Fudoh's ode to old display technology

[Fudoh]

haha, yes, you're right, my bad. 384 on LD, 40 on DVD. But then again their early DVDs were non-anamorphic 480i as well. Same master tapes.

[Einzelherz]

chroma/phase ... RGB mode?

RGB is RGB, there's no chroma or phase.

You can get a rough idea why this is so by looking at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrominance

The setting doesn't work in other forms of component (I think here meaning YPbPr also) either: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/223/19322

It works on component, that's how I calibrated the first go through. I was hoping to let it do its auto color thingy again to get it "perfect" since I'm no longer using the CSY clone.

[Ed Oscuro]

It could be that the link I posted was wrong or misleading - after all chroma / phase is an alternate way of describing a YUV type system.

Within RGB, though, there's no such controls. All you have with RGB is saturation, contrast, and brightness, whichever the system allows you to control. I don't think Trinitrons allow color balance between channels, except in the service menu, so if you need to shift that your system needs service or you need to look into whether you have any color pots on your equipment.

[nissling]

Armageddon is over. I picked up my Sony HDM-3830E and survived.

Just over 180 kilograms (400lbs), this baby is huge. The Blu-Ray case is only for size refence.



And a horse trailer is needed for transport. We were four guys lifting it, as the table it's on was just slightly too wide for their entrance door. You could smell sweat throughout the entire house. Picture was taken just when we got it in the trailer and we hitched it A LOT.



But now it's here. What a beauty.

[BazookaBen]

I picked up my Sony HDM-3830E

Neat, looks pretty old, can it do anything higher than 480i?

[kamiboy]

It is a wide screen tube though, so it cannot be that old. I've never heard of that model though. Not a PVM or BVM, but HDM.

I suspect it is an HD capable model.

[Ed Oscuro]

I wish I had a good user manual or detailed information to share, but I did figure out a few things.

I hope it still has a good picture! To give an idea how old this thing is, look at Broadcaststore's embarrassingly old looking B&W image here. Probably scanned from a really old brochure.

But yeah, it's 16:9, so of course it does more than 480i. It's branded HDVS - Sony's original line of support equipment for the initial push into (originally analog, not digital) HD, released originally in April 1984, which gives you the earliest possible date. The IEEE mentions the exact model name in August 1991. I don't know the end date, though - in 1998 this brochure advertises a "digital HDVS" version of the monitor in a 28" size. Hopefully it "just works" regardless of "analog" or "digital" sources. I found a reference here to somebody running 1920x1024 resolution video on it the 3830, so it does look like it should be roughly close to "modern" HDTV.

I would try running a lower resolution HDTV signal (i.e., 720p) before 1080p, if you attempt it, and be ready to turn it off quickly.

tbh, I think running 480i on such a beauty is a horrible waste.

[nissling]

can it do anything higher than 480i?

It does 480p, 576p and 1080i. Currently there are some convergence issues whenever you show anything 480p but if you give it a 1080i signal it really shines. Colors are amazing and picture is very sharp. Cannot see any aperture grill at all. Tried to get two screenshots of it but there's no way it can do any justice. Capturing a 15KHz monitor or a plasma/LCD set is a piece of cake in contrast to this.

It's Blade Runner on Blu-Ray, running in 1080i.

[Ed Oscuro]

Awesome. Have you tested anything beyond the four mentioned, and did you find any official specs?

tbh, this is the way Blade Runner was meant to be seen. This time I'll forgive interlacing

[nissling]

Did try out 720p and 576i, neither worked no matter what settings. Cannot find any official specs.

Interlacing is nearly invisible on this monitor. The picture is basically so sharp and stable that it can barely be seen. Will try out an Xbox 360 and my Playstation 3 someday.

[BazookaBen]

Interlacing doesn't really matter when you're watching 24fps movies. You're still getting as much detail as on a 1080p screen. Same with 30fps games. The only time you need progressive scan is for 60fps games. So Wipeout HD won't look as sharp in motion.

[Fudoh]

Interlacing doesn't really matter when you're watching 24fps movies.

