1080p DLP Hits the Shelves!

[Geoffcin]

June 29, 2005 — Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, Inc. is claiming bragging rights to being the first rear-projection HDTV maker to bring Texas Instruments' 1080p DLP technology to your corner TV store. Mitsubishi (sometimes called by customers shopping for big screens "Mister Bushi" - as in, "Let me see one of those Mister Bushi TVs" - seriously, I'm not making this up) says they'll claim their rightful place in the consumer-electronics history books when they begin shipping the 52-inch WD-52627 to certain lucky (or brown-nosing) Southern California retailers on June 30th. National distribution of the widescreen HDTV will commence in the following weeks. The suggested retail price of the WD-52627 is $3,699 (plus local taxes and applicable delivery charges).

Full story;

http://hometheatermag.com/news/062805mitsubishi/

[steamboy 2]

now that 1080p is starting to show up in new displays, is it because the next wave of hd-dvd & blu-ray are coming in the next 6 to 7 months? and are these new formats displaying 1080p or 720p ?


always great info from you!

mike

[Geoffcin]

now that 1080p is starting to show up in new displays, is it because the next wave of hd-dvd & blu-ray are coming in the next 6 to 7 months? and are these new formats displaying 1080p or 720p ?


always great info from you!

mike

HD-DVD & BlueRay will both be able to output 1080p resolution. The future is looking good for high-rez video!

[toenail]

Unfortunately many of the new 1080p sets can only deinterlace/scale and display to a 1080p native resolution. Most can't accept 1080p as an input format. Not sure if the Mits in question offers this feature or not.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

My question is how much improvement over 1080I will our eyes actually notice from 1080P. It is always about what you CAN see, and not what the numbers are.

[toenail]

I would love to see how much of a detectable difference there is between 1080i and 1080p input signal on a 1080p native monitor. As the technology advances I find myself wondering how far it has to go before people will be satisfied. I put my stock in the current 720p DLP arena. I highly doubt that one of the emerging formats (1080p) will leave me wishing I'd waited.

[Geoffcin]

I would love to see how much of a detectable difference there is between 1080i and 1080p input signal on a 1080p native monitor. As the technology advances I find myself wondering how far it has to go before people will be satisfied. I put my stock in the current 720p DLP arena. I highly doubt that one of the emerging formats (1080p) will leave me wishing I'd waited.

And the HD-DVD demo with 1080p resolution simply distroyed any other format I've ever seen. A clear step up in performance.

[ryjam282]

That is great news, I am in the market for a new TV and this is the way I am leaning now, I have to do some more research but it is looking like this is going to be the one. Anyone have any reviews or insight on the 1080p DLPS in general?

[cam]

This 1080p sounds great, but why can a rptv crt only do 1080i. A crt can't even offer 720p. Can a crt only get to 1080i and that is why they are being phased out.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

This 1080p sounds great, but why can a rptv crt only do 1080i. A crt can't even offer 720p. Can a crt only get to 1080i and that is why they are being phased out.

I don't think that 720P is actually superior to 1080I. But from what I have gleaned from Joe Kane during his workshops all depends on the camera type that is recording the images. I am going to cut a paste the notes I recorded on my laptop during the workshop.


There are many factors that affect picture quality aside from format.
These include lens design, lens condition, lens mounting, camera type,
camera design, camera condition, and camera setup. Those can have huge
effects on picture quality. But I'll concentrate on image format.

An interlaced format has a number of drawbacks relative to a progressive
format. Regardless of image, there is a "pi" effect when scanning lines
are visible that can draw attention, but that's unlikely to be an issue
on an HDTV consumer display viewed at normal distances.

There is another reduction in vertical resolution, referred to as the
"interlace coefficient," which researchers have placed anywhere from 0.5
(half the resolution) to 1.0 (no reduction). In NHK's early HDTV
testing, they found 731 (total) lines progressive to be visually
equivalent to 1125 (total) lines interlaced for still images, but that
research was conducted in an early era of tube cameras.

