Native Resolution Pass Through

[BCH]

I sent the following question via email to Monday's Tech Chat. I received a response today.

Question:

During the last tech chat Dan Minnick indicated that native resolution
pass through should be implemented by this summer. Is the implementation of this update on schedule?

Reply:

Thank you for your e-mail. The Tech Forum is correct, we are on schedule for native resolution pass through.

We hope we have properly addressed your concerns. If you have further questions you can respond to this e-mail or access our online technical support at the following link: http://tech.dishnetwork.com/departmental_content/techportal/index.shtml.

Thanks,

Rebekah S.
Technical E-mail Support
Dish Network

 

[rdinkel]

When this is implemented, do you think they will do like DirecTV's new DVR and let you specify which resolutions to pass through and which ones to convert? I would need that, since my Loewe Aconda does not support native 720p (only 480i, 480p, 520p, and 1080i).

 

[JohnL]

When this is implemented, do you think they will do like DirecTV's new DVR and let you specify which resolutions to pass through and which ones to convert? I would need that, since my Loewe Aconda does not support native 720p (only 480i, 480p, 520p, and 1080i).

Rdinkel,


Native Pass Through is just that, if you start asking that some content not be passed through and some not, then you defeat the reason for Native pass through in the first place.

Currently the VIP622 can be set for EITHER, OR, 720p and 1080i. With Native pass through channels that are 1080i stay 1080i and channels that are 720p stay 720p.

John

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Hopefully Dish defines native passthrough to be what JohnL said. But you never know with them.

I am extremely doubtful that Dish would implement a complex system that would allow you to check off which resolutions you would want to pass through and which you would want to convert.

My HDTV can't accept 720p, so I'm stuck with the 1080i conversion. But if I had a higher end set that could handle all formats, then I would want native passthrough as there is a very good chance that my high end TV would do a better job on the conversion to its native resolution than what Dish offers in a relatively low-end piece of HD gear.

 

[Hall]

Scientific Atlanta's set-tops, with Pioneer Passport software, have the option to output any combination of 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i. I could enable ALL of them or only 1080i or 720p and 1080i and so on.

 

[rdinkel]

Read the review of the new DirecTV HD DVR. It says you are able to specify which native signals to pass through. I was trying to determine if Dish would take the same approach.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

That would be nice.

 

[mlinuxg]

What does "native pass through" mean?

Mike

 

[rdinkel]

It means instead of the sat receiver box converting the program material to a specified resolution (e.g., 1080i) to be displayed on your tv, it just passes through to the tv whatever the "native" resolution of the program material is. That is--as received by the sat receiver box.

 

[dougmcbride]

It means the resolution of the incoming signal gets passed through to your TV without conversion. The way it works now is you pick a resolution, and the box converts all signals to that before passing to your TV - e.g. converts 480i to 1080i, 720p to 1080i, etc. if you choose to use 1080i. Native would just pass through 480i as 480i, 480p as 480p, 720p as 720p, and 1080i as 1080i. Works great if your display can handle all resolutions (not all do however) and it does a better job of converting to its native display rate than the Dish receiver. Some do, some don't.

Cheers,

Doug

 

[BobMurdoch]

The ESPN channels and a few others use 720p which is supposedly better for showing rapidly moving images. The majority of channels use 1080i, which has a sharper picture but is not as good with fast moving images (also supposedly).....

 

[ralfyguy]

Does this only work with the HDMI port, or also with the Component port?

 

[rdinkel]

Also works that way with components.

 

[John Kotches]

Rdinkel,


Native Pass Through is just that, if you start asking that some content not be passed through and some not, then you defeat the reason for Native pass through in the first place.

Currently the VIP622 can be set for EITHER, OR, 720p and 1080i. With Native pass through channels that are 1080i stay 1080i and channels that are 720p stay 720p.

John

I think the point was to have an option for scaling 480i content to 720p or 1080i

I could be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time today

Cheers,

 

[rdinkel]

Yes, John:

In my case I would like 480i and 480p to pass through uncoverted by the Vip211, but I need 720p to be converted to 1080i, since my HDTV cannot accept 720p inputs. Or else, just leave it as is with everything being passed to the HDTV as 1080i.

 

[LASooner]

My TV scales up better than the 622 or 921 do. I've been wanting passthrough for a while.

 

[Cowchip]

I was wondering about this and wasn't sure if I would be better off setting the 622 to 480p since my TV is 1080p or just leaving it on 720p?? I've had it set to 1080i for a majority of the time but tried 720p and really didn't notice that much of a difference. Probably a horse a piece.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

The primary desired feature from native pass through is to allow all resolutions to pass through unchanged to the TV. Most HDTVs are good at converting 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i to their native resolution. They are likely to be better at this than a Dish 211/622 converting all of these resolutions to a single 720p or 1080i output.

Indeed there have been some tests of Dish receivers posted on AVSFORUM that indicated the Dish receivers were mediocre at this. Much worse than some of the good quality HDTV sets.

The extra nice feature would be to enable the receiver to allow the user to individually select the output resolution for each input resolution.

So if you have a TV that can accept 480i, 480p, and 1080i, but can't handle 720p. Then you could have it pass the first three through unchanged, while converting all 720p channels to 1080i.

Or if you have a 720p set that does a poor job of handing 480i inputs, then you could have the Dish receiver convert those to 720p, while passing through all of the others.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

If I had a 1080p set, I would test the receiver with both 720p and 1080i outputs. I would expect 1080i to be the better setting, to allow all of the 1080i channels to pass directly to the 1080p TV for de-interlacing.

But it is for exactly this type of HDTV that you would want native pass through. At least to test it.

 

[John Kotches]

If I had a 1080p set, I would test the receiver with both 720p and 1080i outputs. I would expect 1080i to be the better setting, to allow all of the 1080i channels to pass directly to the 1080p TV for de-interlacing.

But it is for exactly this type of HDTV that you would want native pass through. At least to test it.

It really depends on the content.

1080i deinterlacing for video sourced material is complicated and tough to do. Motion adaptive and Directional Correlational deinterlacing on native interlaced material at this resolution takes substantial power as you have 60 discrete points in time. You have to take these 60 fields and cleanly merge these (artifact free) to 30 frames, then frame double them to 60 frames.

There are cheap ways of doing this which is what's in most sets, namely Bob and Weave. Both of them look like crap on native video material. Weave looks ok on film material assuming a clean telecine, but that's a big stretch to assume a clean telecine.

Native film material (24fps) can look pretty good assuming the display has the ability to detect the cadence and recover the original 24fps material. Otherwise it'll look like crap.

Best,