Questions pertaining to this Hitachi set (1 Viewer)

[DaleI]

Anyone familiar with the Hitachi 57s500? Some questions:

After paging thru the manual, I don't believe this set has a cinema/movie mode. How is the 2:3 pulldown activated then? And is that mode preferred for dvd movies (I have a Panny xp30)?

I read some where that this TV set, like others, upconverts 480p to 540p, possibly creating more artifacts. What item do I need to set so I get a 480p image or do all of you non-Panny or non-Mitsubishi TV owners live with this fact? Maybe the quality of the XP30 will make this point moot.

--Dale

 

[Steve Schaffer]

In the past, Hitachis have all activated their 3/2 pulldown when Movie mode was selected. This is moot with the XP-30 in any case.

The set's 3/2 pulldown is only active for incoming 480i sources, like a non-progessive dvd player, vcr, or the set's own ntsc tuner. Since your XP-30 has progressive scan output and it's own excellent 3/2 pulldown capabilities the set's pulldown will not be a factor.

Your set will, however, convert all incoming 480i or 480p scanrates to either 540p or 1080i. There is no way to make it do native 480p.

I had an Hitachi with this characteristic back in the fall of 01 and found it unsatisfactory as it made faces look posterized--no subtle color variation and lack of fine detail in closeups of faces. This and a couple of other problems specific to the particuar set I had led to it's being returned. This was a fairly common complaint on that generation of Hitachis, but may no longer apply. Hitachi may have since improved this as I've read few complaints about it on the current models, so my experience definitely may not affect your set's performance.

Another alternative is to purchase one of the new upconverting players that will feed the set a 1080i scanrate which it can display natively. The Zenith dvb 318 can do this via component cable as well as dvi and folks with crt based rptvs that do a forced 480p to 540p conversion are getting nice results at 1080i via component from this player.

I'd go ahead and try the Hitachi with the XP-30 first. Set progressive mode to on in the player's setup menu and select Auto-1 in it's pulldown selections menu. You should still have the option of switching your tv to 540p or 1080i even with the player in progressive mode, do so and choose whichever mode looks best to you.

 

[DaleI]

Yes, I don't think my Hitachi offers Movie-Mode anyway. Thanks for the thorough reply.


Dale

 

[Barry Hebert]

On the 57S500, under VIDEO setup options is "AUTO MOVIE MODE". This allows you to turn ON/OFF 3:2 pulldown detection.

As stated, the set supports native 540p/1080i scan rates.
Everything else is upconverted using Hitachi's VirtualHD™ 1080p, which they describe as...

"The VirtualHD™ 1080p digital video processor takes non 1080i high-definition incoming signals, like 480i or 720p, and upconverts them to 1,080 progressive lines. By examining every pixel of every frame, smoother curves and diagonals can be calculated while noise is reduced and color improved."

You have the option of displaying upconverted signals as either 540p or 1080i. 720p will always be converted and displayed as 1080i.


--Barry