first impression hd-drive

John,

What have you just bought ? (for £130), what are you using to display the image ? and what are you using to deliver the sound?

How does the image compare to an n-Vi (or some other identifyable dvd source)?

How does the sound compare to an n-Vi or some other identifyable audio source?

Cheers

Don

don its a hd-drive add on for the x-box 360,it is out-putting at 720 into my sd panny panel, via component and optical lead into the n-vi, on some scenes the definition on the hd version does seem better, but on many scenes on my set-up there seems very little in it, might be my set up or might be that the n-vi is very good at what it does, it out-puts sound only on 5-1 dolby digital, and apart from the hd disc having a very low volumme, i would say the n-vi is as good if not better as far as the sound goes, will post more when i have played with it for a bit longer, i do feel though its well worth the £130 that it cost

So HD DVD, per-se, isn't the panacea of DVDs. Well, not at the £130 price-point.

I saw a Panasonic BluRay DVD player in John Lewis the other day. I think the price was about £1,300. It was screening its picture to a 50" Panasonic and looked really quite stunning.

I assumed that it was running at 720p to suit the screen. If so, then 1080p should be mind-blowing!!

I would like to see this BluRay v a Naim DVD5 onto whichever screen Naim thinks best suited.

Cheers

Don

Or would you really like to see a Naim DVD555 with a BlueRay drive?

quote:

my panny downscales it from 720 to 480

So, let me get this straight.....

You've got a standard def panel and you're not blown away by the additional quality of 720P/1080i/1080P from your HD-DVD drive or your TVDrive?????


Gee, let me see if I can figure out why......


Ah yes - because your Panny is throwing away between a third and half of the picture info you're sending it!!!!!!


My £1000 worth of turntable doesn't sound that special either if I run it through our little bedroom system.

Perhaps if you want HD to look good an HD screen might be a wise move?????

that could be the reason mike, or it could be that i am more than happy with the picture quality that i get now, have read a couple of threads on the av forums about people switching from sd panels to panny hd screens, saying they thought the x-box 360 out-putting 720 or 1080 looked better on there old sd screens,or perhaps they were just lying, correct me if i am wrong but untill you replaced your screen you were running the tv -drive via scart so how can you know what the hd-out-put was like on a normal sd panel or tv

Why would folk lie?

On the other hand - if they haven't got their screens set up properly they may well be seeing lower quality images.

quote:

how can you know what the hd-out-put was like on a normal sd panel or tv

Interesting question - which you've just answered:

quote:

correct me if i am wrong but untill you replaced your screen you were running the tv -drive via scart

I couldn't feed component HD to that screen - so instead of asking the screen to throw all the extra resolution away I had to ask the TVDrive to do the job of disposing of all those pesky unwanted pixels.

My old screen was good enough that I could see a level of picture quality step up (on a downscaled HD picture running from RGB scart) from a standard def broadcast - but in no way whatsoever was it good enough for me to see what HD was truly capable of.

Figure from that what you will.

From a resolution perspective

HD-DVD = 1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels

SD Plasma = 720x480 = 345,600 pixels

SD Plasma is displaying about 17% of the available pixels

Allan

mike and allan, i am not saying you can't get a lot better than i have, all i am saying is for the present time i am more than happy with my pq from tv-drive x-box360 and hd drive, also have seen n-vi displaying into pioneer 436xde panel via dvi into hdmi, and yes there was a slight improvment in pq, not enough for me to run out and buy a hd srceen at the moment, bearing in mind my n-vi is the main part of my set-up and will be for quite a few years to come.

John,

It might still be worth trying the 1080i output from the Xbox with HD-DVD, you never know, you might get a small improvement, or maybe not, but worth a try. As I mentioned in a previous thread, the disks are encoded at 1080 lines, you're getting the Xbox to scale to 720 and your plasma to scale 720 to 480. Why scale twice when you can do it in one?

Also, it's entirely feasible that the Xbox is taking the 1080i signal and scaling each 540 line field up to 720 (rather than scaling 1080 down to 720). This was a well known problem with the earlier Toshiba HD-DVD players when outputting 720p. In fact it was actually slightly worse as the toshiba was scaling 1080 down to 480 before scaling up to 720. The recommendation for those players (until the firmware fix came out) was to stick to 1080i regardless of display.

Allan

I think what is being said is that you re bound to be happy with what you have because you are not seeing what HD is.

Its like saying you are happy with your hifi because you have no speaker with which to hear the sound. Your little test is utterly pointless without a compatible screen.

garyi, i know what hd is, i also know having read on the av-forums how bad sky hd can look and thats beside there poor upscaled signals, and i also know how bad some hd screens are when fed with inferior signals, yes i could get a better picture with my hd-drive add on into a hd-screen, but my n-vi is never going to be hd is it.

