Sony SXRD, HDTV and 1080

As you may have read on my brother's blog, he recently purchased a 50" Sony SXRD (KDS-R50XBR1) rear projection TV (RPTV). This is the same exact make and model of HDTV that I purchased in March and received delivery of last Thursday.

This TV is one of the few true 1080 capable sets available on the market today. What does this mean? It means that the TV has an actual (native) resolution of 1920x1080. What other TVs currently have this resolution? Most CRT based units have it, although unlike the Sony, they cannot typically display 720p (1280x720) signals. JVC and perhaps a few others make some 1080 D-ILA (both SXRD and D-ILA are different versions of Liquid Crystal on Silicon or LCoS technology) displays and there are a few direct view LCD displays that are 1080. There are also a few 1080 native plasma displays, but they are very expensive and will run you about $10k for similar size TV as the 50" Sony SXRD that costs $3000 to $3500.

What about DLP sets? Sorry to anyone who's recently purchased one of the so-called 1080 DLP sets, but there are currently NO DLP RPTVs that I am aware of that are true native 1080 displays. All of the DLP displays that market themselves at 1080 are in fact using a 1280x720 DLP element that uses a technique called "wobulation" to approximate the effect of 1080p, but they do so horribly. The current crop of DLP displays are just not worth buying. They introduce a lot of color and motion artifacts and just aren't as sharp as the LCoS units.

So what does all this talk of 1080 mean exactly? It means that on average, a true 1080 display will produce higher resolution images, that is, images that are sharper and crisper than a 720 display.

Problem is the market is very confusing right now as most sets that are 720 are not well marked as such. It does not behoove the manufacturers to announce to the world that most of their sets are not as good as the few and proud sets that are true 1080. Most of the retailers don't push this info to the front as they typically want to push what they can get the largest margins on as well as what they have too much of.

In other words, it is only really in the interest of the buyer whether or not a TV is truly 1080 and many of consumers don't care either as they have other factors that are more important to them, such as size of the TV combined with price, or perhaps they want a big flat screen to hang on a wall, but don't want to pay what it costs to get a 50 or 60" flat screen that is 1080.

Along with that is the problem of 1080P or 1080I (the P stands for progressive and the I stands for interlaced). This is where things get even more confusing. Fret not as there are basically no current sources for 1080P signals other than a computer. Because of bandwidth concerns, no one broadcasts HDTV in 1080P 30 frames per second format, which currently is the highest FPS 1080P format available. Since this is for all intents and concerns equal to 1080I which is broadcast at 60 fields or half frames per second (which is equal to 30 frames per second), whether a TV does 1080P or 1080I is of little significance really.

I bring up that point though, as most of the current crop of native 1080 displays, except for perhaps the Westinghouse LCD panels, cannot accept a 1080P signal. What they do instead is take a 1080I signal and "deinterlace" it into a 1080P signal.

There's been much talk about whether 720P or 1080I is the better format and this basically centers around the fact that content can be output in 720P at 60 frames per second, which is twice the frame rate of 1080I or even 1080P, so you in effect get similar amounts of pixels per second. This is why 720P is used a lot for sports programming, where frame rate is more important that overall resolution. However, while a native 1080P display can do 720P signals just fine by upscaling it, a 720P display cannot do a 1080I signal very well as it has to downscale it thus losing the extra resolution information.

What's maddening to me is that companies are still bringing to market newer 720P displays when they should be focusing on 1080P displays. This is where Sony gets it. They are basically cutting production of their plasma displays and will be focusing primarily on the SXRD technology for their future products. In fact the next generation of SXRD displays will be able to accept a 1080P signal, if that's important to you for future use.

I know that Mitsubishi and others are slated to come out with different technologies for their DLP sets, but until they start using true native 1080 chips, move to a 3 chip design and get rid of the color wheel, I personally think that DLP technology is a non-starter. Plasma has proven too expensive to really be viable. Organic LEDs or OLEDs have been talked about as a promising display technology, but I haven't heard much about planned sets using OLEDs.

The only other technology that I'm aware of that shows promise is SEDs. SED technology is being developed by Toshiba and Canon jointly and is supposed to start shipping in early 2008. SED is sort of like combining an LCD panel with a CRT display. Instead of one large tube that a CRT has, each pixel in an LCD panel is replaced with what are in effect tiny CRTs. Each pixel (actually each sub pixel of red, green and blue) has its own electron emitter and phosphor. This design gives you the advantages of LCD or Plasma (very thin TV, fixed geometry and a naturally progressive scan display) with the advantages of CRT (contrast or black-levels, color fidelity and brightness) while having lower power requirements than pretty much any other technology. Will just have to wait and see if it lives up to the promise or not and how expensive it is released at.

Currently though, for large screens, LCoS is it and Sony's version in SXRD is the leader. For smaller screens, direct view LCD is pretty much the only option for those looking for a 1080P display.

My advice would be to get a 1080P display if you are buying now. If you can't afford one, wait until they are affordable and get one as you won't do yourself any favors by buying an already obsolete product. Be very wary of claims that a display is 1080 capable. Just because it accepts a 1080I signal doesn't mean that it is a true native 1080 display. As I have noted above, very few displays have in fact true native 1920x1080 resolution, which is required to be a true 1080 display.

If a salesperson tries to sell you a non-1080 display (DLP for instance!) when you specifically ASK for a 1080 display, smile and walk away. They either didn't do their research or they don't care and just want to sell you something, in either case they don't deserve your sale.

Lastly, if one of your requirements is the ability to hook up a PC and display from the PC at 1920x1080, the current Sony SXRD is not for you. The max resolution signal it will accept from a PC is 1280x1024. Good enough for 720P, but not good enough for 1080.

You can get more good info on HD and 1080i at the HD1080i blog as well as on the Wikipedia site.

Here's a link to a good roundup of reviews of the Sony SXRD sets over on htdude.com.