I know a little about video but the number of formats and options in HD is mind-boggling. I am looking for a little advice here (and I have been reading reviews, etc for months.) Eventually, when I buy a system it will be for receiving over-the-air broadcasts. Happily there is a line-of-sight path to the main broadcast antenna in our area. A true 108 hex 1920 monitor is almost too large for my viewing space. 720P on a 32 or 37 inch screen would be fine. Question is how well do standard def. DVDs play on wide screen monitors? Is an up-rez player the way to go? How do older 4x3 format movies look? Far as I remember the new HD players won't play SD disks. Has anyone experienced the 720P vs 1080i issues first hand with SD DVD disks? What route did you take? Any wisdom would be much appreciated.
1080p vs 720p has nothing to do with size. Regardless of picture size, 1080p will look better than 720p. SD DVD's look fine on widescreen monitors. Mainstream DVD's are actually designed to look better on widescreen monitors. I don't know of any high def DVD players that don't play and upconvert SD DVD's (as long as the player is connected via HDMI). For 4:3 movies, you will have options. You can view them windowboxed (black bars on right & left), you can stretch them in the DVD player or, depending on the TV, you can use the different stretch modes in the TV (this option may require that the resolution is no greater than 480p, because some TV's disable the stretch modes at HD resolutions).
Thanks Bill. The Harry Potter DVD I saw at an Office Depot looked really, really bad on a 720 monitor. But it was coming out of a portable DVD player. I haven't thought much about the HD players yet since my wonderful local rental place has only SD. Plus I am watching a lot of Criterion Collection movies anyway. None of the blockbuster stuff. I ordered a Samsung DVD-AR650 DVD Recorder and Player w/ tuner today because my DVD stopped tracking. This will get me into over-the-air digital broadcasts as well as direct recording to DVD, avoiding the DVD Studio Pro work-around. You say "Regardless of picture size, 1080p will look better than 720p." I know some HD cameras are only 1440 with extra wide pixels. None of the monitors are doing this are they? Also, no one is broadcasting 1080p, only 1080i, so you still get the noisy field look with broadcasts. Thanks for all the info.
I would be careful about Samsung DVD units if I were you. I had one a couple of years ago that had all sorts of weird playback issues. I have one I just bought not too long ago and it, too, has problems. Specifically, DTS dropouts every couple of minutes or so. I prefer DTS so that's a real problem. Sometimes, the playback just goes funky and I have to restart. I just don't have a lot of faith in Samsung as far as their DVD players go.
Of course, I had no idea what DTS stood for, being an image type of guy. But googling I found this at www.digitalhome.ca which possibly may help you: "As you've noticed, this (DTS dropouts) is a known problem with the Samsung HD-841 player. Good news, though: Samsung has a firmware update that resolves the issue. I've been arguing with Samsung since July 2004 about this issue. Simply go to Samsung's site: http://product.samsung.com/cgi-bin/n...ct_resultsp Download the firmware upgrade and follow the instructions (3 very simple steps), and problem solved! This is now an awesome player!" i hope this helps. I will have to cross my fingers with Samsung.
If you are talking a small screen (you said 32 to 37) you will most likely not be able to tell a difference between 720 and 1080. Most of the difference is relative to the size of your screen coupled with your viewing distance. You basically need to be sitting like 6 feet from a 50" screen to tell a difference at that size/distance. In fact, I don't even think they make 1080p sets less than 42 inches. You should really check out avsforum.com for opinions. That place is full of experts. Finally, I would not take anything I saw at a b&m as gospel...especially Office Depot, which is no way a home theater store. Even Best Buy and Circuit City will rarely have the setup right. The player could be cheap, the connections could be using RCA, and it's doubtful the TV is calibrated.
Well, it was a nice thought. Unfortunately, I already did a firmware upgrade on that player. Although the one I did was for a very similar player. Reason being, they players have the same chip but the other player's firmware can play Divx.
Going from 1080i to 1080p is not a big deal from a processing perspective. They're not adding additional information, as is the case when upconverting from a lower resolution. They are just taking the two 540 line fields (the first which displays the odd numbered lines for 1/60th of a second and the second which displays the even numbered lines for 1/60th of a second) and deinterlacing them so that all 1080 lines display for 1/30th of a second. The main difference between 1080i & 1080p will be the elimination of "jaggies", which are inherent in any interlaced display.
Not to derail the thread or anything but using Power DVD, which deinterlacing method is the best (if anyone knows)? I've been fooling with it but it's really hard to tell from a subjective standpoint. If I knew one method was clearly technically superior to the others, I could set it and stop fucking with it every few minutes trying to compare.
