your understanding is not correct, you may be confusing audio output options where native high-res DD/DTS versions can be accomodated by 1.3, but that's kind of a moot point since you can go PCM output currently with 1.1.

All versions of DVI and HDMI are fully capable of video output at 1080p, though you will need HDCP compliance, which all HDMI gives, but some older DVI inputs do not have.

 

[timNGY]

Thanks for the reply. I just thought the Panasonic 900 and most other 720p projectors could only accept 1080i, not 1080p of the new Blu-Ray/HD-DVD players.

And how about the content on the new DVDs. Are they encoded in 1080i OR 1080p?

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Depends, but a lot of content will be 1080p native.

 

[Arthur S]

Interestingly enough, the first round of HD DVD players from Toshiba will be limited to outputting 720p/1080i.

The Blu Ray players will output 1080p.

 

[Allan Jayne]

I'm pretty sure the new HD DVD's are natively 1080i (@30 frames per second) or 1080p@24 or 1080p@30 depending on the source material. It is a no-brainer to make the latter two into 1080i for the majority of today's TV's, although not a no-brainer to turn their converted namesakes back into what they were originally or turn them into 1080p@60.

How the players make 720p out of any 1080i HD DVD content remains an unknown. It is still possible that on some makes and models the result could be short of high definition. If you have a 720p TV (or projector) you will want to compare the picture quality using 1080i output (the TV converts it to 720p) or 720p output (the player converts it to 720p).

Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/hdtvnot.htm

 

[timNGY]

Take a look at this very good article about Toshiba's HD-DVD player. Looks like the Panasonic 900, among others, was able to connect flawlessly. As most new user have been saying and also the reviewer, looks like its better to feed 1080 (let projector rescale to 720p). Ohhhhh......so tempting or should I wait for Blu-Ray, and see who wins.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/hd-dvd.htm