Hello. I am the happy owner of a XBR4 46" display. I am very new into this matter and didn't know why when I watched a movie with my Panasonic S97 upconversion DVD, I liked it better when it was in 480p than in 720p mode. The same happened with the PS3. I come to realize that when I set the DVD player to 480p my display is the one doing the work of upscaling/upconverting the image to it's native 1080p resolution rather than my DVD player. As I am having "out of sync" problems with my S97 (mostly because of the Faroudja chip it uses) I am going to replace it with a simple Sony DVP-NS57P. I have read the specs of the more pricier Sony DVP-NS77H and this model has something called "Precision Cinema Progressive" that as I have read do something with the 3:2 / 2:3 reverse pull down and conversion from 24fps to 30fps amongst other features. The XBR4 has something called "Bravia Engine Pro". My question is: if I set both DVD players (the 57p or the 77H) in 480p and so the XBR4 will do the upconversion, will I get any additional benefit from having the "Precision Cinema Progressive" of the 77H or would I get the same results with the 57P without that feature??

Is it correct so say that setting a DVD player in 480p mode in a HDTV with 1080p is like just using your DVD player as a transport and the HDTV as the upconversion processor?

Thank you very much for your answers!

Is it correct so say that setting a DVD player in 480p mode in a HDTV with 1080p is like just using your DVD player as a transport and the HDTV as the upconversion processor?

Thank you very much for your answers!

DVDs are recorded at 480i, so if you supply a 480i signal the player is just a transport and the display does the deinterlacing and scaling.

If you supply 480p the player is deinterlacing and the display is scaling.

Deinterlacing is an important step and not every bit of gear does it equally well. This is site is all about deinterlacing performance, unfortunately it is not being updated very often: http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi

-Bill

Thank you very much for your answer. When I connected an old DVD player I had that does not do progressive scanning and thus transmits the information at 480i the image in my XBR4 was not as good as when I used another DVD (the Panasonic S97) at 480p. So I guess my display is better at scaling at 1080p than my S97 but not as good at deinterlacing... So I think I will be better off buying the "better" progressive scanning DVD player that in this case would be the 77H with its "Precision Cinema Progressive"