[mythtv-users] High end, state of the art Myth Frontend

[Michael T. Dean]

On 09/18/2013 01:00 PM, Andre Newman wrote:
> On 18 Sep 2013, at 16:57, Eric Sharkey wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 6:12 AM, Andre Newman wrote:
>>> What is the current best de-interlacer for high motion (sports)
>> I'd have to say it's picking up a $5 wrench and repeatedly hitting
>> whoever it was decided it should be interlaced in the first place.
> I'm doing my best with my clients but it's really joe public who mucked things up by mumbling 1080 is bigger than 720 so mus' be better!?
>
> There were people at my previous motor sports employer who said that 1080i looked better because it looked more like SD when panned, 720p looked too clean!?!
>
> There are many many people in Television standards bodies who have said quietly into their beer that 1080i was a big mistake. 720p for broadcast, 1080p for bluray would have been great and lovely.
>

Generally, though, which is better comes down to the type of content 
being encoded.  For sports and fast-paced action, you need temporal 
resolution more than you need spatial resolution.  For slow-moving 
"talking heads" or scenery or stills, increased spatial resolution is 
more important than temporal resolution.

That said, most broadcasters (at least here in the US)--who wanted the 
most cost-efficient means of handling their content--chose to stick with 
a single format for all content, so typically chose formats to try to 
get a good compromise.  That's why it comes down to basically 720p60 and 
1080i60 (versus 1080p30 or 1080p24 or even 720p30 or 720p24) in use, today.

Now, if the broadcasters wanted to step things up, they could actually 
change formats on the fly for varying content, but I doubt we'll see 
that happening until after consumer electronics vendors get off their 
"bigger (spatial) resolution means better TV" kick (with the 4k and 8k 
UHDTV they're pushing) and realize that temporal resolution may actually 
be more important (even as a next step upgrade from "standard" HDTV).  
So in any argument about formats, temporal resolution deserves fair 
time. :)  Of course, even then, they may well choose the "720p60" of the 
time (lower than max spatial resolution and giving max temporal 
resolution) format of the day for all content (and it's likely that will 
actually be suitably high spatial and temporal resolution for any given 
video, anyway), rather than choosing different formats based on content.

Mike

(OK, some are actually using 1080i59.94 rather than 1080i60, but what's 
0.06 between friends?)