The HD Guru lets the numbers do the talking
By Steven Kim 
posted Nov 17th 2007 4:41PM
posted Nov 17th 2007 4:41PM
Gary Merson, aka HD Guru, teased us a few months back with the initial results from his annual display testing. Those of you wanting to see the numbers generated by his testing can check them out now at the link. The good news is that this year's roundup did pretty well: deinterlacing was handled correctly by 65% of the displays compared to last year's 46%, and the bandwidth test was at least partially passed by every set. Inverse telecine still needs attention, however: 81% of the sets filed the 3:2 pulldown test. Motion resolution results broke down along display technology lines with LCDs putting in the worst showing overall and plasmas producing the highest level of detail. If you check out the list and find your particular set didn't fare so well, don't get discouraged. The HD Guru himself gives some sage advice that we've talked about before: "You should not judge a TV based solely on these tests (or any single aspect of performance)."
this is VERY interesting... the Sony S series (budget) *passes* 3:2 pulldown HQV test, yet the more expensive W model fails... curious if the V passes or not.
More interesting is that the samsung xx61 passes (an older model) and has 1050 static res while the sony's W has only 850 lines??
Granted the samsung 61 series couldnt beat the newer sony's black level (i suppose the 10 bit panel is supposed to help) but it is much cheaper, along with the S series... than the W.
Curious how the V-series would test.
while we're on the topic of hometheatermag... they did a review of the hd-a35 (the one i was planning on, due to its analog outs and me without a hdmi/truehd receiver)..
you know how it outputs 1080p (while the cheaper a3 does 1080i).. these guys say it didnt deinterlace 1080i correctly to 1080p. DOH! so i suppose we're reliant on our displays to do the deinterlacing.. time to check that chart!!
Wow that really sucks. I wonder if a firmware update will fix some of these problems on some sets.
what I find amazing is that the Maxent passed I thought it was a POS!
The whole idea of taking a progressive source material from the disk, unnecessarily INTRODUCING interlacing, just to have to deinterlace for no reason seems stupid. Its one thing if you are trying to output to 1080 to introduce interlacing, but if you are trying to get a progressive signal the need to introduce and then remove interlacing is as!n!ne.
And keep in mind that you cannot transcode nor scale while interlaced, so it only furthers the absurdity of adding and removing interlacing ALL THE TIME.
GhostDoggy; I do understand, it's kind of silly, but it's done to get a budget player into more people's hands. Unfortunately, the main reason it's being done is to justify a cheaper HD player, but it's not as if 1080p output actually costs any more than 1080i. It's just done for market segmentation and nothing else, the people that want 1080p are asked to kick in another $100.
In manycases, I think it might be cheaper to get an equivalent display that doesn't do proper pull-down removal and buy a 1080p player than buy a 1080i player and buy a TV with proper pull-down removal.
The way to go is 1080p/24.
Do that and the Toshibas are 2nd to none.
I think the Bravia XBR4 is the best LCD if not one of the best all around. I've been through quite a few HDTVS and the Bravia was no question on the top!! The colors are so real and the during motion scenes, it is wonderful. I love the way the 1080/24p looks. I've never seen anything so clear and so.....lets just say I honestly feel like I am the camera man sometimes. It freaks everybody out that comes over and sees it!!! LOL. I love this TV!!!
I guess that puts to bed the myth that 1080i is always as good as 1080p - because that myth presumed that all HDTVs did the pull down removal. This article shows they don't necessarily do that. I had suspected this to be the case, but had no proof, so I didn't say so.
This sort of issue is also why there can be a valid reason to get a better upscaling DVD player to play legacy DVDs. TVs don't always deinterlace or scale as well as we might think they should. There are several deinterlacing systems, of varying quality, and there are several scaling algorithms of varying quality. Even when upscaled, it's still not HD, but that's no reason to let the picture quality be worse than it has to be.
It's pretty widely known that most TV's don't do proper 3:2 pulldown detection for some time. In fact, if you go through the CNET reviews, you'll find very few displays which perform this function. However, this isn't really the end of the world. If the TV properly deinterlaces the 1080i, most people won't see the artifacts that result from the missed 3:2 cadence. You shouldn't lose resolution unless both the 1080i deinterlacing and the 3:2 pulldown detection fail.
Anyway, if you're buying a new TV, I'd worry more about proper 1080i deinterlacing than the 3:2 detection.
Where is the Samsung LNTxx71F? LNTxx81F? Sony XBR4/XBR5? They omitted some important new sets from these tests.