Taking Advantage of Progressive Scan (1 Viewer)

[Brandon.B]

I have a Toshiba SD-430VSC DVD player (is this considered to be good player?) and a big screen 4:3 Projection TV with built in 16:9 enhancement to take advantage of anamorphic DVDs. Now, when I’m watching a DVD and I press the progressive button on the remote, switching from interlaced to progressive, for some DVD's, like Muppets Take Manhattan, Ghostbusters or Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, the image changes in size. In some cases the widescreen and/or anamorphic DVD now fills the whole or most of screen.

So, what I want to know is, why when watching certain widescreen DVDs, does pressing the progressive button on the remote change the images size?

Also, what is it that makes progressive mode make some areas of a DVD, such as animated menus or some bonus features like interviews and text that flashes across the bottom become almost shaky..fuzzy and blurred but goes away and back to 'normal' when switched back to interlaced? Is this because it’s a different format? And finally, should I always be using Progressive when I watch movies? Because I notice with some, the picture becomes a bit shaky with select DVDs when switched to Progressive.

I’d really appreciate any help by anyone, so I’m not as confused where I shouldn’t be.

 

[David Allen]

Correct me if I'm wrong fellow HTF members, but isn't progressive scan capability useless without an HDTV?

 

[Brandon.B]

Oh, well I should add and forgot to mention that the tv includes Hi Scan 1080 allowing me to receive 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i. Which means its a HDTV, right?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

It sounds like you are triggering a "lock-in-full" mode which, when it detects a source with a certain scanrate, adjusts the display to fit a certain set of assumptions about what is coming in -- the most common ones being "480p, 720p, and 1080i are always in 16:9 ratio" and "480i is always in 4:3 ratio". Look for some kind of "Automatic Zoom" mode in the owner's manual; there may be an incorrect setting somewhere, or you may be able to defeat it altogether.

As for the second problem, this is a result of a stupid deinterlacer handling material which is actually progressive but flagged as interlaced, or vice versa: it will try to stitch together fields which don't belong together [producing ragged edges], or will line-double fields which should be stitched together [resulting in the picture "bobbing" up and down]. You can partly cure the problem with a better player, but it is also dependent on the discs being properly coded.

 

[Brandon.B]

Thanks for the help/info

But I don’t think the image size changing has to do with a zoom, because nothing gets cut off. Like when I press progressive on Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, it changes in size to fit the whole screen, however nothing is cut off on the sides or the bottom. You still get the same exact image and it looks to be the exact same clearness. Which is actually great, but its just I didn’t get why it was doing it or what progressive scan had to do with the size. When I watch Ghostbusters and do the same, the image size in creases, however the black bars are much smaller, again allowing you to get a bigger picture with still nothing cut off.

On Nightmare Before Christmas, nothing happens. No size change. Muppets Take Manhattan, full screen but the image is stretched, but still looking great. No noticed distortion unless compared side by side with just the interlaced version where its now a bit vertically stretched than before.

 

[RomanSohor]

Nothing is happening on Nightmare Before Christmas because the title is not anamoriphic

 

[Mike Williams]

If Pee Wee's Big Adventure is widescreen, and pressing your progressive scan button causes it to fill the entire screen and yet nothing is cut off, that is impossible. A rectangle cannot fill a square and something not be cut off. Is Pee Wee widescreen?

Also, if your'e getting the exact same resolution as you did before you hit the progressive scan button that is NOT GREAT, as your picture should actually be CLEARER with progressive scan mode is on.

 

[Brandon.B]

Well, what I meant when I said it’s the same was that it isn’t worse. It is actually better with the progressive scan which is why I use it. I didn’t get that across.

But yea, nothing is cut off. All that is really happening is the image is stretching vertically to fill the screen. Depending on the size of the black bars, the stretch is hardly, if at all noticeable. Unless comparing the two different pictures side by side. The image isn’t looking all stretched out or anything.

