Toshiba is back on top! Look! They said so themself!

[Taxi]

Link

Of couse, take this with a huge grain of salt, but I think it's interesting nonetheless. Seems to me this is either an act of desperation, or else it's for real, and HD really is gaining.

(I can't believe Ruined hasn't posted this story already. Or maybe he did and I just missed it? )

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Taxi

Link

Of couse, take this with a huge grain of salt, but I think it's interesting nonetheless. Seems to me this is either an act of desperation, or else it's for real, and HD really is gaining.

(I can't believe Ruined hasn't posted this story already. Or maybe he did and I just missed it? )

Toshiba has been on top of standalone sales since 2006 for every month except the one the BDP-S300 was released; Sony PR (like much of BD's PR trickery) of course pounced upon that month boasting how their standalones sold better. Now Toshiba is back on top again after a brief spurt of S300 sales. So its really a non-event IMO. Also, Toshiba quoted NPD figures so there is no grain of salt needed.

The real key is whether Toshiba can tap the average consumers XMAS wallet come November and December and make the HD-A3 the Tickle-Me-Elmo of the AV World over the holiday season.

[MooglePorn]

This is because the PS3 is not counted, and most people other than PirateHat see the PS3 as the best BD player for the lowest money and pounce on it.

[Pirate]

Originally Posted by MooglePorn

This is because the PS3 is not counted, and most people other than PirateHat see the PS3 as the best BD player for the lowest money and pounce on it.

Actually, Piratehat knows the PS3 is the best BD player and is very sad because of that fact. Piratehat might actually get a PS3 if it has analogs... and wasn't a toy.

[Derb]

Originally Posted by piratehunter

Actually, Piratehat knows the PS3 is the best BD player and is very sad because of that fact. Piratehat might actually get a PS3 if it has analogs... and wasn't a toy.

I'm sorry you have a massive collection of what?

Here's more incentive for why people should consider the PS3 over any other,

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/news...ractivity/1060

Possible Pro 1.1 & dts-HD MA PCM output next firmware.

[Pirate]

Originally Posted by Derb

I'm sorry you have a massive collection of what?

Um... collectibles.

[Ruined]

I am confused when people hard-line debate me that Blu-Ray is more than just the "PS3 Movie Format," yet nearly every BD owner I know hard sells the PS3

[Derb]

Kinda like everybody knows HD DVD is more than just an XBOX movie format.

Well lets hope so.

[Ruined]

some more
http://www.hdgamenews.com/2007/10/hd...y-players.html

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Derb

Kinda like everybody knows HD DVD is more than just an XBOX movie format.

Well lets hope so.

Kinda hard to argue that when HD DVD standalones have always sold well compartitively to BD players, and that the HD standalones are MORE competent than the XBOX 360 HD DVD player, not less!

[rixrex]

Here's the math that matters to the regular consumer who's not a videophile with extensive tech knowledge, has little or no time to play games, and with a budget to consider:

BD player = $499
HD player = $299
SD DVD player = $49
SD DVD Recorder = $99

HD and BD discs = $30-$60
DVD discs = $5-$20

HD and BD = exclusivity problems
SD DVD = get whatever you want pretty much

Yeah, history repeats itself.

If that's not obvious, then you ain't lookin'.

[Sehnzeleid]

Originally Posted by rixrex

Here's the math that matters to the regular consumer who's not a videophile with extensive tech knowledge, has little or no time to play games, and with a budget to consider...

Yeah, plus one has to wonder if regular consumers really care about video quality. I mean, HDTVs seem more like a semi-expensive to expensive "bling" statement to most people.

[Iguana Man]

I'd venture to say many J6P's have already bought a HD TV and don't even know it.

No bling, no fanboyism, no nothing....two of my neighbors now own HD capable TV's and still haven't maximized their viewing pleasure...heheh..yet.

How's that fall into the big picture ladies and germs?

Hmmmmm???

[rixrex]

Yep, that's absolutely correct, as I too have seen the same thing among many folks I know.

To them, the sets they have recently gotten are so much better than the old sets, with 3-d comb filters and P-scan enhancement built in, etc, that a standard DVD looks like hi-def. I even see them watching their DVDs through the composite plug-in and thinking that it's great.

Most of them went from 32" or 36" CRTs or 42" old-style rear project CRTs that had alignment trouble to a new 42" lcd or dlp, and the difference is pretty great in comparison.

