HD and SD 3:2 Pulldown and 2:2 De-interlacing Tests. What do they mean?

[Panayotis Melas]

Hello, everyone.

This is my first posting here and I am glad doing it.

I found this forum in an Internet search, and as soon as I read a few posts, I immediately decided to become a member.

I have been a Home Theater aficionado for many years, but Blu-Ray was out of my reach. Actually, I was waiting to let the format mature and then take the step. Finally, I bought the Panasonic DMP-BD55 and I inititally set it up to my system, routing its HDMI output directly to my JVC DLA-RS2 input and its 7.1 analog output directly to my Denon AVC-A1SE 7.1 analog pre-input.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoyed it for much time, because I had to leave my home for professional reasons. I hope that next month I'll be home again.

Let me now place a series of questions for a matter, which was also one of my criteria to select this player.

Reading the various tests in the specializing magazines, of English or of Greek language, I found out that this player (as well as its smaller brother, the BD35) do not present any problems with the de-interlacing of the HD video material (perhaps also with the SD one), while others of the same generation do.

Although I was not sure whether this is critical or not, I chose the BD55 for this reason. In order to demonstrate what I have read, following are examples of the reviews I checked for four different models, including the BD55 and BD35. The reviews are from Home Theater Magazine, all four by Kris Deering:

A. Sony BDP-S350

.....I started my testing regimen with some HD material. The BDP-S350 is the only Sony player to date that properly deinterlaces film-based 1080i material to 1080p with a 3:2 cadence. There still isn’t a large amount of disc-based content out there that this applies to. However, it might become more of an issue as studios release pre-recorded film content at 1080i or make cable recordings onto blank disc media. The BDP-S350 does not properly deinterlace 1080i material with a 2:2 cadence. This applies to concert media or anything sourced from a 30-fps camera. A few concert videos on the market today (including some by Sony BMG) employ a 2:2 cadence.....

(http://hometheatermag.com/discplayer...lu-ray_player/)

B. Panasonic DMP-BD35 and DMP-BD55

....The DMP-BD35 and DMP-BD55 did a spectacular job in our video tests. These are the first Panasonic players that pass all of our video processing tests for deinterlacing.....
......Panasonic has included the ability to play back standard DVDs at 1080p/24, which is a rarity for Blu-ray players. For all the people with 1080p/24-capable displays, it’s a bonus to be able to take advantage of removing the judder that’s associated with 3:2 pulldown.....

(http://hometheatermag.com/discplayer...u-ray_players/)

C. Sony BDP-S5000ES

....The BDP-S350 (HT, November 2008) was Sony’s first Blu-ray player to include HD deinterlacing, although it was limited to 3:2-based material. Unfortunately, the BDP-S5000ES takes a step back in this department. With our standard 1080i HD deinterlacing tests, the BDP-S5000ES didn’t pass our 3:2- or 2:2-based deinterlacing tests. This is surprising at this price point, since there are a number of lower-end players that have no problems with these tests at all. There are only a few 1080i-encoded Blu-ray Discs out there, but it’s still important for a player to offer the right video processing to maximize video performance with all discs.....

(http://hometheatermag.com/discplayer...lu-ray_player/)

D. Samsung BD-P2500

.....As you can see from our video-processing test results, the BD-P2500 does an exceptional job with both HD and SD video processing. The inclusion of the Reon video-processing chip makes this a very capable player with outstanding deinterlacing and scaling performance, which allows superlative 1080p playback from DVD discs. Unfortunately, the BD-P2500 does not offer frame-rate conversion of DVD material like the recently reviewed Panasonic DMP-BD35 and DMP-BD55. Those players allow for 1080p/24 playback of DVD material. The BD-P2500 is limited to 1080p/60 on DVDs, which is typical of most Blu-ray players. This one simply does it better than most.



The HD decoder does have an issue with chroma upsampling with HD material mastered with a 2:2 cadence (not shown in our chart). This content represents a tiny segment of the market, but the player revealed obvious banding with our 2:2 Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE) test pattern. The player didn’t show any signs of chroma error with DVD material or the more common 3:2 cadence with HD material.....

(http://hometheatermag.com/discplayer...yer/index.html)

Therefore, my questions are:

1) What does exactly mean 3:2 and 2:2 pulldown, in simple words?

2) How is this process connected to de-interlacing? (I know what "de-interlacing" means)?

3) Why is this important for HD (or even SD) material?

4) Does this apply in all kinds of video signals and standards (i.e. ATSC, NTSC, PAL, etc.)?

Please, forgive my ignorance on this matter.

Thanks in advance.