Hoho Mister. That's not right at all, there's a telecine applied to the 24 progressive frames, turning them into 60 interlaced fields. Top and bottom are alternated and so the's cadence (3:2:3:2:3:2...)

Code: Select all

T1 T1 T2 T3 T4 ...
B1 B2 B3 B3 B4 ...

You can see that every 3rd frame you get a field mismatch. The inverse telecine is what Yves Faroudja got a handful of awards for.

[BazookaBen]

I wasn't comparing 60hz interlaced to 24hz progressive, I'm comparing 60hz interlaced to 60hz progressive. Either way, you have 2:3 pulldown, the only difference is that the 3rd field is only a half frame on interlaced displays.

Either way, your eyes see all of the available information from the original film frame.

[Einzelherz]

It could be that the link I posted was wrong or misleading - after all chroma / phase is an alternate way of describing a YUV type system.

Within RGB, though, there's no such controls. All you have with RGB is saturation, contrast, and brightness, whichever the system allows you to control. I don't think Trinitrons allow color balance between channels, except in the service menu, so if you need to shift that your system needs service or you need to look into whether you have any color pots on your equipment.

I was under the impression that the auto color thing used the SMPTE bars to calibrate the screen. Am I wrong? It worked that way with component where using blue only looked near perfect.

[Fudoh]

I wasn't comparing 60hz interlaced to 24hz progressive, I'm comparing 60hz interlaced to 60hz progressive. Either way, you have 2:3 pulldown, the only difference is that the 3rd field is only a half frame on interlaced displays.

If you watch a BD on a real 1080i60 display you get the very same combing artefacts during motion you get on classic NTSC and PAL CRTs when playing a NTSC DVD. Of course it's not as visible as on a SD display due to the scanline size, but it's there.

[BazookaBen]

If you watch a BD on a real 1080i60 display you get the very same combing artefacts during motion you get on classic NTSC and PAL CRTs when playing a NTSC DVD. Of course it's not as visible as on a SD display due to the scanline size, but it's there.

You get artifacts for sub-30fps material on a 60hz progressive display too, in the form of a double image. On an interlaced display the "doubled" image is in the combing pattern you describe, but in the end you're still getting visual noise from doubled and tripled frames.

I've realized this since I've started to play 30fps games on my PVM in 480i instead of 480p on my Trinitron PC CRT. My PVM is a little better in the brightness and color department so I've started to use it to play stuff like Xenoblade, FF12, Pikmin 2, etc. For 60fps stuff like F-Zero GX and Metroid Prime, I stick with the PC CRT.

[Fudoh]

You get artifacts for sub-30fps material on a 60hz progressive display too, in the form of a double image.

But for movies you always opt for straight cadences. 1:1, 2:2, 3:3, 4:4. Your choice. You cannot do that on an interlaced CRT that just syncs to standard broadcast timings.

[BazookaBen]

But for movies you always opt for straight cadences. 1:1, 2:2, 3:3, 4:4. Your choice. You cannot do that on an interlaced CRT that just syncs to standard broadcast timings.

Yeah, I was speaking more to TV's that are always stuck at 60hz, interlaced or progressive. I guess most flat-panel TV's are 24hz compatible these days?

I guess one thing nissling could try is 1080i72 from a PC via a custom resolution in CRU. That would give you the straight cadence, though highly unlikely for his tube to support.

[nissling]

Don't think this monitor is compatible but maybe I'll give it a shot whenever I get the time. Will play around with it for a while today and see what I can do in order to fix the convergence for 480p signals. All the convergence and geometry controls are available on the control panel so it's very flexible. Guess Sony thought that no one would want to unscrew this beast. Tried out 576p briefly and it looked all right however.

Also been thinking about which year this may have been produced. Considering it having the old Trinitron logo, it should most definitely be from an early generation of HD monitors.

[nissling]

Now I've played around with it some more. It seems to have some issues with 576p and 1080/50i. The later doesn't seem to work at all and with 576p the picture is shifted down. Have tried to find a solution but nothing really gets rid of the problem so far. Convergence is rather simple to adjust on this monitor, but what works in 1080/60i doesn't look good at all in 480p and vice versa. In other words I wouldn't recommend having multiple resolutions on this monitor.