[Taxi]

My dad has a VCR attached to his 60" Vega SXRD TV. (Yes, VHS looks like ass when blown up that big.)

I used to have to remind him to switch over to the HD input when we're watching something over the air in HD, but he's getting better at doing that on his own now.

[Shadowman82]

Yes I suspect alot of average Joes buy HDTVs simply because they want a big screen TV which just happen to be HDTVs and not necessarily because they don't like the picture quality of analog sets .

Interest for HD-DVD and Blu-ray in the public at large is still pretty low and I suspect will be so for quite sometime .

[chlngr1970]

I wouldn't be surprised to see the interest HDM wan till there is a signifigant increase in PQ over what HDM offers today. Remember, DVD offeres better PQ than anything we had been previously ( average consumer wise ) exposed to. To realy experience the full PQ of DVD, you needed a new TV ( WS, Progressive Scan ) that could take advantage.

j

[Derb]

While browsing some HD titles the other day I couldn't help but overhear a guy say his friend returned an HDTV & went back to his old SDTV because DVDs didn't look good on the new HDTV.

I'd agree with this if the person didn't have an upcon player. 480 rez on a 480 set would look better than 480 rez on a 1080 one imo.

[SilentBob]

Originally Posted by Derb

While browsing some HD titles the other day I couldn't help but overhear a guy say his friend returned an HDTV & went back to his old SDTV because DVDs didn't look good on the new HDTV.

I'd agree with this if the person didn't have an upcon player. 480 rez on a 480 set would look better than 480 rez on a 1080 one imo.

I'm surprised they didn't return it because it still had black bars when watching their dvds

[PunkMunkey]

Originally Posted by Derb

I'd agree with this if the person didn't have an upcon player. 480 rez on a 480 set would look better than 480 rez on a 1080 one imo.

Not necessarily...if the TV had a good scaler/deinterlacer built in then any SD material would have been upconverted to the HDTV's native resolution well enough to make the material look good. Most HDTV's have at least decent processing power to be able to convert signals to their native resolution and make it look good, perhaps the model that the person in question chose did not?

[Vonner]

Originally Posted by SilentBob

I'm surprised they didn't return it because it still had black bars when watching their dvds

Probably returned it because now all his DVD's had black bars on the SIDES! WTF? I thought these were FULLSCREEN!

[rixrex]

Originally Posted by Taxi

My dad has a VCR attached to his 60" Vega SXRD TV. (Yes, VHS looks like ass when blown up that big.)

I used to have to remind him to switch over to the HD input when we're watching something over the air in HD, but he's getting better at doing that on his own now.

Yeah, it can look bad, but not if presented properly. I watch many VHS tapes still and on my 64" HD Pioneer set. I know lots of older folks who prefer the VHS to the DVD just because of feeling at ease with it.

For those of you who might still have older relatives with extensive VHS collections and have moved up to big screen HD sets, you can do this:

Put the VHS setup through a different input from the HD cable, and allow nothing else on that input, so they must switch to another input to view cable.

Set up the VHS input so that you always have the darker sidebars, don't use any stretch or zoom settings that will just enhance the scanlines, edge fuzzies, or dot-crawl effect, and make people look fat.

If the set has a built-in P-scan converter, use it. It often goes under a company-specific name of some sort.

Have a good quality VHS unit like JVC, Sony, Panasonic, Mitsubishi and not an off-brand unit, and if it has S-video, that's even better. If you do this, and you play good quality tapes, not old rentals that have been seen a million times, you will get a very fine picture regardless of it being a big screen set.

If you must play older rentals just because the film isn't available any other way, then spend a few dollars for a tape cleaning/rewinder machine and clean the tape first before watching. This is a big deal for rentals.

Also an option is to get a used DVDO enhancer such as Plus 2, Pro or Ultra models that digitally convert the inputs to P-scan and give you component outputs, and also will create the sidebars for you, but then we're getting into areas that older folks don't want to deal with too much.

[Derb]

Originally Posted by PunkMunkey

Not necessarily...if the TV had a good scaler/deinterlacer built in then any SD material would have been upconverted to the HDTV's native resolution well enough to make the material look good. Most HDTV's have at least decent processing power to be able to convert signals to their native resolution and make it look good, perhaps the model that the person in question chose did not?

