For a long time, I have wondered if anyone else would see things my way. I'm not speaking of anything profound or world changing, just displays; televisions and monitors. First of all, no matter how good the technique is that they use, interpolation will just not give the best image quality. All of today's technologies (LCD, plasma, DLP) use discreet pixels that, unlike those of a CRT, do not take well to any resolution other than their native. As a result, standard 480 television/DVD do not look their best on an HDTV. Well, a little quick math, and you see that none of the common resolutions adapt well to displays but for another. Bottom line: 1080p, in all its glory, just isn't good enough! A little more math, though, shows you that the first time the stars align for a videophile is at 2160p or Quad HD as some have called it (3840x2160).
While it will be quite some time (if ever) before any content is available at that mouth-watering resolution, there's really no need as ever bit of video you already have access to will look its absolute best at that size with pixel doubling (tripling, etc.). It just happens that 2160 is exactly twice 1080 and three times 720. While it's awkwardly 4.5 times 480, 3840 is exactly five times 640 and who needs the top and bottom 5% of the screen? Do you really miss the news ticker at the bottom? Besides, if you are watching a movie it's just black bars anyway so it's perfect.
All of this will get rid of the spatial interpolation that degrades quality from our entertainment, but what about the temporal interpolation schemes to which we subject our content, for example 3:2 pulldown and the like. The same problem comes up where we are trying to squeeze two different numbers into the same space: most high-quality content is recorded at the cinematic standard of 24 frames per second and television broadcasts and the sets that display them are designed to display 30 frames per second. Displaying these on the same set degrades one or the other (almost always at the expense of movies since the sets are designed for broadcast even though almost everyone would rather have the higher quality on their premium content).
Again, math to the rescue! You had to see that coming. A coincidence of numerology would have it that 120Hz is a perfect multiple of both these numbers. By simply sending the same image for 4 or 5 frames we eliminate complex schemes like 3:2 pulldown that really only do a good job of faking it. Fortunately, others really are thinking like me for a change (God help them) and such products are starting to make their way to market. What I'd like to see is both in the same product and you would have the ultimate viewing experience. We just need to wait a little while for a couple more revisions of the HDMI spec to carry all that data which would allow the screen to be used at its full resolution on a PC…
…but that's just my opinion.
