Not impressed with Toshiba HD-XE1 and Panasonic PH9 HD DVD playback! Help Needed!

[macguffin]

I have been watching standard dvd's on my toshiba XE1 ans panasonic PH9 plasma for a few weeks now and have to say i am impressed with the upscaling quality of the player and the panals handling of resolution and motion. If SD dvd upscaled were this good i could'nt wait to get my hands on a HD DVD. Yesterday, i finally got to see my first HD DVD, the excellent Children of Men UK HD DVD. Well what an expierence, i started feeling as if i had taken some pychotropic drug due to the weird effect of motion judder, it totally ruined the film expierence.

Has anyone expierenced this on their plasma and toshiba XE1?

The resolution is just fantastic but could someone explain what is going on?! Is it due to the film being 1080p/24 and the player incapable outputing 24hz coupled with the panel set at 60Hz.


The panel is capable of 48hz-120hz so when toshiba firmware update there player with 1080p/24 output will this improve the motion judder?

I know it is the panel at fault so if i introduce a video processor into the chain aswell and output it at say 48hz or 72hz will this reduce/eliminate the judder?

If so what is the cheapest second hand video processor that could do this?

I know i have only watched one HD DVD and it could be the transfer at fault and me jumping the gun, but I am just not sure but would like to solve this problem as cheaply as possible. I have Enter the dragon HD DVD on route and dread watching another film i know very well spoilt by this problem.
Any help appreciated
macguffin

 

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

Yes it would appear you are seeing the 2:3:2:3:2:3 telecine process of frame rate conversion for film to 60Hz video. Your problem will be that the HDMI input on Panasonic plasma's will not accept any frame rate other than 50 or 60Hz. If you could get an analogue signal to a scaler then out of it to the PC input of your display you could eliminate the motion judder by playing back at 48Hz (providing the scaler has inverse-telecine for 1080i film source and 48Hz output capability). Or if youcan find an HDCP stripper you could feed the HDMI to such a scaler then use it's analogue output as I just described.

The cheapest scaler that I can think of that will do this is a Lumagen Vision HDP at under £1000.

Gordon

 

[macguffin]

Hi Gordon, are Panasonic going to address this problem by allowing a HDMI board to accept other refresh rates other than 50/60hz? I thought the pro panels were supose to be flexible?

I thougt the PH9 was HDCP compliant or is this just the HDMI board that is not?

Could I use component from the HD player into a scaler that has inverse-telecine 48hz output into the pc vga slot? Would this be the same quality as HDMI?
thx
macguffin

 

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

I seriously doubt that Panasonic will do anything to alter their current HDMI or DVI boards. I think they might do somethign in a new board sometime though but then probably only to accept 1080P24

The PH9 is HDCP compliant. The problem is that if you want to get 48Hz you CANT use the HDMI/DVI input terminals as they don't support it. So you have to go in via RGBHV on PC or RGBHV terminal board. Any video processor that accepts a 1080i HDMI signal from an HD-DVD player will automatically turn off it's ANALOGUE output when it sees the HDCP encrypted signal from the HD-DVD source. So you need to strip the HDCP from it before it reaches the scaler, or use analogue component outputs from the HD-DVD to the scaler so it doesn't turn off the analgue outputs. In that way you could get 48Hz, native resolution signal to the panel from your HD-DVD source.

Gordon

 

[MAW]

Well, if you were goung to use component at 24fps, the Panasonic should have no trouble with it. Never tried it, but sure it works.

 

[choddo2006]

I seriously doubt that Panasonic will do anything to alter their current HDMI or DVI boards. I think they might do somethign in a new board sometime though but then probably only to accept 1080P24

The PH9 is HDCP compliant. The problem is that if you want to get 48Hz you CANT use the HDMI/DVI input terminals as they don't support it. So you have to go in via RGBHV on PC or RGBHV terminal board. Any video processor that accepts a 1080i HDMI signal from an HD-DVD player will automatically turn off it's ANALOGUE output when it sees the HDCP encrypted signal from the HD-DVD source. So you need to strip the HDCP from it before it reaches the scaler, or use analogue component outputs from the HD-DVD to the scaler so it doesn't turn off the analgue outputs. In that way you could get 48Hz, native resolution signal to the panel from your HD-DVD source.

Gordon

There's one other option - you put the HDCP stripper after the scaler.

And this has the added advantage of allowing the native resolution of the panel @ 50Hz as well of course, for SkyHD stuff over HDMI, to make the most of the scaler.

 

[Rob100]

Could I use component from the HD player into a scaler that has inverse-telecine 48hz output into the pc vga slot? Would this be the same quality as HDMI?

My Sony PJ (HS60) will also not accept 48Hz (47.952Hz to be precise) over HDMI, so I have to use VGA input.

I've tried both HD-A1 component > Lumagen HDQ > PJ (VGA) and...

HD-A1 HDMI > Lumagen HDQ > Vision FC4 > PJ (VGA)

I found the second option to be preferable. I found that using analogue from the HD player and then analogue to the PJ took the "shine/wow" out of a lot of HD stuff.