All right. I went down to the not-so-lousy A/V shop here in town and got some more first-hand information. I decided that I truly love seeing NTSC on an HDTV monitor. I've hated scan lines ever since I got my first largish TV. I also determined that I absolutely love anamorphic DVDs. But I think I also got some misinformation from the salesman. He was obviously very much into pushing the Sony. He claimed that he was unaware of a TV besides the Sonys (Sonies?) that would support unsquishing anamorphic signals. (We were talking specifically about CRTs.) This is bound to be untrue and I was hoping to get someone here to refute his statement. (The fact that they also had a dedicated DVD player running signals to one of the only TVs in the store that he claimed would do the unsquishing running in non-anamorphic mode was unsettling. I changed it myself and it looked way better.)

Anyway, I kinda wanted to stay away from the Sonys because they're real expensive, their convergence was not very good compared to other sets, and I've had trouble with them before. As a side note, does anyone know if TV manufacturers are using old NTSC tubes in their new 4:3 HDTV sets? That would explain the better convergence and the higher cost on the 16:9 sets.

But I think I also got some misinformation from the salesman.

No!



The difference between a car salesman and a TV salesman is the car salesman knows when he's lying.

He claimed that he was unaware of a TV besides the Sonys (Sonies?) that would support unsquishing anamorphic signals.

I'm sure that most modern televisions will do this. If the television is 16:9, it will definitely do it. If the television supports a progressive-scan signal (480p), it will most likely do it. If the television supports HDTV, it will most likely do it. I can't imagine anyone building a TV with 480p/HD capability which doesn't support anamorphic DVDs. Check the manual of any TV in the showroom, it should be in the manual.

As a side note, does anyone know if TV manufacturers are using old NTSC tubes in their new 4:3 HDTV sets?

I don't think that's technically possible. In order to display 1080i, you need a tube capable of doing the job.

Now, I'm sure many manufacturers are using the same sorts of technologies and assembly lines to build 1080 tubes as they did to build 480 tubes. But I don't think they are exactly the same tubes.

Well, I was looking closely at the tubes, and the 4:3 HDTVs all seemed to use the style of tube that has the red, green, and blue phosphors lined up in columns of all one color, Trinitron-like. That would definitely support 1080 lines, but the dot-pitch (or aperture grill spacing, more likely) wouldn't support a large number of horizontal pixels. But, then, maybe HDTV has analog lines, like NTSC. Doubt it, though. Anyway, I didn't have a loup with me to examine closely, but the AG spacing seemed to be about the same as on the NTSC sets. It still looked nice, but, nonetheless, I worry that they've just put a new yoke on an old tube.

Good point about the manuals, too. Thought about it after I posted and tried to find some on the web. Couldn't find anyone's. Guess I'll be going back. Maybe this time I'll go to the upscale shop. I don't like them so much, though, because they've already decided what I'm going to buy, and as such, only have those few sets on display.

Sony is the only maker of standard ratio televisions that can *automatically* squish the signal. The other manufactures that have autodetect on 480p signals have 16:9 TVs. There are other makers that can support squished 16:9 ratios on a regular tube, but you have to physically adjust/set the option. some of them require a kludgie modification. But by far, the Sonys are ahead of the game there.

Calvin

Ah, there's the trick: "Automatically".

Even my HD set doesn't do automatic detection of the source material. I have a button on the remote that switches aspect ratios.

Yeah, that's probably what the salesperson meant: The automatic thing.

It's no big deal to press a button.

It's no big deal to press a button.

Unless you're my wife....

Seriously, though, now that I think about it, autodetecting that the valid NTSC that's squished is different from other valid NTSC is pretty amazing. I can deal with the button push. My wife can't figure out how to use the DVD player anyway.

One thing I forgot to mention is that when the Sony I looked at was showing the non-anamorphic widescreen picture, it looked like the line doubler was having a problem detecting the edge between the picture and blackness, leaving a weird artifact where there was the field of blackness, then a line of picture, then a line of less bright picture, then normal through the picture field, and then the inverse at the bottom. I guess there's some sort of interpolation going on. It went away, as I expected, when I switched the DVD player to anamorphic mode. But it still concerns me, because even anamorphic DVDs will have such an edge when showing something filmed in an aspect ratio greater than 16:9 (Ben Hur comes to mind again). Does anyone else see similar artifacts on their HDTV?

You might have simply been seeing the excessive sharpening applied to the original DVD image.

Many DVDs are produced with sharpening and edge enhancement filters applied to them. The idea is to make the DVD look sharp on a small-screen television.

