SiGGy

Ok, who went out and bought one? lol, and the 4 movie titles that were released yesterday.

I think the toshiba player is $499 at bestbuy.

Now everyone who doesn't have a true 1080i/p TV will want one. As watching 1920x1080 scaled down to 720p 1280x720 is

HD-DVD movies are in 1080p on the disc. won't be long before players start to support it. There are already a few TVs that do, and more comming this year.

I'll await the posts of people who have 720p or EDTVs who say HD-DVD is lame and no major difference from 480p. My answer to them is upgrade your TV ... lol

ps.
If you don't have a HDMI/DVD port that support HDCP protection you will get scaled down video. And the component outputs only output scaled down video

So if your TV doesn't have a DVI/HDMI port and doesn't support HDCP you won't be enjoying HD-DVD in it's full resolution.

doopstr

So what you are saying is, 100% of SD TV owners need to upgrade and 99.8% of current HDTV owners need to upgrade.

Moog-Type-S

...meh HD DVD = the new laser disc

fsttyms1

How about 1080i.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

And this is exactly why I waited to buy a 1080p TV. Waited until the TV manufacturers offered 1080p via the HDMI port. I mean, what good is buying the new Sony XRD 1080p set when the only native 1080p port is VGA? This is also why my advice on this forum to others was to wait. The ones that didn't listen or agree will be kicking themselves once the 1080p HD-DVD players come out... which they will soon.

Later in the year I can start looking again and by next year the full setup will be 1080p via HDMI :yummy:

TLover

HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Meh, I won't buy unless:

1. The mess is sorted out.
2. There's a player that can play both formats.

zamo

I've read this reply in slashdot with some interesting facts.

1080i produces 60 interlaced frames per second, equivalent to 30 full frames.
The HD-DVD discs store the movies in 1080p24 (24 frames per second).

If thats true, then we are still at 1080i even with progressive content from the source. 1080p is still not used at its full extent even after 1080p24 HDMI content is sent to the TV.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183407&cid=15149437

Sarlacc

Don't get me started on this entire crock of shite.

Just go to my poll thread, and deal with it there.

Billiam

I thought all video content (SD or HD) was converted to 29.97 fps by the DVD player. That's the whole purpose of the 3:2 pulldown function, isn't it? My point being that it would seem that the fact HD-DVD disc content is at 24fps is independant of whether or not the video is delivered at 1080i or 1080p.

Sarlacc

I just found this article....I take it will a slight grain of salt becaause there is no info on the gear or settings used to watch the material....but that just falls into the category of people buying this shit with no clue whatsoever:

Sarlacc

But why have the pulldown if the disc supports the framerates?

The movies were shot in 24fps...you see them projected in theaters at 24fps...If I can see them at home in 24fps then thats what I want.

24fps > 30/60fps

fdl

i;m so confused.

Sarlacc

A point I have been trying to make all along about the general public's reaction towards this...and eventually blu-ray.

Moog-Type-S

Bottom line: No need to switch to HD DVD for a while.

zamo

You are the film guru here, so I can't argue much. What I can see is that 1080p is a waste if you are watching a 1080p24 movie.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Just wait for the format wars to be sorted out, then buy something...

I'm so impatient I'd probably buy both, but the cheap bastard in me will win out and I'll probably just get a PS3....

Sarlacc

yes and no....a progressive image is still better then a interlaced image.

So...in response to siggys "people who are watching on a 720x1280 HD TV"

A...I'd rather watch progressive....B......almost no one would be able to tell the difference between 1080i and 720p...you'd need a really LARGE screen.

Billiam

Progressive vs. interlaced has to do with how the picture is painted on the screen, not how fast it's done (in terms of frame rate).

As far as I know, all content is going to have its frame rate changed to 29.97 fps before it's painted on the screen. To the best of my limited knowledge, there is no choice in this matter. It's effectively a constant. So if your frame rate is arbitrarily set, why not watch it in progressive instead of interlaced?

Sarlacc

I agree with the progressive vs interlaced....but 30fps (29.98) is a left over from the NTSC era...24fps (23.98) can and should be the method of viewing with any HD content that originates at that framerate. It is so much nicer to watch.

