Question:
Dear Expert,
I bought a Mitsubishi LT3780 37" LCD HDTV in 2005 for $3000. I am stumped about 1080P. The specs say that this TV has "Plush 1080P" technology and can convert 1080i signals to 1080P - hence the "Plush 1080P" technology. But....I just bought a Panasonic DMP-BD30K Blu Ray player which plays 1080P Blu Ray disks.
Will my TV give me an actual 1080P picture? The owner guide does not talk about it, and I am confused. Do I actually need to go out and now buy another HDTV that is certified "1080P?" I hope not.
I have not yet hooked it up as I am waiting for my new Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver which will decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio - I can't wait!! I am feeling down about all this if my HDTV cannot show me a real 1080P picture. Please explain!! Thanks!!
-Jody N.
Answer:
Hi, Jody,
Your set was one of the early 1080p panels, manufacturerd when there really were not any commonly available 1080p sources. Its "Plush 1080p" technology is simply Mitsubishi's name for their proprietary video processor which de-interlaces and scales all signals to the native resolution of the panel (1920x1080 pixels).
What some people don't realize is that a 1080i/60Hz signal contains all of the original information in a 1080p/24FPS film. The interlace processor used by the player (or by the broadcaster in the case of broadcast HDTV) encodes 24 frames of 1080p into 60 fields of 540 lines each (each field has half the 1080p picture). Some fields are repeated in the 1080i signal in order to match the 60 Hz processing rate. At display time, the TV's built-in de-interlacer detects the underlying 1080p/24 signal (the so-called "3:2 cadence"), throws away the duplicate information and stitches the two halves of the picture back together with no loss (theoretically anyway).
So the bottom line is you can set your Panasonic Blu-ray Disc player to 1080i output and your HDTV should be able to decode the signal back perfectly into its 1080p original resolution for display on the HDTV. I say "should" because not all de-interlacers are created equal. Some do this processing perfectly and some do not.
Your best bet is to hook up the player to your TV and see how it looks with some of your favorite movies. My guess is that you won't be disappointed. If you've been happy with the way broadcast HDTV and DVDs look on your set, you'll love the way Blu-ray movies look.
Hope that helps.
-Chris
