I just bought a used Pioneer PDP-5050sx (5th gen display) and for some reason the image when my DVD player is sent to output 480i is better than when I set it to 480p. The 480p is jagged and full of artifacts. Is this possible or is something wrong with one of the units? Is it possible that my plasma display is already de-interlacing the 480i and setting the DVD player to 480p is somehow screwing it up?

 

A plasma has a native display resolution that it will display everything in. No matter what you send to it, the output will end up in the display's native resolution. So apparently your TV is better at taking 480i from your player and converting it. With my plasma I send everything to it at its native resolution and let the plasma handle the conversion.

But it really involves experimentation to find out what's best. Some displays may look better if you send it 480p. It doesn't mean there is anything wrong with your panel.

 

I just recently hooked my DVD player into my TV that has progressive scan. I don't see any difference in 480i & 480p. I have bad eyes though.

 

Did you go into the dvd menu and set the player to output in progressive scan?

 

Yep, I've changed it back & forth & I see no difference. Is it supposed to be night & day?
As I said my eyes are bad.

 

no, i've never seen any benefit from progressive scan output of interlaced content either.

 

The only benefit I noticed between 480p and 480i is that you get less artifacting during fast motion scenes with 480p. B/C of this, I always run progressive from my DVD player to the TV.

 

I'm still a little confused about something:

1. So if my plasma is converting/resizing everything to it's native resolution, and de-interlacing the signal, then is there any point to buying a DVD player that upconverts to 720/1080, other than the DVD player might do a better job at it?

2. So does having an HD DVD or bluray 1080 signal going directly to my monitor perform better than a 1080 upconverting DVD player, and is the reason becasue there is no upconverting or processing required?

3. My plasma can only display 720p so an upconverting DVD player will only upconvert to 720p, and not 1080 - is this correct?

Man..things were more simple back in the day.

 

what about those long pans in some movies, and at least for my eyes, it kills me cause i see so much flickering on DVDs, at movie theaters and on TVs etc, havent seen anything in progressive to be able to tell.. this is probably from all the CS ive played over the years, made my eyes super sensitive to low frame rates.

 

The Pioneer probably has a better scaler than the DVD player unless you spent a lot of coin on the player. The only way to tell for sure is to go pickup the player you want at Best Buy and if you can't notice a difference take it back.

It will look better because the source material will have 1080/720 lines. IMHO a downconverted signal will look better than an upconverted one. I can't wait for the HD-DVD/blueray shakeout to get over with so I can get a player.

If you buy an upconverting player that can go to 1080 this is what happens.
1. Your source material is 480i
2. It gets converted to 1080 and sent down the cable to your monitor.
3. Your monitor converts it to 720p.

So you have two conversions going on. Ideally you want 0 conversions, but 1 conversion is better than 2.