Whiskers

I've been Tweetered

Billiam

I agree completely. If it's shot at 24fps why not watch it at that rate? I'm sure it's just a matter of cost. It probably would not be cheap proposition to have the electronics and software support multiple frame rates.

Sarlacc

I don't know that it would cost any more or less to author the DVD in 24fps, then it would to author 30, or 60. Its just a matter of making the change in the program they are using...like the lick of a button really.

23.98, 29.97, and 59.94 all go into eachother.

It sounds like these DVDs are always 59.94 and display the proper framerate accordingly (much like how the Sony F900/950 and the Panny Varicam shoot)

So, like the Panasonic's system...frames could be flagged. and a pulldown is used to extrapolate the proper framerate when veiwing.

Or...just author the damn movies in 24fps. Making a player that read the framerates is so easy its not an issue in my eyes.

Getting back to your original point...The Cameras do it, the editing systems do it....make the damn players do it. It wouldnt be that hard...firmware.

Sarlacc

I'd even be willing to bet the players can do it...consumers are just locked out, and/or the discs dont support the framerate.

Billiam

I was thinking more on the display side. It wouldn't surprise me if all the hardware and software in a modern TV set is tuned (if not limited to) displaying 30/60.

Sarlacc

I don't believe the actual television has anything to do with the framerates.

SiGGy

1080p isn't sent to the TV, only 1080i is. No HD-DVD player supports 1080p video signaling yet.

SiGGy

Its is,(most) of the new circuitry is tuned to 60hz fixed. Hence the need for 3:2 pull downs and such.

However CRT 1080i TVs can sync to 24fps with a 72hz refresh rate.

Newer 1080p digital TVs will do the same.

SiGGy

its' pretty easily seen actually. Your talking 2x the resolution. 720p is 1M pixels, 1080i/p is 2M pixels.

However your correct on a TV 45" or less it would be a challenge. On a 65" it'd be real easy to see if they were side by side.

SiGGy

lol, well reality is... unless you *just* bought a TV in the past 6 months you not going to have a full resolution 1080i/p TV. So you can bet most of the guys who do the comparisons are doing it ona 720p TV.

They are missing 1/2 of the 1080i/p resolution on a 720p TV.

And one can only imagine how much detail the EDTV guys are losing

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Anyone who buys an HD-DVD or BluRay player and hooks it up to an EDTV needs to be beaten with a wet noodle repeatedly....

Sarlacc

Like i said a large screen. And how many consumer have 65 or larger in their homes compared to most?

If your eyes can tell the difference on a smaller set its preferential after that. Both look really good. I just prefer progressive scan.

Sarlacc

Thats my point...we dont know what TVs these guys were using, or their settings.

And if they most likely dont know either. Which just passes on misinformation to masses...which has been the case for HD since its inception.

zamo

Why spend $1,000+ difference in price for a 1080p TV instead of 1080i version of it. Not even HD-DVD supports it yet.

SiGGy

There was no such thing as a true 1080i TV until 4-6 months ago. The *only* TV made prior to 4-6 months ago that supports 1080i natively was a 73" mitsubish CRT. It has 9" CRT(s) inside that have the capacity to display a 1080i signal.

Some tv's accept a 1080i signal, but they downconvert it to 720p. They *do not* have the ability to display it natively. Even mistubishi "1080i" TVs sub 73 inches have 6" CRT's that are only capable of displaying a maximum of 1200 pixels in width. Which basically makes them a 720p TV even though they are labeled a 1080i. Same applys for any LCD/DLP/LCoS that are more than 6 months old.

Until 4-6 months ago there were NO (consumer grade) digital or analog TVs that were capable of displaying 1080i natively. (excluding the one mitusbishi 73") They are a recent development.

Just because a TV says it can take a 1080i signal doesn't mean you get to see all of that 1080i 1920x1080 resolution

With this HD TV technology if you don't know how to read between the lines you'll get burned on your purchase. Most people haven't a clue on most of this stuff... a lot of people think they do, but really don't.

