Analog sourced video on non CRT monitors? (1 Viewer)

[Stephen Gladwin]

Analog sourced video on non CRT monitors?

As I was transferring another old VHS of mine to DVD-R I wondered how my DVD-Rs, which are my old VHS (which is an analog source) will look on non CRT displays. I put one of my DVD-Rs in my computer and watched the first few minutes on my LCD computer monitor and can't say I liked what I saw. It seemed the digital compression artifacts were really pumped up and any flaws in the original analog signal were pumped up too, along with a strange flickering of the brightness level.

All of the above uglies are either drastically reduced or not viewable at all on my old CRT TVs. I'm just wondering what the point is of transferring to DVD-R if the displays of the future (DLP Projectors, Plasma, LCD) will make my DVD-Rs look WORSE than the original VHS!

Do some computer monitors as well as some new plasma TVs and LCDs have certain filters or options for analog video sources so they don't worsen the analog picture? **Would an upscaling/upconverting DVD/Blu-Ray player help this problem?

Thanks!

**PS: I'm sorry I double-posted this in the a/v sources room. I didn't see this room first, and I can't delete my old post!

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Your problem isn't CRT vs. non-CRT monitor technology - it is HD display vs. non-HD. And a matter of calibrated vs. non-calibrated displays.

1) In order to accurately reproduce video signals a monitor needs to be properly adjusted. I wouldn't judge anything by a computer monitor, because they aren't really designed for watching television and very few people run Digital Video Essentials or Avia II Guide to Home Theater on their computer monitors.

2) Without such calibration any monitor is going to make any SD source (including SD DVD and SD cable) look bad. The lower the original source resolution, the worse the image will look scaled up. In the early days of DVD many people complained about "digital compression artificats" that were no such thing - they were just bad images caused by the factory settings on most TVs. (DVD actually looked worse than VHS on many sets.)

3) It isn't that the DVR-Rs look worse than the original VHS. The VHS tapes would look just as bad on those new TVs - not because they are non-CRT, but because they are HD.

As for the point of transferring your old tapes to optical discs - Those DVD-Rs will likely out last your tapes, they don't wear out with every replay and they aren't subject to damage by electromagnetic fields. They will perserve your memories - at least until the next format comes along.

Calibrate your TVs and try watching the DVD-Rs again. They will never look great, because the source material simply doesn't have the resolution. They look good on your old SD TVs because they are just as low res as the tapes.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Stephen Gladwin]

That's encouraging news Joseph!

So what you are saying is that with careful calibration with software like Avia, an HD display device like LCD or plasma or a DLP projector could display my old VHS (or DVD-Rs of the old VHS) nearly as well as my old CRT TVs? Would simple adjustments to brightness/contrast help make the HD displays display the VHS better?

Ideally, of course, I'd like them to display just as well. Is this where a DVD or Blu-Ray player that can upconvert would come in handy? That is, when I buy a hi-def display and I want the optimal picture quality out of my DVD-Rs (again, sourced from my VHS), I could also buy a new DVD player or Blu-Ray player that would upconvert the DVD-R image to 720p or 1080p or whatever? Would that make the DVD-R image (remember, it's sourced from a VHS) look as good as it would on a CRT?

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

An LCD, DLP or Plasma set is already scaling all inputs to its native resolution (720p, 768p, or 1080p.) Such sets are incapable of displaying anything other than their native resolution. Whether the set or an upconverting DVD player does a better job at this depends on the particular set and player. I have a JVC LCoS RP set (similar to DLP or LCD RP) and a Sony upconverting DVD player. I can't tell the difference between the scaler in the player and that in the TV. To my eye the picture looks the same regardless of which I use.

But there is a limit to what upconversion can do. All the set (or the player) can do is examine each pixel in two adjacent lines of an image and "guess" what would appear in the "missing" lines at higher resolution, then create those pixels. The reuslt can be very impressive if the source is a very clear 480p DVD image. But if it is a 240-line interlaced VHS image, there's a lot less actual information to work with and a lot more guess work to fill in many more lines. The final result is going to reflect that.

So, no, your old tape-sourced material is probably never going to look "just as good" as it does on an old SD TV, just as an aging actor or actress is never going to look as good shot with a clear lens as when shot through a silk stocking or a film of petroleum jelly to soften the image and hide the wrinkles.

The higher-resolution sets are going to continue to show the flaws inherent in the original material - flaws that are hidden by the low resolution of your old TV. This is the downside of the march of progress.

When the producers of ST: DS9 did their "Tribbles" episode, which featured new footage intercut with the TOS "Trouble with Tribbles", they were amazed to discover things like brush strokes in the set paint and coffee stains on Spock's uniform clearly visible in the original film. That wasn't a problem in 1967, because on a low-res broadcast monitor the flaws simply disappeared. But on modern equipment, even SD TVs, these things were clearly visible. They spent a lot of extra money digitally cleaning up the old footage to bring it up to modern standards.

Similarly when local stations went to HD they found that the sets for all their news and other "live" shows had to be seriously upgraded. "Brick" background walls (really wallpaper or vacuum-formed plastic) that had looked convincing at SD resolutions stood out as obvious fakes, scratches and pencilled notes on the news desks became visible and the entire make-up plans of shows had to be completely redone because of what the HD cameras picked up.

Regards,

Joe