Hack HD-A3 to be 1080p

Yes by selling you old player and purchasing a A30 or XA2


DJOel

Just attach this little device with an hdmi cable.
http://www.anchorbaytech.com/product...ms/vp50pro.php

If you have a 1080p tv the tv it will do it for you. There are multiple posts and articles on the lack of difference between 1080i and 1080p.

There are also multiple posts on the difference between 720 and 1080p or i. Remember your seating distance vs. size of you TV......at normal distances the difference between 720p, 1080i, and 1080p are pretty small......so small that most won't be able to tell.

If you have a TV that de-interlaces correctly, then 1080i/p should look identical on your TV. If you have a TV that accepts 1080p@24fps, then you would see a benefit to upgrading the A3 to a A30/A35/XA2.

It isn't that easy to properly deinterlace 480i to p, so I don't think it's a given that 1080i to p will be easy either.

Kevin, the first part of your statement is true because the 480i source is truly intelaced and it is not easy to recreate a progressive series of frames without repeating a few fields every now and then. With HDM, the source on the disk is already progressive so creating an interlaced output is a snap because all the frames are there in the proper order and converting it back to 1080p at the display device is easy too. Don't ask me why Toshiba decided to go with only 1080i output on their low end models, but it is as big an issue as some camps make it out to be. I have an A2 feeding a FP setup with a 9 foot wide screen and I can honestly say I see very few artifacts, if any. At that screen size, problems in the playback chain are easily spotted. I see problems with the quality of the transfers ( SD and HD ) more than anything else.

Bill

The fact remains that most TVs (according recent benchmarks) are as bad/good in de-interlacing 1080i to 1080p as A20/A30/A35. So, upgrading from A3 to either of those may not be worth it unless you have a TV that takes 24p properly. The best 1080p player is still XA2 and its clone, Onkyo.

It has to upconvert it, it doesn't have a choice. All 1080p sets are fixed pixel displays, so they can only output 1080p and all other resolutions are upconverted. With a 1080i source, all the data is there for the 1080p picture, the only thing it has to do is deinterlace. Since deinterlacing is a fairly easy thing these days, on most 1080p displays, the difference between 1080i and 1080p is non-existent.

Yes it is, the fact that TVs deinterlace doesn't mean they do it well either. Some of them yes I'm sure, but some of them no. In that case, it's better to let the player take care of the deinterlacing, and sending 1080p directly to the TV.

[edit]when I say "no", I'm not saying the image displayed is unwatchable, but maybe a subtle difference would go in favor of the player for deinterlacing.

You are correct. But I think you overestimate the displays which fail deinterlacing and overestimate even more the ones which fail enough to be visible. But there are some displays where letting the player do the deinterlacing is preferable, which is exactly why I said "these days, on most 1080p displays, the difference between 1080i and 1080p is non-existent", "most" being the operative word.

Of course, with an A30 or A35 the player doesn't do any deinterlacing - it simply plays back the native 1080p content.

The biggest issue of course is that if your TV isn't 24hz capable (120hz for example) you are going to be "creating" extra data as the player does 3:2 to make 60fps from the native 24. This can make unscreen motion rough looking, a problem commonly referred to as 'judder'.

Some players judder worse than others, of course. The biggest problem with judder is, in my opinion, the same as the 'rainbow' problem on DLP's or banding issues on LCD displays - most people never notice these issues, but once you do, you always do and it drives you insane.

Actually, I believe this is incorrect. Because of the current hardware available to do 1080p/24 to 1080p/60, the process involves an interlacing/deinterlacing step. This is part of the reason for the "glitch" in 1080p playback for the A30/35. 1080p/24 content does not require this step.

My Panasonic AE1000U FP apparently converts the 1080i signal from my A2 to 1080p, looks great to me.

How would I even know if my TV is deinterlacing 1080i content to 1080p? I have a Samsung PN58A550

Unless you have an old CRT TV, any modern TV will deinterlace 1080i because those fixed pixels (LCD, Plasma and DLP) can't shift half line each frame to display 1080i.

This can't really be a serious question. This is a joke, correct?

I wouldn't say that this is a joke. I've often wondered the same thing. Maybe a A3 can be crossflashed to a A30 with a hex edited A30 firmware. Bud-Man and other people crossflashed their A2's with the EP10KTY firmware.

You never know until you try it. I remember a certain somebody from down under said that the Aussie firmware couldn't be put on the USA players. Then someone hex edited it and proved him wrong. He then said that the firmware couldn't be rolled back and that the USA players couldn't do PAL unless you added more hardware to the board. Someone with a hex editor proved him wrong again. I find it odd that someone who claims to have wrote that firmware doesn't know too much about it.

who do you think was the person who actually showed the person and explained how to hex the player , then he told people after i told him what to do.... i knew what you needed to do , lol.... yes you can convert your a3 to 1080p, also ive got 2.1 for 3rd gen players the firmware but have no reason to release it to people... to fix bugs........
cheers mate.... n8ywf...

For people who own 720p/768p televisions, 1080i can be a problem. Of course there is the 720p output option, but some people want to make use of the few extra pixels on their 768p display. If the TV doesnt have a good de-interlacer, it will be converting each frame from 1920x540 to 1280 x 720 rather than taking two 1920x540 frames, deinterlacing first, then passing that as 1280x720 twice.

For my 1080p source, I obviously have no problems, and my 720p/768p plasma seems to deinterlace properly so no worries there either...but for others, it would be nice to have 1080p output for the reason i mentioned above. In that case.. get a HD-A30/5