Hello, all -

I was looking at the spec sheet for the Samsung Slim-Fit 27" HDTV (TX-T2793H) which will be released in April 2007. I want a 4:3 CRT that can take a 480i, a 480p, and either a 1080i or 720p feed without any upscaling or downscaling. The spec sheet says this tv can accept all 4 of those signals natively. Is that even possible?

http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/SlimFitHDTV/TXT2793HXXAA.asp

The reason I ask is because I want to hook up a Playstation 2 (480i) and an Xbox 360 (480p, 720p, or 1080i) to the same tv without either console suffering from converting or processing. I'm racking my brain trying to find a well reviewed tv to do this. Am I asking the impossible? Suggestions? Thanks!

Shadow mask CRTs have 1 native resolution.

The best you can do is get an aperture grille CRT (Trinitron, Diamondtron) which only have a native HORIZONTAL resolution, as there are no subdivisions in the vertical direction.

There is no digital scaling in any case, the beam scanning changes, so it looks pretty good.
Well, actually some CRT TVs (eg., Philips) scale 720p to 1080i, and can scale SDTV to HDTV (this last thing is called Pixel Plus in Philips parlance).

Shadow mask CRTs have 1 native resolution.

The best you can do is get an aperture grille CRT (Trinitron, Diamondtron) which only have a native HORIZONTAL resolution, as there are no subdivisions in the vertical direction.

There is no digital scaling in any case, the beam scanning changes, so it looks pretty good.

Crap. Ok, considering this:

"CRT HDTVs usually have two native resolutions and sometimes only one. Those resolutions are typically 480p and 1080i. Sometimes, it is only 1080i. THERE ARE NO CRT HDTVS THAT CAN DISPLAY A NATIVE RESOLUTION OF 480i."

From this: http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=94426

...maybe I should just look for an EDTV. They can do 480i and 480p natively, right? Is that what you're referring to? I gave up on an EDTV because I can't find a 4:3 27" EDTV these days.

How does a 480i game look on a TV that can only handle 480p natively? I'll sacrifice the 720p and the 1080s if I can find a TV that will handle 480i and 480p without any processing in the background.

When I save 'native', it means what in some monitors is referred to as 'optimum' resolution. Some people say CRTs don't have native resolution because you don't have pixels that cannot be 'shifted'. In a non-optimum resolution the beam will excite partially more than one spot, so that adjacent pixels will contribute a bit to the color of one spot resulting in some kind of analog rescaling.
When they say it mas more than one native resolution it means it will scan the exact number of lines, but only one is perfectly aligned with the grid.
I have tried 2304x1728 on a professional aperture grille monitor whose optimum is at 1600x1200 and it doesn't look bad. Lower resolutions have no problem at all.
I don't know about 4:3. If it were 16:9, I would go for an HDTV that shows 1080p (don't think that it exists), or one that shows two different sets of 540 lines on each field, I mean shifted, with 1080 actual lines showed interlaced (not maybe some fake HDTV which always overwrites the same 540 physical lines).
But a 16:9 TV normally has a 4:3 mode showing black bars on the sides. A good compromise is a 32" wide TV which gives you about 25" in 4:3 and weighs 100 lbs.
To get 29" 4:3 one would need a 36" wide and definitely humongous (plus, no slim models available).
Of course, ensure that such a TV has 'native' SDTV modes and not that it always scaless digitally to 1080i, so you have a choice. If that Samsung also does 720p natively that would be great. I imagine that if it is a yet to be released model, it will have the distortion correction coprocessor mentioned in another thread.
I see quite a few people complaining about the geometry of SlimFit and many seem to favor the LG, although it can also have its own set of problems.
I don't know which brand will be better given this new processing tech.

The only CRT that can produce more than 3-4 native resolution is a monitor.
There is no TV out there that can produce more than 3-4 native resolution
whether it's aperture grille or shadow mask.

Ok, so what's with Samsung making claims like this for the TX-S2782H?

*Native resolution display format
1080i/480p/480i Interlaced

*Maximum of 800 lines horizontal
resolution

http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/SlimFitHDTV/files/tx-s2782h.pdf

Ok, so what's with Samsung making claims like this for the TX-S2782H?

