Plasma and LCD resolutions for HD

True hi def is either 1920x1080 or 1280x720, so if you've got a HD source it probably would be better to use the native format. The other resolutions you specify sound as if that model of screen uses PC based resolutions.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both plasma and LCD. I find LCD quite annoying on fast moving action, but this does depend on the manufacturer. Plasma gives a more "natural" picture IMHO, but the cooling fans can be noisy.

Personally I'd go for CRT, with HDMI input (but the screen sizes tend to be smaller) or a decent projector.

I am sure a few more regulars will post soon with some more detailed info for you...

1024 x 768

This seems to be the most frequently seen resolution on plasma screens, especially Panasonic, Fujitsu and Pioneer.

These screens claim to be HD or HD ready.

So what's going on ?

If the resolution of the source material is 720p (or even 1080i or 1080p), does this mean that Panasonic Fujitsu and Pioneer are all using their internal scalers to deliver 768?

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by Graham Russell:
To get the best out of 1080 HD I assume it's ideal to have a screen with a native 1080 resolution. Looking quickly at the specs of plasma and LCD it appears plasma tend to be 1024x768, 1024x852 and sometimes 1024x1024. However some LCDs offer native HD resolution of 1920x1020.

So does this mean LCD is a better technical solution to 1020 HD?

I have compared the picture quality of plasma and LCD and preferred plasma. However, this wasn't with 1020 HD, but something closer to 768 which both formats can handle without any re sampling.

If I'm looking for a 1020 capable TV with good picture does this mean LCD is the only solution? Or am I getting too hung up on the technicalities of video re sampling? Meaning the better picture quality of plasma along with down sampling 1020 to 768 would actually look better?

Thanks,
Graham.

I've just noticed the massive typos I made previously. All references to 1020 resolution should of course be 1080.

Sorry...

It also has to do with pixel shape.

1280x720 has square pixels
1024x768 has rectangular pixels

Is the screen you are looking at buying a "PC" based screen or domestic (some manufacturers possibly use PC based chipsets).

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
If the resolution of the source material is 720p (or even 1080i or 1080p), does this mean that Panasonic Fujitsu and Pioneer are all using their internal scalers to deliver 768?

In the case of 720p and 1080i, then yes the sets need to use their own internal scalers to scale to their 768 resolution. In the case of 1080p, most sets won't accept this at all, although the 50inch Pioneer will.

the new pannys ie px70 px700 acept 1080p and the pz700 available from june outputs 1080p as far as i know will be the first 42" plasma to do this.

The up and coming Panasonic PZ700 will accept and display 1080p so any Full HD material (i.e. 1080p or 1080i like Sky-HD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) will not need scaling at all. This is perfect and perhaps what Plasma/LCD TV makers should have took into consideration in the first place rather than dumping on us either NTSC biased SD screens with 480 lines when they should have given us 576 or their later supposedly HD-Ready sets that were really using computer resolutions with 768 lines rather than 720 or 1080. People owning 1080 sets feeding them 1080 should in theory see the set for what it really is rather than having it's performance masked by bad/cheap internal scaling hardware. Some people will argue that a 1080 set over a 768 set is not really needed as you can't really justify or see the difference in the extra pixel and it's just a marketing numbers game, but weather you can or can’t is only part of the story and the significance of having the same number of lines displayed to what is being transmitted or fed into it is huge. 1080 is not a numbers game it is the exact number of lines needed for FullHD content and so there would be no point in the future for a manufacturer to produce a TV with any more pixels.

Some 768-line sets will actually accept 720p signals and scale horizontally (only) / letterbox them at 1.896:1.

quote:

Originally posted by David Dever:
Some 768-line sets will actually accept 720p signals and scale horizontally (only) / letterbox them at 1.896:1.

Really? Which models do that? Not that I don't believe you, i'm just curious.

quote:

Originally posted by SimonJ:
Some people will argue that a 1080 set over a 768 set is not really needed as you can't really justify or see the difference in the extra pixel

I assume you are refering to 720p v's 1080i...
there is talk that a 720p picture is as good if not "better" in some cases than a 1080i rendering (depending on manufacturer).

This is down to 720p having as much information in the picture as the 1080i signal. (720 has more temporal resolution, 1080i has more spatial resolution)

quote:

I assume you are refering to 720p v's 1080i...

No. The reference is to 768 which is what I have seen written on the description of many Panasonic, Fujutsu and Pioneer plasmas.

