The New Plasma Displays
Dear Gary: I have been reading that one would need a progressive-scan DVD player, or an outboard line doubler to eliminate line wiggles and minor artifacts when viewing DVDs on the new flat panel monitors, such as, for example, the Sony PFM-42B1U. I am wanting to buy the best I can in this type and not wait for the new Loewe 38-inch. The DVD artifacts, after spending say $6,000, would drive me nuts. Do I need to upgrade my Sony DVP-S7700 to the new DVP-S9000ES? You’re the best magazine for this type of interest. I even clip out your DVD reviews and paste them inside the DVD cases for future reference!
Video Technical Editor Greg Rogers Comments:
I haven’t tested the Sony panel you mention, so I’ll give you a general answer to guide you in selecting a DVD player or video processor for use with a plasma (or other fixed-pixel) display. I have tested several plasma display panels that have not had inverse-telecine processing to deinterlace video transferred from film. In that case, you will eliminate some line twitter and improve movie picture quality by using a progressive-scan DVD player, or a line doubler, with inverse-telecine deinterlacing to produce 480p progressive video. But before making that choice, you should consider the items below to determine if you really need a video scaler instead. 1) A 16:9 (1.78:1) display panel must provide scaling to convert 4:3 (1.33:1) and 4:3 letterbox video formats to fit correctly on the 16:9 display. A high quality video scaler with aspect ratio control (see the Runco VHD-4404 Ultra review in Issue 52, September 2001) is likely to do a better job than a scaler built into a panel. 2) If a panel has more than 480 rows of pixels, as HD-capable displays normally do, the panel will have a built-in scaler to upconvert incoming 480p (or 480i) video to match its native resolution. You are likely to get a better picture by using a higher quality, external video scaler that can also match the panel’s native resolution. 3) It is also necessary to deinterlace and scale video that was not transferred from film. Most of the time this will probably be from broadcast sources, rather than DVD. Since this is much more difficult than deinterlacing and scaling film-source video, budget video scalers may not do nearly as good a job as a high-end scaler. But I have also seen some Plasma Display Panels that do a surprisingly good job with broadcast sports using a built-in scaler. The only way to determine if you need a scaler, rather than a line doubler or progressive-scan DVD player, is to directly compare the performance of an external scaler to the display’s built-in scaler. If you decide on a scaler, be aware that most will not accept the 480p output of a progressive-scan DVD player.
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