Has Joe Kane Lost His Marbles?
Dear Gary: I just got the new Issue 33, and couldn’t help myself on commenting on Joe Kane’s 720p article. First, I have to say I respect Joe Kane’s opinion, and feel he has helped manufacturers really push the technological envelope, as well as help consumers to realize they can view video/NTSC/and all other video sources the way they should have looked to begin with. However, this latest article has got me wondering if Joe Kane maybe has, well, I don’t know how to put this, lost his marbles? The 720p article, while intriguing, I think was way off base, and in some ways, contradictory to previous Joe Kane articles on the subject of HD. First, I want to comment on the Princeton Graphic monitor. It looks nice, real nice. But I was wondering if Joe’s article wasn’t nothing more than a sales pitch for the Princeton monitor. There are plenty of other HDTV display devices (the Sony KW-34HD1 for openers) that will display HDTV. Plenty of front, rear, and now coming to market, CRTs that do a fine job.But what got me was how Joe went on about the resolution, how it could help 720p DVD, and all his previous articles on the subject of HD. I recall (I’m not going to go and look them all up [in back issues]) Joe stated that display manufacturers should pick one native display format and stick with it. Running multiple display resolutions isn’t good for the CRT (or whatever you own), as you don’t get the most optimum picture available. I recall the goal Joe had was that every display device available would be run at its optimal scan rate, and convert all incoming signals to this rate. But in this article, Joe is going on about how he’s running 768p on this monitor that doesn’t even truly display 720p natively, nor even 1080i let alone this 768p! What I really don’t understand, is how you can "watch" 720p on a display that can only do a maximum resolution of 800x600 (it’s right on Princeton’s Web site), and has a maximum display of 550 lines of TV resolution. Sure, it has the display range to support 720p, but doesn’t have the pixel count to come close to 720p. And with Joe mentioning 768p, I don’t see how the numbers jive. The display (Princeton, again, refer to site) can scale the image up to 1024x768, but that’s not the displays actual resolution. Additionally, I thought it was kind of ingrained in our heads that 720p is 1280x720, not 1024x 768. That’s like me saying my Sony D50Q projector is 1080i. Sure, it’ll display 1080i, but not the actual pixel count specified. I just kind of feel this 720p/768p talk is misleading. But to continue on, Joe is talking about 720p DVD players, and what seems to be his hope that 720p DVDs and players will actually happen. As much as I’d like it to, let’s be realistic here, Joe included. Look how long it took the studios (all the majors) to support DVD. Then break that down to how many have actually supported the anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1 format. I mean, we can’t even get a somewhat decent selection of DTS DVDs, let alone even come remotely close to buying a consumer, off the shelf DVD 480p player! Sure, you can use a DVD-ROM unit and the 3DFusion (or other card, pick your poison) but who wants to wait for Win98 to boot up so you can watch a movie in 18-bit color (3DFusion still didn’t support 24-bit color as I write this), while waiting for good ole’ Win98 to bite the dust, requiring a reboot? The studios all balked at Toshiba with a 480p production player, and suddenly they’re going to roll over and support a 720p format, with movies at that? Joe, buddy, let’s be super-realistic. I can’t even get a production HDTV set (not front projectors) that support 720p natively except a Panasonic set. I see that Joe really wants 720p to take off, but I don’t see it. Only Panasonic makes a RPTV [rear projection TV] that supports 720p natively, as well as a set-top box (DS-TU50) that will output a 720p signal natively. Every other STB manufacturer or television manufacturer seems to go the 480p/1080i road. It just seems Joe is fighting a losing battle. Besides, how many of us, many who made the jump from LaserDisc to DVD want to go the 720p DVD route (should it truly occur w/720p encoded discs), with the thoughts of blue laser HD-DVD around the corner. There’s only so many times I’ll keep buying hardware. I think that a 720p DVD format is going to run into the same problems DVD-Audio/ SACD will have. Sure, they look and sound a lot better. But most consumers are happy with CDs. No one I’ve talked to is even remotely close to being excited about the new audio formats, regardless of technological features. Same goes for DVD, most are happy with the format, and really would rather have a recordable feature than a 720p feature (I’m not in that camp). I’d really like Joe to address these items he’s mentioning in his review. Thanks, and keep up the great work.
