[opendtv] Re: Microsoft Exec: 1080p HDTV Is Meaningless

Not sure I ever thought I would be saying this, but the exec at Microsoft and Kilroy have it right.

1080P is clearly better than 1080i as a camera acquisition format, however, there are practical limits on the frame rates that can be supported and encoded for emission. The reality is that 1080P on the acquisition side of the video chain is becoming synonymous with 1080@24P. This is what is being used by Hollywood for digital post production, and in some cases for acquisition. 1080@60P is for all practical purposes a display format, and as Kilroy noted, it can just as easily be 1080@50P or 1080@72P.

1080@60P as an acquisition format is ludicrous today. It may take another decade to develop cameras that can do a decent job with 1080@xxxxxx

To explain, the problem with cameras is that you need to oversample by a factor of 1.5 to 2, to produce images that can take full advantage of the available spectra in a 1920 x 1080 format. We are not there yet even for 1080@24P. Doing this at 1080@60P is even further out in the future. Then there is the other reality that the sensitivity of the camera is limited by the sample area on the sensors and the frame rate. Building an oversampling camera to produce high quality 1280 x 720 is far more practical; on an oversampling 1080P display the quality will be outstanding.

Kilroy touched on the issue of getting 1080@60P through the HDMI connections to commercial displays. This is also true for the entire video production chain. Virtually all of the HD production gear in use today is limited to the clock rates used for 720@60P/1080@30i. There are now over 40 remote trucks on the road that can easily switch between these formats; video production chains that could support 1080@60P do not exist today, and there is little reason to believe that this equipment will be available in the near future, or that the industry will replace the existing HD gear that is just coming on line.

Another interesting side story here is that we are talking about gaming platforms. Clearly, it is desirable to render the graphics for a game using progressive formats. I don't know what the render specs are for the current generation of game platforms, or what is planned for the PS3, but I am very confident that the graphics ARE NOT being rendered at 1920 x 1080@60P.

Bottom line, I believe that most of the hype about 1080@60P is being generated by those who are in the 1080@30i camp as an acquisition format. The long term belief (hope) that 1080@60P will become the one format to rule them all, helps to prop up 1080@30i for today.

Microsoft had it right in the '90s, suggesting that all emission formats be progressive. The issues related to entropy coding alone justify this, not to mention the elimination of interlace artifacts in acquisition gear.

The emphasis should be on building oversampled 720P cameras, and giving the emission channel enough headroom to deliver the full potential quality of this format. The oversampled 1080P displays can deal with the small number of displays sold that will be large enough to need 2 million screen samples.

Meanwhile, interlaced SD is still the primary economic engine behind the television industry. If we had listened to Microsoft, Apple et all in the '90s, we would at least have a digital TV system that delivers high quality images to ALL modern progressive displays.

Regards
Craig




At 6:16 PM -0700 8/16/06, Kilroy Hughes wrote: 
[TB] "This doesn't work well with (confused) telecined material, causes
artifacts, and likely will involve some additional filtering by the
display to hide those."

Published HD DVD-V discs have had their P24 cadence carefully preserved.
That has been SOP for DVD-Vs by the major Studios and authoring
facilities for several years.  Video editing gear has become cadence
aware to preserve "edited on tape" TV.  Production chains handle native
P24 at most stages now, such as D5 tape machines, video editing, etc.,
so P24 can be encoded Progressive_Sequence=1, or =0 with repeat field
flags and consistent frames/field pairs.

HD DVD-V players should render graphics at P24 as well as the video, and
only apply field scanning and 3:2 pulldown to the composited output
(only necessary because display manufacturers don't support HDMI 1080P24
mode).  A display won't be confused by P24 output with 3:2 pulldown.

The interlace problems you mention used to be a big problem for DVD-V
for the first few years when 480P output players and progressive
displays were rare.  Now there are many tens of millions of progressive
display systems that have resulted in mostly good production behavior.

The industry still has no clue how to make HDMI and 1080P work.
Displays are still forced to guess what kind of video content is coming
over the wire and what signal processing is being done by the source
device and the display device.

Kilroy Hughes
-----Original Message-----
From: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Tom Barry
Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 16:04
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [opendtv] Re: Microsoft Exec: 1080p HDTV Is Meaningless



Kilroy Hughes wrote:
 > The 1080i30 output of the Samsung BD player will be "inverse
telecined"
 > by the 1080 displays out there, 12 fields will be thrown away, and
the
 > other 48 will be losslessly combined into 24 frames, which can be
 > blinked by the display at 60, 72, 120Hz, etc. for motion and contrast
 > improvement.  No scaling/resampling, filtering, "deinterlacing", etc.
 > needed.
 >

That is sort of a best case scenario.  If there are bad edits, moving
video menus, or video (or different cadence) PIP then it is very hard to

just throw away fields.  And even harder to automatically determine that

you should be doing that.

