HDTV Advice

[marcus]

I admit to being a little confused with the rate of new formats coming out and so am after some basic advice.

Ive a setup of a Panny 50" 1366 x 768 res plasma, connected to my PC by VGA.

I obtained a demo disk of HDTV material, its source resolution is 1920 x 1080.

Using the ATI Control Panel (Ive a radeon x800 Pro with two options to force 720p at 60Hz and 1080i at 30Hz), I forced the 1080i resolution and proceeded to watch the demo using the newest version of Power DVD, which indeed did look nice and crisp.

The image looked very nice at my desktop setting of 1280 x 720 also.

Am I watching what can be described as actual HDTV as its intended, or am I missing or of misconfigured something?

[sj33]

If your forcing 1080i resolution, then your TV set itself is downscaling it to 1366x768, assuming that's the resolution of your TV.

The whole thing is debatable though, as when you deinterlace 1080i, the amount of detail vertically contained in the capture only works out to be roughly the equivelent of 800p anyway, which is hardly a huge leap from 720p.
Course, you still get more horizontal resolution.

Arguably, to see 1080i at it's fullest, you need a 1920x1080 set, though those won't be sensible prices for the forseeable future... and besides, it still has to deinterlace it.
Technically, 1080p would be seeing the set at it's fullest, though 1080p is not actually part of the HDTV spec.

[Pavey]

Just curious Shakey,how do you know these things?

I dont have a clue about this stuff.

Thanks for the PSU.

[Leon Retro]

Just curious Shakey,how do you know these things?

I dont have a clue about this stuff.

Thanks for the PSU.

I never knew much about all this HDTV jargon until I visited the AVForums and researched everything. If I'm not mistaken Shakey visits the AV forums too!

[Ajay1986]

Ive been trying to get my head around this stuff for when the 360 arrives but god its making my head hurt. Why cant tvs just stay the same lol.

[RLench]

Just curious Shakey,how do you know these things?

I dont have a clue about this stuff.

Thanks for the PSU.

Nick, I'm writing a HDTV guide for the site. It should be finished today but I've been delayed by a few things.

It'll explain everything from resolutions to formats to connection types and (most importantly) how it all relates to games

[marcus]

Im using FFDSHOW and Theatertek software, although I am yet to get a full-screen image when using FFDSHOW decoding. Its also jerky, presumeably the settings I am using are beyond my CPU (which is a hefty Athlon64 3500).

The most useable resolution so far is 1280 x 720 which according to the ATI Control Panel is 720p. When I switch to 1080i mode, whilst the desktop isnt usable as it is in 720p, DVD (I think) is of sharper quality. I assume then that the 1920 x 1080 resolution the desktop is set to is being scaled down to the native resolution of 1366 x 768 as shakey says.

Based on that, Im best off sticking to 720p (or 1280 x 720) which is a near fit to my resolution. For true HDTV content at 1080i I dont have a screen which would support it without downscaling the image.

Further on from that, I have a pro-scan DVD player (Arcam DV88), if a standard DVDs resolution is only 720 x 480 surely I would be getting a better quality image from the higher resolution of my PC?

[EvilBoris]

The TV will stretch it to a higher resolution to fit the screen and the PC will stretch it then output it at the higher resolution. I imagine the PC would be better at doing this, but you never know

[MACO]

I'm really hoping that Microsoft come out before the launch and do some cross promotion with a TV manufacturer so at least the 360 buyers will at least have some sort of guide as to what screen/make to get. There's too much information for the general punter to take in and MS should take the lead if they are driving forward the HD gaming revoloution with the 360. I mean with all the various reports of screen tearing etc, who wants to shell out for a new TV if it doesn't do the gaimg job.

[marcus]

Ive some HDTV content at 1920 x 1080, its split into .TS (Transport Stream) files which when I play via WMP10 is badly slow and stuttering. PowerDVD seems to cope better, but as the files are split into 100Mb sections it pauses to a black screen when going to the next file which is useless. Id imagine my PC is fast enough to cope with these (A64 3500) so any ideas how I can get the content to run better? A program called HDTVtoMPEG apparently can join the TS files, but I wonder if thats necessary.

[EvilBoris]

Maybe you can change the buffering settings somewhere and reduce that down? What are the videos you are trying to play?

[marcus]

I tried VLC player and was able to play the TS files a lot better, there was still occasional freezes though, perhaps because Im watching via a network might not help there. On still or slow moving images the picture is lovely, on fast movement I often see lots of lines appear which I imagine is an interlacing issue? The movie Im watching to test this is AVP, it outputs to 1920 x 1080.

[themanwithapc]

I'm really hoping that Microsoft come out before the launch and do some cross promotion with a TV manufacturer so at least the 360 buyers will at least have some sort of guide as to what screen/make to get. There's too much information for the general punter to take in and MS should take the lead if they are driving forward the HD gaming revoloution with the 360. I mean with all the various reports of screen tearing etc, who wants to shell out for a new TV if it doesn't do the gaimg job.

They are doing this with the new Samsung LCD sets, and using them for the demo booths. However, these screens do seem to have the dreaded tearing issue, so we're still none the wiser as to which set to buy for the 360.

[andrewfee]

I'm really hoping that Microsoft come out before the launch and do some cross promotion with a TV manufacturer so at least the 360 buyers will at least have some sort of guide as to what screen/make to get. There's too much information for the general punter to take in and MS should take the lead if they are driving forward the HD gaming revoloution with the 360. I mean with all the various reports of screen tearing etc, who wants to shell out for a new TV if it doesn't do the gaimg job.

Microsoft have already struck a deal with Samsung for the Xbox 360, they're promoting the LE__R41B for Xbox 360 use, and using the LE23R41B in their demo pods.

This is an image of the prototype unit. One of the final unit was posted online recently, but I can't seem to find it.


EDIT: Oops, should've refreshed the page before posting.

I've got the 32" and have spent hundreds of hours using 720p/60 over VGA, Component and HDMI, which is where the fault is said to occur.

I'm still convinced it's just the source; most people seem to be reporting it when playing 720p Xbox games, but it's more than likely it's just v-sync issues with the game itself, as the Xbox can't handle that resolution very well.

[lei]

nice pod