*Native resolution display format
1080i/480p/480i Interlaced

*Maximum of 800 lines horizontal
resolution

http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/SlimFitHDTV/files/tx-s2782h.pdf

Yes that is possible. 720p converts into 1080i.

It means your TV has 800x1080i maximum resolution displayed. When 480p or 480i
is outputted, the TV displays 800x480p or 800x480i. This is the same with Sony's
FD Trinitron. It accepts 720p and converts into 1080i. Although 480p and 960i is
the two other native resolution.

Just get a PC monitor

And CRT HDTV's don't really have a native resolution..they just display what ever you fed it..depending on what the actual tv supports resolution wise 1080i,720p,480p,etc.

Thanks for all the replies, but I'm afraid you're gonna have to dumb it down for me. Maybe I should alter my question a bit.

From what I've been reading, it's impossible to get a tv for gaming that embraces both the old and the new. You either get an SDTV that does 480i and let your "crisp" Xbox 360 games suffer, or you get an HDTV and let your old PS2 games look like crap. I'm trying to find a 4:3 tv that will do justice to both generations of gaming. (I don't want to deal with 16:9 right now. Long story.) So when I read that the Samsung has native resolutions of 480i, 480p (PS2) and 1080i (Xbox 360), I thought I struck gold (except for the reported geometry problems.)

Seriously, am I making this too complicated for myself? My pals with HDTVs don't seem to care that their PS2 games are stetched out and have "jaggies" on their HDTVs, but that would bother the heck outta me. And I don't want to unplug my PS2 and switch to a tv in another room just because I went from a progressive scan video game to a 480i one.

(And I understand that if I went the 16:9 CRT route, I'd insist on playing my old non-widesceen games with black bars on the sides. I'm not into stretching or zooming. But then wouldn't I have to worry about "black bar burning" if I played a lot of games this way?)

Now where did I put that aspirin bottle? ;-)

A CRT adjusts the beam to vary the pixel size, so a pixel can be composed by the contribution of phosphor dots reachable through several mask holes or grille slits. It's sort of analog and your perception integrates the information, so it looks good. There are no digital scaling artifacts if the mode is displayed 'natively'.

Don't worry about using an HDTV CRT to display SDTV in this case.

Quick tip on burn-in:

http://www.cnet.com/4520-7874_1-5140690-1.html

Good info in that link, rhomboid. Thanks. I also found this forum discussion that I found interesting:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=764525&highlight=gaming

The phillips 9110d has two seperate electronic receivers inside it, one for digital and one for analog. The digital component inputs scale everything to 1080i, while the analog one only does 480i. Its 480i isn't perfect, but it's notably better on the analog side than the digital.

Additionally, you could get the ps2 hdtv xploder to force games to run in 480p over component. It requires you put in a boot disc before every game but is that such a big price to pay?

http://www.xploder.net/products/148/Xploder-HDTV-Player.htm

PS2 HDTV Player Xploder thing sucks. I have it.

fivestarav, I was in the same boat as you. I am *very* picky about my games and I wanted a set that would do justice to older 480i stuff (PS2 and before) as well as 480p (nearly all my Xbox and GC games) and of course the newer 720p and 1080i material (360 and PS3). It literally took me years to make a choice. LCDs and Plasmas were immediately out of the question because of how awful they made everything look that wasn't in their native resolution. RPTVs were considered, but I heard some negative comments about black levels. The best compromise I found was the 4:3 Sony 36XS955.

Every game I've tried on it -- old and new -- looks awesome... as far as scaling is concerned. My set has a bothersome streak problem that may or may not be present in all of these models. If you can find one that definitely doesn't have this issue (or find one at all as they're now out of print), it might be exactly what you're looking for.

Thanks for the info, Compass. I read a write-up on the 36X5955 just now. I like how it mentioned even VHS tapes look good on it. That shows they're not forgetting about the older generation stuff.

