Theater modes? (1 Viewer)

[KennyF]

I'm shopping for a 65 inch HD TV. I watch a lot of DVD's and plan to get digital HD cable (Rogers in Toronto). What 'modes' should my TV support?
480i/p, 760i/p, 1080i ??? I'm soo confused. I do understand the difference, but why do some TVs support some and others not? The Sony supports them all, but the Toshibas only support 480. Will I lose out with the Toshiba? .... I'm thinking of the 65HX83.

Ken

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Kenny,

There's some confusion going on, basically with the term "supports".

There are 4 different scanrates your set will have to deal with. 480i is regular old fashioned television. 480p is progressive scan dvd and a few digital tv broadcasts (Fox uses 480p in a 16/9 format instead of true HD).

720p is high definition and is broadcast by ABC and ESPNHD. 1080i is also HD and is used by all of the other HD broadcasters.

Any HD ready set will "support" 480i, 480p, 720p (not "760") and 1080i to the extent that when fed these scanrates the tv will produce a picture.

The differences are in what scanrates the set will actually display.

The Toshiba (and Hitachi) will display 2 different scanrates--540p and 1080i. They convert incoming 480i and 480p to either of these (you choose which in the user menu). They convert 720p to 1080i and display 1080i natively.

Sonys display 480i as 480p or 960i, 480p natively as 480p, and 1080i natively as 1080i. Depending on the model they display 720p as either 480p or 1080i.

Few if any crt based sets will display 720p natively. HD set top boxes almost all convert this to 1080i anyway.

 

[KennyF]

So which is ideal?

If a tv upconverts to a higher scan rate, how does it extrapolate the data?