Hitachi 57SWX and the movie mode (1 Viewer)

[Alfonso_M]

I've had this Hitachi for about three weeks now and I can’t figure out if this is normal or not, after activating the “movie mode” to watch SD cable on ANT-1 or SD satellite through S-Video I see a flash of dark horizontal lines right after a quick edit, its clearly visible during commercials especially movie trailers, when I switch back to any other mode (Sports, Music, News) the lines go away, I suspect something to do with “film” based programming but Hitachi’s manual indicates that the ‘movie’ mode implements 3-2 conversion when selected, it is my understanding that this mode also has a built in line doublers and that’s why I’d like to use it for regular SD sources if I can avoid this annoying effect.

Is the movie mode for 480i DVD movies only?

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Your set has line doubling which works with all sources in all modes. Using Movie mode just adds 3/2 pulldown which is only for film based material (480i film based dvd), not video based material. Use one of the other modes for SD tv.

 

[Alfonso_M]

Thanks Steve for clearing that up for me, this explains why PQ was the same when using other modes, I didn’t know the line doubling was present in all modes..

 

[Steve Schaffer]

It's a little confusing, but line doubling and 3/2 pulldown are 2 separate things.

Your Hitachi actually takes all incoming 480i (normal tv) sources and will convert it to either 540p or 1080i, your choice in one of the menus, whereas straight line doubling would only convert it to 480p.

480p from a progressive scan dvd player also gets converted to 540p or 1080i, won't display natively. Toshibas are the same way. There was some loss of resolution on the first Toshibas that had this but Hitachis were better.

So in fact everything that's fed into the set except 1080i gets converted to something else. Hitachis are very good at this though.

 

[Alfonso_M]

My confusion was thinking that by using the movie mode with SD cable, and not 480i DVD, I was only activating the line doubling section and not the 3/2 pull down, but after your detailed explanation I know better now, is funny cause I’ve read a bunch of discussions and articles on this subject but never quite understood 100 % .

I’m glad you also mentioned the 480p conversion, after reading somewhere that the Hitachi locked the signal at 480p I was beginning to suspect otherwise, because while experimenting with Toy Story 2 the PQ was better after switching to 1080i, the conversion must be very good because the picture looks flawless to me after only doing the Avia tweaks.

 

[Rich Burns]

I also have a Hitachi.

If I have a prog DVD player that can do 3:2 pulldown, should I make sure and never use the "movie" mode on my TV...to avoid unneeded D/A/D conversions and extra signal processing?

 

[Michael TLV]

Greetings...

The TV automatically senses 480P coming in and disables the internal 3:2 process in movie mode.

Regards

 

[Rich Burns]

I have used my Hitachi 57TWX20b for DVDs mostly and have used Movie mode.

My question is now that I am getting a HDTV STB and will be using DVI input on my TV, should I switch to Sports or News mode when watching HD content from DirecTV and OTA? Is HD HBO via DTV "film based material" or not?

When should I ever use Movie mode?? I have a progresive scan DVD player.


Also my other question is since I tweaked the "F" paramaters for my component 480p DVD signal, does the DVI 1080i input also use the "F" set of numbers?

Or do I have to use the "G" set to tweak my 1080 DVI signal?

I've read conflicting reports but some are very old.

 

[Charles C]

It's been a couple of weeks since the post below, and I too am wondering the same thing. To rephrase...

...If I have a progressive scan DVD player, and therefore don't need the 3:2 pulldown of the "Movie" mode of the Hitachi set, does it make sense to assign the "Movie" mode to my HDTV input for any film-based HDTV material (e.g., most sitcoms and dramas on network HD broadcasts)? Or, are all HDTV broadcasts, regardless of whether they're film- or video-based, inherently a video signal -- i.e., the 3:2 pulldown has already occurred pre-transmission?

All the 3:2 discussions in this forum (almost all of which I've read thoroughly) don't quite address this point. They mainly deal with DVD source material, not HDTV (or SDTV, for that matter).

Thanks.

 

[Alfonso_M]

Charles/Rich, I don’t have a HD STB yet, so I can’t answer (or test) your very good question, as you can read in my first post I was having problems using the “movie” mode while watching SDTV on satellite, apparently the 3:2 was causing problems with certain programming transitions/edits especially ‘Trailers’ (film based?), I don’t know exactly if this means the transmission is film or Video based but after switching modes the issue went away. As you know DVD’s use ‘flags’ to tell the player how to handle the stream and I suspect this Flags are not present in any off air transmissions, but I’m not sure.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Charles,

3/2 pulldown isn't applicable to HD signals. It should be disabled even in movie mode if the set's fed anything other than 480i.

So for progressive scan dvd and HD, 3/2 pulldown in the set is not gonna happen and isn't necessary.