progressive scan question (1 Viewer)

[Jeff Edrich]

I just purchased a hitachi 16 by 9 hi-def rear projection television and was wondereing if I am getting the best possible picture from my dvd player. I am using the component connection and the image is outstanding. My dvd player is not a progressive scan player, but the new television offers two display modes, one 540P and the other 1080i. If I set the television to 540P and the dvd player is not a progressive scan player, will I actually be looking at the best possible image? I am wondering if the image would look better if the dvd player was a progressive scan player. By the way, I know the progressive scan players are inexpensive but I already have 3, one for my wife, my daughter and myself. If the television is effectively doing the progressive scan from the non progressive dvd player, then it's one less electronic piece of gear to have to obtain. I'm actually trying to pare down my equipment and don't want to add more unless its truly an improvement. Thankyou in advance

 

[greg_t]

Like you said, the Hitch is capable of both 540P and 1080i. So lets just say you have the TV on 540P. If you input video from a non-progressive player, your inputting a 480i signal, that the TV then upconverts to 540p. Likewise, if you get a progressive scan player and output a 480p image to the TV, your TV will still upconvert the 480p to 540p. So either way, your sets line doubler is still going to upconvert. My personal feeling is that getting a great progressive player isn't going to help much because the TV will still upconvert the image.

I think it would be better to get a player that outputs a high quality interlaced image and send the 480i to the TV and let it upconvert to 540p. The Panasonic RP91 puts out a fantastic interlaced image and it's video quality is reference all the way. The only down side to the 91 was it's non-stellar line doubler. In your case, you could use the 91 to send a high quality 480i image and let the Hitachi take over from there. That's what I do with mine. I have a 91 hooked to a Pioneer Elite and input 480i from the Panny and let the Elites line doubler handle the progressive conversion. The resulting image is spectacular. Hope this makes sense.

 

[Allan Jayne]

Can you tell the difference, visually, between 540p and 1080i on your TV?

Technically, the difference is that in 540p, the 540 visible scan lines of successive frames coincide on the screen while with 1080i, alternating 540 line frames (fields) are slightly staggered. If the scan lines are slightly fatter than 1/1080'th the screen height, using 1080i for DVD and non-hi-def material may give a slightly softer picture.

Ordinarily the TV's de-interlacer and upscaler behave the same way for both 540p and 1080i,

An alternative definition may be staggering alternating fields all the time but using a proprietary formula for 540p that blends scan lines in order to achieve less jagged diagonals. It is not desirable to do such blending in hi-def since the scan line content is already unique for the 1080 scan lines in each pair of 540 line fields.

Your TV may or may not use the above technical definition for its distinction between 540p and 1080i.

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