But when you've got a 1080/60i source, how does it look? Like I said earlier, absolutely fantastic. It has a certain modern feeling, it's what we've all been wanting to get on our current displays. With Blu-Rays, results are near flawless. I've never seen anything like it. If you're in Stockholm sometime and want to see what it looks like, you're very welcome to drop by. For those of you who cannot, here are some captures that may interest you.

[sixbynine]

Groundhog day with japanese subtitles?

These really look awesome. How’s 240p? I’m finally picking up my A32 next month, can’t wait. I’m also really glad it’s only 100kg, not 180.

[nissling]

The Japanese edition of Groundhog Day is near perfect. Highly recommended for reference viewing.
http://caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleiche/m ... 01#auswahl

Haven't tried 240p. I think it only takes 480p, 576p and 1080i but I'm not sure. The A32 seems like a very nice monitor. Let us know what you think about it.

[Xyga]

Wow, what a beast ! *envy* <3

[Ed Oscuro]

On the Xbox 360 / PS3 front, it'd be interesting to know what will happen with a game running at 30fps. I'd hope it would show up as like 1080/30p, but it might not. (Is there any chance of the frames not matching up, i.e. T1 - B2 / T2 - B3 / T3 - B4 using a notation like in Fudoh's pulldown example?)

[andy251203]

Sony's HDM line of HDVS monitors came out at the very early stages of HDTV. Remember that 1080i was the only HD standard at first. 720p did not exist when that monitor was new. There are also HDM monitors that look exactly like the common BVM-20F1* and use the same 20" tube, with the difference being that it only supports the HDVS system (1080i). Once the BVM-D series of multiformat monitors was released, the HDM line was obsolete.

[BazookaBen]

On the Xbox 360 / PS3 front, it'd be interesting to know what will happen with a game running at 30fps. I'd hope it would show up as like 1080/30p, but it might not. (Is there any chance of the frames not matching up, i.e. T1 - B2 / T2 - B3 / T3 - B4 using a notation like in Fudoh's pulldown example?)

All NTSC consoles have always been 60hz. So on a progressive scan display, it just shows each frame twice. On an interlaced display, it shows each frame once, over the course of two refreshes.

I think the only scenario you could get 30hz progressive is on a PC and compatible TFT monitor. Most G-sync and Freesync monitors can go as low as 30hz.

[andy251203]

Another fun fact: Hi-Ten Bomberman, the unreleased Hi-Def Bomberman game used a Sony HDM monitor for display all the way back in 1993. You can see pictures here: http://randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com/bomb/arc-hiten/

[Xyga]

Yeah the story of the 'hi-ten bomberman display' is famous but i've heard different versions.
Wasn't it an early plasma with some bastard resolution ?

[Fudoh]

On the snapshot at the very bottom, that's certainly a Sony HDM CRT. The ones above it show a CRT projection TV - both were most certainly running in 1080i. This was too early for Plasma.

[Ed Oscuro]

@ Ben: Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, and perhaps my example wasn't well thought out. Trying again, I think this should make sense:

Code: Select all

T1 T2 T3 T4 T5
B1 B2 B3 B4 B5

For 1080i60 output, T1, B1, T2, and B2 display two frames, and within most of a 1/30 second window we'd just see one rendered frame. However, between B0 and T1, and between B2 and T3, there will be a period where half of the fields will show the "old" frame, and half will be showing the "new" frame. I don't expect this would be unique to the display on discussion.

Come to think of it, running at 30fps isn't essential to this example either - 60fps should show any possible effect even more strongly.

Mainly, I just want to see if there's any unusual behaviors with this monitor, since its internals apparently predate the standardization of HD. It is interesting to think that 1080i was one of the earlier standards, since it's supported, with 720p coming later.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, as impressive as this monitor is its hardware apparently only needs to push 540 (or so) lines in every scan, which is considerably less than 720p, let alone 1080p. Those other scan rates might require more power, and should require significantly higher internal voltages.