Brian Wiklem
Video Technical Director Joe Kane Comments:
Someday I’m going to build my dream research/demonstration facility so that at least the press and manufacturers can come in and see all of the issues involved in your comments. It takes so much longer in words to cover these important points. Brian, somehow I’d like to be able to take you and everyone else on the ride through display technology that I’m seeing. You’re right in that I might be creating some confusion because I missed presenting you with an episode of this journey. That’s part of why Gary is now interviewing me much more often. Together we hope that fewer important points will be missed along the road. As it is, answering the majority of your points is probably more than an article in itself. Let’s see what we can do. The episode I suspect is missing is the one about the transition period between our old analog system and the future of DTV, what ever that holds for us. (That’s another topic in itself and the reason I’m pushing for 720p on DVD as soon as probable.) At the moment I see the transition path others are taking as being way too slow. At the rate they’re going, we should see a true mainstream DTV system sometime after 2010, if ever. You may have seen reports that the high-definition portion of DTV could be still born. I often feel the entire industry’s approach to the transition is more like what can we do to say we’re moving forward, being digital-ready, while adding as little as possible to what we are currently doing. TV stations should have all moved to digital component production in the early ’90s as an example. They had known that digital component was the way of the future since the late 1980s. As of November 1998, the official opening month of DTV transmission, most networks were still demanding that shows be delivered in the composite format. This is not a good start on the transition. Yet the broadcasters are way ahead of the consumer world. The source is coming first, maybe far enough ahead of the demand to stop the supply of real DTV-ready sets. I don’t want that to happen. I see similar delays in the consumer world. That’s certainly my take on any TV set that only does 480p or maybe includes 1080i and calls itself DTV-ready. In discussions with enlightened TV set designers, such as those at Princeton, some other companies are somehow not aware that if they were to start from scratch on set design, instead of modifying existing designs, they would bring us much closer to DTV much faster at a similar cost. Now the question is how to get manufacturers to understand that. How about forcing them to address 720p. I started that discussion in a Widescreen Review article in Issue 32 on certification for DTV display devices. You can get the updated version on Widescreen Review’s Web site. For the record I’d like to once again make it clear that Princeton Graphics is one of my good clients. I helped specify the model P32169 set being discussed, spent much time during its development making sure the manufacturer was on track with what I had suggested, and have spent some time personally promoting the product once it became a reality. From that point of view I’m seriously biased in Princeton’s favor, but not so much so that I won’t lead you to believe that it’s perfect. It’s not. As Princeton well knows, I want it to be even better than it is. As for its current competition, in the department of picture quality, how many of the other sets have the correct color of red, green and blue? They might all score well in one of the three colors, that being blue. Then comes resolution and scan rate capability. The real resolution capability is 800x720. If Princeton’s Web site says anything else I’ll see to it that it is corrected. The scan rate capability is from 480p to 768p, including 1080i, which is just slightly above 480p. It currently has a medium quality 480i to 480p converter so that it will display standard NTSC signals. We could go on about white field uniformity, gray scale calibration, geometry, convergence, multiple aspect ratio, automatic detection of scan rates for matrix decoding, and light output capability, but we’ll save that for the reviewers. What I’ve learned from my experience with Princeton is that the 27-inch wide tube they’ve chosen is capable of showing a vertical resolution of 720p. I’ve also known and confirmed in this experience that in this size it’s not important that it be capable of the 1280 lines of horizontal resolution. The set would be almost totally useless if it could reproduce the 1280 part of the 1280x720 specification. Two important considerations came to light when comparing it to a $30,000 broadcast grade high-resolution HD monitor of the same picture size. First, if you are more than 2 picture heights away from the set the difference in what you see in picture resolution is negligible. Second, as resolution capability goes up, light output goes down. Even if the high-resolution set can reproduce the resolution, the light output is so low that you can’t see it. Sure we compromised horizontal picture resolution, just so you could see the picture. On the other side of the horizontal resolution capability, the Princeton is good enough so that no one fails to see a marked improvement in picture quality when switching from the Snell & Wilcox Interpolator high quality upconversion of component DVD, the 768p that I was discussing, to a real 720p or even a 1080i broadcast. The advantage of true high-definition digital TV can justify the cost of the set even if its horizontal resolution is limited to 800 lines across the screen. When we used the Panasonic or other brands of DTV tuners to down convert 720p to 1080i the Snell & Wilcox Interpolated DVD picture at 768p could win out over the DTV signal. Way too much detail is lost in the