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| Posted by | Seán Byrne |
| Posted on | 25/05/06 00:38 |
| Number of views | 16750 |
HD Upscaling:
Besides the playback of DVDs, the main feature of this DVD
player besides HVD playback is the ability to upscale to HDTV, so in this page,
we will cover how well this player performs with the HD upscaling modes and
outputs versus the standard SVHS output. As the only HD display we have
handy is a PT-AE500E projector, all HD upscaling tests will be done using this
projector. For these tests, the projected image is roughly 88" in size and
we will use a 6 Megapixel camera mounted on a tripod to take snapshots. We
have tried using a 19" DVI TFT for taking snapshots, however we ran into two
significant issues: The monitor rescales the image to fit the screen,
which means that it is interpolated up to 1280 x 1024. The second issue is
that when we tried taking any photographs of the image displayed, we would get a
severe moiré effect in the photo.
For these
tests, we used the following DVD:
- Brainiac Science Abuse - The Best Of Series 1
As the majority of HDTV sets have a component input, the first tests we carried out is comparing component against SVHS. For the component, we first tried out 720p and then 1080i. To start with, we had to adjust the saturation due to the picture being a little over saturated by default. To do this, we used the colour calibration chart we created during our last review of the NeuNeo player (see important notice in the screenshot section below) and adjusted the saturation such that the brightest shades of each colour element were distinguishable from each other in the photographs.
There is a fairly significant difference between SVHS and component, mainly in scenes where there is a lot of detail, such as trees, grass, people, text and furry animals. The difference is most noticeable during playback, as some of the graininess starts to appear in the component image when we pause playback to take a photo. However for most still images, the actual picture looked pretty much the same between the SVHS and component when paused. When it comes to action scenes, the component picture came out better since there is a slight interlace effect with the SVHS picture, even though the projector features its own deinterlacing capability. This is particularly noticeable with the credits at the end of a movie. With SVHS, the writing gets a slight interlace effect as it is climbing the screen, where as with the component connection, the writing scrolls very smoothly and looks just as clear as if the picture is paused. Unfortunately, we are unable to capture the interlace effect with the camera, since once we pause the picture, the effect disappears until we resume playback.
Like with the NeuNeo, the 720p and 1080i modes were virtually indistinguishable apart from a slightly more detailed looking image on the 1080i mode when it came to scenes with fine detail, such as leaves. On the other hand, as the projector only supports 720p natively and has to downscale 1080i to its native resolution, this likely explains why we see very little improvement.
HDMI Output
For HDMI testing, we used a HDMI to DVI cable to test both 720p and 1080i, since the projector does not have a HDMI input. As a DVI connection is a pure digital connection between the player and the display, the one thing we expected was a picture that does not need any adjustments. However, like the NeuNeo player this was not the case as the colour looked under-saturated, brightness was too high and the contrast was weak and this was before we even made our first adjustments for taking a photo. So, to start with, we had to adjust the projector's brightness almost as low as it could go in order to make the 'blacks' look black again and then adjusted the contrast to brighten the picture. While the projector has no saturation adjustment for the DVI input, the saturation looked a lot better once the brightness and contrast adjustments were made.
Once we adjusted the brightness, contrast and the component's saturation such that the colour and luminous rendering of both looked about identical, we were unable to see any difference in the image quality between the HDMI and component connections with most scenes, when it comes to its upscaling capability. However, we do get a noticeable difference when it comes to the side effects of an analogue connection as when it comes to the Component picture, bright edges seem to have a slight ghosting effect to the right upon close inspection and the overall picture has very faint lines going scrolling through it, both of which are not present in the HDMI connection. Unfortunately, we were unable to capture these effects on camera.
Like with component, the 720p and 1080i modes are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Again, this is likely due to the projector's resolution being 720 and having to downscale a 1080i image. Interestingly, even though 1080i is an interlaced mode, we did not experience any interlacing effects with action, unlike the image we get from SVHS.
VGA Output
As the projector has a 16:9 native display aspect ratio and is not a native SVGA, XGA or SXGA display, we decided to use a 19" SXGA DVI LCD monitor for this test. Unfortunately, due to the severe moiré effect we get when trying to take photos of the image displayed on the monitor, we have only done limited testing with the monitor, such as for some of the HQV tests.
The contrast, brightness and colour rendering comes out very well on the monitor, however the signalling does not seem to be as good as that from a PC as pixels seem to randomly fluctuate between their adjacent left / right pixel. This issue is much less noticeable than with the NeuNeo model we reviewed, however even after performing an 'auto-sync' several times on the monitor, the pixels would still fluctuate, which is noticeable on a paused or still image as well as on the menus. Unlike the NeuNeo model, the LCD monitor is capable of displaying the SXGA image without any issue, whereas the NeuNeo model often caused the LCD monitor to display 'Out of range'. For those with LCD / DLP projectors which have a VGA input, but no DVI, HDMI or Component input, the VGA input would provide a better picture over SVHS since the VGA image supplied by the player is progressive and upscaled.
We did experience a fairly announcing issue with the VGA output when playing back PAL discs in that motion does not seem to be as smooth as any of the other outputs and the image often looked grainier, much like playing a PAL disc with the output set to NTSC. Unfortunately, the player only supports 60Hz over VGA.
Screenshots:
In this section, we will compare screenshots between SVHS,
Component and HDMI from several different scenes. For these scenes, we
paused the DVD to take each picture and switched between the modes at that
paused scene to take photos of the same frame using the different outputs and
modes.
