Blu-ray and 1080p = ?

[gandalf]

Hi all!

I´m very new as a member here and this is my first post.

I do not have anything new to deliver but i sure am confused about a lot when it comes to HDTV and the dirrerent variations of quality that it seem to bring.

I have heard that Europe (EU) has decided to use the 720p standard for HDTV broadcasting. True?

I also have heard that 1080p is not a reality with todays technology since it demands a lot of power and capacity to be produced in real time at least. True?

Will Blu-ray be capable of capturing a 1080p broadcast? Will it be capable of capturing a 720p broadcast? Or what?

Is 1080i almost the same as 540p??

As you might realize i´m very new to all this and might be asking stupid questions. Hopefully you wont toss me away from this forum for ever anyway. :-)

Looking forward to read and write more here!

Thanks for all great posts that I have read so far!

Let´s keep this forum going!

Gandalf - not my real name. :-)

[Rob]

1) Europe has adopted both 720p, (1280 by 720p @ 50hz), and 1080i, (1920 by 1080i @ 50hz). Same as in the USA, just that they output at 60hz.

2) There aren't as of yet, any 1080p tvs in the Uk, and they're only just starting to appear in USA/JAP. Few tv sets have the full HD res for 1080i let alone be able to display 1080p, (most hdtvs have a res of 1366 by 768 so have to scale down 1080i to fit). The only tv capable of displaying native, (i.e. pixel for pixel), 1080i is Sharp's 45" lcd costing £4,300 online, originally retailing for £6,500. Sharp also has a 65" £14,000 1080i set with 1920/1080 res out in the Uk this Dec. However, in Japan it has 2 1080p sets one 37", the other 57" that will also be released this Dec. Sony has it's own 1080p set the 46" Qualia that is LED based, removing the need for a backlight.

Sony is claiming it's PS3 will output 1080p, and it's hoped by most people here that Blu-Ray will output movies at this res. Just as dvds store movies at 575p 24fps, Blu-Ray should hopefully store films at 1080p 24fps. The player outputtin a 1080p50 signal in the Uk by showing each frame twice, (admitedly meaning that films would run 2 frames per second quick as they do with dvds).

3) I see no reason why Blu-Ray will not be able to capture a 1080p broadcast. Still, HDTV will be protected by HDCP which is the latest digital copy protection. It may be that digital copies of HD films, tv etc. may not be possible. Sky's first HDTV box will have a HDD to store programmes on anyway.

4) 540p and 1080i are not the same. 540p describes a progressive picture made up of 540 lines, where the whole picture is displayed in one go starting with the first line, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on til the 540th. 1080i describes an interlaced picture with 1,080 lines where in this case all the odd lines are displayed in the first frame, (i.e. half of the picture), then all the even in the second frame. A progressive picture is therefore preffeable as it displays twice the number of whole frames. In the Uk, 50 compared to 25.

[gandalf]

Well now I have a lot to think about...

:-)

Thanks for straightening a few threads for me!

I am still thinking here. lol

Take care!

[john_1958]

Has anyone else notice less High definition when viewing as i don't notice much of 3d

did broadcasters reduce 1080 for more bandwidth?

[thunderhawk]

Has anyone else notice less High definition when viewing as i don't notice much of 3d

did broadcasters reduce 1080 for more bandwidth?

3-D? I wish that was a feature of Blu-ray Disc
Unfortunately 1080i doesn't support 3D graphics.

[Blue]

1080i was chosen for broadcasting to limit it's bandwidth requirements. They got the best of both worlds. For slow moving use 1080i for fast moving e.g. horse racing we really need a progressive so 720p. It's not that there isn't enough bandwidth in most countries they just wanted more. Each TV station in Australia has their normal Analogue channel a mirror in standard definition digital, another Standard definition channel (None use them at the moment - except the Public broadcaster) a HD channel and effectively a data channel for 1080p they would have had to of lost one of their other channels. This could have also been done with another compression standard, but the standard was set when MPEG2 was the greatest thing around.

As far as monitors to view 1080p there are not many at the moment, but why make a monitor if you have nothing to view on it. The building blocks are in place - both TI (DLP) and Epson (LCD) are ready to go with 1080p and numerous other manufacturers have small scale 1080p and will expand rapidly once there is a requirement. We know BD Movie is 1080p as the "first" movie has been encoded this way.

[JDMP10]

Currently in the US from my knowledge there are at least 10 sets in total from all the leading TV makers capable of outputting HD in 1080p. With no 1080p content of any kind aside from upscaled 1080i demo content by the makers of those its not easy to justify to a consumer why they have a need for a 1080p set currently speaking. With any luck after this year's CES, more concrete info will be given by the BDA and HD-DVD associations so maybe by this time next year(2007), we might have a handful of BR players and HD-DVD players along with a few movies made in 1080i(or even better 1080p) to take advantage of those 1080p displays. Also I believe by this time next year there will be more 1080p sets available to the public in smaller sizes and a bit more affordable then $3-$4k.

Currently the only way to take advantage of the 1080p resolution of a 1080p set is to get a video upscaler to convert the video content from 480i(DVD's) to 1080p. Technically it wont look as good as true 1080p content but the difference wont be visible to the human eye.

I was at the Sony Style store in Vegas a few days ago at The Forum Shops in Caesar's Palace and I got to check out on display in the back room the Qualia 006 not currently for sale. List price of that set is $13,000 and I never thought I could convince myself that a purchase of that amount would be something worthwhile, but after taking a look at that set and a BR Spider-Man 2 trailer being played on it, I truely couldnt believe my eyes. It was really that good. Sony's SXRD sets are truely revolutionary in my view especially the 006 and even the lesser 60" and 50" models. The BR disc was being played on a Japanese spec Sony BR player available currently in Japan for around $3600 but I believe the BR player was connected to a commercial upscaler to output the video to 1080p cause the Sony BR player can output at 1080i maximum nothing higher. Nevertheless the video was pretty incredible, I couldnt believe I was watching video that crystal clear and that smooth in that huge size(70").

The only thing everyone can be sure of though is the future is going to be very interesting as HD is going to continue to spread into more sets and better sets are going to become more affordable and the future couldnt look better for us enthusiasts and consumers.

[thunderhawk]

Originally Posted by JDMP10

The only thing everyone can be sure of though is the future is going to be very interesting as HD is going to continue to spread into more sets and better sets are going to become more affordable and the future couldnt look better for us enthusiasts and consumers.

And what we need soon, is a price crash with the WK football 2006.

[Blue]

Originally Posted by thunderhawk

And what we need soon, is a price crash with the WK football 2006.

We are expecting the first price crash after the Commonwealth Games - yes we (Australia) have found one and most probably only one good reason for being part of the British Empire. Hmm should be plenty of time for the price crashes by the time for the rumoured Sony's BD release.