conversion done in the set-top DTV boxes. Brian, that’s a case where the set-top box manufacturers aren’t yet doing a good enough job translating signals. If all of the source signals were in one of many progressive (p) formats high quality translation wouldn’t be a problem at the price points of their current product. That’s why the Panasonic set-top box is the only option for me. It’s the only one that will allow me to see the best consumer high-definition distribution format for all its capability, and I need that in combination with a set that will display 720p. That’s now, today. That’s the reality being discussed in the interview that I apparently didn’t make clear. Yes I eventually want to see all sets driven progressively. As much as I’ve indicated that it would be at a single rate for CRT displays, I’ve since learned that’s incorrect. (Yes, I’m still learning.) While the line count should remain fixed, the set is going to have to be flexible enough to accommodate several refresh rates. I’ve been watching DVD movies at 72Hz and find the lack of 2/3 jutter absolutely wonderful. Until all source material moves to progressive, obtaining high quality images at an affordable price is going to be difficult. Progressive is more efficient to encode, much less expensive to translate and produces a much better looking picture. You and everyone else I want to take along on my vision quest aren’t necessarily going to understand what I’m seeing until you’ve had a chance to live with it yourself. Even with the poor encoding ABC was presenting at the 1999 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, I was easily able to demonstrate the superior capability of 720p over 1080i. As a consumer high-definition distribution format 720p should be able to serve all but the most extravagant .01 percent of the home display requirements for the next 15 to 20 years. If we take 12 years getting to the beginning of that 15 years, there will be a lot of valuable pictures wasted. I know that by even openly discussing the 720p format on DVD I’m going to upset a lot of people, including those at the studios who just want to have a good Christmas selling season now that Divx is gone. I don’t know how to get around that problem. I also want them and my distributor to have a great Christmas season. The original DVD format was supposed to be 576p/24 for film material instead of 480p/24. We’ve all but missed that capability. (It is available in Europe but with limited titles.) I’m hoping that once the world knows that copy protection is truly the only stumbling block, we can get on with our future, 720p for at least the next 15 to 20 years. It should be good for the world, just as I did say 576p was good enough several years ago. (I was calling it the 625 line format at the time. We’ve now switched to a system that describes the number of active lines in the picture.) You asked about 480p players. If there is anything that comes close to a small step, that’s it. It’s a product for a time gone by, about a year or two ago, not today or tomorrow or anytime in the future. Anyone with a good progressive scan display device is going to want more than 480p. Anyone building a progressive scan display device wider than 25 inches needs to be operating higher than 480p. At the price I understand is being asked for these players, you can get a good DVD-ROM player that will do 600p/72Hz or 768p/60Hz. As for the color depth, I hope by the time you read this, 24-bit color processing will be available at a price lower than the stand alone 480p players. As for purchasing many generations of DVD players and or program material, two things should be considered. In the digital era, nothing about equipment remains the same for long. Quickly moving to 720p, which can be easily downconverted to existing formats, gets us a scan and resolution format that should be good enough for electronic cinema in the years to come, let alone home viewing. As for the blue laser DVD, that’s all part of upgrading digital-based hardware. I don’t believe we need wait for the blue lasers, nor should we wait that long for 720p. We might have to restart high-definition if we delay the introduction of software that long. While still on the subject of DVD hardware, I agree with you in not wanting to wait for Windows to boot every time I watch a DVD. I live with that problem. Okay, so Microsoft also knows of the problem and will get around to fixing it. Stand alone DVD players with this 720p capability won’t be far behind the DVD-ROM version if the software is available. As for the consumer saying what ever they have is good enough, that’s where conversion of a high rate progressive scan source comes in. It’s easy and inexpensive. Should we be considering 1080p instead of 720p? I think it will be 20 or more years before any more than .01 percent of the population can easily afford a display that does true 1920 x 1080. Therefore, it need not be a consideration for distribution. Should I be mastering in that format? Just as soon as I can at a reasonable cost over 720p. For the time being, I’m faced with a situation of wanting to help the industry realize that they have to move towards progressive scan before all of the other things I’ve long talked about will happen. Progressive scan will make them easily affordable across the board, at whatever level consumers wish to be involved. Sure I’ve changed my direction, realizing that I have to push progressive before I can get single-scan rate TV sets. Do I actually think that much of what I’m advocating is going to happen? The only answer I have for that is that the time table will be much longer if we don’t all try. Eventually the entire industry will recognize the value of progressive over interlaced. I just want it now!
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