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I just purchased a HD-DVD player and I was wondering what everyone has their resolution set at? I heard thats it's best to set the resolution at 1080i even though Benq is a 720P native resolution projector.
Benq 8700+ owners
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Noboby has this projector and an HD DVD player? I switched between 720p and 108oi and I perfered the 1080i setting. I'm just curious what everyone else has their's set up.
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Mike - the choice of what to feed the 8700+ varies on the type of source you're giving it and how it processes different signals.
If you're talking about a satellite or cable box, it's usually at good bet to feed the projector 1080i and then let the BenQ scale it down to 720p.
If you're sending it an image from an HD-DVD player like the A1, XA1, A2 or the majority of Blu-ray players, it's best to send it 1080i.
If you're sending it an image from a "good" upconverting DVD player or an XA2 or the Samsung BDP1200, then 720p is the best choice.
To understand why these are the best choices, you need to understand how all the items above scale images.
The 8700+ can take a 720p source and display it a 1:1 pixel mapping. It displays 1080i by first down converting the image to 540p and then scales it back up to 720p. So, there is a loss of resolution and it can introduce other negative impacts like moire in the image with fine details.
The majority of HD-DVD and Blu-ray players do the exact same thing with the 1080i to 720p conversion process. The exception to this are the source devices that can scale directly from a 1080i or 1080p source. The only devices that I'm aware of right now that do this are the Reon enabled players that have recently started coming out (like the XA2 and BDP1200). The Reon can take 1080i and scale to 1080p and then go directly down to 720p.
I recently had an XA2 hooked up to the 8700 and it looked MUCH better than any other 1080i source I've had hooked up to it.
So the short answer to your question... it depends how well your source device can go from the original signal to 720p. If the original signal is greater than 720p, it all depends on if the source device scales better than the projector. For the majority of sources, they do not scale 720p+ resolutions very well, so the projector will do a better job.
If you're talking about a satellite or cable box, it's usually at good bet to feed the projector 1080i and then let the BenQ scale it down to 720p.
If you're sending it an image from an HD-DVD player like the A1, XA1, A2 or the majority of Blu-ray players, it's best to send it 1080i.
If you're sending it an image from a "good" upconverting DVD player or an XA2 or the Samsung BDP1200, then 720p is the best choice.
To understand why these are the best choices, you need to understand how all the items above scale images.
The 8700+ can take a 720p source and display it a 1:1 pixel mapping. It displays 1080i by first down converting the image to 540p and then scales it back up to 720p. So, there is a loss of resolution and it can introduce other negative impacts like moire in the image with fine details.
The majority of HD-DVD and Blu-ray players do the exact same thing with the 1080i to 720p conversion process. The exception to this are the source devices that can scale directly from a 1080i or 1080p source. The only devices that I'm aware of right now that do this are the Reon enabled players that have recently started coming out (like the XA2 and BDP1200). The Reon can take 1080i and scale to 1080p and then go directly down to 720p.
I recently had an XA2 hooked up to the 8700 and it looked MUCH better than any other 1080i source I've had hooked up to it.
So the short answer to your question... it depends how well your source device can go from the original signal to 720p. If the original signal is greater than 720p, it all depends on if the source device scales better than the projector. For the majority of sources, they do not scale 720p+ resolutions very well, so the projector will do a better job.
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The Benq take's the 1080i signal and downconverts it to 540P and then upconverts it up to 720p to display the image? why? Why can't the projecter just take the 1080i signal and downconvert to 720p?
Set it to 1080i for hd material, and 720p for upconverted DVD. The Benq scaler design is something like four years old now. Scalers have improved dramatically during that time, but it was fairly sophisticated when it originally shipped in the non-plus models. At that time, it was common to deinterlace 1080i material by throwing away every other line.
Set it to 1080i for hd material, and 720p for upconverted DVD. The Benq scaler design is something like four years old now. Scalers have improved dramatically during that time, but it was fairly sophisticated when it originally shipped in the non-plus models. At that time, it was common to deinterlace 1080i material by throwing away every other line.
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Unfortunately, very few built in scalers had the processing horsepower to deinterlace 1080i to 1080p before scaling back to 720p. That's one of the advantages of the Silicon Opitix solutions. They have tremendous processing power for the price.
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Toshiba has three models priced at $799, $499, and $399, The top two outputs a 1080p signal and the bottom model( Which I own ) only outputs 1080i. My question is does the middle player take the 1080p signal and downconverts it to 720p or does process the signal like the lower end model?
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Mike - Assuming you're referring to the A1 or the A2 model, my guess is that 1080i would be the best setting for HD-DVD. With regular DVDs, 720p would be an easy scale up from 480i for it to do since it just has to deinterlace to 480p before going to 720p. You didn't mention if you are using HDMI>DVI or component; but, that makes a difference too. With my 8700+, DVI is light years better than the analog input.
The bottom line is that you'll probably want to try both with your equipment and pick what's best in your eyes. I could tell you things to watch for at each setting; but, these are always the little things that will annoy you once you have them pointed out. Ignorance is bliss in this case.
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The bottom line is that you'll probably want to try both with your equipment and pick what's best in your eyes. I could tell you things to watch for at each setting; but, these are always the little things that will annoy you once you have them pointed out. Ignorance is bliss in this case.
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I'm using the DVI input on the projector and I'm refering to Toshiba's 2nd generation players. Is their any difference in scaling between the middle and bottom players? 1 hundred dollars seperate the two players and 1080p output on the middle player is the only difference that I can see.
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