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Update: Tried some DVDs out for the first time on my Dell 2001FP

BentValve

BentValve

Diamond Member
Update: Well I sort of went into ultra critical mode recently and have really began to put my 2001FP thru the paces. I spoke too soon when I first posted this thread because now I have played several more DVDs thru my 2001FP and I feel differently. Movies look excellent thru the 2001FP, certainly not as good as my G520P did but thats mostly due to the black level ability of the G520P.
I have tried several reference quality DVDs at this point and the 2001FP does a very good job for DVD playback, id rate it a 8/10.

I could easily live with the 2001FP for a video only monitor for a long period of time.


Today I am going out to test several high end LCDs including an Apple Cinema display and some other higher end units from Samsung and other LCD makers.

Honestly my experience with LCDs is rather small, ive owned a Dell 1801FP which was very nice , I had a VPR Matrix Laptop and I had a Proview 14" LCD ..the last two were horrible looking compared tot he 1801 and 2001.
Basically now that I have had some time with the 2001FP I want to see what a better display looks like.

 
Interesting, most review sites, including Anandtech and Tom's Hardware remarked that the 2001FP excels at displaying DVD's. I have this monitor and think it looks great with DVDs as well, as do all of my friends who have seen it.

But, it doesn't look nearly as good with DVD as with high definition programming. In fact, at 20" you can really start to see the difference between .345megapixels video (480i and 480p DVD's) and .9 megapixel (HD 720p) or 2 megapixel (HD 1080i) programming.

Of course this is totally subjective and everybody "sees" things differently. Just as you see the 2001FP as "sucking" for DVD display, I see ANY plasma or large screen display SUCKING for 480i or 480p video content once the size of the image is larger than about 40" diagonally. Not that the monitors aren't good, it's that the resolution of the video signal is too low to get any benefit from the high res display.

I mean what's the point of buying a 55" display and then watching 480p content at a pathetic 15.7 dots per inch! It's really silly.

Are you watching DVDs on your 6' wide projector? If so, how do they look? I can't imagine they look very good at 10 dots per inch.

I just thought I'd post the other side of the story for everybody.

Thank you for your time.
 
I mean what's the point of buying a 55" display and then watching 480p content at a pathetic 15.7 dots per inch! It's really silly.
Click to expand...

Oh, please, I have exactly that and I can tell you that DVD PQ is definately not "pathetic" on my 55" screen.... in fact, its awesome.
 
I mean what's the point of buying a 55" display and then watching 480p content at a pathetic 15.7 dots per inch! It's really silly.

Are you watching DVDs on your 6' wide projector? If so, how do they look? I can't imagine they look very good at 10 dots per inch.
Click to expand...

It depends a whole lot on how close you're sitting to the display. Large, (relatively) low-DPI displays are great for large rooms, but lousy if you're sitting three feet away.

Also, projectors and very large HDTVs generally upsample to 1080i. Granted, it's not as good as a native HDTV source, but it shouldn't look as blocky as just blowing up 480p to that resolution would.
 
Originally posted by: Matthias99
I mean what's the point of buying a 55" display and then watching 480p content at a pathetic 15.7 dots per inch! It's really silly.

Are you watching DVDs on your 6' wide projector? If so, how do they look? I can't imagine they look very good at 10 dots per inch.
Click to expand...

It depends a whole lot on how close you're sitting to the display. Large, (relatively) low-DPI displays are great for large rooms, but lousy if you're sitting three feet away.

Also, projectors and very large HDTVs generally upsample to 1080i. Granted, it's not as good as a native HDTV source, but it shouldn't look as blocky as just blowing up 480p to that resolution would.
Click to expand...


First of all, I want to retract my statement about it being "silly." That was an immature remark and I wish I hadn't said it. Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. That was an inflammatory way of saying "SD and big screens aren't for me."

Okay, let's think about this. If you like to sit 6' away from a 27" TV screen, then to make a 6' wide display appear that same size (27"), and hence the same resolution, you'd have to sit 20' away. I doubt anyone would sit that far away, probably more like 12' so they could actually "see" a larger picture. That distance would be the equivalent to sitting 42" from a 27" TV. Thats a little close IMO, I think I'd notice (and I do) the blockyness of the low resolution SD image.

When you add the fact that NTSC DVDs use a 4:1:1 color space, which means the actual horizontal color resolution isn't 720, but actually 720/4=180, with a 6' wide screen the maximum resolution you are getting (not factoring in overscan) is 2.5 pixels per inch, or about .4 inch pixels.

As I said in my original post, this is all subjective but I'm going to wait for HD DVD content distribution (Blu-Ray or HD DVD) before investing in a large screen display.

And, the math doesn't mean anything if "it looks good." I have checked out many large screen displays, and to my eyes it just ain't that impressive when they play SD video signals. In fact, the artifacting (twinkling of light or low contrast areas and "softness" of the display among other things) is annoying and distracting.

 
Oh there is no question that standard def looks like shite on a big screen, but well mastered anamorphic DVDs via a good progressive player can look stunning. I personally use a Denon DVD-2900 and an Infocus X1 projector , my screen is just under 6' wide and I sit 9' back from it. Good DVDs are alot of fun. 🙂
 
Like I said, I apologize for the stupid remark. You're right, a quality DVD can look quite good, especially when it's played back progressive.

I'm writing a book on HDV write now so I sometimes forget when I'm "working" and when I'm just writing for fun.
 
Indeeed. I'm a quality freak so I am not keen on infinitely blowing up a given source. NTSC TV and the like looks like crap on "big screen" TV's. There's no way around that. It gets worse when overly compressed by the suppliers which is all too often the case. Add to that widescreen TV's distorting aspect ratios or otherwise stretching the picture and it makes me wanna barf and really appreciate "small" 27-40" direct view CRT's. DVD's, at least, generally avoid the latter two problems although transfers do vary so they are watchable on the smaller "big screen" TV's. But I really don't see the fascination with ever bigger displays with relatively limited resolution sources.
 
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