Another deficiency that can appear in interlace even in still images is
called interline flicker or twitter. If a horizontal line in an image
appears in only one scanning line, it will appear only 29.97 times per
second instead of 59.94. The smaller number is below the human vision
flicker threshold for most viewing conditions. The line, therefore,
will appear to flicker. That's a problem for graphics, but most cameras
are normally set up to do line averaging (two rows on the image sensor
are added to create a scanning line; in the next interlaced field, each
of those rows has a different partner). That reduces the effect.

The other deficiencies of interlace all relate to moving images. When
vertical motion is at a rate that is a multiple of one scanning line per
field, vertical resolution is halved because what was in a scanning line
in one interlaced field appears in a different scanning line in the next
interlaced field, and the adjacent interlaced scanning line never sees
the additional detail in the source. That's a serious issue in graphics
(consider credits at the end of a show), but, thanks to gravity, it's
less of an issue in football.

In horizontal motion, the fields get separated. That's a problem in
signal compression and processing, which is why progressive scanning has
been said to have a compression-efficiency advantage over interlace
roughly equivalent to the interlace coefficient. It's obviously a big
problem in still images. It can be a problem for displays that show all
lines at once, such as LCD, DLP, and some plasma displays. But it is
not a problem for normally interlaced displays like CRTs (direct-view or
projection) other than any interlace-coefficient losses.

So, all else being equal, progressive should look better than interlace.
But all else is absolutely NOT equal. Even ignoring lens, camera,
maintenance, and setup issues, interlace has one very significant
advantage over progressive. It has half the information rate.

A 1280 x 720 progressive camera has a little under a million pixels per
frame. At 59.94 frames per second, it approaches sixty million pixels
per second. An interlaced camera has only 29.97 frames per second, so
it can use roughly twice as many pixels per frame and achieve the same
number of pixels per second. 1980 x 1080 is roughly two million pixels
per frame.

If we assume NHK's research still holds true today, then the 720 lines
of a progressive camera will actually provide slightly better vertical
resolution than the 1080 of an interlaced camera. But there's no
question that the 1920 pixels per line of the interlaced camera are far
more than the 1280 of a progressive camera.

That's a limiting-detail discussion. There's also sharpness. The
psychovisual sensation of sharpness is proportional to the square of the
area under a curve plotting contrast ratio against detail fineness. All
such curves (normally called "modulation-transfer function" or MTF
curves) have a shape somewhat like the right side of a bell shaped
curve, i.e., high at the left, sloping down slightly on a "shoulder,"
dropping faster after the shoulder, and then flaring out at the bottom
in a "toe." The shoulder area is what is most significant for
sharpness. If the shoulder can be made higher and broader, sharpness
increases even when images are viewed after recording on an analog VHS
cassette. The toe area, being low in contrast ratio, is relatively
insignificant, which is how Sony got away with dropping all resolition
over 1440 pixels per line in the professional HDCAM format (JVC and
Panasonic do similar in D9 HD and DVCPRO HD, respectively).

It has LONG been known that more pixels in the camera make a broader
shoulder. Ordinary high-end standard-definition cameras intended for
use in analog broadcasts (which, in the U.S., cannot carry more than
about 440 pixels per line) have typically had about 1300 pixels per line
for the purpose of raising the shoulder of the MTF curve. It works.
That's why the pictures from those cameras look better than pictures
from older cameras, even when viewed off VHS cassettes recorded off
analog broadcasts.

1080-line HDTV cameras typically have 1920 x 1080 sensors. The pictures
would look better if they had, say, 4000 x 1080, but the technology
hasn't really been available to do that economically yet.
Unfortunately, most 720-line HDTV cameras typically have 1280 x 720
sensors. 1280 is fewer pixels per line than in even some high-end SDTV
cameras. It makes for a shortened, lowered shoulder and, therefore,
significantly less sharpness than in a typical 1080-line camera. The
720-line format does not preclude more pixels per line in the camera; it
just hasn't been done until very recently.


1080P is a much better than 720P, but I must say that the demo that I attended sitting from a distance of 12ft(which is how far I view my own RPTV) the difference between 1080P and 1080I was not all that much. Joe says its not the technology, but how much resolution the eyes can actually resolve from that distance.

There is no way I am going to discount Geoff findings, I am just going to say they didn't mimick my own. Interesting enough HD DVD max resolution will be 1080i, BlueRay will be 1080P.

