Sir
A lot would have to do with what sort of display you would be watching it on; also, be aware that a costly playback device is not necessarily high-performance, or the most performance for the dollar spent:
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Dull normal TV broadcasts, as seen for many years, must adhere to a transmission standard established by the National Television Standards Committee, hence the use of the acronym "NTSC" to describe the signal which is 480i, or 480 tv lines, interlaced. The signal is sent 60 times a second; on the first pass lines 1,3,5,7 ...... are transmitted, then the scan retraces back to the top of the frame and lines 2, 4, 6, 8 ..... are sent. It takes two vertical sweeps, a pair every 30th of a second, to draw 480 visible lines at 30 frames per second. Due to the limits of human vision, this happens fast enough that it appears mostly as seamless motion. The NTSC system is also referred to as 525 lines, but only 480 lines have visible pixels; the rest are blanked, used for VITS or captioning, or are lost to retrace. 480i looks okay on a 25" tv from ten feet away, but when you magnify it on a quality projector one can clearly see gaps and jitter between the scan lines, the image is not continuous or filmlike. A doubler will sample the 480i signal, digitize it in memory briefly, then draw the image with all 480 lines every 60th of a second. Now we have 480 progressive, and scan lines become less intrusive, at least on a seven inch CRT. However, eight and nine inch CRTs have more potential resolution, and usually feature higher bandwidth and superior lenses. A good eight inch projector is capable enough to resolve gaps between scan lines at 480p; to eliminate these pesky gaps it requires drawing more scan lines per frame; 720p is usually sufficient, this is line-tripling. Triplers are more sophisticated, and good ones are usually $4000 and up. Just drawing more lines isn't enough, the accuracy of colors and fine details must be recreated digitally to avoid distracting artifacts. Some nine inch CRTs will still show gaps at 720p so a line quadrupler is often specified; it samples the same 480i at the input but outputs it in more lines per frame. This is harder to engineer than a tripler so a good quadrupler is usually costly, $5000 and up. The HTPC has generated much excitement by making scaling of DVD playback very affordable and with superb results; as input cards for PCs become improved it may be possible to do quality scaling entirely in the PC. Many of us are very excited about the proliferation of HDTV; High Definition Televsion inherently uses more lines per frame, with shorter raster heights that pack the scan lines close together; this requires the use of more bandwidth to transmit, the image quality is stunning. 1080i and 720p are currently the formats most widely used by HD broadcasters.
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I posted that earlier on the CRT Forum in response to someone who wanted to know the difference between scalers, line doublers, and quadruplers. My business here at E-Tech Phoenix is rebuilding Marquee projectors, also sold by others as the Madrigal MP series and the Vidikron Vision series. I like to think I know a few things about build quality, image quality, and value in terms of performance for the amount you might spend on a given product. Do I worry about offending those who offer high-priced products that lack performance? Don't bet on it. I have not seen or worked with a Proceed PMDT; if it is part of the Madrigal/Levinson family of products I expect it is very costly; that may not help in terms of getting you the performance you seek. Think about this: About nine months ago, a nice lady called me from Ayre Audio, asking would I be interested in selling their $6500 (+) DVD player. I asked her a few questions about the product, and politely declined the opportunity. Why? you ask? Anyone well-heeled enough to shell out $6500 for a DVD player probably has a nine-inch CRT projector to view it on, but it is a lousy combination. The Ayre unit only outputs 480p, as does the PMDT. So what? Well, any competant nine-inch CRT will be brutally revealing of scan lines at 480p; those projectors shine best at 720p to 1080p, depending on which guru you ask. The finest scaled image I have yet seen in action is an HTPC with a Radeon card, running 720p, and costing all of $2000 to assemble. Do not be seduced into believing that high cost is high performance, you could be very dissapointed at the results.
