Will progressive scan fix this? (1 Viewer)

[Stephen_Ri]

Hi, right now I'm using my old interlaced player with component on my new Samsung HD monitor. The set upgrades a 480i signal to 480p, and it looks pretty good. One thing that bugs me, however, is that in some scenes, when interlace lines used to be obvious, now there is flickering. You know, like when the camera zooms in or out of say, a crowd in a stadium. My question is, would a progressive scan player remove this flickering? If so, what's a good, but inexpensive player? Thanks.

Stephen

 

[Brian L]

My question is, would a progressive scan player remove this flickering? If so, what's a good, but inexpensive player? Thanks.

It may or may not help. It would depend on whether the deinterlacer in your TV were better than in the player you are buying.

One thing to check is if your TV has a setting to enable/disable 3:2 detection (that is to detect film sources, and convert it properly to progressive). My TV (A Pioneer 533) has this, and it is called Pure Cinema. I suspect most vendors have their own name for it.

Anyway, if you have such a setting, make sure its turned on.

Another question is whether you see this all the time, or just with certain titles, and if those tittles were film based or video. It is possible that some of this may be in the source.

I do not see this sort of thing much at all with DVD's (although the VE montage does have some highly detailed shots that are video based which do show the line twitter you describe).

I see it all the time when watching sports (the lines on a basketball court).

FWIW, even when watching in High Def (the NBA finals for example), I see it once in a while.

BGL

 

[Stephen_Ri]

Thanks for the response Brian. It does it mostly on analog satellite, but also on dvd occasionally. Sometimes when there are fine lines on the screen they will jump up and down, on both anamorphic and non-anamorphic. My TV does do 3:2 pulldown, I believe automatically, as there is no on/off option. My TV's deinterlacer is Samsung Pro Chip Plus, and I have heard good and bad reviews on this; does anyone have an opinion regarding its quality? Is there a big differece between inexpensive and expensive pro-scan players? The set is small(27"), so it won't show quite as much detail as bigger sets anyway. Or is this normal, to have a little shimmering and jumping every now and then? Thanks again.

Stephen

 

[Brian L]

Is there a big difference between inexpensive and expensive pro-scan players?

The funny thing is cheap players (well relatively cheap in the world of $45 Apex machines) like the out of production Panny RP-82 was one of the best players in terms of the Secrets of Home Theater DVD Shoot-out. It had a great decoder AND a great deinterlacer. All that for about $250, I think.

The newer Denon 1600 is basically a RP-82 in disguise. It also aces the Secrets tests, but is about $450.

Unfortunately, both machines are said to have a horrible user interface, so I guess you can't have everything!

Contrast that with a Meridian player I just read about in WSR. Its a megabuck machine, and its decoder is poor. The good news is that the deinterlacer hides it, but the point is, the money it costs for a player does not seem to have a direct relationship with its performance.

The basic chip sets do not seem to have a huge impact on player cost, and there are some good ones, and bad ones, and they are in players of all prices, so it seems.

The build quality on a $$$$$ player may be better, but the guts are what counts, IMHO, and there seems to be no correlation between performance and price (in spite of what you may read in some high-end publications).

I own a Pioneer 45A, which scores very poorly on the Secrets test. That said, I am not seeing some of the flaws of this player, and have even been getting some very helpful coaching from one of the Secrets authors to better understand how to evaluate these issues. There are many variables that can mask flaws, such that you may or may not see a problems that others feel is obvious.

If you don't see them, consider yourself lucky, pop in a movie, and enjoy.

I, however, refuse to take my own advice, and am trying very hard to see what these flaws look like so I can better evaluate any potential new player (FWIW, yesterday afternoon, I actually had three players tied in to my system to try to see if I could spot the Chroma Upsampling Error that gets so much ink. To date, I have been unsuccessful).

