THE FRONT LINE: JULY 24, 2007
1080P: The Last Word
It’s been over a year since my last opus on 1080p, and two years since the original 1080p Reality Check article. And now for the final chapter (I hope)…
The first two installments of this series generated lots of mail, positive and negative. And that’s a good thing, as the topic has certainly been controversial. Even so, I stand by everything I wrote back then, even with all of the new 1080p displays and program sources that have come to market in the past 12 months.
The original article (July 2005) was written in response to a flurry of marketing and press releases that were full of half-truths and outright falsehoods about 1080p. The writers of these missives were well intentioned: their goal was to sell more 1080p displays. However, they were stretching the truth considerably with claims like “there will be lots of 1080p programming to watch this coming fall in HDTV.”
The mail I received after the first article was overwhelming and ranged from arguments about display and HDTV standards (yes, it is 1080i/29.97; and there are no 1080p/24 broadcasts) to viewing distances (the standard for 1920x1080 lines of detail is 3.1x the screen height) to interfaces (yes, every version of HDMI since 1.1 supports 1080p/60 playback).
The early models of HD DVD and Blu-ray players that stumbled into the marketplace didn’t help. Only Samsung’s BD-P1000 even offered 1080p output, but you had to jump through hoops to make sure that mode was activated. It wasn’t compatible with at least one native 1080p home theater projector (JVC’s HD10K) and a video noise problem with the player’s internal processor essentially negated any benefit to the 1080p output.
So, what’s changed in the past year? Has sanity returned to the HDTV market? Let’s take one last look.
Market Pressures: The downward spiral of retail prices for LCD, plasma, and rear projection HDTVs continues. In fact, prices have dropped so low that many companies have dropped 720p or 768p HDTVs altogether from their fall 2007 lines, including Sony and Mitsubishi.
You can buy a nice 57-inch or 61-inch 1080p rear-projection HDTV for what a 720p set cost about 18 months ago. Panasonic and Samsung have both rolled out 1080p 50-inch plasma HDTVs for about $3,000, and you can find 52-inch 1080p LCD HDTVs for a few hundred dollars more.
From this perspective, the move to 1080p displays is logical — the selling prices and margins are higher. 720p and 768p displays are rapidly becoming commoditized, with 50-inch 768p plasma well below $1,500 and 720p rear-projection closing in on the $1,000 mark.
Don’t overlook a good deal on these lower-resolution sets! Many of them have decent video processing to handle 1080i sources, and of course it’s not much of a leap from 480p DVDs to 720p in terms of pixel scaling. Remember too, that ABC, FOX, and ESPN broadcast in the 720p HD format exclusively, so if you watch a lot of sports on these channels, a 720p or 768p display is just the ticket.
Eventually, 720p/768p resolution will just go away altogether in favor of 1080p, in screen sizes over 42 inches. And the question of whether or not to buy 1080p resolution will become moot — that is, unless newer, higher resolution HDTVs will be pushed on the market.
Viewing Distances: I’m not aware of any trends in society where human beings’ visual acuity is improving with time and age. And most viewers I know sit at least six to seven feet from their HDTV set, with most parked eight feet or more away.
Using the accepted rules of thumb for 1080i (3.1x the screen height) and 720p (4x the screen height), it would seem that HDTVs with 42-inch and smaller screens will probably look just as good with 720p or 768p resolution as they would with 1080p resolution. Even a 50-inch HDTV has a minimum viewing distance of about six feet for 1080p and just over eight feet for 768p.
As of this writing, the “sweet spot” for HDTV sales ranges from 37 inches to 46 inches. With the viewing distance examples shown, there’s little advantage to spending extra money just to get more pixels on the screen. A 768p or 720p HDTV with a good internal deinterlacer and video scaler, coupled with a decent scaling DVD player like OPPO’s DV-981HD, should do the trick nicely.
Blue Laser vs. Red Laser: I’ve tested enough of the new HD DVD and Blu-ray players to know that you’ll need a big screen to see the real differences between the formats. With a high-quality scaling DVD player, close-ups and medium shots will appear to have comparable sharpness to blue laser, even on big screens like my 82-inch Stewart. (That’s assuming, of course, that the test red laser DVD program benefited from a decent encoding job.)
