[dr.apocalypse]

Do you need your DVD to have progressive scan for the F38310-- someone told me that it's not necessary to send a progressive feed to the tv because it will double to lines on its own-- or something to that extent-- what's a good DVD to buy for the F38310?

 

[Budget_HT]

Read this thread for some background on this subject ...
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=192354

 

[hob]

dr. whether I have 3 of my progressive scan playes on or my il player on I get a great view from the internal line doubling



Lets go back a few years Yves Farouja, made a line doubler the cost was $10,000, then he made a line quadruplar that once cost $20,000.




We now in our F-38310 line doublers if after reading the truth about Mr. Farouja,

have the benefit of having tat type of techology in much less money. Believe me if you ever came to my apartment, I would drop your jaws to ever loving floor! In doing my calbirations and tweaking out the system, I have it ready to play with any disc from any region on this earth!




Oh BTW I have owned this set since

June 2, 2001 it now has close to 14,000 hours on the internal odometer. If you buy the set I will tell you how to enter the testing part of the Service Menu. I also know how to get the odometers of each of players to give me the laser hours and the CD/VCD hours on each player, do have a nice evening.

 

[DrJoe]

The F38310 will sort of upconvert 480i over the component input -- it upconverts it to 540p. The problem is that the video zoom modes in the set (the "full" and "fill" modes) aren't as good as the zoom modes of many progressive DVD players.


Basically, DVD video is inherently 4:3, and is 480i (interlaced). The deinterlacer on the set is not as good as many mid-high end DVD players.


Some movies are "letterboxed" or "matted" -- they are saved in the orignial aspect ratio to fit in the 4:3 window on the screen. If you view these in interlaced mode, the video will appear in the center of the screen, with black bars at the left and right sides, and at the top and bottom of screen. Zooming the video in "full" mode fills the screen, but the video is over stretched (you lose a bit at the edges) and the aspect ratio generally isn't quite right (on my set, the scren appear to be too stretched vertically).


Other DVD's are "anamorphic" or "enhanced for 16:9 screens". These are fitted vertically to fill the 4:3 screen (with the video stretching past the sides of the 4:3 window) and then the video is compressed horizontally to fit in the 4:3 frame. Stretching the video in "fill" mode fills the screen and the picture looks pretty good.


When you purchase a DVD player, you want to get a good progressive scan player, which handles deinterlacing well, and which allows you to zoom letterboxed DVD's in progressive format. You see, the F38310 assumes that all progressive video is 16:9. So if you use a player like the Panasonic RP56, which doesn't scale letterboxed progressive video, you will be stuck watching it in progressive scan mode with black bars on all sides -- or turning progressive mode off and using the "full" video mode on the F38310, which as I said is not acceptible. A player like the Panasonic RP91, however, will perform "zoom" functions on progressive video for you. There are models by several manufactures which do a good job on the F38310. Go over to the DVD hardware forum and search/ask for proressive DVD players which scale letterboxed video for other recommendations.


Joe

 

[hob]

What Joe has said is correct I use Toshiba SD-4800 to zoom pic up to anamorphinc,

then make the zoom icon disapeer. It's progressive scan and it handles DVD-A (Audio). I have a second progressive set that's mod for regions 1-6 the JVC zoom icon will 'not' disapeer, but with x, y, scaling on PAL discs, you can make a letter box into a anamorphic as it has the mediamatic chipset.

 

[Budget_HT]

Hob:


I have a different understanding of the term anamorphic.


I thought it described a process to use all (or most) of the 480i scan lines to store or transmit an image that started as widescreen (2.35:1 or 1.78:1 or 16:9 or whatever) and is ultimately displayed as widescreen. During storage or transmission, if the "raw" signal was viewed on a standard 4:3 monitor, the image would appear vertically stretched. The DVD player or video monitor modifies the anamorphic signal to recreate the original aspect ratio and correct geometry for the viewer.


The whole idea is to take advantage of bandwidth that was otherwise wasted on a non-anamorphic letterbox program, which stores/transmits the horizontal black bars as if they had useful video content.


The end result of "anamorphic," a.k.a., "enhanced for widescreen," is more scan lines used for real picture information, thus improving vertical resolution when compared to non-anamorphic letterbox.


For viewing on either a 4:3 monitor with vertical compression ("squeeze") or a 16:9 monitor, all of the scan lines provided are used in the display. The DVD player should have the aspect ratio set for 16:9.


Side Note: There are some analog 4:3 TVs today that provide vertical compression to take advantage of anamorphic program material (Sony and JVC have models that I have seen).


For viewing on a 4:3 TV or monitor that does NOT provide vertical compression, the DVD player aspect ratio should be set to 4:3. For an anamorphic DVD, the DVD player creates a non-anamorphic letterbox output to display the correct aspect ratio on the 4:3 TV. In the process, the DVD player actually reduces the vertical resolution of the picture area and provides the horizontal black bars as part of the video output, just as if the source material was created and transmitted without the benefit of anamorphic processing.


So, a non-anamorphic DVD that has a letterboxed widescreen movie looks like 4:3 content to the DVD player and the TV. This would result in a widescreen picture surrounded by both vertical and horizontal black bars if viewed on a 16:9 monitor. If either the DVD player or the monitor has the capability of zooming the picture (stretching equally in the vertical and horizontal directions) then a viewer can fill (or nearly fill) the screen while preserving the original aspect ratio of the movie, recognizing that zooming a letterbox picture provides less vertical detail than the anamorphic alternative.


In short, anamorphic describes the process of using all scan lines to transmit or store 16:9 content with the expectation that the viewing equipment (DVD player or TV/monitor) will recreate the original 16:9 aspect ratio. On a 16:9 monitor this is accomplished by horizontal stretch. On a 4:3 monitor this is accomplished by vertical compression.


So, AFAIK, everything anamorphic is widescreen. But not all widescreen is anamorphic.

 

[UncD2000]

Dr. Joe has interchanged the terms "Full" and "Fill". The Full Mode on the F38310 correctly stretches the image horizontally by 1/3. It is used with anamorphic DVDs, and also (if desired) to stretch a 4:3 image horizontally to fill the screen. The Fill (zoom) Mode is intended to stretch both vertically and horizontally by 1/3, and it does this pretty well with the DirecTV tuner.

The problem is that with the NTSC tuner and the analog inputs, Fill Mode stretches vertically by nearly 50% instead of 1/3. This is the only real defect in the F38310.

 

[Ratman]

Quote:

Originally posted by UncD2000 The problem is that with the NTSC tuner and the analog inputs, Fill Mode stretches vertically by nearly 50% instead of 1/3. This is the only real defect in the F38310.

Why is that a 'defect'? Can't you correct this via the service menu?

 

[UncD2000]

I don't believe there is anything in the service menu that affects the function of the Fill (zoom) mode. RCA has certainly been aware of this problem for a long time, but I have checked twice with a local RCA servicecenter and been told there were no service bulletins on it (and no known remedy). If anyone has had any luck fixing this, please let us know. My personal solution has been to play non-anamorphic DVDs and letterboxed videotapes on a different TV that has the ability to zoom them properly.