Video quality from Sony PS3 Blu-ray to 720p/1080i Plasma HDTV (1 Viewer)

[JK_Livin22]

When connecting a television that accepts video signals of 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i, is fed a signal from a Sony PS3 playing a Blu-ray DVD, it is my understanding that the best option is to set the PS3 to 720p output because this would mitigate the number of conversions (interlacing/deinterlacing/scaling/etc.) taking place before the video signal actually appears on the television screen for viewing (or would it be better to set the PS3 so that it automatically determines the appropriate signal?).

Given that the PS3, as well as the more capable upconverting DVD players (such as the Oppos and Denons with Faroudja chipsets) are capable of upconverting standard (480p/i?) DVDs to 1080i/720p, which will then be played on the plasma screen in 720p, is there any advantage to using a Blu-ray DVD with TVs that only display 720p? Would the quality not essentially be the same if both are being played in 720p? Perhaps the Blu-ray will deliver superior audio through the AV receiver (which could be reason enough to go with the Blu-ray DVD) but as far as the video, would there be any difference?

How about with an LCD TV instead of plasma; that shouldn't make a difference should it?

 

[Jari K]

Every TV has one "native resolution" (in your case, is it 1080i?), so you should set your PS3 to that "max resolution" (e.g. 1080i). If your TV is 720p, I would set PS3 to 720p also.

PS3 does very good job with upscaling (with SD DVDs) and with 1080-TV and Blu-ray-titles (most are 1080p), you don´t obviously need "upscaling".

(Btw. It´s not really "Blu-ray DVD". It´s just "Blu-ray". )

 

[JK_Livin22]

First of all, my sincere thanks for the reply. But that didn't exactly answer what I was asking. First of all, there are no plasma TVs to my knowledge with 1080i native resolution. They accept 1080i video signals and then convert them to 720p, but the only 1080i TV's I know of are older HD CRT TVs; something many people are not clear on. My question is whether or not the video quality when watching a Blu-ray disc played on a PS3 will have superior quality to the video quality of a standard DVD, also played on a PS3 (or other quality upconverting DVD player) since both will ultimately be viewed in 720p? As far as the settings on the PS3, even though 1080i is a higher resolution than 720p, it still will have to be converted to 720p, the same as all HD programing provided by cable companies. From what I understand, the reason that they broadcast in 1080i instead of 720p is because it uses less bandwidth to do so. Unless you have a 1080p TV, all HD content you view, whether from cable company or Blu-ray disc, is going to be converted to 720p. At least that is my understanding, although I could be wrong - that has been know to happen on occassion .
Thanks again for the feedback.

 

[Brian Borst]

Yes, the video quality will be better. How it looks depends on the dvd-player most of the time, but I understand the PS3 does it very well. Yet it's still upconverting. With DVDs (native resolution of 408, in NTSC) player's basically putting together information that isn't there. While, with 1080 it's downgrading the image.
Imagine if you take two images (one 480 pixels high, the other 1080), and you're resizing them both to 720. Even with several options in Photoshop (the upgrading), the 1080 will still look better.

 

[Patrick.C]

On a 720p display, yes. The only thing a 720p display can view natively is the sports programming mentioned above. If you have a 1080i display you can view television programming natively and if you have a 1080p display you can view Blu natively.

 

[JK_Livin22]

Thanks everyone that answers almost everything. I am still uncertain about the issue of TVs being able to accept, but not displaying 1080i. Here is a link to an article about it (albeit very dated, it still seems to be relevant) [had to delete the link because I have not posted 10 or more posts??? wtf! ].

A quote addressing a similar question posed from someone else on another forum stated that

"Your DLP isn't a "1080i" set. It's a 720p set that accepts 1080i as input. The only true "1080i" sets were CRT based sets and a few weird Hitachi plasmas; all other so-called "1080i" digital sets are 720p/768p. The DLP has to deinterlace + scale down to 720p if you send it 1080i. Setting the player to 720p output may give better result (avoid deinterlacing step which can be problematic), but try it both ways.

Here is the link to the entire thread
(again, had to delete link because of 10 post requirement) 1080i Upscaling Question?? - AVS Forum[/url]


So, can anyone decipher all of this and come to a determination regarding the facts about TVs displaying 1080i?

 

[TonyTone]

You know--sometimes the best answer to a question is one that is the simplest; not to sound like an a**, but really--you should let your eyes judge as to which mode offers the better PQ. Anyone can argue that, on paper, one mode should offer better PQ than the other...but sometimes, what can be proved on paper don't always pan out in real life.

