HDTV Forum

This question came about when I selected picture in picture on my HD screen, and saw a crisp and clear picture of my standard definition broadcast..

I have the latest Samsung 61

To get the letterbox and pillarboxes to appear when they should, you can make a setting in the Sat box setup menu to show 4:3 content as 4:3, and not stretch it. Then you must use a NORMAL widescreen mode on your TV, not a stretched or zoomed one.

You must have one of the older Dish boxes. SD on the older Dish and DirecTV boxes was atrocious, but has been improved significantly on the newer products. I just went from a 3 yr old Samsung TS160 HD receiver to a new HD DVR with DirecTV and a 55" diamond Mits CRT. The Samsung SD was almost unwatchable while the new HD DVR SD is at least as good as 480p DVDs. I've heard similar things about the Dish receivers. Apparently they didn't have much resources to devote to the SD tuning and scaling in the first gen receivers.

The computer satellite cards produce a very nice signal for SD on Dish. Of course a strong computer has considerable resources for post processing any digiital stream.

Just a fine picture on my 34XS955 CRT HDTV. It's a pity really, it's DCC scaler is suposed to be very good but I just feed it 1080i from my computer and it's just amazing how sweet SD can be.

I want to find a product that allows me to display the standard definition on only a portion of my TV,

1X1 pixel mapping of sources can do that but your display does not have that feature. In fact most consumer displays don't. The BenQ I am reviewing does that...

viewtopic.php?t=6804

An external scaler could possibly do that just like the BenQ if supported. Bear in mind most users want to fill out the screen so you and I are in a VERY small minority!

It is a great idea and I am in the same shoes with my huge screen! Leaving my external sclaer set for 720P and using 1X1 pixel mapping on the BenQ I get a reasonable size image while reducing artifact visibility. 480P pixel mapped to 1080P yields less than half the vertical size... it's small Probably would be just right with 720P.

A computer has no trouble putting an actual pixel size image on a display. I scale all my stuff to 1080 high on my 1080i display as the computer media players effortlessly scale to full screen.

Even very low res stuff, 352x240, scales very nicely.

The Sony I have comes with a GPL disclaimer so it's likly the onboard scaler and digital conversion stuff runs Linux. My computer does too, they do seem to get along well .

Thanks for the feedback all! Richard got my real question - can we do 1 to 1 pixel mapping, (or even 2 to 2 pixel mapping,) so only a portion of the screen displays. With a 61" screen only 10 feet away, I am on the edge of optimal viewing at 1080i.

I found great technical background info at http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ and in the "How is viewing HDTV different" section, it says how ideal viewing distance (and for me perfect immersion) is:
1080i/p: 3 times screen height
720p: 4.5 times screen height
Standard (NTSC) 8 times screen height.

From the site:
"Note also a built in annoyance: Every time the broadcaster changes resolution you have to move your chair. No one actually does this. They just suffer the mismatch. The only solution is to wait patiently for the day when all broadcasts are hi-def. Until then, room layout is an unsolvable problem"

I thought - why the annoyance? Change the screen size.

From the site, it says that ESPN, Fox and ABC broadcast in 720P, where most of the sports are. I can see the interpolation, and when watching football on other channels at 1080P the view is spectacular vs. just really great at 720p. If I gave up a little screen size, I could get 1:1 mapping and still be at the optimal screen distance.

And then there is standard def: Dish and DirectTV perform "Noise filtering" for standard TV channels to squeeze them all in, and quality is reduced. I will be setting up standard def off-air reception and see if that helps.

My Dish HDDVR is new and is great and the 1080i broadcasts are awesome. I got the Samsung DVD-HD960 upscaling DVD player and it works great paired with the Samsung HL-6187W TV - I would rarely go to the movies any more with this combination. I'll wait a while before I go to HD DVD or Bluray.

Thanks again for all the responses