Set my HD200 to output in 1080p or 1080i

[joe123]

All this stuff with HD gives me a headache

I have a 240GHz LCD TV which can display 1080i as well as 1080p (and 740p/480i/p).

My TimeWarner Box can only output 1080i and the HD-PVR can only record up to 1080i from what I read.

Since the SageTV HD200 can display up to 1080p, is it not best to setup the HD200 to NOT output in 1080i so that 1080i recordings will be shown as 1080p on the TV?

My limited understanding is that 1080p is better than 1080i and if you have a box (the HD200) which can take a 1080i recording and display at 1080p, that this is the better choice for picture quality.

Do I have this correct or am I missing something?

[reggie14]

I prefer to use my TV's upscaler for everything. I've set my HD200 to always output at the video file's native resolution (i.e., the HD200 outputs 480i when playing back a 480i recording). It seems like my Samsung LN46A630 does a slightly better job at upscaling standard definition video files. I don't notice much of a difference for HD video though.

The downside to using a TV's upscaler and the HD200 in native resolution mode is that whenever you switch between a recording and the Sage menus the TV screen will flash to black for a brief second while it adjusts to the new resolution. As long as you're not simultaneously playing back a file, the Sage menus will come up using whatever resolution you've selected. So, if you've set up the HD200 to usually display 1080i, and you play back a 1080i recording, then the screen won't flash to black. But, if you go from 1080i menus to a 720p recording (or vice versa) then the screen will flash.

Anyways, even if you don't go all the way to outputting native resolution, if your recordings are pretty much all 1080i, then I'd say set your HD200 to output at 1080i.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Anyways, even if you don't go all the way to outputting native resolution, if your recordings are pretty much all 1080i, then I'd say set your HD200 to output at 1080i.

Aside from the temporary flash it needs to switch resolutions, I thought that 1080p is Superior to 1080i so one would want to if possible, to always display in 1080p?

I been reading a lot of HD articles, so I may be confused here, but from what I read, if you can take a 1080i recording and display it as 1080p, that this was Superior and hence gave the best picture quality.

Since the SageTV HD200 can do this, does it not make sense to leave out all if the (i)'s out of the HD200 output resolution? That is take out 480i, 1080i from HD200 output display resolution menu.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by joe123

[COLOR="Blue"]Aside from the temporary flash it needs to switch resolutions, I thought that 1080p is Superior to 1080i so one would want to if possible, to always display in 1080p?

In the end, no matter what you do in the middle, your starting with a source that's 1080i (or 480i, for example, if you were doing SD TV), but displaying something at 1080p. Your LCD TV can't display interlaced (or non-native resolution) video directly. If your HD200 doesn't upscale or deinterlace a video, your TV is going to do it.

What it comes down to is what is better at upscaling: your $2000 TV or your $200 HD200? There might be some instances where the HD200 is better at it than the TV it's hooked up to, but I would sort of expect most high-quality TVs to do a better job (again, at the cost of having those resynchronization flashes). In many (perhaps most) cases, you probably wouldn't see a big difference between the upscaled output. People should feel free to disagree with me. That's mostly a guess based on my experiences. But as I said, SD video does look better if I let my TV do the upscaling instead of my HD200. The HD200 doesn't seem to deinterlace it quite as well.

In other words, upscaling DVD players aren't nearly as wonderful as their manufacturers claim them to be. The (theoretical) argument in favor of upscaling DVD players and STBs is that its better to upscale "closer" to the original source. However, the quality loss over HDMI or component is probably so minimal that the quality of the upscaler plays a bigger role in determining video quality.

[CollinR]

Resizing up a video never helps it, as was mentioned your TV can only display progressive frames at it's native resolution. However much detail was in the original capture cannot be improved by simply resizing the image. 1080p is superior to 1080i but only when the source is 1080p.

That said I have the HD200 do scaling rather then the displays since it was just easier for me.


Do you know the native resolution of your display? Not all 1080 "TV"s have 1920x1080 native resolutions. Sometimes it's a jacked up resolution thats not really standard. For instance my Dell plasma supports 1080i however its native resolution is 1366x768. With a PC it's no big deal to output 1366x768 but with video formats none of them match exactly so you can't actually wind up with both of them scaling the image. The opposite is true the Hanns-G 28" "Monitor" is actually 1200p hence everything gets scaled down.

