Native on or off ???

It really depends on what has a better 'scaler,' the DirecTV receiver or your TV.
In most cases, "native" only helps you if you have an (expensive) high end HDTV scaler somewhere in your setup. These high end scalers do the best job of scaling (converting) between 480, 720, and 1080.

Additionally, sets like the Sony big screens have lots of settigs you can tweak on the scaler for sharpness and blending. If you prefer to use these settings, you'll want to use the scaler in the TV.

Finally, you can set some TVs to treat 480 4:3 signals differently from HD signals (such as how it zooms or letterboxes the image.) If you want to use the TV's auto settings for this situation, native allows you to do this.

But using Native mode will cause the biggest lag when changing channels since your TV has to re-sync to the channel change every time.

The HR20 has a pretty good scaler in my opinion. So it's best to set your output to the TV's native resolution and turn native mode off. Let the reciever/DVR handle the scaling.

General rule of practice, native is really only there for the few that need it.

The exception is if you watch a lot of ESPN-HD and want to keep 720p from being interlaced.
My TV supports 1080p. So if I feed it a 720p image, it'll scale it to 1080p and never interlace it.
If I had the HR20 set to 1080i, it would interlace 720p to 1080i, then I'd get 1080i on my TV instead of 720p scaled to 1080p.

I don't like the channel change lag for 90% of the time, so I just have my 'format' button set to 720 + 1080 and use it to switch between them for the rare cases I need it.

thekochs said:

Tanwnee,

Since your TV is 46" and is true 1920x1080 native rez and can handle 1080P set Native to OFF....go into HR20 Config and make sure Aspect is set to 16:9.....then go into Resolution support and uncheck all except 720P.

Click to expand...

Why do you suggest that he uncheck all except 720p when his TV is 1080? I don't get it!

I'm one here that does not understand the NATIVE setting "thing"

I've read all the post in this thread and a similar thread that I started a few days ago.

I still can't for the life of me figure out if I'm better off with Native set to ON or OFF. I also have no idea whether or not to check or uncheck 480i / 480p / 720p / 1080.

I have a Samsung 56" DLP HLS5687 TV.

I tried it with NATIVE on and off (both ways) and with all res. checked and with all unchecked except 1080. As far as I can tell I notice no difference.

Right now I have it set with NATIVE on and only 1080 checked.

Since I can't figure this out myself please advice me as to what setting would be best for my HR20 / TV combination.

I must be missing something , I'm usually not this confused

Tiger Tony said:

Why do you suggest that he uncheck all except 720p when his TV is 1080? I don't get it!

I'm one here that does not understand the NATIVE setting "thing"

I've read all the post in this thread and a similar thread that I started a few days ago.

I still can't for the life of me figure out if I'm better off with Native set to ON or OFF. I also have no idea whether or not to check or uncheck 480i / 480p / 720p / 1080.

I have a Samsung 56" DLP HLS5687 TV.

I tried it with NATIVE on and off (both ways) and with all res. checked and with all unchecked except 1080. As far as I can tell I notice no difference.

Right now I have it set with NATIVE on and only 1080 checked.

Since I can't figure this out myself please advice me as to what setting would be best for my HR20 / TV combination.

I must be missing something , I'm usually not this confused

Click to expand...

It is confusing....I'm not including alot of other data that would really confuse. So, simply put....you have a large TV 56". Thus, your eye will be more sensitive to artifacts than to the difference/addition of a few extra lines/pixels. So, the object for those with large and new TVs (I have Sony PJ that throws to a 110" screen) is to show a source that has not been mucked with too much. The reality is 1080i sounds better except for that darned "i"...Interlaced. This means in reality the broadcasters are actually sending a 1440x540 image and this image is being put/mapped (even scaled...1440 to 1920 horizontally..and yes 540 to 1080 vertically) up on the screen on every odd line...the next 1440x540 image is being put up on every even line....leaving the first odd lines alone....then this repeats. Although 1080i is a native 1920x1080 resolution by definition this interlacing effect is bad, especially on big screens and with alot of motion. Also, as you can see the 1080i 1920x1080 rez is really truly not a 1920x1080 image broadcast.

So, first there is never one perfect setting....but since most of the folks on the Forum want a set-and-forget answer mine is 720P with OFF. The reason is that the 720P image is "progressive"...no interlacing. The image size is 1280x720. Yes, your TV will scale this 1280x720 image to 1920x1080 rez of the 56" TV but this is far better than the effects of interlaced 1080i. So, if you set Native to OFF and set only the 720P resolution on HR20 then the HR20 will either passthrough a native 720P image or convert others to 720P. You will not have the lag during channel changes to different native formats....you will not see any interlacing artifacts...you will not see artifacts induced by motion (aka: sports, movie explosions, etc.) on the screen.

So, there is little drawback on this. It's 90% the best setting and covers you the most. Again, at the end of the day it is what you are happy with....beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Having a 56" HDTV with HD source there is no real bad setting....except maybe 480i and only watching SD channels.

Just my two cents.

Good link....look at the diagram at bottom of page under Resoluton & Aspect Ratio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDV

The real question is not native on or off. It is what is a better scaler, your TV or your DVR? There are going to be shows that are not the native resolution of your TV. For example my TV's native resolution is 1280x720 (720p) it can accept 1080i, but it scales it down to 720p. Similar thing with SD content. It scales up from 480i/p to 720p. If you turn native off and set the format to your TVs native resolution, then your DVR is going to do the scaling. If you turn native on, then your TV will do the scaling.

I did a test with my setup to see what scaled the picture better. In my case, setting the DVR to native on gave me a slightly better picture than native off. But I decided to set it to native off. Even though native on had a better picture, every time the resolution changed, (like switching between channels not in the same resolution) my TV would blink for a second or so while adjusting to the change. I found this blinking annoying, so I put the DVR's native setting to on and put the format to 720p.