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Apple's 27" iMac only supports native or 720p video input, no 1080p - Page 2

post #41 of 48
7/23/10 at 5:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by elasticmedia View Post

Thanks Mr. Me for correcting me. What I meant to say was that I heard the players and slow to start playing Blue Ray and that they are also slow to start playing DVD (maybe I am wrong about this last point).

I don't understand the first point MM makes: with my current 1080i tv, a dvd is upscaled to 1080i. With a blue ray player disk, my 1080p blue ray disk would only be displayed as 1080i - my whole question was "how much worse would this be than true 1080p and is it smart to wait until I had an actual 1080p tv?"

Do you really have a 1080i plasma that can't take & display a 1080p signal? If so, I didn't know those existed. Do you know the native resolution of the panel?

Some BDs are slow to load the first time you play them. I think most of the slow loaders speed up the second time around. My Blu-Ray player doesn't load DVDs any slower than a regular DVD player.

Maybe there are some slow players, I know my HD-DVD player takes 30 seconds to bother opening the tray.
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post #42 of 48
7/23/10 at 5:37pm
Hmmn - all I am saying is that my tv only displays 1080i - so I assume that a 1080p blue ray disk will not play in its full glory - how could it? I am assuming that it would show the video but just not in 1080p.



Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post

Do you really have a 1080i plasma that can't take & display a 1080p signal? If so, I didn't know those existed. Do you know the native resolution of the panel?

Some BDs are slow to load the first time you play them. I think most of the slow loaders speed up the second time around. My Blu-Ray player doesn't load DVDs any slower than a regular DVD player.

Maybe there are some slow players, I know my HD-DVD player takes 30 seconds to bother opening the tray.
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post #43 of 48
7/23/10 at 8:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by elasticmedia View Post

... with my current 1080i tv, a dvd is upscaled to 1080i. With a blue ray player disk, my 1080p blue ray disk would only be displayed as 1080i - my whole question was "how much worse would this be than true 1080p and is it smart to wait until I had an actual 1080p tv?"

People like to throw numbers around and put i's and p's behind them, but that doesn't mean that they understand what they are saying. If you have a 1080 display panel, then everything shown fullscreen on that panel will be a upscaled to 1080. That is how a digital TV works.

Many new DVD players are advertised "upscaling." All this does is to move the scaling process from the display to the player. Whoop-de effing do.

Your "clarification" question borders on nonsensical. The vast majority of 1080 flat panels are spectacular. Whether they are advertised as 1080i or 1080p, one will be hard pressed to tell the difference. As I said in a previous post, all flat panel TV sets display content in progressive mode. In the case of TV sets that are advertised as 1080p, they are usually 1080p24. This means that they are specifically designed to display 24 frames/second and are intended to make filmed content look its best. With better sets sporting refresh rates of 120 Hz, 240 Hz, or 600 Hz in the case of certain plasma panels, this is simply not an issue.
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post #44 of 48
7/24/10 at 2:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob55 View Post

Yes, but the thing you are forgetting, is that when cassettes were popular, our frame of reference was LP's or even 8-tracks, not 128k MP3/AAC files. In many ways, they were superior to their predecessors. By your logic, 78 RPM records were just fine because they were head and shoulders above the quality of the bees wax cylinders used on the original Edison phonographs in some much as the were less crappy. At the time they were, but by today's standards, they are unlistenable (except from a historical perspective). Today, the 128k MP3/AAC file is the "horrid cassette tape".

I still don't get you here. In the past, where you were implying kids didn't have to grow up being conditioned to poor quality audio when compared to today (or if that's not what you were implying, then what the heck was your point?), our frame of reference, as you say, was the LP, and our cheap, common media was the audiocassette. Now, our frame of reference is still the LP (unless you're claiming it's the CD, which in a few ways is better, but in a few ways is worse), and our frame of reference is the 128kbps MP3. So I'd say today is a marked improvement over the past, wouldn't you?
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post #45 of 48
7/24/10 at 3:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Me View Post

Many new DVD players are advertised "upscaling." All this does is to move the scaling process from the display to the player. Whoop-de effing do.

Actually, when you are using a full HD (1080) monitor that doesn't have a tuner built in, it is a big deal because most such monitors don't accept the analog input from a "non-upscaling" DVD player. But you're right, most people have iDTVs, which almost always include analog D input.

Then again, there are a hell of a lot of stupid people who have both an iDTV and an external digital tuner box. I mean, if you're going to get a digital tuner box, why not save a few hundred dollars and get a monitor instead of an iDTV?
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post #46 of 48
7/24/10 at 8:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by tonton View Post

Actually, when you are using a full HD (1080) monitor that doesn't have a tuner built in, it is a big deal because most such monitors don't accept the analog input from a "non-upscaling" DVD player. But you're right, most people have iDTVs, which almost always include analog D input.

Then again, there are a hell of a lot of stupid people who have both an iDTV and an external digital tuner box. I mean, if you're going to get a digital tuner box, why not save a few hundred dollars and get a monitor instead of an iDTV?

In the US, HDTV monitors were common in the early days of HDTV. Today, they are rare. US law requires that all sets above a certain size have integrated tuners. The older sets that lack tuners accept component video, DVI-D, VGA, HDMI, and/or other inputs. I am aware of no TV set or monitor available in the US that does not accept some type of analog input.

I have purchased several digital sets, including one digital TV monitor, over the past six years. Every single one of them allows scaling of analog input. In fact, the only content that can't be scaled on every set that I own is [full screen] HD.

Obviously, the digital TV environment in Hong Kong is different than it is here in the US. It might seem foolish to the uninformed to purschase both an integrated digital TV and an external digital tuner. I would want to examine buying decisions from the customers' points of view before declaring them stupid.
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post #47 of 48
7/24/10 at 8:51am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Me View Post

In the US, HDTV monitors were common in the early days of HDTV. Today, they are rare. US law requires that all sets above a certain size have integrated tuners. The older sets that lack tuners accept component video, DVI-D, VGA, HDMI, and/or other inputs. I am aware of no TV set or monitor available in the US that does not accept some type of analog input.

In the US, I recall that it can't be legally advertised as or called an HD TV unless it has a digital tuner. Anything that might be used as a TV might as well have one, it really doesn't add much to the price these days, which is different from the early days when a tuner costed several hundred dollars.
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post #48 of 48
7/27/10 at 8:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post

The problem is that Apple's EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) on the iMac and LED Cinema Display doesn't advertise 1080p as an option. EDID is a simple data structure a display sends to output devices that outlines what video formats and settings it knows how to support. Both devices appear capable of 1080p but simply don't advertise that capability in a way that external devices like the AV360 and Kanex HD can take advantage of.

It appears Apple could update the firmware for these displays to enable support of 1080p input, allowing users to input full 1080p video from devices such as the PS3.

What change is meant with the firmware update? A new firmware to have the iMac accept 1080p signals from a PS3 straight away? Without any interference of some Kanex/Belkin adapter? I thought the fact that the iMac doesn't have a scaler is limiting here?
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