Actually a heap of dumb questions. The background here is graphics drivers for HTPC and whether only 24p and 50/60 are needed, or whether we need to output some multiple of 24 (48, 72 etc..) depending on the quirks of the individual TV.
1. I had always been under the impression that movies on DVD had the 3:2 pulldown added during mastering and were stored on the disk as 60i. Now I am reading that "all movies on DVD are stored 24p and pulldown is applied when outputting to a 60i TV". Which is correct, and if 24p DVDs are common why don't BD players offer to drive a native 24p output from DVDs as well as BDs ?
2. I'm pretty sure that BD allows native 1080/24p storage on the disk and that most movie disks are recorded in that format, but could someone confirm ?
3. 24p output from player to TV is obviously useful with a 120Hz native display since the TV can either repeat or interpolate frames from 24 to 120 Hz without any funny processing. If you have a TV with a native 60p or 60i refresh then presumably 3:2 pulldown would be applied in the TV before display. OK so far ?
4. There seems to be hot debate about the existence of a "middle ground" solution, where :
- the TV (typically LCD or plasma) seems to be able to refresh at either 50 or 60 Hz in order to support multiple TV standards
- an additional "24p friendly" refresh frequency is supported, either 48 or 72 Hz
- when processing a 24p input, the frames are doubled/tripled or interpolated and displayed at 48/72 Hz, avoiding the funny effects you get during pans after 3:2 pulldown
I have read a bazillion forum threads and looked at a lot of highly ambiguous spec sheets (Sony spec sheets are right down there with Denon user manuals IMO ;)) but still have no clue if these "24p friendly" sets actually exist. So far it seems like most of them just apply 3:2 pulldown internally and display at 60p.
What's the story ?
EDIT - I finally found a couple of posts where owners complained about flicker when displaying 24p with 2:2 (48 Hz) so that seems credible
Seems like maybe Panasonic offers some sets which double to 48Hz, Pioneer offers some which triple to 72 Hz, and a number of vendors claim "100 Hz" frame rate (presumably 4x or just under 96 Hz ?).
5. Finally, the one place where I see value in outputting at 48 or 72 Hz is in the case where you are going to a computer display which can natively refresh at that rate *and* you have a player app which will take care of doubling/tripling the frames and synchronizing them nicely with the display. Does anything like this exist today ?
Thanks