Some DVDs are worse than others in this respect. A recent DVD where this is very noticeable is The Phantom Menace. There is a very visible line at the edge of the letterbox that's caused by oversharpening. This is in the DVD itself. You don't usually notice it until you blow up the image to big-screen size. At smaller sizes, it achieves the desired result and makes the image simply look sharper.

Also, some TVs or DVD players have sharpening filters built into the television, which can cause the same effect or exaggerate the effect if it's encoded into the DVD. Usually this is adjustable on the device in question. For instance, my TV has an easily-selectable "sharpness" setting which allows me to control it.

Backtracking a second....

I was surprised to discover that the new A Clockwork Orange collector's edition is not labelled as anamorphic (or any of its pseudonyms). Then I realized that it was presented at 1.66:1, which is narrower than 16:9(1.78:1). Is it common for films presented at less than 1.78:1 to be non-anamorphic? They could just as easily add black bars to the sides as to the top and bottom. I really don't want to support anyone half-assing a ``collector's edition''.

As a tangent, did you know that Kubrick was constantly going back and reediting and framing his films, even way after their release? I believe that A Clockwork Orange was theatrically presented at 1.66:1, but he often redid it when someone wanted to cut a film for TV. Weird perfectionist. According to Steve Martin, in 1979, Kubrick was talking to him about starring in what would eventually become Eyes Wide Shut and he was still screening prints of 2001, A Space Odyssey -- over ten years after its release.

Hi.

Actually, to automatically detect 16:9 anamorphic sources (on the displaying part, not on the DVD player), you should only need to check the voltage on one of the SCART pins. There is one pin (I don't remember which one though), that is set to 6V by the player (if it (and the DVD) follows the specs). For non-anamorphic and 4:3 sources, this is set to either 0V or 12V (I don't remember specifics about this either) . I could try and find out about this again though.
My (rather cheap, 4:3 and non-HDTV) Telefunken TV set is fully capable to automatically switch between 4:3/non-anamorphic 16:9 and anamorphic 16:9. I am not sure wether it differentiates between 4:3 and non-anamorphic 16:9 though, it wouldn't show them any different anyway.

cu,
sven

That would be nice, if the connection to the television included that pin. I don't know of any US televisions which do...

Hi Tony.

Check this page: http://shostatsky.narod.ru/permon/tv-vga/scardpin.html or http://kevlar.20m.com/scart.html

They seem to be quite good (even though the filename of the first one is misspelled).
They state that pin 8 is dedicated for this differentiation

0-2V: TV mode

5-8V: Video mode, wide screen

9.5V-12V: Video mode

There doesn't seem to be a true differentiation between 16:9 and 16:9 anamorphic though. To differentiate those, the TV set seems to actually look at the video signal.

My DVD player puts pin 8 to 12V(actually 11V) for 4:3 and 16:9 non-anamorphic videos and to 6V (actually 7V) for anamorphic 16:9, which works perfectly for my TV set. Other DVD players might set pin 8 to 6V for non-anamorphic wide screen sources as well though, there is certainly some gap in the definition of the interface.

cu,
sven

Yup, just as I thought. A European connection standard, not available over here.

Yup, just as I thought. A European connection standard, not available over here.

Yeah, SCART is European only. You can get a set in North American (imported), but then you also need all the compatible gear to go with it. We've got all sorts of goodies like this at work, but that's not the team I'm involved with, so I don't use them. I do have a voltage-switching PAL/NTSC UK Sony set that I play with though. Haven't tried the scart connector because I don't have any scart sources.

A large number of sets in Europe support an anamorphic mode (4:3 sets). This is not the case for North America.

However, if you've got a 4:3 set in NA, you *can* go into the service menu and then start playing with the screen yourself. Then you have to set your DVD player to 16:9 so it doesn't scale the image down vertically. I did it as a test on my 32" JVC D-Series, but it's obviously way too much of a pain the ass to do on a regular basis. Not to mention that if you forget exactly how your service menu was set up, there's no way to restore it. :)

Bruno

I heard S-video connectors had a pin Sonys can use to detect anamorphic. I have no idea what gets passed on a Component input though.

Calvin

As far as I know, neither an S-video connector nor a set of component connections has a pin that will allow you to detect whether the signal is anamorphic or not.

S-video connectors are simply chrominance and luminance separated into two pairs of pins (ground and signal for each).

Component is simply Luminance (Y) Chrominance Red (Pr) and Chrominance Blue (Pb), with Chrominance green derived as a subtraction operation from the Pr and Pb channels.