Perhaps not - but my n-Vi runs into a full HD 1080P screen - and for two days it ran into an SD CRT screen.
My current tv shows me more of what the n-Vi could do than my CRT did, and it'll show me HD properly too.

When you want to buy an HD set, make sure you buy one with a decent scaler on board and then you get the best out of whatever you watch.

I can make the picture on my screen look fucking dreadful - I just bung it on "dynamic" mode - but a decent set, properly adjusted for all its' inputs, is capable of stunning pictures whatever resolution its' sent - as long as the original footage is of decent quality, and the broadcaster isn't skimping on bandwidth.

Guys,

perhaps its just me? but it seems like you're kicking John in the head. The guy posted some factual details - that's all.

I sought a bit of clarity, nothing else, but an awful lot of the responses seam to be along the lines of "until you buy a propoer 1080p HD Plasma", you are not qualified to post on this forum.

My undestanding is that there's not a lot of difference between an n-Vi and an HD-X-Box into a SD Plasma, and probably not a lot of difference into a 1080p HD Plasma either. But I would be happy to be corrected.

Cheers

Don

I'm simply stating the fact that judging the performance of an HD source entirely on its' ability with a non-HD display is not a true indicator of what it can do.
It is relevant, but by no means a definitive statement as to the capabilities of the device.

By the same token, making the assumption that all HD screens will make a hash of SD material (broadcast or from an n-Vi) is erroneous.

Incidentally Don, there are far more 1080P LCD's than plasmas - largely due to the enormous cost of making the plasma pixels small enough to carry 1920x1080 resolution, without making the pixels so small that their light-output is insufficient. As the pixels of an LCD merely allow light to pass through (rather than generating light), LCD is more cost-effective in various screen sizes at this resolution.

mike, i stated that an n-vi through pioneer 43" hd plasma was slightly better than through my sd panel, but in my opinon it wasn't that differant that i need to rush out and buy a hd screen, and if i did it would be a hd plasma displaying at 720p not a lcd whatever the resolution was, as i agree with the majority that plasma are better than lcd ?

If you don't feel the need to rush out and buy an HD screen, that's cool....

But I bought my LCD having seen it run alongside... and OUTPERFORM a Pioneer 427XD plasma. I've had a home theatre system in one way or another for over a decade... and as a photographer I take image performance and accurate rendition of colours very seriously - pooh-pooh my choice if you wish - but please do so on better grounds than "the majority says so" - after all - "the majority" think CD sounds better than vinyl, and MP3 is brilliant!

Also, why buy a 720P screen which STILL downscales and disposes of a third of them image that can be held on a 1080P disc???

When the time comes to buy check both technologies - don't let folk on forums (myself included) tell you what is better or not.
I'm always glad to share the benefits of my experience on here - not to tell folk on here what they should be buying.

You ended up with Naim because you trusted your ears & eyes more than the marketing men from B&O etc.... repeat the procedure and get what YOU feel is best, but I wouldn't rule a whole technology out until you've seen the best it can deliver.

i agree with what you are saying mike, a also feel from my past experience that vinyl sounds better than cd, only ever got up to lp12 with akito, k9, and cirkus upgrade, and i prefered it to my naim cd2,

Smooth!

Mike

Your posts were simply getting aggresive without reason and IMHO they still are.

Cheers

Don

How do I gently put it to you, Don, that you're attempting to stoke the fire long after the ashes are cold.

John & I were seeing things differently and with different experiences. Unless I misread his last post then we have reached the point where we both understand what each was trying to get across.

Thanks to your 2nd to last post, Don, I attempted some clarification as to what I was trying to get across to John.

As a direct response to your "HO" I reserve the right to confirm to you that agression was never my intention.

There is nothing more for me to say on this thread... unless someone invites further comment from me???

quote:

Also, why buy a 720P screen which STILL downscales and disposes of a third of them image that can be held on a 1080P disc???

Surely you would set your source to output 720p?

1080p screens are quite expensive if you buy a reasonably big size.

720p/1080i screens are the norm for the moment. Until Full HD @ 1080p becomes the standard that's what people as a whole are buying.

John R1.

Is your Panny a PW6 by any chance?

I ask as I have one and am about (tomorrow) to receive a 50PH9.

My primary reason to change was I wanted a bigger screen.

My hopes are that my DVD5 really comes into play on the bigger screen. However, the leap to 720p is supposed to be as good as the leap from VHS to DVD or equivalent.

.....and yes I know the DVD5 only goes to 576p.

general skanky, yes it is a pw6, am waiting for your review of the phd9,