Hi,
I just received my new Panasonic PT-47wx51 Wide Screen HDTV . The picture looks very good. I'm using a sony dvd player about a year old. Would there be much or any difference if I buy a "Progressive Scan" dvd player?? How many lines of resolution am I getting now and what would the "Progressive Scan" dvd give me???
Any help would be appreciated.

Werner

What is progressive scan?

(Quote from the Net)
You may think that the video you see on TV is simply flashing up images one frame at a time the way a film projector does, but that isn't the case at all. Inside your TV, an electron "gun" fires a beam that lights up a phosphorous coating behind the screen. Rather than painting an image by scanning from top to bottom in one pass, ordinary television sets skip every other line, first drawing in the odd-numbered lines, then going back to the top and scanning the even-numbered lines. This interlaced scanning method is great for broadcasting TV signals because it requires less bandwidth to send picture information. However, between that interlaced image and the filtering that's needed to reduce flicker, the picture resolution is reduced. In contrast, computer monitors and digital television sets can scan the whole screen in one pass. As a rule, such progressive-scan displays flicker less, and the edges, especially those of slow-moving objects, appear more solid and smooth. A progressive-scan DVD player takes advantage of this by sending one full frame of video information at a time rather than splitting the frame into two fields (odd lines first, then even).

Many, Many people are finding the difference in the switch to progressive scan is very subtle, but with prices being so low you can get some nice players for not alot of money. Find the DVD player shootout on the web to get reviews of the latest players and the drawbacks each might have

It may be a personal thing, but I found the biggest difference (and not that big anyway) was the color saturation; much brighter and vivid with the progressive player; but again, maybe I told myself that to justify the expense of upgrading even though my Sony was probably good enough.