Supposedly, the new Panasonic HDTV monitors (36- & 32HX41) can also automatically go into anamorphic mode. I've seen one at the Circuit City, but, again, they're all idiots over there and the only video source they have for it is 1080i (which is also what they have going to the NTSC monitors, downconverted and squished) and they refuse to hook anything else up to it. Plus, it's all ``What's anamorphic?'' and ``Try channel 14''. I mean, I could understand that at the Best Buy, but all these guys do is sell televisions. And it's the X-mas season, for God's sake! Learn about your products! Okay. Enough rant. Anyway, I'm waiting for the guys at the reasonably upscale A/V place to get one out on the floor. I really want to stay off the Sonys. Plus, it's about $500 cheaper and I can fit the 36"-er in my space, which I can't do with the Sony. And I still didn't like that weird artifact on the Sonys. I'll have to wait to see if the Panasonic does any better....

You can also have seperate horizontal and vertical syncs along with RG and B (instead of SOG (sync on Green)). Some Sony RPTV have this on input #5 (such as one of their 53" 4:3 sets... But then not on their 57" widescreen...)

Bruno

Right, that's an RGBHV input, the same thing as the plug on a VGA monitor. My TV has both RGBHV and YPrPb inputs. I have plugged my PC into the television and ran it at 1920x1080. Kind of fun.

A braincell just sparked. 1080i? Is that 1080 lines vertical?

Glenn (I too am in the market for a tv with a high geek factor)

1080i is one of the modes for HDTV. It's 1080 interlaced lines at 60hz (30 frames per second).

The number of horizontal pizels in a 1080i image is 1920. Hence, 1920x1080.

When I speak of a "high geek factor" my real desire is for a flat panel device that will display 1920x1080 (1080i) I'm not looking for a huge screen.

So, are there any flat panel devices that run with a true resolution of 1920x1080? I don't think I've seen any lcd's tv's that display more than 480x640.

The only FP plasma device I've personally seen was the Philips
42" 16:9 FlatTV Plasma-Display EDTV Monitor - 42FD9932. Not a HDTV capable display. That kind of takes it out of play. It would be acceptable if I wasn't holding out for HD.

Glenn

Pioneer's plasma displays are HD. All signals are converted to 780p, according to their docs.

Yeh... I've seen those. But hasn't any company come up with a flat panel that does the 1080i hd signal. In any size display.

Pioneer's new Elite Plasma screen is about the best plasma screen you can get, but it still looks like SH*T compared to a high quality CRT or projector (as well as any quality LCD). For the money, I would never, ever, buy one of these things. All plasmas I've seen are saddled with colour fidelity that can't even resolve what's encoded in the DVD's MPEG2 stream. Too many artifacts make it look like it's being driven by a 16bit display device. Ugh. But again, the Pioneer is much better at this than any other display of its type. It actually does pretty solid blacks for instance.

Once you see it running an HDTV signal, you won't be very happy with watching a DVD on it. :)

Bruno

I got a new TV this weekend. I'm a sucker. Got the Panasonic 36HX41 36" HDTV monitor. The screen's nice (convergence is not too bad) and it supports automatically compressing anamorphic inputs. Not to mention that Sony's 36"-er wouldn't fit in my space. The wife's not too happy, but, then, she was starting to get fed up with the old 14" TV we were using as a temporary replacement anyway. I also got an extended warranty, so I expect to have 5 years of perfect service, followed by an immediate catastrophic failure. Wish me luck!

got a new TV this weekend.

Funny thing... so did I. Nothing exotic or large or fancy, though -- just a replacement for my old 19" Toshiba that was so worn out that if I tried to watch X-Files, most of the time all I could see would be random small blobs of white on a black background. Of course, the permanent cyan spot in the exact center of the screen was entertaining -- it seemed to be right on somebody's nose most of the time.

What I got was a garden-variety 27" Akai model CFT2790, less than $400. It has a completely flat screen, and the performance compared to what I was used to is simply amazing. I don't have any kind of cable hookup, just an outdoor antenna, and two of the six channels I can receive that used to be completely unwatchable are now just fine. The only way I can tell which channel the set is on is to hit the display button on the remote -- I can't tell by picture quality any more.

With inputs for S-video, two composite inputs, 75-OHM RF, and DVD, plus auxilliary inputs for camcorder, and both composite and monitor outputs, it's living in a whole new world compared to my old set which had a single RF input.

Anybody have any experience with the Akai CFT2790? I did extensive, highly scientific research before I bought it: I paced off the distance in my house from my viewing position to the set location, then went to the store and paced off the same distance and bought the size and model that looked best to me.

tanstaafl.

Well Apple just announced a 1920x1200 23" Cinema display.

Drool.

The news snippet I saw it in mentioned that it was US$1000 more than the 22" model, bit didn't mention the price of the 22"... I suppose it's a question of "If you have to ask..."

/Michael

$3500 from the online Apple store. ($2500 for the now remarkably outdated 22" model.)