Maybe.. I havn't tested every tv out there. Could also be a cheap dvd player the person had with composite inputed. My older Sony tv had 1386x788 & everything was displayed at this rez. Before HD or upconverting dvd players, I used a progressive scan Panasonic DMR-E30 dvd player through component & in comparison to a good 4:3 CRT, the image I was getting wasn't as good.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by PunkMunkey

Not necessarily...if the TV had a good scaler/deinterlacer built in then any SD material would have been upconverted to the HDTV's native resolution well enough to make the material look good. Most HDTV's have at least decent processing power to be able to convert signals to their native resolution and make it look good, perhaps the model that the person in question chose did not?

Yep, I agree. I've seen this (to some degree) on my dad's 42" Vizio 1080p LCD HDTV. We have an $80 Toshiba upconverting DVD player connected to it via HDMI and I was testing feeding the set 720p output from the player as well as 1080i output. We used Gladiator as the test material. During one scene, I saw some artifacting when feeding the TV a 1080i signal that disappeared when we fed it a 720p signal. This isn't scientific but made me wonder it the Toshiba player could de-interlace better than the TV. When watching 1080i over cable, my dad often notices combing which shouldn't happen if a good de-interlacer is involved. Perhaps his TV is a "flag reader" or something.

Peace...

[rixrex]

Lots of sets on the market with less than desirable built-in enhancers and/or de-interlacers, etc, and the same is true of players that do such. Any good enhancer can't just 'blow-up' a video image to fit a resolution. There's got to be super-quick algorithmic based comparisons of frame-to-frame and line-to-line imagery, and then an instantaneous creation of the 'missing' information necessary to make the enhancement look good.

For example, an enhancer taking original SD-DVD image of 480 lines could simply repeat a set number of lines to enhance to 720 or 1080, and so it could play on 720 or 1080, but look like it was "zoomed" or "blown up". A quality enhancer actually compares the frame by frame images for motion, and also the line by line images, and then creates the additional inserted image lines based upon how they would actually appear.

This is exactly what DVD players with p-scan output do currently because DVD video image is encoded in 480 interlaced scan, not progressive. A high quality enhancer/scaler will do such a good job at this that it is very difficult to tell original HD material from HD enhanced DVD material.

I've only found two TV sets that do a decent job of this, yet not as good a job as the outboard enhancers you can buy like the DVDO, and those are Pioneer and Mitsubishi. Everybody else is very distant in that area, which is not hard to figure when a top-quality enhancer/scaler is not a cheap item.

I'm not surprised to hear about artifacting effects with 1080i that are gone in 720p. You have 1080 lines total, but that's 540 odd and even alternating, each 30x per second, whereas 720p is 720 lines at 60x per second. The math shows 720p to be preferable for smooth imagery. I'd bet those effects have more to do with the alternating fields than any actual DVD artifacting.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by rixrex

Lots of sets on the market with less than desirable built-in enhancers and/or de-interlacers, etc, and the same is true of players that do such.

Yep, that's why we talk about the de-interlacing capabilities of DVD players and TVs so we can best know how to "mate" them, so to speak. That's also why the Panasonic DVD-RP82 and DVD-XP30 (and related) DVD players were so popular, they offered de-interlacing capability most HDTVs on the market just couldn't match, with the exception of a Pioneer Elite CRT RPTV, I believe.

For example, an enhancer taking original SD-DVD image of 480 lines could simply repeat a set number of lines to enhance to 720 or 1080, and so it could play on 720 or 1080, but look like it was "zoomed" or "blown up". A quality enhancer actually compares the frame by frame images for motion, and also the line by line images, and then creates the additional inserted image lines based upon how they would actually appear.

A cadence reading de-interlacer does this, but a flag reader doesn't. That's another reason why the Panasonic players I mentioned above were so "hot" (back then), they were (are) cadence readers and as such didn't "suffer" from bad flags, as flag reading de-interlacers do or can.

I'm not surprised to hear about artifacting effects with 1080i that are gone in 720p. You have 1080 lines total, but that's 540 odd and even alternating, each 30x per second, whereas 720p is 720 lines at 60x per second. The math shows 720p to be preferable for smooth imagery. I'd bet those effects have more to do with the alternating fields than any actual DVD artifacting.

I'm not talking about "DVD artifacting" but combing and other artifacts as a result of de-interlacing. Considering the HDTV in question has a native resolution of 1080p, it's taking the 1080i input (from either the DVD player or the cable box) and de-interlacing it to 1080p. In the case of a