Noob question

[davsdu]

I have a plasma screen with native res. @ 1366*768.
Lets say I'm playing a video clip which has a resolution of 1280*720p. Is it then enough if I set the res. on the pc @ 1366*768 - or do I need to somehow resize the video to 1366*768 (and have a screen res. at [email protected] at the same time)?

 

[Deleted member 39241]

No, the plasma will scale it for you... or you can use some software to scale everything to the plasma's native resolution (like ffdshow), or do both and see what looks better. What plasma is it with that res?

 

[davsdu]

Its a 50" panny PHD8.
Regarding the scaling, are there any other options than ffdshow?
I'm currently using Theatertek - can't this program perform the scaling?

 

[richjthorpe]

I thought the native resolution was 1024x768 for the Panny.

Richie.

 

[KraGorn]

Regarding the scaling, are there any other options than ffdshow? I'm currently using Theatertek - can't this program perform the scaling?

Without something like FFDSHOW then scaling is done by the graphics drivers and it's because they're really only 'so so' at the job that people battle to get FFDSHOW running because the results are immeasurably better.

There is a package called DScaler but that isn't a post-processor like FFDSHOW so can't be used in TT's output chain .. at least, it couldn't last time I played with it about a year ago.

I thought the native resolution was 1024x768 for the Panny.

AFAIK only the Hitachi uses rectangular pixels to achieve 16:9 A/R.

 

[richjthorpe]

AFAIK only the Hitachi uses rectangular pixels to achieve 16:9 A/R.

I think you'll find that most HD Plasmas are 1024x768 in 16:9 A/R. I haven't seen a true 1280x720 or 1366x768 plasma screen with square pixels. Hitachi are 1024x1024.

Richie.

 

[Nicky]

Regardless of the resolution of the plasma a couple of thoughts on what to avoid:

i) try to avoid scaling the picture twice - if your PC is outputing a different resolution to the plasma native res you risk scaling the picture once to fit the PC resolution and then again to fit the plasma. This is unlikely to be the best solution. Native resolution + fddshow is likely to look very good if you've got a big enough processor and the time to get it all set-up. TT by itself is fairly impressive.

ii) Might be obvious but don't forget about refresh rates. IMO getting the refresh rate right has a bigger impact on the overall quality of the picture than tweaking scaling. PAL you need to be driving the screen at 50Hz (or 75Hz), NTSC is generally easy as most screens are happy to be driven at 60Hz.

 

[KraGorn]

At least one plasma is hard/impossible to match .. it may very well be 1366 horizontal .. due to clock-timing issues (the clock can only resolve to a multiple of 8 pixels), this is going on from what I've read rather than personal experience.

In that case it's best to over-sample (aka. up-scale) higher than that in the PC and let the plasma down-scale to fit.