arch_angel16
12th October 2005, 16:28
Forgive me, I'm a newbie, and not even wikipedia's much help on this topic.
I've read over the 'peculiarities' of interlacing, telecining, NTSC, etc before. I've also read over the HDTV spec. Now, the HDTV spec allows for a few different resolutions, right? (note these are all 16:9 AR numbers)
480i - 480 interlaced lines so basically 2 interlaced 854x240 images
480p - 480 lines at a time so basically an 854x480 image
720i - not even worth mentioning
720p - 720 lines at a time so basically a 1280x720 image
1080i - 1080 interlaced lines so basically 2 interlaced 1920x540 images
1080p - 1080 lines at a time so basically a 1920x1080 image
forgive me if I'm sightly off in my understanding of the interlacing (not important now) and for failing to mention 3:2 pulldown, etc.
I've realized that I only ever use my PC as a home theatre/jukebox these days and would like to reconfigure it to better suit this purpose. The first upgrade I want to make is to replace my 21" CRT with either a 24" widescreen LCD monitor (the Dell 2405FPW) or a larger LCD television. In my research for this I've realized that things aren't exactly straightforward with LCD TV tech, (really weird...)
So, digital TVs. They come in some wacky resolutions:
Plasma: usually "Enhanced definition" aka 854x480
LCDs I've seen:
1024x768
1280x720
1280x768
1366x768
Since 1280x720 is the highest natively supported resolution here, I'm wondering WTF is with these other resolutions and aspect ratios? Anyone? I guess with 1280x768, the TV could just ignore the extra 48 lines, but huh?
And it just gets weirder. Let's now take a look at widescreen LCD monitor resolutions:
1400x1050 (common in laptops) - true 4x3 (yay!)
1280x1024 (most 18-19" LCD displays) - 5:4 (bah!)
1680x1050 (most widescreen 20" displays have this, like the 2001fpw and 2005fpw) - 16:10 (huh?)
1920x1200 - (24" widescreens like the cinema display and 2405fpw have this) - 16:10 (again?!)
ok as far as the monitors go, I surmise that a 16:10 screen might be kosher. I'm guessing a software DVD player would put black bars on the top and bottom to change the image drawn to a true 16:9 aspect ratio.
While I would *like* to ask about this magical 2.33:1 aspect ratio that I see all the time in the movie theatre but never in consumer electronics, I'll pass. I'm betting the answer would cause my brain to explode.
The crux of my problem is that I want to get an LCD tv that a graphics card can drive natively (the signal sent by the graphics card is natively supported by the tv, and isn't scaled/interpolated by the tv). This display is going to be primarily for watching movies with perhaps some websurfing activity (and of course recoding video...). I scoured the net and didn't find one actual TEST of a gfx card driving an LCD TV natively, and I also can't find any answers to the weird pixel resolution and aspect ratio question.
If all else fails, I atleast know that if I can somehow natively drive an LCD television as a monitor, then my DVD software can scale the image size to whatever funky resolution is on the TV and the aspect ratio will be correct. Still, I'd like 1280x720 natively driven...
Someone wanna help?
references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdtv - overview of HDTV
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=36&p_created=1096923831&p_sid=dDmtBRRh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD0yNTImcF9wcm9kcz0mcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1 - invaluable guide to setting up HD output on an nvidia gfx card (note currently only FX and higher cards are supported, so FX, 6, and 7 series.
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge - ati's currently supported 16:9 hdtv modes
http://www2.ati.com/manuals/AIWX600Series.pdf - ati "all in wonder x600" manual with some info regarding hdtv output
I've read over the 'peculiarities' of interlacing, telecining, NTSC, etc before. I've also read over the HDTV spec. Now, the HDTV spec allows for a few different resolutions, right? (note these are all 16:9 AR numbers)
480i - 480 interlaced lines so basically 2 interlaced 854x240 images
480p - 480 lines at a time so basically an 854x480 image
720i - not even worth mentioning
720p - 720 lines at a time so basically a 1280x720 image
1080i - 1080 interlaced lines so basically 2 interlaced 1920x540 images
1080p - 1080 lines at a time so basically a 1920x1080 image
forgive me if I'm sightly off in my understanding of the interlacing (not important now) and for failing to mention 3:2 pulldown, etc.
I've realized that I only ever use my PC as a home theatre/jukebox these days and would like to reconfigure it to better suit this purpose. The first upgrade I want to make is to replace my 21" CRT with either a 24" widescreen LCD monitor (the Dell 2405FPW) or a larger LCD television. In my research for this I've realized that things aren't exactly straightforward with LCD TV tech, (really weird...)
So, digital TVs. They come in some wacky resolutions:
Plasma: usually "Enhanced definition" aka 854x480
LCDs I've seen:
1024x768
1280x720
1280x768
1366x768
Since 1280x720 is the highest natively supported resolution here, I'm wondering WTF is with these other resolutions and aspect ratios? Anyone? I guess with 1280x768, the TV could just ignore the extra 48 lines, but huh?
And it just gets weirder. Let's now take a look at widescreen LCD monitor resolutions:
1400x1050 (common in laptops) - true 4x3 (yay!)
1280x1024 (most 18-19" LCD displays) - 5:4 (bah!)
1680x1050 (most widescreen 20" displays have this, like the 2001fpw and 2005fpw) - 16:10 (huh?)
1920x1200 - (24" widescreens like the cinema display and 2405fpw have this) - 16:10 (again?!)
ok as far as the monitors go, I surmise that a 16:10 screen might be kosher. I'm guessing a software DVD player would put black bars on the top and bottom to change the image drawn to a true 16:9 aspect ratio.
While I would *like* to ask about this magical 2.33:1 aspect ratio that I see all the time in the movie theatre but never in consumer electronics, I'll pass. I'm betting the answer would cause my brain to explode.
The crux of my problem is that I want to get an LCD tv that a graphics card can drive natively (the signal sent by the graphics card is natively supported by the tv, and isn't scaled/interpolated by the tv). This display is going to be primarily for watching movies with perhaps some websurfing activity (and of course recoding video...). I scoured the net and didn't find one actual TEST of a gfx card driving an LCD TV natively, and I also can't find any answers to the weird pixel resolution and aspect ratio question.
If all else fails, I atleast know that if I can somehow natively drive an LCD television as a monitor, then my DVD software can scale the image size to whatever funky resolution is on the TV and the aspect ratio will be correct. Still, I'd like 1280x720 natively driven...
Someone wanna help?
references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdtv - overview of HDTV
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=36&p_created=1096923831&p_sid=dDmtBRRh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD0yNTImcF9wcm9kcz0mcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1 - invaluable guide to setting up HD output on an nvidia gfx card (note currently only FX and higher cards are supported, so FX, 6, and 7 series.
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge - ati's currently supported 16:9 hdtv modes
http://www2.ati.com/manuals/AIWX600Series.pdf - ati "all in wonder x600" manual with some info regarding hdtv output