Saturday, January 20, 2007
HDTV yay!
I've just been sitting back and admiring my KDL-40W2000, now that I can finally enjoy one without seeing misty patches all over the screen. It really is astonishingly good once it's set up properly, and this is just watching standard def DVD on my cheap-ish Panasonic DVD-S97.
But my crazy money throwing around plans aren't done yet. Although it'll be a long time before I get to throw around any more money, because the next thing is going to be more costly than the TV itself. Yup, a video processor. But why would I want one of those? Well, on my current setup I can choose between three sets of artefacts when I watch standard definition DVDs:
1. Using the Panasonic S97 with upscaling turned on: Gain the bonus of the Faroudja chipset's jaggy-smoothing technology for nice silky pictures. In the process, introduce the Faroudja chipset's macro-blocking enhancement error and very minor ringing which is part-and-parcel with the scaling process (especially scaling done at affordable prices).
If you're wondering why I'm up-scaling DVDs to 720p when my TV is 1080p (meaning the picture gets scaled twice - dangerous in terms of quality), it's because the 1080-line mode on the Panasonic S97 looks like pixellated crap.
2. Use the Panasonic S97 to output DVDs in standard-def (not upscaled) but still have it do the Deinterlacing. Which means giving up the jaggy-smoothing features of the Faroudja chipset and also get rid of the macro-block enhance problem - but say hello to my TV's slight colour shift error instead.
3. Use the Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player to do the upscaling. That will only work if the DVD is NTSC since it's an American player. The HD-A1 is a top-notch upscaling player apart from this lack of European friendliness - but, it has the Chroma Upsampling Error. So the edges of colours look a little jaggy.
All three of these methods give excellent quality with the right disc, but as you can see they each have their own annoyances. Yes, the quality is excellent, but the fact is that it could be more excellent. I can't wait to get a video processor so I can (hopefully?) give all of these issues the boot. Damn me and my chasing after perfection.
Posted at 1:33 AM