My question was - what happens when a 720p source is sent to a 768 plasma? does the plasma's built-in scaler have to convert the 720 into 768? or what?

Cheers

Don

I was refering to SimonJ's post.

I think it depends on the screen mode used

If you uses a "pixel to pixel" mode then is 'should' display the picture correctly, other modes probably re-scale to 768.

quote:

Originally posted by AV@naim:

quote:

Originally posted by SimonJ:
Some people will argue that a 1080 set over a 768 set is not really needed as you can't really justify or see the difference in the extra pixel

I assume you are refering to 720p v's 1080i...
there is talk that a 720p picture is as good if not "better" in some cases than a 1080i rendering (depending on manufacturer).

This is down to 720p having as much information in the picture as the 1080i signal. (720 has more temporal resolution, 1080i has more spatial resolution)

No I was referring to the screen resolution not the source material. So a 768p screen v 1080p screen with HD material at 1080i or 1080p. A 1080p screen should in theory look much better as it needs no scaling, but that is presuming the screen is a good screen and if the feed is 1080i the video processor in the screen can deinterlace ok. A 1080p screen with HD material at 1080i (Sky HD) or 1080p (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray) will need no scaling as did UK SD material at 576i and CRT TV's that display at 576i.

The talk of 720p looking better than 1080i is again probably more down to how good the video processor is and the resolution of the displaying screen rather than the amount of information in the feed as I think a 1080i has 12.5% more information in it to 720p.

On a 1080p screen, if your screen is better at scaling than deinterlacing then chances are a scaled picture 720p > 1080p will look better than a deinterlaced picture 1080i > 1080p, but if your screen is better at deinterlacing than scaling then chances are a deinterlaced picture 1080i > 1080p will look better than a scaled picture 720p > 1080p.

On a 768p screen it gets worse though, as a 720p feed will have be upscaled a little, but a 1080i feed will have to be downscaled and deinterlaced to display on a 768p screen, which is maybe why some people see a 720p feed as better. With Sky HD though and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray the source is originally 1080i/p so if you tell a Sky HD box to output 720p your very cheap Sky box downscales 1080i HD content and also deinterlaces it to 720p, before your screen upscales it afetrwards.

As with many things with flat panel screens it has more to do with video processing than actually quality or amount of data in the feed and is the reason why video processing is so important and you can't just say 720p or 1080i is better full stop.

If the TV can't show a 1080p signal then can't the HD-DVD player (or BLu-ray player) convert the 1080p into to a signal the TV can cope with, e.g. 720p?

My understanding is that HD DVD and Blu-ray is 1080p so surely all those owners of TV's with native resolutions less than 1080 (many plasma/LCDs) will still be able to enjoy HD quality DVD material.

That's the vital question(?).

b

quote:

Originally posted by Brucie:
If the TV can't show a 1080p signal then can't the HD-DVD player (or BLu-ray player) convert the 1080p into to a signal the TV can cope with, e.g. 720p?

My understanding is that HD DVD and Blu-ray is 1080p so surely all those owners of TV's with native resolutions less than 1080 (many plasma/LCDs) will still be able to enjoy HD quality DVD material.

That's the vital question(?).

b

Yes they normally can, but again, it's the conversion and video processing that detracts from the quality.

Take a HD-DVD player for example, it can probably output from a 1080p feed 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 576p or 576i. 1080p needs no scaling or processing so will have the best picture out with HD-DVD’s, all the other output resolutions need some kind of scaling and some require more processing. Now a typical HD-DVD player at say £250 selling price I’m guessing costs less than that to produce. Now how much of that cost do you think they spent on that processing that converts 1080p to 1080i, 720p or whatever.

Yes the DVD player can scale, but the best route is to feed native with no jiggery pokery going on, unless you want to invest in a descent external video processor/scaler.

Simonj,

Well that's what I was hoping that at least it is doable (1080p DVD sending to 720p screen for instance) but appreciate it is not theoretically as good as 1080 signal to 1080 screen.

I only have a humble 32" LCD so am hoping that any scaling will not be noticable anyway.

B

This is a bit of a technical minefield. It seems careful auditioning is needed to find an HD display that works well with both all HD formats and SD.

It will be interesting to see 1080 native plasmas.

My 32" Sony Vega TV still looks great with my humble DVDs

Sony make very good CRT's...

Walked past the local Sony shop yesterday and saw this chap in action -

http://shop.sonystyle-europe.com/SonyStyle/b2c/deeplink...tryId=OTC-PPCGBNBGEN

looked quite nice from what I briefly saw.