The actual quality of HD

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Master Geek

#139931 23-Jun-2008 13:10

on my 17" monitor running at 1280x1024.

i can notice straight away look at the flesh on the fore head and the nose

I watched 300 HD DVD on my 42" Toshiba 42c at 720p and it was Awesome.

Just remember that the Blu ray disk you watching was ripped most likley into a H264 codec.
so there will be slight lose of data

richms

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#140079 24-Jun-2008 00:51

The HD downsize will look better because they dont leave DVD at 480 or 576 lines, they have to run it thru a flicker filter which will drop the vertical res to about 360-380 lines of resolution. They do this so that people still in the dinosaur era with an interlaced CRT dont get offensive flicker onscreen.

I wish they would stop this since those people are generally going to be outputting in 4:3 anyway so have the letterboxing of the dvd player meaning they get flicker out of the lower vertical resolution anyway.

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#140094 24-Jun-2008 08:43

richms: The HD downsize will look better because they dont leave DVD at 480 or 576 lines, they have to run it thru a flicker filter which will drop the vertical res to about 360-380 lines of resolution. They do this so that people still in the dinosaur era with an interlaced CRT dont get offensive flicker onscreen.

I wish they would stop this since those people are generally going to be outputting in 4:3 anyway so have the letterboxing of the dvd player meaning they get flicker out of the lower vertical resolution anyway.

There's still a lot of people out there who don't like 4:3 letterbox.. you know the ones.. they either watch dvds in 4:3 centrecut (cutting the sides off) or watch dvd's with tall-skinny people.

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#140149 24-Jun-2008 12:29

Alot of movies these days are in 2.35:1, so you get a letterbox effect even on 16:9 displays. On 4:3 displays about half of your screen is black bars

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#140153 24-Jun-2008 12:43

adamj: Alot of movies these days are in 2.35:1, so you get a letterbox effect even on 16:9 displays. On 4:3 displays about half of your screen is black bars

I wonder how long it will take for the worlds first cinemascope plasma/lcd?

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#140157 24-Jun-2008 12:48

Viewing 300 in SD DVD on my home theatre shows a huge difference in viewing in 720p Blu-ray on the same rig.

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#140164 24-Jun-2008 13:08

As well as the flicker filter already mentioned, it's important to note that hardware scalers like those used in TVs and high definition DVD players don't necessarily use the same image resampling algorithms that software like Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop use. The OP didn't say, but I assume the demo images were resized using PC software, perhaps on it's highest quality setting. Those programs have a wealth of RAM and CPU power at their disposal (compared to hardware devices) when resizing so can afford to spend more cycles (seconds) on ensuring minimal loss of detail. Hardware scalers have to work in realtime and without huge computing resources. You might get photoshop-like results from a top-end hardware scaler, but from reviews I read a lot of cheap scaler chips used in TVs (and PC LCD monitors) leave a lot to be desired.

720p upscaled content from broadcasters shouldn't be that bad though since they would have higher grade equipment at their end than a consumer would have in their TV.

Also having watched a lot of HD content (720 and 1080p) on my monitor (Dell 30") I can't stand watching SD content on it anymore. I think if you take any single frame of HD content and analyze it, there's probably not a lot to see as far as jaw-dropping detail is concerned, and you'd probably be disappointed to see smearing, a bit of film grain and the odd compression artifact.

For me, the impact of HD isn't in individual frames analyzed like photographs -- its when the video is in motion that you really get a sense of clarity and detail that isn't there with SD content. It's not a very scientific explanation, but I do see the difference.

To each his own, though.

richms

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#140235 24-Jun-2008 17:56

ZollyMonsta:
There's still a lot of people out there who don't like 4:3 letterbox.. you know the ones.. they either watch dvds in 4:3 centrecut (cutting the sides off) or watch dvd's with tall-skinny people.

They should still not cater for an obsolete display technology when choosing how to master DVD's - there is a hell os a lot of flickering content on broadcast tv these days in anycase so its not really something isolated to dvd

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sbiddle

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#140238 24-Jun-2008 18:13

richms:
ZollyMonsta:
There's still a lot of people out there who don't like 4:3 letterbox.. you know the ones.. they either watch dvds in 4:3 centrecut (cutting the sides off) or watch dvd's with tall-skinny people.

They should still not cater for an obsolete display technology when choosing how to master DVD's - there is a hell os a lot of flickering content on broadcast tv these days in anycase so its not really something isolated to dvd

Unfortunately it's something we have to live with.. I don't know why we have interlaced HD video formats - 1080i really is a joke. Every flat panel TV uses a progressive scan panel - why are we using a 50yr old video format for our broadcasting when we can transmit progressive scan images? Give me 720p over 1080i any day..

