Hey guys,

I have a question for the "techies" here (more info can be provided, if needed):

There's a studio (I won't mention the name - some of you may know, though) who is releasing titles and claiming "1080p" on the box covers of their releases, however, when you play their titles back, the titles are playing at 1080i. Not just on my system - we've checked with multiple set-ups, TVs and players (as well as reviewers/customers)...so that's not the issue.

When I confronted the studio with this fact, this is the reply I got back. My question is are they giving us a line of BS?

Here's the reply:

Thanks in advance!

I didnt know that this was open knowledge on the boards.

These are the things I'd much rather read about instead of what sales are doing compared to SD - then the three pages of arguements that follow.

From my understanding, the 29.97/1080i would be the equal of say the 1080i/50 release of [REC], it is an NTSC encode at that rate and doesn't support true 1080p. In order to get the true 1080p, it would have to be running at 1080p/24. I haven't spent a lot of time on it, but it seems like the players are automatically converting it?

I'm probably wrong on this, very, very wrong. Interested to see what the final answer is, though.

Are you thinking Image who did Short Circuit? I think they put 1080p on the back of the box by mistake...

Maybe Echo Bridge?

Short Circuit says 1080i on the back.

Ahh ok. I remember people making a big fuss about it being 1080i and can't remember if it said 1080p on the back or not.

After looking on AVS, I saw that BD does not support 1080p30. However, 1080p30 content can be encoded at 1080p30 but flagged as 1080i60 in order to make it compliant (the NIN disc, for example). The player can either look at the encode and see it is progressive and decode it as progressive, or it can read the flags and decode it as interlaced.

Perhaps their original encode is 1080p30, and the player is reading the flags and playing it back as 1080i60. Is this a concert or other video-based disc?

It's not one of the "major" studios - I probably should leave it at that.

I guess my question is as follows: given the info they gave me, COULD the discs contain a full 1080p transfer and be putting out at 1080p, but result in the player/TV reading it as 1080i? Keep in mind, we're talking about mulitple players and multiple TVs reading it like this...just not a specific brand or specific set up.

The studio wants us to list their titles as 1080p and review them as 1080p transfers - and I'm hesitant to do this, since it's reading 1080i. There's my dilemma.

Well, if the material is 1080p30, I suppose the player could just be reporting how the video is flagged, but is actually outputting 1080p.

I am wondering why the studio name is being kept a secret. I not only want to know the studio, but the titles as well.

It's possible that the disc stores whole video frames, but is encoded in such a way that the Blu-ray player can only decode it in 1080i format. Just a theory, though.

I'm guessing it's R&B Films. This sounds like exactly the kind of confused, half-understood technical gibberish their rep used to spout about how an identical encode was only 1080i on HD DVD but full 1080p on Blu-ray, because his particular player was a 1080i model.

I'm not sure I understand the concern. If the content was recorded at 1080p/30, but it is encoded (or flagged) on disc as 1080i/60, pragmatically there is no difference. There is no pulldown required to convert a 1080i/60 image back to 1080p/30, so why would anyone care how the video signal gets from point a to point b? If it starts as 1080p/30, and it ends up displayed as 1080p/30, isn't that what matters?

I can understand the concern as it relates to 1080p/24 material, since the de-interlacing step for that material can be more complicated, but that's not what we're talking about here, right?

There are no TVs that will display video at 1080p30. Assuming a 1080p model, it will have to display at either 1080p60 or 1080p24 (or an even multiple of 24).

As for whether the conversion from 1080p30 to 1080i60 to 1080p60 will have any negative impact on the picture, I can't say for certain but I'd tend to doubt it would be anything serious.

I would assume you knew what I meant. A 1080p/30 image would obviously be frame doubled to 1080p/60. That really has nothing to do with my question.

The concern is people's player/TV readouts are showing it as 1080i...so it becomes difficult to explain to customers/users why their 1080p disc is reading as 1080i on their players.

Granted, there's really not much (unless you have a gianormous set) VISIBLE difference between interlaced and progressive at 1080, but you KNOW how people get if they think they're not getting a full 1080p disc.

From what I'm being told (elsewhere, not here), they are flagging it at 1080i60 (NOT 1080p60) and 1080i60 playback is (again, according to them) the same as 1080p30. Hence why the player/TVs are reading it as 1080i instead of 1080p.

Anyone confirm or deny that 1080i60 playback equals 1080p30 playback?

Ah, that makes a lot more sense, thanks!

Of course, when talking about today's TVs, there should be ZERO difference between a 1080i/60 and 1080p/30 source, once it gets the the display. There are no interlaced displays in the LCD/plasma/DLP world, so it is always going to be 1080p/something (unless, of course, its a 720p display panel ).

But, explaining that to a customer might not be so easy.

I think the answer is yes and no. There may be a difference in the way the fields are organized in the data stream, but I'm not positive. Either way, my guess would be that most TVs wouldn't accept a signal that is flagged as 1080p/30. The only to get the set to accept the signal in that case would be to flag it as 1080i/60 (which all TVs must accept, whether or not they actually display it as such). What ends up on the display will be the same, regardless of how it is flagged.

How about next time you just post the correct information from the start, rather than post something inaccurate that you assume people will be able to figure out what you actually meant.

A 1080p30 image would be frame doubled then interlaced to 1080i60, then deinterlaced (either in the player or in the TV) to 1080p60. That's two conversion steps in between what's on the disc and what gets displayed on your screen. Theoretically, that can be reconstructed without visible loss. However, several Blu-ray players (including the Panasonic BD30 I currently use) have very poor deinterlacing of 1080i and are liable to cause jaggies and other unwanted deinterlacing artifacts.