ESPN: 720p or 1080i?

[squicken]

I'm posting in the main forum b/c this is a technical question, not a programming one. I'm aware ESPN produces in 720p, but it was earlier posted that Voom was sending it at 1080i. Is this still going on? I have no way to check this with my TV, but I hope Voom has gone back to sending it in the way it as intended to be seen.

 

[DarrellP]

Last time I checked it was: about a week ago, I'll take a peek again tonight and see. The baseball game last night sure looked nice.

 

[occammd]

I would think with sports you would definitely want 720p.

 

[Neutron]

But some HDTVs can't display 720p, like I've been told my RCA doesn't do. Wouldn't the box upconvert it to 1080i?

 

[vurbano]

I would think with sports you would definitely want 720p.

I dont. 720p Hockey looks like crap compared to 1080i Hockey on HDnet. AND CBSHD football is superior to ESPNHD 720p anyday in my book.

 

[squicken]

I' m not trying to revive the debate. But if ESPN produces and sends the material to Voom at 720p, then Voom should send the channel to us at 720p. I'm not taliking about the STB settings, I'm talking about the actual signal Voom sends us.

I remeber an earlier post by someone who said with the STB at native, his TV was telling him the ESPN signal was 1080i. The game did look really good last night. My current TV is 1080i/540p native, so it doesn't affect me yet. But if I get a new 720p fixed set, I'll certainly want to see the 720p feed.

 

[DarrellP]

That was me, cyuhnke, my pj on DVI tells me the resolution it is receiving and everytime I've checked ESPNHD, it was at 1080i. As good as it looked last night, they can leave it there, it probably improves the PQ to send it through at 1080i.

 

[occammd]

why would it improve it?
Are you in native output from the box? Is that why you know it cam in as 1080i?

Vurbano, it's just my opinion, but for fast moving stuff on a very large screen I would think the elimination of combing would be more beneficial than the higher resolution (of 'course until I get a projector w/1080 panel that accepts 1080p - which is when hell freezes over by the looks of it). But I think it is just a personal preference.

 

[DarrellP]

I'm in Auto so my pj selects the resolution of the source and when I tune in ESPNHD, it shows 1080i. Although my pj is native 720p, 1080i source material looks much cleaner vs a 720P source.

 

[squicken]

Thanks for checking on this stuff, Darrell. I disagree with the "improves" idea though. Since ESPN is sending it's signal at 720p @ 60fps, I think these sets should be able to show off what they're designed to do. At 1080i @ 60 fields/sec, Voom is scaling and interlacing the feed.

Voom may be using "line doublers" or some such for scaling, but that's not adding new material, it's just creating additional lines from existing material. And with the move from 60 frames to 60 fields per second, there is a loss of data. So even if your 720p TV or projector de-interlaces the the signal, you have lost quite a bit from ESPN's camera to your TV.

I'm not arguing 1080i vs. 720p. What I'm arguing is that 720p material on a 720p fixed display is superior to 720p material scaled and interlaced to 1080i then rescaled and de-interlaced on those 720p displays. I know this is not unique to Voom. I think both D* and E* both do the same thing, but I couldn't tell you specifically when or where.

 

[DarrellP]

All I can say is that 1080i source material looks better on my pj than 720p source material. The only way I can verify this is with OTA ABC & ESPNHD from Dish. The material I get in HD from them does not come close to what I get from OTA CBS or HDNET from Dish. ABC & ESPNHD looks more like the Cinema10 channels, nice but not WOW. Maybe the pj does a good job of scaling from 1080i to 720p, I don't know, it's all FM to me anyway.

 

[squicken]

I got to trying to do some research on this, and I think I might have an answer. In the Q & A with Rod (which is alot more Q than A) Ilya talks about Voom down-rezzing 1080i to 1440 instead of 1920 to let the channels run at 16 Mbps instead of the 19 Mbps 1080i really needs. From doing research in other places, I know 720p @ 60frames/sec. is almost as bandwidth hungry as 1080i @ 60fields/sec. So maybe this is the only way Voom can fit ESPN into a 16 Mbps stream. I posted in Yahhogroup hoping Wilt responds.