HD 1080p Screen - worth it yet?

Unless your Sky HD box can de-interlace a 1080i signal to 1080p, your display will need to perform the de-interlacing itself–how well this works is dependent upon the built-in processing of the display.

It can depend on how close your viewing position is to the screen. The bigger the screen and the closer you are the worse the picture looks on some SD material i.e. ITV

Proceed with EXTREME caution.

Are you looking at this screen:
37PX70


Or this version:
37PX70CAB


And are you seeing this part of the spec:

quote:

37 inch, 94cmV Screen, VIERA HD Ready plasma with Pedestal stand


1080p Digital Processing Chip-Set.
1080p Digital Re-Mastering Processor
3,072 Equivalent Steps of Graduation
Max. 10,000 : 1 Contrast
Digital Optimizer
Advanced 3D Colour Management
Motion Pattern Noise Reduction
Sub-Pixel Controller

Don't get excited by all that 1080P stuff!

Read further down that page:

quote:

display

Screen Size / Screen Aspect

37 inch (94 cm) diagonal

Panel

G10 Progressive HD Plasma Display Panel

Number of Pixels

786,432 (1,024 x 720) pixels

Applicable PC Signals

SVGA (XGA compressed)

Displayable Colours

Max 29 billion equavalent colours for darker part
Contrast Ratio

Max. 10,000:1

This is a 720 line display!!!

I think you'll find that the smallest FULL HD 1920x1080 panel Pana make in plasma is 65 inches!!!!

They're simply pointing out that they have a special circuit for downscaling the 1080P output from a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player to match the screen's resolution.

Back on topic.

I have a 1080P panel (Sharp LC37XD1E - LCD)... very nearly all of my viewing is SD material (TV or DVD).
Over the weekend I watched Grey's Anatomy on Ch5, Casino Royale on DVD, Two and a Half Men on Paramount, and the F1.

The F1 looking f'king shocking!
Everything else looked great.

The F1 was badly shot with old and outdated outside broadcast cameras partly zoomed in to re-mask it as a 16:9 broadcast. Bernie Ecclestone needs to get his wallet out!
It even looked dreadful on the old SD CRT on my other cable box.

I don't use Sky - I have a Virgin V+ box, but a friend has the same screen hooked to a Sky HD box and whilst the picture on cable is definately better than SKY for SD broadcasts, the difference between the two is not enormous.

Without a doubt, well shot, well mastered and well broadcast stuff will look great on a decent 1080P panel.. but it'll certainly show those broadcasts which are lacking for what they are.

panasonic make a full 1080p 50" plasma for about £3500 pioneer make one for £6000, did read somewhere the new 50" panasonic pz700 might also output 1080p and be quite a bit cheaper

Yep...

Just looked at their site....
50PZ700 IS Full 1920x1080 HD
50PX70 is 1366x768

So, still the smallest Full HD Plasma is 50" from Pana or Pioneer.

Reckon it's a pixel size to light output thing... must be why there are buckets of smaller 1080P Lcd's and no plasmas.

i quite agree with you mike, have also read somewhere would be hard to make a 42" full hd plasma, i notice the new 42" pz700 panasonic has better resolution than the px models, so be interesting to find out how good it is, no doubt will be quite expensive.i think pannasonic also make a 50"full hd panel pf9.

All

Sony do a good few 40" lcd screens that will show 1080p. Although I still feel that plasma is better than LCD.

I would tread carefully on this one, also do you have a blu-ray or hd dvd player to feed the screen???

Neill

Panasonic are to make some G10 1920x1080p in 42", 50" and higher, they may not be out yet for a few months though. I think the 50" is going to be around £2400-2500, not sure on the 42" price. Link to Belgium website as that always seems to be updated before the UK one, although the product codes may be different :-

http://www.panasonic.be/servlet/PB/menu/1250410_l6/index.html

Here's you go in English :-

http://www.panasonic-europe.com/news_read.aspx?id=2242

42" I think will be under £2k from release.

Worth the wait in my view because :-

1. The processing is meant to be good, so SD should not look as pants in theory as other plasmas, although I obviously haven't seen it in the flesh

2. 1920x1080 pixels means you are pretty future proofed and native for SkyHD (1080i) HD-DVD (0180p) and BluRay (1080p), rather than being fobbed off with that 720p tat many of us got suckered into.

3. The prices have come down loads as they have done year on year, so I expect shortly after release a 42" FullHD panel for £1800 and they look good aesthetics wise. I've seen the HD Ready version in JL002E

All in all a promising looking panel that is ahead of the game performance for price etc and 1080p!!

Feeding HD Plasmas

I would like to buy a 1080p plasma and can comfortably wait a few months.

But when I get it, what am I going to be able to feed it with?

How big is the Blu-Ray catalogue?
What BBC output will be available in 1080p ?
How extensive (and how expensive) is the Sky HD channel?
What else is available ?

And will SD (dvd/tv/video) look better upscaled to 1080p with the built-in plasma scaler? or will it look better on a 720 plasma (or are they all 768 and scaled anyway?)

Cheers

Don

1080p you have Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, 1080i you have SKYHD.
So far at Amazon.com they have 303 Blu-Ray titles listed & 297 HD-DVD titles listed.
At the moment BBC HD on Sky is half a preview channel and half real programs, the content is amazing though.
SKYHD costs £10 extra per month (which included Sky+ for free with that if you don't already have it), the minimum package you can get will cost £25 per month. If you buy you box through Sky you are tied into a 12 month contract, if you buy it from elsewhere you can turn off the HD content or indeed all of Sky whenever you want.
Full listing of SKYHD's 13 current channels is :-
BBC HD
Sky One HD
Sky Arts HD
SkyMovies HD1
SkyMovies HD2
Sky Sports HD1
Sky Sport HD2
Prem Plus HD
Discovery HD
Nat Geo HD
History HD
SkyBoxOffice HD1 (pay as you go movies)
SkyBoxOffice HD2 (pay as you go movies)

If you have a Home Theatre PC you can also download HD content and show it on your TV.

The how good will SD look on a Full HD screen, will be the same as the answer did on a 720p or XGA (1024x768) TV. It all depends on how good the internal scaler is.

I think many TV manufacturers have had a good teeth kicking over the past few years by people buying HD ready TV's and the picture with SD material looking pants. The newer generation TV's tend to have a bit more effort put into their internal scalers. You can only ever tell by auditioning the kit and since the Panny 1080p is not out yet I do not know of anyone that has seen one in the flesh. Their internal scalers are never likely to be as good as an external scaler, so if you are likely to be watching SD material for a few years to come then that may not be a bad option anyway. Thing to do is audition one and see what you think and if the internal scaler floats your boat enough.

Sky HD content is all 1080i so the only way you can currently get 1080p is through a BR / HD DVD player or through a HTPC.

The content on a SD signal is really dependent on the SD signal. Look at the football on ITV tonight and compare it to any HD BBC or SkyHD broadcast. If you want to go one step worse look at the Chelsea game on ITV4. Absolutely shocking.