720p or 1080i

[LoveElectronics]

I purchased a Yamaha RX-Z11 and was wondering; My cable has the option to output 720p and 1080i then I let my Receiver upconvert it to 1080p. Now my question is should I upconvert from 720p or from 1080i? I know it might sound foolish, but I do know 720p is a better picture than 1080i. Any help please. Thanks.

 

[Brian_the_King]

That's a good question, actually.

It logically makes sense to me that you should use 1080i, since there is more data [pixels] there for the reciever to process.

But then, I have no idea how recievers process->upconvert HD video signals.

The thing to do is A/B. Decide for yourself which looks better.

 

[itschris]

I went through the same exercise. It seems on my setup 720p converted better. I would have thought it was the other way around. The picture looked more grainy, but it certainly is a worthy discussion and I'd probably revisit my setup to double check if others think it should 1080i

 

[LoveElectronics]

Well gentlemen. Thanks for the problem solving. I took both pieces of advice and saw which looked better. I thought just as someone had mentioned if I went with 1080i to 1080p it would look better, actually it turned out that when I went from 720p to 1080p the image looked much better for some odd reason. I'll try and do some more research as to why that is, and will keep everyone posted.

 

[annunaki]

What is your display's native resolution? 720p, 768p, 1080p? That will tell you where you should set the output.

The closer the signal is to a display's native resolution, the less processing needs to be done.

Some 1080p sets do better with a progressive input as opposed to interlaced. It depends on the quality of the de-interlacing capability of the set's processing.

Try it both ways and see which one looks better. Typically the 720p setting works best for most cable boxes.

 

[nibhaz]

I think there are a number of factors to consider concerning this question.

Are you concerned more with your SD or HD content passing through your cable box?

From my experience, if you are more concerned about the SD content, it becomes a simple matter of trial and error as itschris mentioned. For me there was quite a difference between the two settings.

If you chose 720p you’re asking the cable box to scale from 480 to 720 and also asking it to deinterlace the signal to a progressive one. Which means your receiver is going to take that signal and scale it again to 1080.

If you chose 1080i, the cable box is merely scaling the signal but to a much larger extent. The receiver will then take this signal and deinterlace it.

Basically it comes down whether or not the cable box or the receiver does a better job of scaling and deinterlacing, or combination thereof, which all equipment dependent.

If you are more concerned with you HD content, you should look up the native resolution in which your favorites HD channels are broadcasted in and choose that setting so the signal passes through unaltered to your receiver for the final processing to 1080p. This will remove one step of processing which is almost always a good thing.

 

[Pyrrho]

I purchased a Yamaha RX-Z11 and was wondering; My cable has the option to output 720p and 1080i then I let my Receiver upconvert it to 1080p. Now my question is should I upconvert from 720p or from 1080i? I know it might sound foolish, but I do know 720p is a better picture than 1080i. Any help please. Thanks.

Which works best depends upon the particular equipment involved. You should try both and then use whatever you like best.

A reason that 720p is sometimes better than 1080i for conversion to 1080p has to do with the fact that 720p and 1080p have the same frame rate (in the U.S., 60 frames per second). 1080i has 60 HALF frames per second (in the U.S.; in Europe, it is typically 50 Hz instead of 60 Hz). This means that motion will be better from a 720p source than a 1080i source. However, a static image should look better with 1080i source. Since we are talking about "motion pictures", I wish everyone would broadcast 720p instead of most of them broadcasting 1080i, but 1080i sounds like it would be better to most people because it is 1080 lines instead of only 720 lines of resolution that are present.

Of course, with your cable, if it is outputting everything at 720p or 1080i, it is converting the source, whatever it might be, to one of those output resolutions. So it might be that for some sources/channels, it would be better with one setting, and for other channels, it might be better with the other setting. It depends upon how well it converts versus how well your TV or other video processor converts.