|
Field Report of August 4, 1999 by Craig Birkaimer, PCube
On a whim I decided to visit the new Best Buy here in Gainesville to talk with the staff and find out how they and customers are reacting to DTV here in Gainesville since the new store opened on June 25th. I was also curious to see if they had any new DTV gear; I was pleasantly surprised by what I found and have a few bits of news to pass along.
When I walked into the TV department the Panasonic 55" HDTV display had been moved...it is now centered under a 16:9 video wall made up >from 12 4:3 cubes arranged in a 4:3 array. The actual size of the video wall appears to be about 12' x 9'. Below the video wall is an enclosed area where the HDTV server and gear to run the video wall are hidden.
To the left of the Panasonic RP-HDTV display is a large 4:3 NTSC rear projection display..probably about 50" diagonal. To the right was the surprise...a 32" 4:3 DTV ready CRT display at the amazingly low price of only $1699. For this you get:SDTV-Compatible (480i/480p) with optional DTV Receiver-Decoder Built-in Progressive Scan Doubler 2-Tuner Picture-in-Picture Fine-Pitch SuperFlat System Picture Tube 3D Y/C Comb Filter 800 Lines of Horizontal Resolution Capability (NTSC) Artificial Intelligence Picture Control Velocity Modulated Scan Horizontal & Vertical Edge Correction
SPATIALIZER® Surround Sound
Bass/Treble/Balance
Twin Dome Sound System
15W Subwoofer
The Director Lighted Home Theater Remote with Joystick
Roller Guide Menu System
Component Video Input (Y, PR, PB)
4 sets of A/V Inputs (3 rear/1front)
2 S-Video Inputs
Center Channel Audio Input
Fixed & Variable Audio Output Jacks
A/V Program Out Jacks
Clock, Sleep and 2 On/Off Timers
Parental Guidance Control
http://www.prodcat.panasonic.com/shop/product.asp?sku=CT-32XF55
The same "standard edition" Best Buy HDTV trailer was being displayed on the Video Wall, the 55" set (presumably scanned as 1080i) and on the 32" set in letterbox.
Upon closer examination and a discussion with a very pleasant and inquisitive young saleslady, I determined that the hard disk-based server was outputting an 8VSB feed to a Panasonic DTV decoder. The analog component outputs were feeding the 55" RP set through some big hunk'n molded coax cables. The feed to the decoder box was via a high quality RF coax as well...looked like the same Belden cable used for the feed from a DBS dish.
It was not possible to determine how the videowall was being fed...I suspect it was direct from the server. The 32" CRT display was being fed via an S-video input and line doubled internally for 480P display.
Observations:
The 55 inch set appeared a bit soft, but not quite as soft as the NTSC display (which was being fed a different source showing film-based content. There was no visible line structure on any of the DTV displays, in contrast to the NTSC display where the line structure was easy to see. The video wall appeared soft as well, but to be fair, I was standing about 10 feet from all of the displays. The letterboxed presentation on the 480P display was by far the sharpest, which the salesperson noted; But she also noted correctly that part of the HDTV experience is a big screen, and the 55" display did offer a completely different psychovisual effect, even when I moved to three picture heights for both displays.
All of the displays looked pretty good on film-based source, although it was quite easy to see quantization noise on the videowall; the artifacts were minimal on the 55" display. Then the server started showing football and hockey courtesy of WRAL and things started going down hill. On HDTV camera source, the picture on the video wall was falling apart...you could see every DCT block in the picture (again) I was well inside three picture heights. On the 55" display the artifacts were less objectionable, but clearly evident.
On the 32" display the artifacts were of a completely different nature. The MPEG coding artifacts were mostly buried; this was more than compensated for by the vertical aliasing artifacts, apparently related to the de-interlacing process. The football scenes were not too bad...they were generally soft. But the hockey was terrible as all the horizontal lines around the arena aliased badly.
The first question from the salesperson, after I told her that I'm in the DTV business, was: "When will we have DTV broadcasts in Gainesville. I explained that it could be awhile, but that they would be able to start selling HDTV DSS receivers next month. She was not aware of any sales of DTV receivers at this store, but sales of DVD players are booming!
She also had some comments about the HDTV server. Apparently it is not too reliable; she indicated that the hard disk kept dying because it is run continuously. She thought that it was part of the Panasonic set-up, but I told her it was probably a Sencore server. Apparently it has failed more than once, and the store has only been open a little over a month. It should be interesting to see what the MTBF is for the hard disks in the first generation of set-top boxes...
When I got home I looked up the specs on the 32 inch set on the Panasonic site. Apparently there are two versions priced at $1,699 and $1,799. The site also lists a 36" set for $2,599.
It is encouraging to see the price of these SDTV compatible displays coming down, even as they begin to arrive in the stores.
Craig Birkmaier
Pcube Labs
|