But if the deinterlacer is uncertain it may fall into an attempt at
motion compensated or adaptive deinterlacing, assuming the worst.  This
doesn't work well with (confused) telecined material, causes artifacts,
and likely will involve some additional filtering by the display to hide

those.

So while deinterlacing is absolutely necessary in our new world of all
progressive displays I still won't trust it much.

- Tom



 The writer didn't understand, so you drew the wrong conclusion.



 The fact is that the HD displays worth considering are progressive
 display technology (DLP, PDP, LCD, LCOS, etc.).  If they have
1080lines 
 of resolution, they always DISPLAY 1080P, even if you input an
 interlaced signal, even if the video was sampled interlaced.  The only


 question is how much damage is inflicted by source and display
 processing to create that progressive image.



The 1080i30 output of the Samsung BD player will be "inverse
telecined"
by the 1080 displays out there, 12 fields will be thrown away, and the 

 other 48 will be losslessly combined into 24 frames, which can be
 blinked by the display at 60, 72, 120Hz, etc. for motion and contrast
> improvement. No scaling/resampling, filtering, "deinterlacing", etc. 
 needed.



The 1080i30 HDMI connection produces better progressive video than the 

 1080P60 output.



 The 1080P60 output applies 3:2 pulldown to generate 60 fields in the
 player, then deinterlaces with a Genesis chip.  Ugliness happens when
 resampling, motion compensating, and filtering 60 540 line fields, to
 synthesize 60 1080 line frames.  60 frames of judder and distortion
are 
 then passed over the video interface (HDMI) and processed by the
 display's image processor (random behavior different for different
 displays) and displayed at 60 frames per second (with 32ms/48ms
judder).



As many reviewers have noted, the i30 signal connection from this
player 
 produces cleaner, higher resolution progressive display with the same
 disc, player, and display than the 60P signal connection.



Microsoft is a big fan of encoding and displaying progressive images,
but the hype about P60 vs. i30 signal interconnect is a red herring. 



 Kilroy Hughes


------------------------------------------------------------------------
 >

 *From:* opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
 [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Mark Aitken
 *Sent:* Wednesday, August 16, 2006 08:32
 *To:* OpenDTV
 *Subject:* [opendtv] Microsoft Exec: 1080p HDTV Is Meaningless



 I find it "interesting" that MicroSoft NOW finds the P vs. I argument
 "meaningless"! Perhaps marketing hype only works in one direction???

 http://www.tvpredictions.com/1080p081506.htm

 News & Commentary
 Microsoft Exec: 1080p HDTV Is Meaningless
 The company's XBox strategist attacks Sony's decision to include the
new 
 format in the PlayStation 3.
 By Phillip Swann

 Washington, D.C. (August 15, 2006) -- A key Microsoft strategist says
 the industry is 'hyping' 1080p, the new format that purportedly offers
a 
 sharper High-Definition TV picture.

Andre Vrignaud, Microsoft's chief strategist for the XBox game
console, 
 says the current 1080i format ("i" stands for interlaced; "p" for
 progressive.) provides a picture just as good.

 Sony, Microsoft's chief gaming rival, is launching a new game console
 (Play Station 3) in November that will support 1080p for HDTV movies
and
games while Microsoft's XBox 360 will not. The latter console displays

games in 1080i and will include a 1080i HD-DVD adapter later in the
year.

"What's interesting is that a lot of folks don't realize how
meaningless 
 1080p actually is in this generation," Vrignaud writes at his blog,
 Ozymandias.com. "Most modern HD displays (Plasmas, LCD, DLP, etc.)
 display content progressively, //even if they first received an
 interlaced signal (so) //when you're watching a 1080 signal on a
modern 
 HD display, you're //almost always// watching a 1080p signal."

 Vrignaud, Microsoft's director of technical strategy for XBox Live,
 added that gamers, and HDTV owners, should not be "sucked into all the


 1080p hype."

 Swanni Sez:
 The battle over picture formats is just starting. Sony (and TV
 manufacturers who are launching 1080p sets) will say the new format
 offers a better picture. But Microsoft, and perhaps some network
 programmers who would like to keep filming in 1080i, will say you
can't 
 tell the difference.

It's too early to say which side will win, But the short term loser is 

 the American consumer who is already confused enough by high-def.

Click TVPredictions.com <http://www.tvpredictions.com> to see the rest 

 of today's Swanni Sez.

 (c) TVPredictions.com




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