Great article! Thanks for the link.

What I find interesting about all of this talk we are having is that SO much is based on pure speculation. Here we are...just about in March and HD discs and players are supposed to be coming out in the fall, yet we don't know these basic specs yet?!?! I can't believe the studios don't have this all sorted out by now. This all should have been known by now. Sounds like it's going to be a major rush job.

Yep you are quite right. We are getting more and more info with passing time though. For example, the dvdforum voted to use Mpeg 4 Vc1 this week. It's terrific they didn't cheap out and agree on mpeg 2 only.

I think they are afraid to announce HDMI/downrezzing for fear of the backlash. Remember, a majority of HDTV sets out there right now do not have DVI at all.

Well they'll either get the backlash now before release or later when it is but either way they're going to hear it. This is not only going to effect owners with component only connections. As the above posts point out those with DVI that don't support HDCP can also be left out in the cold and those owners aren't early adopters in most cases. I think it's ironic that many of the same manufacturers that are possibly going to release HDMI players are the same ones who sold you an HDTV without HDMI two years ago. It's conceivable that many of these HDTV owners will be so pissed at their TV manufacturer that they refuse to buy a newer model from them or that brand's player. So they could be playing a dangerous game that can hurt future sales.

For an example of this look how many people Mitsubishi has pissed off when there promise module didn't include DVI/HDMI. They were told when they bought their TVs that the company was providing security for future upgradability through this PM and then they didn't provide it. So many current Mits owners have said that they won't be buying another Mits in the future.

You got that right. When I bought my new car I didn't even look at Mits because they fucked me on the "promise" module. I'll never buy anything with their name on it again. Ever.

So every single player sold is going to have to interlace in order to provide a compatible signal for virtually every display device for some time to come (certainly for 1080, mostly for 720)?

I'm not sure that's much easier than deinterlacing.

Why would you have to interlace to accomodate 720p displays?

I would rather have these systems look more to the future than try to serve what's most widely available now, and I think by the time one of these formats really starts to get a stranglehold on the home video world, 1080p will be much more pervasive than it is now.

How many native 720p display devices are out there now?

Anyway, I'm just wondering about the format, especially since nobody seems to know exactly what it's going to be.

I don't think deinterlacing even 1080 content is all that CPU intensive when done in the digital domain in the player. There are flags telling it what to do. It's difficult for external scalars to do because they have lost those flags and have to figure it out for themselves.

...well... and... or... Etc., etc., and so forth...

. . . . . .

Switcher costs at this point don't matter. They will probably be in the $50 range within 2 years.

I'm still limping along with my Toshiba 36 CRT that I bought 6 years ago now. There is no way I would buy any new TV in the last 2 years, the technology is just too new. Maybe in a year or so, I will think about it but not now. The only complaint I really have with the TV is its weight.

Everything that's not CRT-based, more or less. The overwhelming majority of DLP, D-ILA, LCoS, plasma, and RP-LCD sets are 720p.

But don't you still lose something, even if it's fairly incremental? I'd imagine there's still some drop in quality comparing a de-interlaced 1080i signal with something that's natively 1080p.

You really want to rely on the accuracy of flagging? Have you ever used a flag-reading DVD player or HTPC? They suck. Almost every single DVD ever released has flagging errors on it, which is why cadence-based deinterlacers do such a better job.

It's much easier to interlace a natively progressive picture than to deinterlace a natively interlaced picture. To interlace a natively progressive frame, you literally just have to halve it and send out each field in sequence. When trying to deinterlace an interlaced signal, you get into all sorts of trouble when trying to accurately match up which fields go together to form which frames.

Why should this be a sticking point? The end result will be the same on your display.

Not in every case. Looking at many TVs specs lately many of these display types are not 720p native. A lot are scaling the image from 720p to whatever the native resolution of the display is such as 738p, 766p, etc. So this scaling process can theoretically add in artifacts that can further dilute the PQ.

Absolutely. The majority of plasma screens are no better than EDTV so that means a big down-conversion. Not to mention there are hardly any devices capable of displaying 1080p.

And the majority of the rest that are even able to natively support 720p won't be able to use the 720p signal unless they have HDMI allowing the copy protection to be enforced, isn't that correct? And even if you have a 720p capable set are the HD-DVDs coming out separately as 720p and 1080p so you have to buy the right one for your set and upgrade later as you get better equipment?

I believe interlacing requires vertical filtering that loses some picture quality. And if most existing sets for quite some time will only be able to use the 1080i interlaced output of the player they will depend on the interlacer of the player so it seems we'll have the same problem we have now with deinterlacers, but in reverse.

Well, no one with an HDTV will be able to if they don't have an HDCP-capable input, regardless of the native resolution. It doesn't necessarily have to be HDMI.

No. Any TV that can take 720p input should be able to take 1080i input. Or 480i. Or 480p. The player will do the conversion for you, or if you have more confidence in your television's scaler, you can let that do the work instead (although most displays can't accept 1080p directly at the moment). Whatever works best in your particular case.

First-gen DVD players did a terrible job downconverting 16x9-enhanced material, and widescreen televisions weren't very plentiful at the time. I think most of us here are glad that anamorphic widescreen became the gold standard, despite the hardware limitations at that time and despite the fact that many people couldn't take advantage back in 1997. I don't see this as being any different.

So you are saying all HD-DVD material will be 720p and not 1080p? If it's 1080p how does it get to 720p? Will the player do all those conversions?

No. I believe (or at least, I hope) it'll be stored at 1080p and that the player will downconvert to whatever resolution the user specifies, if necessary.

Current talk is that both formats should be, and are expected to be, 1080p24. This should keep consumers and hardware manufacturers happy for quite some time.

I don't think we'll see "custom" resolution settings in the average players that most in the market will buy. Not even some of the top dvd players today offer this. You're probably better off getting a HD scaler that is built for the task IMO.

With all due respect, you did not say 720p/1080i. You said "custom"(user identified) resolutions. I can't think of one player today that puts out multiple user identified resolutions. Most people refer to custom resolutions as anything you want to output. Not even Denon 5910 has this feature and it costs around 4K. HTPC and outboard scalers are the best methods of doing this.

More than likely both HD formats will have one simple, cost effective, way of scaling material just to predefined "popular" presets such as 1980x1080p, 1280x720p, and 1980x1080(540)i. This will input the signal into your display and anything that is not 1:1 pixel mapped might be rescaled by that display.

The lack of custom resolutions in the 5910 was rather strongly criticized in the Secrets benchmark. Here is the link:
[http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-b...h&articles=121

Thanks, that is a nice read. Should be interesting to see when Denon can cycle the realta chips into the lower cost models.

It was a mutual misunderstanding, which is why I quickly deleted my post. I misinterpreted what you meant by "custom resolutions", and I probably should have worded my message more clearly. By "whatever resolution the user specifies", I meant an option from a list, the way most cable set-top boxes allow the user to choose 480i, 480p, 720p, or 1080i.

Understood. Sorry about the mix up!