And about Nightmare, yea, that’s what I thought. But what does anamorphic have to do with progressive scan? Is this why the image stretches then, because with the disc being anamorphic, the progressive scan enables it to fill as much of the screen as possible as if it was a widescreen tv (even though its 16:9 enhanced)? I’m just trying to get at what’s causing the size increase and if anamorphic and progressive are linked.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Actually, the image is stretched and no HT purist would want to watch a widescreen film stretched to fill a 4:3 set, filled screen or no filled screen.

 

[Brandon.B]

Ok, well here is more detailed info about what I have and which will hopefully help further understand whats going on:

TV:

Sony KP-61HS30

Here’s more detailed info and a picture: http://www.vssll.com/kp61hs30.html

The DRC mode is set on Progressive and the 16:9 enhanced feature is set to AUTO (is it better to have it on ON as opposed to auto?)

Component Video Cables are connected


DVD Player:

Toshiba SD-430VSC

TV Shape is set to 16:9 Widescreen

Progressive is set to ENABLE (allowing you to select the progressive output by pressing the button on the remote)

Progressive Conversion is set to AUTO.

Here is a comparrison shot of Pee-Wee’s Big Advenutre I took with my camera.

Interlaced VS Progressive



Now yes, you can see a stretch. But for me personally, unless comparing side by side, it doesn’t really ruin the picture for me, as its not overly distorting it. As I said, I just wanna know why its doing it and if I didn’t want it to stretch out and still use the progressive feature, is that possible? Because with full frame DVDs, such as Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys, I see a big difference when on Progressive and the picture looks great and a lot more sharp allowing me to see things I couldn’t before.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

It looks like the "progressive" mode on the DVD and the 16:9 auto sensor on the TV are not happy with each other. I would try to force the 16:9 mode by turning it to "on" instead of auto. If that works, you've found the problem. I would change the DRC mode to cinemotion istead of progressive because I'm not sure the progressive has anything to do with the incoming source.

 

[Brandon.B]

Thanks for the tip and help.

Tried it, and selected ON instead of Auto (as well as setting the tv to cinemotion) and still the same thing. Strange.

EDIT

Now it changed and YES, changing it to ON from Auto has fixed it!!!!! Finally. Thanks

Now I ask, why was it doing that to begin with? Were the two signals just not "getting along" and/or is it because anamorphic and progressive are linked? And is it best to always watch DVDs on Progressive scan..even those that are not anamorphic?

 

[Aaron_Brez]

Progressive scan just means that the DVD player is feeding your TV 480 lines of picture at a time, whereas with interlaced mode the DVD player is sending out the odd-numbered 240 lines, then the even-numbered 240 lines.

If the DVD has been properly encoded progressive, this will result in a very solid-looking picture in progressive mode; if the DVD has not been properly encoded progressive, the picture will exhibit the artifacts (flickering) you have seen unless the deinterlacer on the DVD player is good enough to pick up the slack (not all of them are).

Anamorphic means that the picture is stretched to fit a 16:9 frame; in most cases, this is a TV which is shaped 16:9, but in some cases (yours) this is a 4:3 TV with a mode that fills the entire screen horizontally but vertically "squishes" (that's the technical term!) the image to ensure it stays in proportion.

Anamorphic and progressive are not linked, in reality, but some TV manufacturers had an "if progressive, then do anamorphic" shortcut built into their firmware. Doesn't necessarily make sense, and I'm still not sure why it's done that way other than perhaps "It's user friendly, and most users won't notice/care about any distortion that results", but there you have it.

As for whether or not to always watch progressive... depends on your DVD player. Some DVD players have very good deinterlacers built in, and even interlaced material gets spliced together properly and looks good progressive coming out. Cheaper players may or may not yield good results depending on the DVD in question. It's an individual choice; I'd choose based on how the DVD looks, but expect poorly-mastered material to introduce glitches here and there.

 

[Brandon.B]

A lot of this is now making much more sense and I'm understanding much better.

Thanks for all the help! Appreciate it and everything is working great!