"The 36-inch set also offers analog and digital high-definition inputs, great audio features, and a suite of picture-enhancing technologies. Whether you're watching VHS tapes, DVDs, or off-air high-definition (480p, 720p, 1080i) broadcasts, your programs will look breathtakingly good.

DRC--Digital Reality Creation MultiFunction circuitry--upconverts standard interlaced (480i) video sources to 960i or progressive-scan 480p, while inputs as high-quality as 720p (720 lines, progressively scanned) are upsampled to full 1080i. Because DRC processes video signals in real time, it creates an image with 4 times the density of the original signal."

I'm looking for a 27", but I'll keep my eyes open. Still hoping the new Samsung I mentioned will solve all my problems in April. Circuit City said I have 30 days to return a tv with no questions asked and no restocking fee. I may just have to buy one and run some tests by myself.

I was gonna ask you if the 4:3 bothers you when you play appropriate games in 16:9, but with a tv that size, I can't imagine letterboxing to be an issue - the image is still plenty big.

PS2 HDTV Player Xploder thing sucks. I have it.

fivestarav, I was in the same boat as you. I am *very* picky about my games and I wanted a set that would do justice to older 480i stuff (PS2 and before) as well as 480p (nearly all my Xbox and GC games) and of course the newer 720p and 1080i material (360 and PS3). It literally took me years to make a choice. LCDs and Plasmas were immediately out of the question because of how awful they made everything look that wasn't in their native resolution. RPTVs were considered, but I heard some negative comments about black levels. The best compromise I found was the 4:3 Sony 36XS955.

Every game I've tried on it -- old and new -- looks awesome... as far as scaling is concerned. My set has a bothersome streak problem that may or may not be present in all of these models. If you can find one that definitely doesn't have this issue (or find one at all as they're now out of print), it might be exactly what you're looking for.

Never actually tried the Xploder, how does it suck? From what I've heard, it works decently at bringing 480i material to 480p, but horribly at going any higher than that. Still, even a decent success rate of 480p would be nice.

The phillips 9110d has two seperate electronic receivers inside it, one for digital and one for analog. The digital component inputs scale everything to 1080i, while the analog one only does 480i. Its 480i isn't perfect, but it's notably better on the analog side than the digital.

Additionally, you could get the ps2 hdtv xploder to force games to run in 480p over component. It requires you put in a boot disc before every game but is that such a big price to pay?

http://www.xploder.net/products/148/Xploder-HDTV-Player.htm

I've heard nasty things about xploder. Some people say it works wonders, while others say that it makes everything look funny because the PS2 is being forced to do resolutions it wasn't supposed to do. Most complaints are that things either get squished funny or get chopped off the edges of the screen.

I just leave my PS2 the way it is, most older games dont look good at super high resolutions because they were counting on some amount of blur/fuzziness to hide the jaggies and poor dithering effects.

All I wanted it for was to turn 480i to 480p. I didn't have any illusions of turning 480i into 720p or 1080i (which it theoretically allows). But it sucks for everything, at least on my set.

For the few games I tried that were supposedly supported, I got: distorted FMVs (top third displayed at the bottom), crashes, and pillar-boxing that could only be corrected by changing my TV's horizontal scan rate (this is a confirmed issue in the product's manual).

Plus, if you have an older PS2, you may have serious trouble getting it to read the Xploder disc. Mine was read maybe one out of every ten attempts before I finally gave up. Oh yeah, and the component cables it ships with are the cheapest, thinnest wires I've ever seen in my life. Probably not a big deal since we all surely already have component cables for our PS2s, but still. I had to leave the white audio line disconnected because it was causing a perpetual hum. Just a shoddy product all around.

fivestar, believe it or not, I am kind of bothered by the small-ish screen size when watching letter-boxed material. It's 33", and I'm fairly close, but I'd love it to be bigger. This is another reason I'm strongly considering an SXRD. The 4:3 size is fantastic however. No complaints there.

I've been playing San Andreas lately on my Insignia 27" HDTV (NS-27HTV). It's got a couple of jaggies here and there, but that's probably more of an issue with the sharpness level; I suck at using even AVIA. I would recommend taking your PS2 into a store and ask if you can plug it into a TV so you can check the image quality.