*** Important notice regarding the screenshots below ***
The first problem we encountered is attempting to take a photo of the projected image. While the picture looks fine to the eye, initially it would come out green / cyan colour, weak red colouring, anything bright turning out over-exposed and anything dark turning black! So, in order to take snapshots, we created a colour calibration chart with colour steps ranging from black all the way to Red, Green, Blue and White in 16 shades, put this on a CD and played it in the player. We then adjusted the projector's brightness and contrast such that the next darkest shade after black could be just about made out in the taken photo and the same for the next brightest shade after white. Then we started working on the RGB brightness and contrast levels to do the same for each colour element. Unfortunately, the in-between shades would not go in sync and even gamma correction could not help out here.
Even after spending a lot of time at the calibration, there is no way we could make the colour and luminous rendering in the photo come out like that on screen. The next problem we encountered is a huge variation in brightness, contrast and saturating between the DVI and component inputs, so we had to spend another while adjusting the levels of the DVI input in order to make the picture look like that of the component input.
Finally, the projector itself does a fairly good job at its own upscaling when it comes to supplying it with an SVHS signal, so the difference between the standard definition outputs and the high definition outputs can vary significantly from display to display.
As a result, please do not judge the brightness, contrast or colour rendering of the screenshots below as the player's capability on these!
Large Logo
For these tests, we used a DVD on Brainiac due to its wide range of scenes to put this player through its paces. To start with, we compared how well the Brainiac logo turns out in the different upscaling modes, particularly since the edges throughout look quite jaggy in standard definition and a full screen logo is displayed between each part of the disc.
The following image shows the logo via the SVHS output (zoomed):
When we switch over to component at 720p, the edges look much smoother:
While the edges still look a little jagged, this is much less noticeable than the SVHS image. The first image also shows that the projector itself smoothes the image, particularly lines going at close to a 45 degree angle, since the straight edge of the sign is perfectly smooth in both images.
The next image shows the same image with the output set to component 1080i:
As we mentioned earlier, there is very little difference that we can see between the component 720p and 1080i images, likely due to the projector capable of displaying only 720 lines.
The next image shows the display using HDMI output at 720p:
From the snapshots, the DVI image looks identical to that of the 720 component video image.
Finally, the following image shows the display using HDMI output at 1080i.
The following table shows a thumbnail of the five images together:
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Gravel
Gravel contains a lot of detail and edges, which makes it quite a challenge to upscale. So for this test, we used the scene in the Brainiac special where it showed a swinging iron, since there was gravel all around. The following image shows a zoomed-in close-up using the SVHS output, which includes part of the iron:
Now, let's see what happens when we switch the output to component 720p:
Unfortunately, despite our expectation, the image has actually been softened and the gravel does not look as detailed as with the SVHS output. The image looks slightly better with the output set to component 1080i, but not much:
The 720p DVI output looks virtually the 720p component output apart from the colour. As we mentioned earlier, we were unable to adjust the saturation output to match that of the DVI output.
Finally, one to the DVI 1080i output:
This was one of the few scenarios where we the upscaling actually seemed to have a negative effect on the image. On the other hand, it could be that the projector done a better job and that the images produced by the projector's own upscaling may actually be no worse than the original.
The following table shows a thumbnail of the five images together:
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Audience
The image used in this test is taken from the scene were they try to create a Mexican wave, so this makes a good test to see what the player is like dealing with crowd of people. The following image shows a zoomed in portion of the scene using SVHS:
With clearly jagged edges throughout the image, let's see how the image turns out over component 720p:
Even before we took the photo, we could see a significant improvement in the image and while the image looks softened, it clearly does not look as jagged as the SVHS image. For example, compare the person in the yellow T-shirt to the SVHS image. Now, let's look at the image using component output at 1080i:
We can see a slightly sharper image over the 720p output with the edges of objects standing out better.
Now, let's switch to DVI at 720p:
From what we can see, there is virtually no difference between DVI and component at 720p and the same applies for DVI output at 1080i:
The following table shows a thumbnail of the five images together:
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Trees and leaves
Like the texture of fur and grass, leaves are something very difficult to upscale as the individual leaves often fall within one to two pixels in the image, which often makes the individual pixels stand out on many high definition displays, even with my projector:
This is another case where the HD upscaling mode clearly shows a significant improvement, such as over component 720p:
While the image looks a little softer than the SVHS image, the leaves no longer look like 'squares'. To our eyes, the HD upscaled image looks drastically more natural than the SVHS output, particularly during playback. This is one of the few cases where the projectors own upscaling does not seem to work very well.
Now, on to component at 1080i:
This image shows a small improvement over the 720p image with the detail looking slightly sharper.
The following image shows the image output over DVI at 720p:
As the DVI output is much brighter than the component and SVHS outputs despite the projector's DVI brightness set at its minimum, the above image shows the upscaled image detail more clearly. The same goes with the DVI output at 1080i:
The following table shows a thumbnail of the five images together:
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Credits
Finally, we test the very last image of the credits on the DVD, where the writing clearly shows its pixels in the SVHS mode:
Despite the improvement we experienced with edges in previous scenarios involving text (see the HD upscaling tests in the NeuNeo review), the writing on the screen remains about as jagged in the HD upscaled images as with the SVHS output above. The following image shows this screen with component at 720p:
With the output set to 720p, the writing looks a little softened, although with the saturation effect on the writing not as bad as in these screenshots. The next image shows component at 1080i:
This looks much like the 720p output, but with slightly sharper writing.
Now, on to DVI at 720p:
Both the DVI 720p and 1080i outputs look pretty much identical to the same output modes over component.
The following image shows DVI at 1080i:
The following table shows a thumbnail of the five images together:
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As this HD upscaling DVD player uses the same upscaling method as with the NeuNeo we reviewed, please have a look at the HD upscaling tests in that review to have a look at further examples of how it performs at upscaling with other DVDs.
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