Where you’ll notice the difference between red and blue laser is in long shots where objects in the frame become progressively smaller. At some point, their shapes on a standard definition DVD approach the size of individual pixels in the display and they become soft, or start to block up.
In contrast, those objects are still seen with fine detail on a blue laser pressing with 1920x1080 resolution. (I ran this test with red laser and blue laser copies of Superman Returns, Batman Begins, Miami Vice, and Mission Impossible III.)
As for 1080p/24 output — the next “hot” thing, which a few Blu-ray players are now offering (Toshiba’s HD-XA2 and HD-A20 will have software upgrades for 24Hz in September 2007), you’ll need an HDTV that can handle multiples of the 24 Hz frame rate, like 72Hz or 96 Hz. Pioneer, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, and others are now supporting this rate across many HDTV products in their fall 2007 lineups.
Does that mean that 1080p/60 (3:2 pulldown) is to be avoided? Not necessarily, as long as the video processing in your HDTV can correct for and remove the redundant fields found in the 3:2 sequences. Both the Silicon Optix Realta and Reon processors are up to this task, as are Anchor Bay’s DVDO chipsets.
What’s In My Theater: I’m set up to watch movies and HDTV programs using Mitsubishi’s HC5000 LCD projector, which sits just over ten feet from a Stewart 82-inch 16:9 matte-finish screen. The HC5000 incorporates the Reon processor, so I drive all sources to it natively with a 4x1 HDMI switcher. My blue laser player is Toshiba’s HD-A2, since its 1080i output is easily deinterlaced and cleaned up in the projector.
But that’s the only 1080p display in my house — the rest are all 720p or 480p resolution, which given our viewing distances, work just fine.
Full 1080p Processing: By all accounts, there are still many HDTVs that do not process 1080i to 1080p cleanly. A quick test with the Silicon Optix Realta HQV disc (available on HD DVD or Blu-ray) will “out” the offending sets.
If you have an HD DVD player, you can use the Video Resolution and Film Resolution loss tests to verify whether the HDTV in question does process both fields of a 1080i frame correctly and weaves the result together, using full motion interpolation. You may be surprised. Some big-name HDTV sets don’t pass this test, while some also-rans have done quite well.
The other issues with 1080i-to-1080p involve MPEG compression. Some TV stations multicast one or more signals along with a 1080i HD program, and the results can look pretty bad on a big screen HDTV. The CBS O&O station policy of not multicasting is to be applauded when it comes to live 1080i sports coverage — compare the difference between CBS’ AFC football coverage this fall and NBC’s Sunday Night Football games on your local stations.
There are also problems with 1080i content carried over cable and satellite. In fact, DirecTV was sued earlier this year by a customer who claims the DBS service provider over-compresses their 1080i channels, effectively cutting picture resolution to 1280x1080 pixels. It will be interesting to see how that dispute plays out!
1080p looks best coming off a DVD player, where the codecs (Windows Media and MPEG2/4) generally use much higher bit rates and the source material is natively progressive-scan to begin with.
One warning — be careful to check for the actual resolution of the HDTV in the manufacturer’s specifications before you buy. The terms “Full HD,” “1080HD,” “HD1080” and others are being used to market HDTVs. But in one case, the actual resolution is 1280x1080 pixels — not 1920x1080.
Conclusion: To sum up, 1080p is finally reaching maturity, with packaged content and quality displays to make the system work. But it’s not necessary for an enjoyable HDTV experience as there are some excellent deals on 720p/768p HDTVs and upscaling DVD players to be had. (And you can get all of your favorite movies in the conventional DVD format, unlike HD DVD and Blu-ray.)
If you do elect to buy a new 1080p HDTV, check the reviews and look for one that processes 1080i signals correctly. If you think 1080p/24 is the cat’s pajamas, make sure the HDTV can handle that picture refresh rate correctly — otherwise, you’ll just get a blank screen.
Finally (and this might seem like a “DUHH!” comment), check to see how good or bad the set’s 480i processing is! Most viewers still watch many hours a day of standard-definition programming, and some of that can look really awful on a large-screen 1080p HDTV. Match the set’s resolution to the majority of your TV viewing and you’ll be happier in the long run.
