[jliem]

I have a Hitachi 42EDT41 EDTV plasma, and a Toshiba 3960 DVD player connected to the plasma via component. I had been feeding the plasma a 480p signal from the DVD player and the image looks extremely good. However, today I accidentally toggled to 480i (there's a progressive/interlaced toggle button on the remote) and much to my surprise, the image seemed noticeably better. Colours just seemed more vivid and the image a little sharper. I played around with a few DVD's (Star Wars, Finding Nemo, Fifth Element) and the results were the same. Without telling my wife which one I thought was better, I toggled between the two and she also confirmed that the 480i feed looked noticeably better.


Is this surprising, or is it expected?


My plasma features something Hitachi has dubbed "VirtualHD 1080p Digital Signal Processing", which is explained as converting all non-480p signals to 1080p before then converting to the set's native 480p. Is this why the 480i feed from the DVD player looks so good? Considering that my DVD player only cost $60, I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised to see the plasma's scalar noticeably outperform the DVD's. So if this is indeed the case, would it then be true to say in general that unless you have some high-end DVD player with a Faroudja scalar or some such, you should just feed 480i from your DVD player to your plasma and let the plasma's scalar take care of the conversion to your set's native resolution?

 

[JuiceRocket]

As you mentioned in your last paragraph, I would just let the plasma take care of it. Sounds like your plasma is doing a better job that the DVD player.


On another note however, you're probably not getting the best image your PDP can produce. It might be worth your while to look into purchasing a higher end DVD player. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to spend a fortune, if you look in the DVD Forum section, you'll find plenty of excellent performers for under $300.


-JR

 

[Joxer]

Many progressive DVD Players like Toshbas and Sonys have poor de-interlacers, so your display most likely has a better de-interlacer and scaler than the DVD player. Now if you had a progressive model with a good de-interlacer like Faroudja or Silicon Image chipset it might be a different story!