Any news of when Australia get in on the act? (1 Viewer)

[BrettisMckinney]

I gotta tell ya, guys are making me so jealous! It really sucks living in Australia. I want a HD-DVD sooo bad. I've stopped buying SD-DVD's now but I have no idea when the Toshiba or any units are finally coming over. I cant find details anywhere. Only that a laptop is here that has one but no software is sold anywhere yet. Whoopti-do..a laptop!

My projector is just aching for a HD-DVD..you guys are so lucky :frowning:

 

[Paul Cordingley]

Mate, I felt exactly the same. So, I said bugger it and just ordered one. As soon as it was in stock, I had it a week later. Bought a $120 power converter from Dick Smith, and me and my Panasonic AE700 have been in HEAVEN since.

Everyone who sees it gasps, both at the picture and the sound. I used to order all my premium DVD's from the U.S. anyway (to preserve 24fps frame rate), so it's all the same to me - and HD DVD's aren't expensive. We've got 17 titles on our shelf here, with a steady stream (7 shipping as we speak!).

It's like '98 all over again - it's wonderful.

 

[BrettisMckinney]

Hey Paul! That's awesome! Hey do you think you could pm me or something with some details. I'd love to know where you bought it from and where your getting your titles as well. I also have the AE700. Im pretty happy with it but cant wait to see HD on it! You must be running some hours on it now

 

[Cees Alons]

Paul, good for you!

May I ask what did you pay for shipping? And which carrier (there seem to be big price differences among the different carriers)?

As you may guess: I'm looking into doing the same you did myself.


Cees

 

[Paul Cordingley]

I bought the player from Robert at Value Electronics, for $499 including shipping and two free HD DVD's. From there, a (now defunct!) company called "Shop The States" sent it to me for AU$160, and it only took a few days!

So, in all, with power converter, shipping, two movies and the player itself, it cost almost exactly AU$1000. Consider that my first DVD player, the Panasonic A350 back in '98 cost me exactly AU$1500, and I thought *that* was a good buy ;-)

 

[Cees Alons]

Paul,

I agree!

Back in 1997 I bought a Toshiba DVD-player (it still works, although banned to the bedroom now) and the amounts of money were roughly the same.


Cees

 

[BrettisMckinney]

Hey Paul. Can you tell me how the panny handles it? Can you tell a big difference between standard def? I would also be interest in your thoughts on the projector. As in what colour mode you use or settings. Im having a bit of trouble calibrating mine. Im never happy with it.

Currently its running in Normal mode with color temp -2 and colour -6. Im getting some light flicker issues too. Maybe im too picky haha

 

[Paul Cordingley]

Can you tell a big difference on the Panasonic AE700 between SD and HD

HELL YES !!!!

The panny takes 1080i, bobs it into 540p then scales that to 720p. Sounds nasty, right? It made me think twice before waiting for the HD-A1 when I heard its 720p output was poor (it is). Still, let me tell you - every line of those 540 carry real information, and add that to 1280 horizontal lines and the difference is night and day.

It's quite fun to know that as good as the image looks, it's going to look even BETTER on the Panasonic AE1100 (or 1300, or whatever the 1080p model will be).

Exciting times!

As for your calibration, can't help you - each unit is different. Fix flicker by going into the service mode (hold down the select button on OSD for 10 seconds - the service menu appears, go to flicker adjustment)

 

[BrettisMckinney]

Maybe you can quickly help me understand. Where does the 540p come from? I figuered that setting the player to 1080i..the panny would just scale down to its native 720p. WHy does it output 540? Sorry im not completely up with the tech.

I have done the flicker check through the service menu..was a while ago though. Mine is more of a light issue. Eveynow and then its as if it gets brighter, then fades in a 1-2 sec phase. Kinda fustrating. Ive read on forums before it stops after maybe 150 hrs or so. Some have said running for 10 hrs straight on HIGH power got rid of it. Tried that on the wknd to no avail. Oh well.

Im glad it looks good though. I cant wait. And a 1080 version of this projector would be awesome!

 

[Sam Davatchi]

Being in Europe I would like to know how they will handle the HD-DVD Blu-ray material outside of US. I'm mainly interested to know the frame rates they are going to use.

I thought HD would be a standard but we are still stuck with basically what is a PAL HD and NTSC HD format! The resolution is standard but the frame rate is not standard.