Technically speaking todays 1080p TVs are really only truely a 1080i as most of them don't support a 1080p signal as an input. Funny even though they are labeled 1080p right? But not to get confused, internally a 1080p TVs does display the signal progressively in 1080p format. Current 1080p TV(s) deinterlace the 1080i video into 1080p. And in the next few months there will be 1080p HD-DVD players. And hopefully a good ammount of 1080p TVs that accept a 1080p signal, lol.

ps.

A 1080p TV can be had for $2000-4000 depending on the size. $4k would be a like a 70"+.

SiGGy

Whoops, I forgot Mitsubishi made a 83" LCoS 1080i (true) TV as well... however it was like $20k for the longest time. And it used 3 1080p LCoS panels. That would be the other 1080p TV that was out prior to 6 months ago. (really not what I consider consumer)

zamo

Still, the 1080p TVs sold now do display 1080p bradcasts, although i have read that they do NOT support 1080p Inputs, just 1080i. So if by chance an HD-DVD in the future sends 1080p natively, it will render useless many TV sets. Am I wrong?

SiGGy

yes, your mistaken. (and I stated the same things you just said in the posts I have made already. And explained them to some detail)

Some TV(s) now do support 1080p (not a lot) Future models comming out this year *will* support 1080p.

HD-DVD content is stored in 1080p. The players now have to interlace the video for 1080i output. Unlike current DVD technology where the video is stored interlaced (480i) and the player converts it to progressive (480p).

HD-DVD players that can output 1080p will come out in the next year or so.

Any future and or current HD-DVD player(s) are like all HD upconverting players, allowing you to choose the video output format your TV supports 480i,480p,720p,1080i,1080p ... the HD-DVD player will adapt the signal to match the best your TV can handle.

danny25

Ten ways HD-DVD falls short

For Tom Cruise watchers, April 18 was a big day. Yes, there was something about him having a kid with Katie Holmes, but more importantly for videophiles, The Last Samurai HD-DVD was officially released along with Toshiba's new next-gen DVD player, the HD-A1 and three other discs: The Phantom of the Opera, Million Dollar Baby, and Serenity. Kudos to Toshiba for actually getting a semiaffordable first-generation product out well ahead of Sony and Camp Blu-ray. But as I've said before, that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of things to complain about. So, here we go. I've ordered my gripes from mildly bothersome to really irksome. And of course, feel free to add your own peeves.

1. Initial HD-DVDs are just rehashes of the existing DVDs
OK, so it's early in the game. But this is the same complaint that folks had about a lot of early Xbox 360 games--that they're just graphically spruced-up versions of their Xbox counterparts. Hopefully, we'll soon see some HD-DVD discs that actually show off some of the interactive features that Toshiba is touting.

2. Extra features not in high-def
This format is called HD-DVD, so why am I not watching extras in HD? Enough said.

3. Player doesn't do enough
I understand Toshiba wanting to come out with a basic player for a semiaffordable price. Five hundred bucks is a lot, but it's half the price of what Blu-ray players will start out at, and it's not an outrageous figure for those wanting a first crack at cutting-edge technology. That said, the company's step-up HD-DVD player, the HD-XA1 ($799) should have offered a little more in the way of features--instead, it boasts only a motorized front door, some better-looking cosmetics, an RS-232 port, and a backlit remote. How 'bout a little DVD-Audio support? (SACD is probably a no-no, since it's a Sony-backed format.) What about slots for memory cards, so you can show your digital photos at high-def resolutions or play back digital music? And why couldn't those USB ports in front accept thumbdrives filled with digital photos and music?

4. No 1080p output
The high-definition video output of first-generation HD-DVD players is limited to 720p or 1080i, not 1080p, which is currently the best high-def image you can get. With only a handful of HDTVs out there that accept and display a native 1080p signal, what's the big deal? For starters, 1080p is quickly becoming the new de facto gold standard for HDTVs, with 1080p inputs set to become a lowest common denominator for nearly all 2006 HDTVs. But the dearth of 1080p output is most frustrating, once you find out that HD-DVD movies are being mastered in 1080p--but that theoretically better picture quality will remain locked on the disc until 1080p HD-DVD players appear (sometime in 2007, if not earlier). Needless to say, it's a bummer to not get 1080p right out of the gate, especially when first-gen Blu-ray players will offer it. I don't need to be completely future-proofed, but give me some basic protection, please.

