[nneptune]

As far as I can tell, the HD picture looks great in both.
The installer told me that a 1080i is an interlaced picture, while the 720 setting is not.
Is there an advantage to one over the other? What delivers best overall PQ for your setup?
I've got a SONY BRAVIA 40" XBR(R) LCD TV KDL-V40XBR1
I'll google, since, of course, I misplaced the manual.

 

[RJC49]

As far as I can tell, the HD picture looks great in both.
The installer told me that a 1080i is an interlaced picture, while the 720 setting is not.
Is there an advantage to one over the other? What delivers best overall PQ for your setup?
I've got a SONY BRAVIA 40" XBR(R) LCD TV KDL-V40XBR1
I'll google, since, of course, I misplaced the manual.

Don't worry about it, they both are great. However, you could set it acccording to your TV spec. ie, Samsung Dlp is 720p, check your TV manual if you haven't misplaced that too.

 

[Kirkman]

I believe I can answer this. Most HD plasmas and LCD screens have a pixel line count that is closer to 720 lines so you will not see a difference between 720P and 1080i....However if you had the latest Pioneer Plasma or any monitor that has 1080 pixel lines you would see a major difference, but when you switch to a 480i signal with a 1080 pixel monitor the picture will be awful. This is why the manufacters switched to 720 lines. It is able to show a decent 480i and a very nice 720 or 1080 picture. Hope is explains picture quality with regards to detail.

 

[paulman182]

If you put a 1080i signal into a 720p TV, the TV does the conversion.

If you set the HR20 output to 720p while watching a 1080i channel and send it to the TV, then obviously the HR20 is doing the conversion.

In the case of my 720p TV, channels that start out at 1080i show more detail if I send them to the TV at 1080i and let the TV do the conversion. Everyone needs to try it for themselves, perhaps on a still image. I counted the wrinkles in Tom Hank's forehead in "Apollo 13" for my test, and I saw more wrinkles, more clearly, at 1080i.

I have not tried a 720p channel with the HR20 set to 1080i. This would be a conversion in each box and you would think that wouldn't be good, but I'm a "try it and see what happens" type.

I don't leave it on Native because it changes channels too slowly to suit the wife.

 

[DanoP]

If you put a 1080i signal into a 720p TV, the TV does the conversion.

If you set the HR20 output to 720p while watching a 1080i channel and send it to the TV, then obviously the HR20 is doing the conversion.

In the case of my 720p TV, channels that start out at 1080i show more detail if I send them to the TV at 1080i and let the TV do the conversion. Everyone needs to try it for themselves, perhaps on a still image. I counted the wrinkles in Tom Hank's forehead in "Apollo 13" for my test, and I saw more wrinkles, more clearly, at 1080i.

I have not tried a 720p channel with the HR20 set to 1080i. This would be a conversion in each box and you would think that wouldn't be good, but I'm a "try it and see what happens" type.

I don't leave it on Native because it changes channels too slowly to suit the wife.

vip622 doesn't have native.

 

[Mathew]

Many good points in this thread.

I'd like to add that the following -

I've recently learned that the scaler built into the display device may not be as good as the scaler in the ViP622 -- or it may be better - or about equal.

In my setup my projector is native 720p. So I did a test and I sent 720p to the projector (allowing the dvr to handle scaling), then I switched to 1080i (allowing the projector to handle scaling).

As both looked the same to me I figured I'd let the dvr handle scaling and set the ViP622 back to 720p. I figured I'd rather give my projector a break and let the dvr do all the work.

 

[gregleg]

The scalar in my TV (Sony 50WE610) seems to be quite a bit better than the one in the 622. So ideally, what I'd WANT to set the 622 to is "passthrough". However, since the 622 doesn't do that (my #1 feature request!), I go with the setting that more channels are encoded in -- 1080.

 

[Rovingbar]

I've recently learned that the scaler built into the display device may not be as good as the scaler in the ViP622 -- or it may be better - or about equal.

Very true. I think that a big part of the problem is that the signal gets processed many times between the original recording and your display. I'd be willing to bet that the source material also affects which scaler looks better.