Are cheap Progressive players worthless? Question on 3:2 pulldown too? (1 Viewer)

[jeff lam]

I was at my HIFI store last night and was asking about progressive and 3:2 pulldown, etc...
Anyway, the salesman said you can only use one progressive, either the TV's or the DVD's at one time. So, he showed me a panasonic plasma $15K TV with progressive, picture looked good, He had a Toshiba $1500 DVD player hooked up also and used it's progressive. A much better picture using the DVD instead of the TV. He also said if you buy a cheap progressive player, you are wasting your money because most TV's will have a better progressive picture than the DVD player. In order to get a better picture than the TV's progressive, you will need a better progressive DVD player. EX: using a XBR and a cheap progressive player, turning on the progressive on the DVD player will actally degrade the picture quality. Is this true?
Also, is 3:2 pulldown the same as progressive, if not, what's the difference?

 

[JoshWB]

To start with, progressive scan is not the same as 3:2 pulldown. Most good progressive scan players have 3:2, but not all do. If you get a player that does not have 3:2 pulldown, make sure your TV does. For instance my TV has the 3:2 pulldown, but my dvd player does not. (Mitsu 55" diamond series HDTV). The DVD player I am using is the Pioneer Elite 5 disc progressive scan player.
Now my picture looks fabulous, because I am running the TV's 3:2 pulldown. But I would reccomend getting a progressive scan DVD player with the 3:2. Not all TV's have this, and most of the time, the 3:2 in the DVD player is better anyway.

 

[jeff lam]

But is it a waste to buy a cheap progressive player? Just because it says progressive on the player doesn't mean it will improve the picture quality when enabled right?

 

[Karl Englebright]

While there are some cheap models out there that do not have 3:2 pulldown (Pionner 434, for example), most progressive scan players will give you a great picture, even the cheaper ones.
Check out this excellent article.
Link Removed
Having said that, most progressive scan players will have different shortcommings and "quirks", the hard part is figuring which ones aren't going to bother you as much.

 

[Neil Weinstock]

Let me try to clarify just a little. There are two separate things we're talking about here.
First is the de-interlacing or line-doubling process. This is where we take interlaced source material and turning it into progressive-scan. This can typically either be done inside an HDTV, or in a progressive-scan DVD player. Doing de-interlacing correctly requires handling 3:2 pulldown; nowadays a lot of TV's do it and almost all progressive DVD players (with some of the Pioneer players being notable exceptions.)
Using a progressive DVD player vs. the TV's internal line doubler typically has two advantages: (1) de-interlacing algorithms are getting very good, even in cheap players, and (2) the deinterlacing is done in the digital domain, saving an extra pass through A-D and D-A converters as would be required in the TV.
Nowadays, there are some pretty impressive inexpensive progressive DVD players. De-interlacing performance varies, but on properly flagged DVD's almost all perform superbly.
The second thing is the video quality of the analog output of the DVD player. More expensive players will typically do better in this area, but that applies to interlaced as well as progressive players. At the same time, the inexpensive players nowadays have a pretty damned good picture.
So, unless you have a very high-end TV that has an especially superb line doubler, you're probably better off with a progressive DVD player, even one of the inexpensive ones.
This explanation was probably not as clear as it could have been, but hope it helps anyway.