I watch HDTV here and it's 50hz, so it's basically PAL HD! If for the discs here they use 24p, it would be great. It would be a major change and kind of the end of importing for us.

 

[Cees Alons]

That's a common error, you find almost *everywhere*.

One solution to change a 1080i image into a 1080p one (which is TOTALLY UNNECESSARY if the monitor can handle 1080i) is to "bob" the image. This must be done if all one has access to is the "video out" of a 1080i system if one and WANTS 1080p.

Bobbing involves producing alternating images (the odd and even parts of the interleaved image) with a doubled number of lines (thus each odd, followed by an even image is now a full 1080p image). The resulting effect presents the odd and even information alternating to the eye, but because of the "cumulation", it looks a bit softer.

Note however that the horizontal resolution is totally intact and that the vertical resolution isn't really destroyed either, just "blurred" a little bit.

The resulting image is FAR BETTER than a 540p image, but people who like to say so go on calling it "540p".

It isn't. Most people who have seen the resulting image with their own eyes state that it's much better than 540p and much closer to 1080 (i or p) in PQ than to 540p.

Bottom line though: if you can handle 1080i, don't convert a 1080i-image to 1080p, because both have exactly the same image PQ-wise.


Cees

 

[Sam Davatchi]

Could you please explain why? Because with normal DVDs, people's televisions can surly show the 480i image but people still convert it to 480p.

 

[Cees Alons]

Sam,

The image "doesn't know" how it was transferred. Even if the vertical lines were transmitted bottom up - and landed on the right spot in the image, of course - the image would be exactly the same as when they were transferred top down one after each other (progressive) or top down, odd lines first and then even lines (interleaved). Key question is: if they land in the right spot the image is exactly the same!

Only when a timing factor is involved (like real time TV or home video recorders do), an interleaved image could be slightly "problematic" (motion artifacts) - but not much BTW. And in this case the possible effects get worse if you try to convert the interleaved image to progressive!

However, when film is the original source (as is the case with movie DVDs), each original film frame is scanned in total and it doesn't matter how it is transferred to your monitor: as long as the monitor places the individual lines at the right spot.

The notion that "p" is always better than "i" is basically a urban myth and certainly not supported by people-in-the-know (just ask the likes of Gregg Loewen or Michael TLV).


Cees

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Put it this way : a progressive-scanned image has a better percieved image quality than an interlace-scanned image with the same field rate, owing to the absence of certain visual artefacts. A photographic plate pressed against the screen would register no difference on a still image such as a film frame. This only applies, however, to scanning displays such as CRT screens : it has no force for technologies such as LCD DLP or plasma, with a much higher pixel duty cycle.

Conversely, due to the vertical smear, a photographic plate pressed against an image which has been deinterlaced by interpolation (bobbing) will show a decrease in resolution against the same image in interlaced form, which can in principle be as much as 50% but in practice is more like 30% [1 - 1/sqrt(2)]. This so happens to be in the same general magnitude as the visual degredation due to interlace scanning.

 

[Cees Alons]

...while a 540p image has a resolution of 25% of that of a 1080i or -p image, i.e. a decrease by 75%!


Cees

 

[Paul Cordingley]

Ah, Cees, not in my case!

You see, the Panny is a 720p projector, and it can't deal with 1080i very well. So, it bobs to 1920x540, then scales that to 1280x720. Trust me on this!

However, I agree that people calling 1080i "540p" are absolutely wrong!

 

[BrettisMckinney]

Paul, That made complete sense to me. Thanks for clearing it up for me. Although there was some great information detailed, it didnt really answer the question i had.

 

[cinemad]

I am somewhat surprised by claims on this thread that the PT-AE700 "bobs" 540 fields and scales to 720p when fed a 1080i input. The instruction book on page 58 states that an input from 1080i will give the maximum possible quality(code AA), It would appear the TOSHIBA HD-DVD Player's internal processor "bobs" 1080i to 720p and that is why the image from the 720p output is significantly degraded as compared to the 1080i output.

Paul, are you absolutely certain that the PT-AE700 deinterlaces the 1080i input by "bobbing"?

Interestingly the user's manual to the PT-AE900 states on page 64 that this model will actually accept a 1080p 24fps signal. Is this correct?

Peter