[vdr] 1:1 pixel mapping - a waste of time?
seppo.ingalsuo at iki.fi
Tue Jan 6 11:33:44 CET 2009
Jukka Vaisanen wrote:
> HDMI uses DVI signalling for the video (and audio is hidden in a
> vertical blanking time slot believe it or not) so it may seem like just
> another connector.. however in their finite wisdom the HDMI
> standardization people decided that HDMI will not support arbitrary
> resolutions, but instead only the existing (and back then, planned)
> broadcast resolutions:
HDMI interface does not limit the resolutions (TMDS link max. speed of
course does but is another matter). It's mostly the "HD Ready" and "Full
HD" television implementations that support only CEA-861-D modes for
HDTV. Nothing would prevent HDTVs to introduce other modes in EDID and
EDID extension blocks similarly as DVI computer monitors do. Though the
timings would need be defined in such way that there is space for audio.
Fortunately full HD televisions typically support 1:1 pixels over HDMI
so the limited amount of modes is not that bad. GFX cards will scale
other resolutions such as 800x600 and 1024x768 VESA modes into the
native panel resolution.
My 2c: I'm watching also a HD ready television from 2005 and despite of
2x scaling the difference with DVB PAL content is minimal to my other
full HD television with only one scaling operation. The quality of the
SDTV DVB-T/S content is IMHO the bottleneck instead of video scalers.
Also non 1:1 pixels Gnome desktop is usable. Of course 1 pixel wide too
small fonts must be avoided.
More information about the vdr