HD resolutions to Sony XBR (1 Viewer)

[GabeP]

Ok, I have a Sony 70 inch XBR rear projection LCD, we have a Samsung hd receiver and Directv.

Questions

What resolution do i set the directv receiver on?
options
-native 1
-native 2
-native 3
-1080 i/p
-720 p
-480 i/p

Also, when watching a dvd, I htink its prog scan, but will the tv auto convert it to 480p?

 

[Elinor]

That tv will convert everything to 788p. It is a fixed pixel display, all it can display is 788p.

You can experiment with different resolutions on the sat. receiver. I would guess 1080i would give a pretty good picture, since most hi-def programming is in 1080i.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Gabe, without knowing the make and model of your DirecTv receiver nobody can tell you what to set it for, and even with that information only someone with the same receiver and the same tv can give you reliable advice. "Native 1", "native 2" and "native 3" are specific to your particular box, don't mean the same on (for example) a Samsung as on an LG or whatever.

As Elinor said, that tv is a fixed pixel display, and will convert everything to 788p anyway (the number of pixels it has in the vertical dimension.)

all you can do is experiment and decide what looks best to you. Theoretically 720p would be closest to the 788p native scanrate of your set, but some people with the Sony LCDs report better results feeding HD to it at 1080i. For other scanrates you want to use whichever does the best upconversion, the box or the set.

For dvd one of the upconverting players connected via dvi would probably be the best choice. If you don't want to buy a new player of that type, use 480p into the set.

 

[Elinor]

>"all you can do is experiment and decide what looks best to you. Theoretically 720p would be closest to the 788p native scanrate of your set, but some people with the Sony LCDs report better results feeding HD to it at 1080i. For other scanrates you want to use whichever does the best upconversion, the box or the set."

Again, as we both said, one has to experiment, but I would think setting it to 720p would not be a good solution. At 720p, your STB has to convert 1080i programming to 720p, then the tv has to convert it to 788p. As a rule, the fewer conversions, the better. Thus my rec. for 1080i. Still, anything could happen, and 720p just *might* look better.

Also, a very good (say, older) 480i player can actually yield a better picture for the very reason discussed above ... that the tv has to convert to progressive anyway. Cheap DVD players often have cheap deinterlacers. The Sony, particularly the XBR set, has a v.g. deinterlacer.

There's no harm (and often lots of interesting stuff to learn) by experimenting with different settings. If you muck things up too bad, you can always come back for more advice.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

I know that owners of the Zenith upconverting player and Sony LCD sets report the best results feeding the set 1080i via component, of all things.

Since the majority of HD channels are 1080i rather than 720p, Elinor's suggestion makes sense. My set is crt based with a native HD scanrate of 1080i. I have my HD box (an LG mfg DirecTV HD-capable receiver) set to output everything at 1080i which gives me the best results regardless of the original broadcast scanrate. With regard to HD only, the 720p to 1080i upconversion done by the box for ABC and ESPNHD looks exactly the same as native 1080i from other HD channels. Other boxes from other mfgs vary as far as scanrate upconversion capability when the original broadcast is 480i (either analog or digital) but I've never seen one to a bad 720p to 1080i upconversion.

Even with Sony's crt sets, an incoming interlaced dvd picture looks very nice indeed. Overall Sony does a good job with scanrate conversion in their sets, have done for the last 3 years or so.