Question about 3:2 pulldown, and a non progresive dvd player (1 Viewer)

[Todd smith]

If I were to use a non progresive scan dvd player (in this case the xbox) with a direct view 36" hdtv with 3:2 pulldown and a good line doubler, how would the picture compare to a dvd player with progressive scan?

Would there be a BIG difference or would it be pretty minor?

 

[Mike I]

Progressive scan will always give you a superior picture to a hd ready sets internal line doubler evan if the internal line doubler does a 3.2 pull down..

With progressive scan the 3.2 pulldown is accomplished in the digital domain using the frame flags encoded in the dvd's mpeg bitstream..

Advantages of progressive conversion

Line doublers are used in other high-end home entertainment systems to provide progressive scanning. These may be stand-alone devices or incorporated into a digital TV. Impressive as they may be, DVD in-player progressive conversion has three big advantages over line doublers:

1) High precision and stability

A DVD-Video disc mastered from a film holds all the data necessary to produce an accurate progressive image, whereas an external line doubler must take hints from the video source to determine the source material and frame allocation.

2) All-digital conversion minimizes signal degradation

Since the signal from the DVD-Video disc is digital, progressive conversion can be performed digitally inside the player. Signal quality is protected until it leaves the player's analog output. In contrast, a stand-alone or in-TV doubler first receives information from the analog output of the source device then converts this analog signal back to digital for processing. Finally, it must translate the signal back to analog before outputting it. All this back-and-forth translation is much more likely to degrade the signal.

3) Processing is optimized to DVD-Video's high image quality

Line doublers built into digital TV sets are designed to work with a variety of video sources, so their settings are not necessarily ideal for DVD-Video. Progressive conversion is optimized for the high resolution and low noise of the DVD-Video format. This enables the unit to preserve DVD-Video picture quality for display on all screen sizes, from direct-view CRT to projectors.

 

[MikeyWeitz]

Altho Mike I is 100000% correct and gave an EXCELLENT, detailed description, you will not notice a night and day diffference. You will certainly see the difference, but the difference will certainly not be as great as say, going from VHS to DVD quality.

I noticed only a slight difference going from a non 3:2, but line doubled Samsung TSL3294 with a non progressive DVD then changing to a 3:2 pulldown progressive Scan DVD player. Noticeable, but not a very big improvement.