Yes, but what does it MEAN??

doctorjuggles

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I recently posted asking how my TV would be progressive scan without component inputs, because it was advertised as progressive scan. Anyway, I wrote to Philips to ask them about it and this was their response:

"Thank you for your recent e-mail.

With regards to your query we can advise that 26PF9956/12 that (sic) the
TV does not have component inputs or the ability to accept progressive
scan, This tv's internal picture processing is by progressive scan.

Apologies for any confusion regarding the products capability.

We trust that the information provided will be of assistance and
should you require further advice please do not hesitate to contact us again quoting your customer reference number 50-50157660.

Kind regards,

Philips Customer Care"

So what does that mean, quality wise? Is this a good or a bad thing? It's all very well advertising a TV as progressive scan, but this is misleading. Have I bought a dud product, or is 'internal picture processing by progressive scan' not such a bad thing?

Please help explain this to me.
 
All LCD and (most) plasma screens are native progressive displays i.e. they can't show interlaced material without it first being deinterlaced (made progressive) by it's internal electronics. What Philips are saying regarding the 26PF9956 is that it can't accept a progressive signal from, say, a prog scan DVD player. In that case, just feed it a normal interlaced signal and let the screen process it to progressive. Hope this helps.

Steve
 
Dutch said:
All LCD and (most) plasma screens are native progressive displays i.e. they can't show interlaced material without it first being deinterlaced (made progressive) by it's internal electronics. What Philips are saying regarding the 26PF9956 is that it can't accept a progressive signal from, say, a prog scan DVD player. In that case, just feed it a normal interlaced signal and let the screen process it to progressive. Hope this helps.

Steve

Yep, I understand that, Steve. What I mean is, how good is this compared to a 'proper' progressive scan signal, or is this just some sort of gimmick? I mean, if all plasma and LCD screens are progressive scan by nature, surely they're just bigging their product up with cool words that don't really mean anything in the context of what they're saying.

It's a decent telly, and I'm sure I'll be happy with it, but I'd like to know the difference, quality wise, between a picture that is converted to prog scan natively, and one that's fed in through a proper progressive scan source.
 
I asked this question related to Xbox.

27 views so far with no response.

Fact is that no-one seems to know.

A guy in the hi-fi shop in Manchester city centre (not superfi) reckons there is no difference.

He showed me a prog DVD then switvhed prog off. No difference as far as I could see.

This was a 50" Pioneer Plasma through component and HDMI.

I need to know how it affects Xbox though.
 
The description by Philips isn't bigging up anything with cool words.

ALiS plasmas are interlaced, not progressive, and form a major part of Philips Flat Panel TV lineup - hence they distinguish between ALiS and progressive panels in their literature. Simple as that.

This refers to the end-display, not what input signals the TV can receive - this is where they confuse with not being precise with their words.

No current popular source is progressive, they are all interlaced (DVD, Sky, Freeview, Analogue TV). To display on a progressive panel, the signal must be de-interlaced - the TV will always do this, unless it can accept progressive scan via component in which case an appropriate DVD player will do the deinterlacing.

There are theoretical advantages to using prog scan on component for DVD - but on a decent 26" screen, I'd be amazed if you could see a difference from quality RGB Scart, so don't expect miracles by switching to another screen..
 
Well, it really depends on which has the best quality deinterlacer, the LCD screen or the DVD player. I'm not sure I would buy a set that doesn't have a progressive scan-capable component input, though. Hope this helps.

Steve
 
superpixel said:
There are theoretical advantages to using prog scan on component for DVD - but on a decent 26" screen, I'd be amazed if you could see a difference from quality RGB Scart, so don't expect miracles by switching to another screen..

Cool, that's pretty much the info I needed to know. I'm happy if I know that I'm not missing out hugely, if a component/prog is near enough indistinguishable from this type of prog scan, then I'm happy. I just wanted to find out.
Obviously the limitations remain, but I'm just worried about the picture quality, so if that's good, then I'm good.

Thanks for the help and opinions everyone. :smashin:
 
So why is 480p through component supposedly better than TV deinterlaced PAL through RGB Scart then?
 
Because...........

it's often (but not necessarily) the case, that a Prog Scan DVD player has a better de-interlacer in it, than the display.

No other reason.
 
Progressive through component can be theoretically better than interlaced, because the deinterlacing is performed in the digital domain before analogue conversion - and as LV246 says the quality can sometimes be better (though on my equipment, I always use interlaced as I get better results in practice - a high-end player may change things though, I don't know).

Why 480p would be better than other progressive resolutions - I don't know, unless you are using a 853x480 plasma in which case the internal scaling may be bypassed (so a NTSC disc makes perfect quality sense resolution-wise, and a PAL disc again may benefit from downscaling done by the DVD player rather than the display).

So - a good thing to have the option of component inputs, but not worth choosing a worse screen over...
 
Oh, and component is theoretically better than RGB output as the DVD's information is more akin to component than RGB, so theres less conversion required - im no expert, but i think this is the jist of it.

In practice, i don't see big differences though. Sometimes none, and sometimes RGB looks better...
 

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