Back to your initial observation about line flicker, it is very common in OTA and DTV broadcasts. I watch a lot of autoracing, and get huge jaggies on the white lines that line the course, depending on how the camera is moving.

I think a lot of those flaws are because the source is NTSC, and jaggies and line twitter are just there in the source.

Perhaps a better deinterlacer would help, but from what I have read video sourced content is a bear for even the top $ deinterlacers to deal with.

As I said, watching the NBA finals in HD (sourced in 720P but output to my TV in 1080i) still showed some amount of line twitter. That was maybe due to my HD STB converting, but ANY interlaced source, regardless of the resolution, will show some artifacts at times.

BGL

 

[Stephen_Ri]

Thanks again. I'll consider what you've said also read up on the DVD Shootout pages(I'd never been there before you mentioned the site).

Stephen

 

[Brian L]

Thanks again. I'll consider what you've said also read up on the DVD Shootout pages(I'd never been there before you mentioned the site).

They are, IMHO the most extensive and authoritative tests of DVD players anywhere.

Some may argue that some of the tests they do are inconsequential in terms of flaws that you would actually see, but no one, anywhere tests video performance like they do.

Wish I had read them before I bought my 45A, although truthfully, I have been happy with it, and have not yet learned to identify some of the flaws.

Be aware that there is a LOT of data there, but it is very, very informative.

BGL

 

[Brian L]

Thanks again. I'll consider what you've said also read up on the DVD Shootout pages(I'd never been there before you mentioned the site).

They are, IMHO the most extensive and authoritative tests of DVD players anywhere.

Some may argue that some of the tests they do are inconsequential in terms of flaws that you would actually see, but no one, anywhere tests video performance like they do.

Wish I had read them before I bought my 45A, although truthfully, I have been happy with it, and have not yet learned to identify some of the flaws.

Be aware that there is a LOT of data there, but it is very, very informative.

BGL

 

[Tim Glover]

I just recently bought a prog scan dvd player. My new front projector doesn't have anything in the manual about the 2:3 pulldown or 3:2 pulldown, and there appears to be nothing in the onscreen menu to change to progressive or interlaced.

However, the screen does say, "525p" now instead of "525i".

I'm a little confused by this. So the player is doing the work here??? Bottom line though is I see a definite improvement in the image. More stable, cleaner, virtually no flicker at all, and I know this is not a prog scan claim-but the colors seem to be tighter and better.

Thanks!

 

[Brian L]

So the player is doing the work here??? Bottom line though is I see a definite improvement in the image. More stable, cleaner, virtually no flicker at all, and I know this is not a prog scan claim-but the colors seem to be tighter and better.

I don't know a whole lot about projectors, but if your player is set for progressive, then it would be safe to assume that it is doing the deinterlacing.

I suppose it is possible that the projector is scaling the 480P image to 540P, but again, you might want to post a question about the specific make/model of projector AND player....things can get a bit tricky with internal scalers and what not.

Good news is you are happy with what you are seeing, right?

BGL

 

[Allan Jayne]

525i (or 525p) is the same thing as 480i (or 480p). The projector is just using the terminology that includes in the scan line count the 45 non-visible scan lines of analog video that hold vertical sync., closed captions, and other non-picture material. Those scan lines are not included for each frame on a DVD or in digital TV broadcast but are added by the player or HDTV tuner box for their composite, S-video, and component video outputs.

If the projector momentarily shows "525p" where it used to momentarily show "525i" and you didn't change any connecctions, that just means it auto-sensed that the incoming video was progressive. The "525p" does not reveal whether or not the projector is also upscaling to 540p, you still have to research and ask about this.

Not sure whether 540p's alter ego is 562p or 563p. For 1080i it is 1125i. (99.9% of 540p and 1080i equipment will work together with no problem)

Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[Tim Glover]

Ok, here's the gear:

Panasonic PT-L200U front projector
RCA DVD player Model DRC212N

I'll post this info on the dedicated L200U thread too. Thx!