Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater LCoS

Everyone drooling over a 1920 x 1080 LCoS display, consider this: Virtually all current digital display HDTV sets have a maximum physical resolution of 1280 x 720 or lower. While you might think a 1920 x 1080 native display (whether LCoS or otherwise) is significantly better, there are several factors that diminish the possible improvement.

Several networks will broadcast in 720p (ABC, ESPN, Fox). Whether the HD display is natively higher resolution won't improve things.

Most current 1080i broadcasts are effectively limited to about 1440 horizontal pixels to lessen the required video compression. In essence, there are no *true* 1080i broadcasts for a 1920 x 1080 HD display to receive.

Actual tests indicate 720p often has roughly equal "practical" resolution to 1080i, despite having half the theoretical pixels per frame. It's very nonintuitive, but sometimes 720p has better resolution than 1080i. This is due to interline flicker and other factors affecting the 1080i interlaced display.

When the day comes that a native 1920 x 1080 display is available at the same cost as a 1280 x 720 display, there's no sense in not getting one. But current 720p native displays are much better than the pixel count would indicate.

http://www.vxm.com/Progvsinter.html

HD-DVD will most likely be 1920x1080. True high-def resolution is 1920x1080. It's been an established resolution for a long time. I'm not sure how 1280x720 has gotten away with calling itself HD. Certainly it's higher-def, but it's not true HD.

Whenever I do finally get a new TV it's primary function is going to be for playing back DVD's. I watch very little broadcast TV, and what I do, I'm not all that terribly concerned with it's PQ.

So...for those reasons, that is why I'm excited about LCoS. Right now I'm still in a holding pattern. I want to wait and see how the dust settles on HD-DVD and the DLP/LCoS battle for supremecy. Let's hope things are somewhat more settled in a year or so.

The high definition standard provides for a number of resolutions including 720 progressive, 1080 interlaced, and 1080 progressive. I believe there are others as well. They are all high definition and all are required to be accepted by high definition televisions though most simply scale them all to whatever single resolution they support.

In reply to:

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I want to wait and see how the dust settles on HD-DVD and the DLP/LCoS battle for supremecy. Let's hope things are somewhat more settled in a year or so.

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In another year there may be another battle of other technologies.
The battles never end.
So when does one finally decide?
We took the plunge over a year ago. I would have to say anything above 480 res right now would be bliss. Our tv is capable of 1080i spec which is more than enough to make me happy for quite some time. If we could handle CRT at 480 for the past 30+ years of living, what's another 30 at something considerably better?

I doubt my eyes will get any less blurry into my 80s such that a higher res screen will clear things up.

Here's another log for this fire. I haunt the local store where I got most of my gear over the last year. I like to visit my new friend there (discount Chuck) and my money. Chuck is quite the information maven and he put me through a little exercise.

I was admiring the various plasmas they had hung on the walls and discussion ensued over several visits. He ended up doing a few blinds for me and actually rearranging these things over a few visits (slow during the winter). I was completely unable to pick out the Enhanced Def TV (EDTV) versus the HDTV when the were receiving the HD signal.

I hope this doesn't degrade into one of our recent super thread dummy contests. The point I'm trying to make is that there just wasn't much difference my old eyes could pick up between the pictures. I was able to IMMEDIATELY notice that the EDTV price was significantly lower than HDTV. Just a bit of info for those lusting for a plasma. There may be a bit of marketing hype influence here that exceeds our senses' ability to make the trip that we are being led to make.

Ray, that's a good point. To corroborate this, on my Samsung HLN-507W 50" DLP, a well-mastered anamorphic DVD (720 x 480) looks to the casual observer just like true HD. Of course 720p is better -- it has 3x the pixel count at 2x the frame rate. But it's amazing how good even *current* DVDs can be when well mastered.
HD adopters quickly discover an issue all too familiar to Axiom owners: even on current 720p displays, there's a huge quality variation due to source material. Like Axiom speakers, quality is often limited by source-material, not the reproduction technology.

E.g, I've seen different shows, all broadcast in HD, that spanned a quality range from barely above analog NTSC to so clear it's like a picture in space. It all depends on source material quality and how carefully that quality was maintained during the multi-step transition to your HD receiver. A frequent pet peeve is when broadcasters use statistical multiplexing to reduce data rate, siphoning off bandwidth that subtly (or not so subtly) degrades picture quality.

It quickly becomes obvious to HD adopters that HDTV is more analogous to a very high definition version of streaming video on your PC. Many things can interfere with the data rate needed for true HD.

Like Spiff said, thank goodness for DVDs and soon-to-be HD-DVD.