loonatic
Prominent Member
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2003
- Messages
- 1,925
- Reaction score
- 16
- Points
- 370
- Age
- 51
- Location
- Springwell Village, Gateshead
Was that Henry or James you spoke to ?
I would say they are kinda correct but not completely...remember that they do not sell nor deal with plasma screens...they are mainly CRT projector based historically and in that area they are masters.
That said I would say that the majority of plasma screens available would not benefit greatly from an external scaler for various reasons...either they do not have the correct connectivity...or provide support for the necessary resolutions and refresh rates...or they screw around too much with the signal once they have received it.
To get the best from an external scaler you really want to be feeding the it the best possible signal you can...ideally that means SDI, followed by interlaced HDMI, interlaced YUV, RGBs...but a digital signal is preferable.
Then you really want to be feeding the plasma screen it's native resolution...again ideally digitally via DVI or HDMI...to avoid any unnecessary A-D and D-A conversion stages.
Then you want to make sure that the plasma screen itself is performing as little processing to that signal as possible and that it does not perform its own internal frame rate conversion on the signal...or if it does that it will not introduce and annoying judder.
If you can achieve the above then the results are really rather good if you are having trouble with some or all of the above then its not going to work for your configuration...or at least not without its drawbacks/issues which you may or may not find annoying.
Some examples are the Pioneer TV range of plasma screens will only accept 720p input from an external scaler meaning that the source image has to undergo two scaling stages one in the scaler to 1280x720 and then again in the panel to either 1024x768 or 1280x768.
The Panasonic Viera range of plasma TVs have no digital input so you are either forced to use the front mounted VGA socket nice or the component inputs which do not support 720p
The PW6/7 range of plasma screens will only accept native resolution via their DVI blade at 60Hz meaning any 50Hz sources have to be converted to 60Hz which can introduce judder on panning shots. And their HDMI blade does not seem to offer anything better just yet either.
The best suited plasma for use with an external scaler at the moment, well that I know of anyhow, is the Pioneer MXE1 range. This is because they have native resolution support via DVI and an FRC setting which allows 50Hz sources to be displayed at 100Hz internally thus eliminating judder.
Anyway its not as straightforward as saying all scalers are bad with plasma screens especially as they are about to start selling one called the Plasma Enhancer
Cheers, Lee
I would say they are kinda correct but not completely...remember that they do not sell nor deal with plasma screens...they are mainly CRT projector based historically and in that area they are masters.
That said I would say that the majority of plasma screens available would not benefit greatly from an external scaler for various reasons...either they do not have the correct connectivity...or provide support for the necessary resolutions and refresh rates...or they screw around too much with the signal once they have received it.
To get the best from an external scaler you really want to be feeding the it the best possible signal you can...ideally that means SDI, followed by interlaced HDMI, interlaced YUV, RGBs...but a digital signal is preferable.
Then you really want to be feeding the plasma screen it's native resolution...again ideally digitally via DVI or HDMI...to avoid any unnecessary A-D and D-A conversion stages.
Then you want to make sure that the plasma screen itself is performing as little processing to that signal as possible and that it does not perform its own internal frame rate conversion on the signal...or if it does that it will not introduce and annoying judder.
If you can achieve the above then the results are really rather good if you are having trouble with some or all of the above then its not going to work for your configuration...or at least not without its drawbacks/issues which you may or may not find annoying.
Some examples are the Pioneer TV range of plasma screens will only accept 720p input from an external scaler meaning that the source image has to undergo two scaling stages one in the scaler to 1280x720 and then again in the panel to either 1024x768 or 1280x768.
The Panasonic Viera range of plasma TVs have no digital input so you are either forced to use the front mounted VGA socket nice or the component inputs which do not support 720p
The PW6/7 range of plasma screens will only accept native resolution via their DVI blade at 60Hz meaning any 50Hz sources have to be converted to 60Hz which can introduce judder on panning shots. And their HDMI blade does not seem to offer anything better just yet either.
The best suited plasma for use with an external scaler at the moment, well that I know of anyhow, is the Pioneer MXE1 range. This is because they have native resolution support via DVI and an FRC setting which allows 50Hz sources to be displayed at 100Hz internally thus eliminating judder.
Anyway its not as straightforward as saying all scalers are bad with plasma screens especially as they are about to start selling one called the Plasma Enhancer
Cheers, Lee