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#140297 24-Jun-2008 20:27

sbiddle:
Unfortunately it's something we have to live with.. I don't know why we have interlaced HD video formats - 1080i really is a joke. Every flat panel TV uses a progressive scan panel - why are we using a 50yr old video format for our broadcasting when we can transmit progressive scan images? Give me 720p over 1080i any day..

Not really, they can just stop vertically filtering content before encoding. If people get flicker then get a flatscreen - problem solved.

The 1080i comes from that HD was invented before flat panels so the interlace was the only reason to get the resolution. Sadly they should have dropped that back when they invented mpeg. Ah well.

Richard rich.ms

LostPacket

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Master Geek

#140446 25-Jun-2008 13:50

sbiddle:
richms:
ZollyMonsta:
There's still a lot of people out there who don't like 4:3 letterbox.. you know the ones.. they either watch dvds in 4:3 centrecut (cutting the sides off) or watch dvd's with tall-skinny people.

They should still not cater for an obsolete display technology when choosing how to master DVD's - there is a hell os a lot of flickering content on broadcast tv these days in anycase so its not really something isolated to dvd

Unfortunately it's something we have to live with.. I don't know why we have interlaced HD video formats - 1080i really is a joke. Every flat panel TV uses a progressive scan panel - why are we using a 50yr old video format for our broadcasting when we can transmit progressive scan images? Give me 720p over 1080i any day..

I find that comment interesting and have a few questions for you.

1) Do you find 720p much better then 1080i?

Would you be able to take a blind test and tell the difference?

2) Why do you think sky took 1080i over 720p?

There is a lot of conflicting information out there .

In the USA, 720p is used by ABC, Fox Broadcasting Company and ESPN because the smoother image is desirable for fast-action sports telecasts, whereas 1080i is used by CBS, NBC, HBO, Showtime and Discovery HD due to the crisper picture particularly in non-moving shots.

But now people are saying that 1080i is actually better then 720p for sports here is a interesting article from AVS

http://www.satelliteguys.us/old-voom-chit-chat-archives/20592-interesting-discussion-1080i-vs-720p-battle.html

Im not taking a Dig at you at all just want to understand more where you coming from.

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#140453 25-Jun-2008 14:18

1080i is alot more work. Without a good deinterlacer, things don't look as good.

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#140481 25-Jun-2008 15:52

The argument about 1080i vs 720p is an interesting one. When HD was still relatively new it was assumed that the bigger the number the higher the quality but not long after it was slated that 720p was in fact better than 1080i. Now that we have larger screens that can actually show 1080 resolutions it seems to be swinging back to how it used to be at the start.

Personally, i think of myself as a rather picky audio visual person but by no means a connisuer, and there is no way i can tell the difference between a 1080i or 720p signal on anything smaller than 42". On anything bigger, that actually does full 1080i, and i'm sitting pretty close i think i can tell the difference. If i'm further away though i'd be stumped.

The realty for me is that i have a 42" 720p capable plasma and i just don't need anything more. I can't tell the difference between a 1080 42" and a 720 42"

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#140486 25-Jun-2008 16:11

pollock:

But now people are saying that 1080i is actually better then 720p for sports here is a interesting article from AVS
http://www.satelliteguys.us/old-voom-chit-chat-archives/20592-interesting-discussion-1080i-vs-720p-battle.html

Im not taking a Dig at you at all just want to understand more where you coming from.

If you take a look at that thread you will see it is 4 years old so I would not read too much into it. A LOT has changed in that time.

Here is a much more up to date (and I would suggest respectable) article where 720p is declared the preferable format, especially when any compression is used.

Industry declares 720p better than 1080i

http://whathifi.com/blogs/television/archive/2008/03/11/news-industry-declares-720p-better-than-1080i.aspx

Personally, although I can plainly see the difference between SD and Hi-Def on my laptop, my pc and my 50 Panasonic Plasma, I just cannot see any difference between 1080i and 720p. My wife on the other hand believes that she can!

Cheers DB

richms

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#140595 25-Jun-2008 21:32

1080i looks great when its from a film source, like all the CBS shows are really 24F/s, what looks like crap on 3 is all the live pal stuff they upconvert and then gets butchered in the display to something that looks like a right mess. Its as bad as pal deinterlace, except the combing is quite a bit finer on the edges.

Dynamically changing would be the solution, but since they cant even get themselves sorted over aspect switching then thats never gonna happen :(

Richard rich.ms

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