Me--I have a 768p plasma that can accept and display 1080i; I have all my HD video sources set to output at 1080i only (where configurable) since to my eyes, PQ looks slightly-better overall when output is set at 1080i than at 720p. Yes there is slightly-less (and even then the difference isn't night-and-day) motion blur when viewing high-def sports scenes at 720p but I am willing to sacrifice some of that for a somewhat-better defined (sharper?) overall picture, resolution-wise.

 

[Stephen Tu]

Interlaced display means the display scans every other line on each pass; first the odd numbered lines then the even numbered lines. On a CRT basically you have an electron beam fired at phosphors on the screen, it traces from left to right, drawing every other horizontal line from the top of the screen to the bottom. Each second for a 1080i60 signal, there are 60 passes, the first 1/60th of a second it draws the odd set of lines, the next it draws the even. Between persistence of the phosphors & persistence of your vision, your brain perceives it as a complete picture. If the beam scanning was slowed way, way down, all you'd see would be a tiny dot tracing across screen.

Progressive display on the other hand, like on a CRT computer monitor, draws every line on each pass.

Flat panel plasmas, LCDs, and rear projection DLPs/LCD/LCOS work quite differently than CRTs though, there is no concept of scanning line by line. Instead, the entire picture is created at once, all the pixels are being activated/deactivated simultaneously every 1/60th of a second or 1/120th for the newer 120hz LCDs. (DLP is actually somewhat more complicated than this, but don't want to get into it here)

So if you feed 1080i to these sets, the set first deinterlaces the signal, then scales it if it's not a 1080p set. You see the set's "native resolution" at the end. There is no "1080i" to be seen because they just don't draw the picture that way. They have a set of pixels to configure, they have to map all incoming signals to that set of pixels.

 

[Jari K]

I believe this was pretty much also my point.

If your TV-set is 720p (sorry, I got confused with your post and thought that it was 1080i), IMO you should set your PS3 to 720p. 720p is that "native resolution" of your TV-set.

**

( E.g. my Sony is "full HD" 1080p. It "accepts" lower resolutions (being Euro-model, both PAL and NTSC also), but eventually upscales everything to 1080p. 1080p is that "native resolution" for my TV.

Of course I can do the upscaling via HD-player BEFORE the TV. So e.g. my PS3 or Toshiba HD DVD-player upscales the picture to 1080p and THEN it´s sent to my TV (at that point the signal is already upscaled to 1080p). It might take some trial-and-error to see what combination does the best job with upscaling. )

 

[Stephen Tu]

Actually, it's probably not. Only a few older DLP & LCD RPTVs are actual 1280x720p native res. Flat panel LCD/plasma "720p" sets are in actuality some resolution like 1366x768p or similar. So even 720p gets rescaled.

Furthermore, it depends on the original resolution of your source disc/program. On a 720p/768p set, programs that *originate* in 720p like channels ABC/ESPN/Fox should do theoretically best with 720p output, since you are avoiding double conversion to 1080i & back to 720/768p, which loses something in the process. But if you start with something other than 720p, then it's best to experiment as TonyTone suggested. It will depend on the
relative quality of the video processing in the source device vs. that in the display.

Many cable boxes however do not offer so called "native" output, outputting exactly the signal sent, & are a bit of a pain to switch back & forth, so one must compromise by picking fixed 1080i or 720p output, which is theoretically worse for channels in the other format. But thankfully the difference is often too small to be really noticeable for most people on many typical combinations of box/TV/viewing distance.

With the PS3, games are 720p, so that's probably the best setting for those, but Blu-rays are 1080p, so 1080i might be better. For DVD you should try all setting options.

 

[Jari K]

Actually some games are 1080p. After these type of reviews ( Grand Theft Auto IV: PS3 vs. Xbox 360 Special Article // None /// Eurogamer ), not sure is 1080p really that "native resolution" to begin with or is "the actual output is being scaled up from the base resolution" like the review says, but still.

 

[Darren Pillans]

Just wondering folks, is my TV's native resolution 1080i?

http://www.sony.com.au/catalog/produ...erm=KVHX32M31#

I assume it is however, I've always wondered what DRC 1250 means. Apparently my TV has it.

Thanks.

 

[Stephen Tu]

CRTs unlike fixed pixel sets are capable of supporting multiple native resolutions or more precisely native "scan rates". Sets for Aussie market are more likely to support multiple scan rates since there is demand for both PAL & NTSC media support. 1080i is probably one of the scan rates, DRC1250 I think is upconverted PAL, e.g. display 576i PAL upconverted to 1152i. (The 1250 is from the total number of lines, 1152 are actually used for active picture, just like 1080i is actually 1125 total lines, 1080 used for picture).