Got My A2000! Now I have a Progressive Scan Question (1 Viewer)

[snash22]

Whoohoo! The Sony KDS-60A2000 is very nice, I picked it up over the weekend from my local boutique home theater store. The price was cheaper than Best Buy and Circuit City.

I have it hooked up to a Sony DVP-NS75H. I can not turn off the progressive scan for the HDMI connection but it can output 480i from the component video connections. (I know, I should have bought the Oppo)

I am thinking that the TV might be better at the de-interlacing than the player, but then maybe the HDMI is a better quality connection than the Component connection.

So, am I better off keeping it as is, sending 480p though HDMI? Or would I be better off sending 480i though the component connections and let the TV do the interlacing?

To summarize (since I'm confusing myself):

Which is better?

HDMI 480p or Component 480i?

I would try this out myself, but I'd have to calibrate and tweak the component video connection setting first, so I'd only want to do that if it should be better in theory.

 

[Craig]

I'd go with the HDMI connection. If you go with the component connection, which is analog only, the player will have to do digital to analog conversion before it sends the signal to the TV, the TV will have to do analog to digital to process the signal and get it in the progressive format. With HDMI, you're digital all the way.

 

[ChrisClearman]

doesn't the Sony 75 output 1080i?

 

[Tom Keels]

According to all the specs I've read it does. But only though HDMI.

 

[SeanA]

I don't think there is any other answer than to use the HDMI connection with 1080i setting since it is the closest to your native TV resolution of 1080p. I have the same Sony DVD player and it can scale to 720p or 1080i through the HDMI output. Being that your TV and DVD player are both Sony, the quality and hardware used for scaling is probably very similar (if not identical). If it is identical, I think it still makes sense to let the DVD player do the scaling since the TV has the bigger job of the two. Now the TV should only have to do a de-interlacing step to take 1080i to 1080p.

 

[SeanA]

BTW, the Sony player is very good in my opinion. I actually had the original Oppo player with DVI and sent it back because of awful macro-blocking on my Samsung DLP. I still have macro-blocking during dark scenes but it is not nearly as bad with the Sony player.

I should have mentioned that you need to go into the settings menu of the DVD player and set the HDMI output to 1080i. Not sure what is the default setting.

 

[snash22]

Good point Chris about the D to A conversion, that seals the deail for using the HDMI.

SeanA - I did try using the 720p and 1080i settings through HDMI and I found that the 480p looked best. The 720p looked bad, evidently going through 2 conversions was not healthy for the PQ.

The 1080i was good, but I don't think it was as good as 480p although it was hard to tell since I couldn't change it on-the-fly, I had to stop the player to change the setting.

I wonder what the player does internally to create 1080i. If it deinterlaces, then upscales, and then re-interlaces to 1080i, then the TV would have to de-interlace again.

 

[SeanA]

I believe the player would only need to upscale. DVD content is 480i.

 

[snash22]

I was assuming that the best way to upscale would be to de-interlace first, but I really have no idea how the algorithms work.

 

[ChrisClearman]

I believe most scalers deinterlace to create a progressive image, upscale, and then re-interlace if needed

 

[snash22]

I did a quick compare between the player outputting 480p and 1080i last night and I couldn't tell the difference. I wanted to find a good reference scene in a movie but instead I had a revolt from my wife and son who insisted that we watch the rest of The Transporter.

Oh well.

For now, I'm leaving the player at 480p letting the A2000 upscale to 1080p. It at least seems like a cleaner path.