First, what a great discussion on the difference between coax and optical cables. The information has been outstanding. It certainly saved me money. I hope it helped others as well.

Next question, what is the down conversion thing that causes problems on Toshiba's 2109, 3109?

I have 3109 and noticed on Eraser the plants or anything with crisp lines in the back ground were not detailed. The fore ground was crisp.

I had a Panasonic a120 which had pixelization problems (it really puked sometimes). Then the Sony 550D which demonstrated lip synch problems (Sony admitted to problem and is trying to fix it). The JVC 501 which had problems with chapter and level changes (would pause for a moment while refocusing). I now have the 3109.

The 3109 has been great until I noticed the back ground when watching Eraser last night. Audio Review's web site talkes about "down conversion" being the problem. Well what is it, how does it effect the picture?

Jim Middleton
middleton@starlink.com

"Down conversion" happens when you watch a 16:9 enhanced movie on a 4:3 (standard) TV set.

A 16:9 (or "anamorphic") movie has extra vertical resolution over a standard movie. What happens is the picture in an enhanced widescreen movie is vertically taller than a normal movie. However if you watch the movie "raw" people will be skinny; everything is out of proportion. A widescreen 16:9 TV will take that "taller" picture and squish it back to the proper dimentions, while still keeping all lines of resolution.

When you watch one of these movies (Columbia Tristar, Warner & New Line are almost always so enhanced) on a regular player, it must do the downconversion, or "squishing" before passing the signal to the TV set. However since NTSC only has so many lines of resolution, some information must be removed.

The traditional method is to simply remove every fourth line (a DVD movie has 480 lines of resolution). Typically this will keep the same image sharpness, however you will notice "aliasing" or "jaggies" - that's where horizontal lines on an angle appear stepped or uneven. If the movie is poorly mastered to begin with this becomes a real annoyance.

The alternate method, used only by Sony I believe, is to take those four lines of information and create three new lines. This solves the aliasing problem, however produces a picture can appear somewhat softer. I own a Sony S500D, and I can safely say this is not a problem on a 27" TV. This picture on a friend's 36" Wega & S7700 player is still phenominal.

Now, I do believe Toshiba uses the first method described, of removing a line... thus softness shouldn't be a problem. Are you sure you aren't just noticing an "artistic out-of-focus" effect? Not owning a Toshiba player or being able to view this problem makes it very difficult to diagnose.

Thanks,

I don't know for sure if the back ground is suppose to be out of focus or not, as in "artistic effect". I'm waiting for Twister to try the scene with the checkered pattern jacket to see if I can see what the effect is.

I did play the scene in Eraser in wide screen version as well as the pan and scan version. It made the wavy lines with Wide Screen too. Now that I think about it, I didn't change the configuration for the DVD so it was set to being connected to a 4:3 TV. I guess I could mess with that, play the scene and see what happens.