5. Component video can be flagged
I almost wrote a full column on this issue alone. The unfortunate fact is that studios can encode their discs with an image-constraint flag that downconverts the HD-DVD's output resolution to 960x540 when played through the analog component-video outputs, which lack the robust digital copy-protection of HDMI. That means discs that are so flagged will display only a quarter of their best possible resolution if you own one of the early HDTVs that are lacking digital video inputs (HDMI or HDCP-compatible DVI). Yes, Blu-ray discs carry the same restrictions, and almost all of the studios have tentatively agreed to not flag their initial batch of releases. But that still leaves early adopters at the mercy of the studio bosses, who can choose to reverse course at any time.

6. Wacky audio
HD-DVD discs allegedly offer even better sound than do DVDs. And while we actually believe this--HD-DVD discs are encoded with the higher-resolution Dolby True HD, Dolby Digital Plus, and/or DTS-HD soundtracks--the player's audio setup is a real hassle to figure out, and we're still not certain we've gotten optimal sound out of the home theater here in our lab. In our review of the HD-A1, we note that, "There's a full-page chart in the manual that details which connections can pass which types of soundtracks, including footnotes such as this: 'Bitstream audio output is possible only when the connected HDMI device has bitstream decoding function. If not, sound is output in PCM (48k) format.'" If that isn't confusing enough, word is that Warner's initial HD-DVD offerings don't appear to have been mastered correctly. As reported at DVD enthusiast site The Digital Bits, if you go from watching The Last Samurai to Universal's correctly mastered Serenity, your speakers may get blown out, because the latter disc is so much louder--a fact to which we can attest.

7. HDMI hiccups
Toshiba didn't create the finicky beast known as HDMI, so we can't totally fault the company for this one, but the fact remains that we've encountered our share of problems while trying to connect the HD-A1 to various HDTVs in our lab. On a couple of occasions, the player simply stopped playing in the middle of a movie, or we got an "HDMI error" message--and a black screen of death--when we switched inputs while the player was running. Blame game aside, we expect that HD-DVD early adopters will encounter their share of connectivity snafus.

8. Sluggish performance
One of biggest disappointments with Toshiba's first-gen player is how slow it is. Yeah, the first DVD players weren't jackrabbits either, but HD-A1 truly chugs--Windows XP loads faster on some PCs than HD-DVDs do on this thing, and certain button presses give new meaning to the word delay.

9. The smaller the display, the smaller the difference
So we compared the The Last Samurai HD-DVD to its DVD counterpart on a Panasonic TH-42PX60U 42-inch plasma. The standard DVD was in our reference player, the Denon DVD-3910 (outputting at 720p), while the HD-DVD was, naturally, in the HD-A1. We flipped back and forth between the TV's two HDMI inputs, and though the HD-DVD image was distinctly sharper and clearly had the edge, the difference wasn't huge. We're pretty certain, however, that you'll see a much bigger difference the bigger you go. As we wait to get a large HDTV back in our labs--say, something along the lines of a Sony KDS-R60XBR1 60-inch SXRD rear-pro or a higher-end front projector--we'll stick by our recommendation that at these prices, next-gen DVD players should interest only those with HDTVs of 50 inches or larger.

10. A dearth of discs
Originally, HD-DVD was supposed to launch with 30 discs, but that number shrunk to 4--and we ended up finding only 3 in stores the week of April 18. Any way you look it, that's a paltry number. By comparison, DVD had at least 30 titles available within the first month of the format's March 1997 debut. HD-DVD backers hope to have around 200 titles--by the end of 2006.

zamo

Maybe I was not clear enough.
TVs that support 1080p have these characteristics.

Broadcast Format Displayed: 1080p (HDTV)
Broadcast Format Supported: 1080i (HDTV), 480i (SDTV), 480p (EDTV), 720p (HDTV)

So back to my original question. If there is ANY HD-DVD player in the future that sends video in 1080p natively, can render useless current 1080p TVs, as they do NOT support the broadcast format. They can only display in 1080p.

danny25

1080p players will be here soon...

from #4 above
"but that theoretically better picture quality will remain locked on the disc until 1080p HD-DVD players appear (sometime in 2007, if not earlier)."