[paulbeers]

I agree with Reggie here. Whether to have the HD200 or your tv do the upscaling really has more to do with which scales better. Case in points:

1. My Toshiba 30" Tube 1080i from 2003 is better to have the HD100 do the upscaling and just output 1080i as the internal scaler isn't as good as the HD100.

2. My Toshiba 51" Rear Projection Screen from 2004 is better to have the HD200 do the upscaling as I can't seem to see a difference between the tv's scaler and the HD200's and therefore I would rather just set it to one resolution and forget it.

3. My Samsung 32" 720P LCD from 2007 and my Panasonic 42" 1080P from 2009 (thanks BF) both have better internal scalers than the HD100/HD200's hooked to them and therefore I would rather output the native resolution (480i, 720P, 1080i, etc.) and let the tv scale it to fit its image.

Not sure if this helps at all, but that's what I do anyway.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by CollinR

Do you know the native resolution of your display? Not all 1080 "TV"s have 1920x1080 native resolutions.

Not sure if it's hacked up? I have a Vizio SV471XVT 47 inch HD LCD TV (240Hz refresh rate).

The specs says "1920x1080 Native Resolution". Display capability: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p. I have my SageTV HD200 connected via HDMI and the HD200 menu output in 1080p. The image on this TV is amazing.

[Taddeusz]

As far as the HD200 goes, one thing I've noticed about native output is that if you have your aspect ratio set to 16:9 and are outputting 480i/p it will resize the video as if it were being displayed wide. So for a 4:3 480p the video received by the TV will actually be 16:9 video with black bars on the sides. But the resolution will still be 480p so that you'll actually lose some horizontal detail.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by joe123

Not sure if it's hacked up? I have a Vizio SV471XVT 47 inch HD LCD TV (240Hz refresh rate).

The specs says "1920x1080 Native Resolution". Display capability: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p. I have my SageTV HD200 connected via HDMI and the HD200 menu output in 1080p. The image on this TV is amazing.

Then just leave it and be happy (serously, we all to often find more problems when we go looking to "fix" or "improve" things).

But to answer your above questions. Yes all else equal, "p" is better than "i". If the overall refresh rate is the same (eg 60i vs 60p), with 60i you're getting roughly half the information.

Where it gets complicated is in mixed systems, like you have. You have 1080i content and a 1080p display. Whenever the input doesn't match the display, something has to give. In this case the video has to be processed "up" to 1080p, ie deinterlaced.

I've found the HD200 to have perfectly mediocre deinterlacing. Given that I have displays that have much better deinterlacing and scaling capabilities than my HD200s, I have enabled native output switching and all the resolutions (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i). This lets the HD200 just pass through the video without deinterlacing or scaling it and letting my superior displays handle it.

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

As far as the HD200 goes, one thing I've noticed about native output is that if you have your aspect ratio set to 16:9 and are outputting 480i/p it will resize the video as if it were being displayed wide. So for a 4:3 480p the video received by the TV will actually be 16:9 video with black bars on the sides. But the resolution will still be 480p so that you'll actually lose some horizontal detail.

You can change the default AR mode to Fill and that fixes that. Though then you have to manually fix the AR on the TV for 480i content.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You can change the default AR mode to Fill and that fixes that. Though then you have to manually fix the AR on the TV for 480i content.

Yea, I think that was the point I was trying to make. If you have both 16:9 and 4:3 content then you have to manually switch between the two AR modes in order to get the full resolution out of both.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

As far as the HD200 goes, one thing I've noticed about native output is that if you have your aspect ratio set to 16:9 and are outputting 480i/p it will resize the video as if it were being displayed wide. So for a 4:3 480p the video received by the TV will actually be 16:9 video with black bars on the sides. But the resolution will still be 480p so that you'll actually lose some horizontal detail.

I'm not really sure what you mean here. I have my HD200 set up with native resolution switching, 'source' for aspect ratio mode, and a display aspect ratio of 16:9, and . I noticed a weird issue when I was setting up my HD-PVR. If I set up my STB to output 480i for SD material, then my TV correctly displays the SD material without stretching it. I don't know how to tell if the TV is doing the letterboxing or the HD200.

However, if I set my STB to output 480p for SD video, then SD videos get stretched out to fill the screen.

Is that the same (or a related) problem to what you're describing?

[stanger89]

Not in Sage though, setting it to fill leaves the video "untouched" and full resolution coming out of Sage.

Only tricky bit is 4:3 content you need to switch to 4:3 mode on your display instead of it automatically happening.