[Geoffcin]

1080P is a much better than 720P, but I must say that the demo that I attended sitting from a distance of 12ft(which is how far I view my own RPTV) the difference between 1080P and 1080I was not all that much. Joe says its not the technology, but how much resolution the eyes can actually resolve from that distance.

There is no way I am going to discount Geoff findings, I am just going to say they didn't mimick my own. Interesting enough HD DVD max resolution will be 1080i, BlueRay will be 1080P.

And we drew nearly identical conclusions. To me I couldn't see any difference in quality between BlueRay 1080p & HD-DVD 1080i, but compared to a 480p DVD they both simply blew it away.

Only now did I find out that even though BlueRay offers initial 1080p performance, none of the rear-projection 1080p sets announced so far will accept a true 1080p signal! They will only accept HD in 1080i and 720p. Possibly why the quality looked identical between HD-DVD and BlueRay.

As to HD-DVD not offering 1080p performance; Probably a marketing move on HD-DVD part to bring the product to market that much faster, and also insure that you'll want to buy another player with 1080p performance in a few years. (crass commercialism) My guess is that as with DVD's initial 480i performance moving to 480p after a few years, 1080p is just down the road for HD-DVD.

[cam]

I don't think that 720P is actually superior to 1080I. But from what I have gleaned from Joe Kane during his workshops all depends on the camera type that is recording the images. I am going to cut a paste the notes I recorded on my laptop during the workshop.




1080P is a much better than 720P, but I must say that the demo that I attended sitting from a distance of 12ft(which is how far I view my own RPTV) the difference between 1080P and 1080I was not all that much. Joe says its not the technology, but how much resolution the eyes can actually resolve from that distance.

There is no way I am going to discount Geoff findings, I am just going to say they didn't mimick my own. Interesting enough HD DVD max resolution will be 1080i, BlueRay will be 1080P.
Thanks Sir Double T for the information.

[hermanv]

On my 55" CRT set I can still see scan lines at 1080i from my viewing distance of 8 feet, I think they would be less noticable at 1080p but for me the big issue is flicker. This seems most noticable when the credits scroll by vertically. The tops and bottoms of the lettering flickers in an annoying fashion.

Worse, once your eyes are sensitized to that particular kind of flicker you occasionally see it in live scenes as well.

My set might have a lousy scaler, it was an early HDTV model maybe with a better scaler this problem wouldn't bother me.

Of course we all know from audio CDs that the more information recorded on the disk (i.e. 24/96 vs 16/44.1) the better the end result. Althought the various up-converter schemes keep improving, few disagree that the best end result is obtained when the raw data format on the recording has the most information.

As TV sets improve it's hard to believe the eventual end result will be any different. 1080p will plain outperform 1080i because it has double the raw information.

Note to cam: I don't think anyone answered your question about CRT and 1080p. CRTs are perfectly capable of 1080p performance. Most of the better front projection CRT sets acheive this rate. It's just expensive to make deflection yoke drivers that can scan at that speed. As far as I know, in a home cost no object picture quality competition, the front projection CRT still wins.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

On my 55" CRT set I can still see scan lines at 1080i from my viewing distance of 8 feet, I think they would be less noticable at 1080p but for me the big issue is flicker. This seems most noticable when the credits scroll by vertically. The tops and bottoms of the lettering flickers in an annoying fashion.

Worse, once your eyes are sensitized to that particular kind of flicker you occasionally see it in live scenes as well.

My set might have a lousy scaler, it was an early HDTV model maybe with a better scaler this problem wouldn't bother me.

Of course we all know from audio CDs that the more information recorded on the disk (i.e. 24/96 vs 16/44.1) the better the end result. Althought the various up-converter schemes keep improving, few disagree that the best end result is obtained when the raw data format on the recording has the most information.

As TV sets improve it's hard to believe the eventual end result will be any different. 1080p will plain outperform 1080i because it has double the raw information.



I think that right now is too early to say whether 1080p will outperform 1080i. Watching the demo I attended it was really tough to see the difference between the two from a distance of 10-12. All depends on what kind of camera is used to shoot the video.

I have a 65" RPTV, and from a distance of 10ft(my viewing distance) I see no scan line from a upconverted image(480p to 1080i). I don't even see scan lines from 6-8ft away.