Question about edge enhancement (possibly stupid one)

[hidefan]

Hi everyone, I have a question I hope someone more knowledgeable can help me with. I got a new LCD HDTV about a month ago and got a new dvd player last week and just finally got around to watching some anime on it. The dvd player isn't the greatest I would assume based on price (it's a $100 upconverting Samsung), but I got it mostly because it can play R2's after being hacked. Anyway, I put in a rather old R2 DVD (Osamu Tezuka's Hidamari no Ki) just to see if the hack worked, and indeed it did, but after watching the first 5 mins of it, I noticed that the video would go from being rather clear to being really blurry, like if the camera was trying to focus itself. Of course this happens really quickly and it doesn't appear to happen during close-ups of characters, but it just could be my eyes. I wasn't sure what was wrong, so I put another disc in (Tokyo Mew Mew R2) and sure enough, the same thing was happening, but when I put the discs in my computer and viewed them, I didn't notice any of the blurriness. So my question is, is this what is known as "edge enhancement", and the reason I can clearly see it on my HDTV but not on my PC is because of the highter resolution of my HDTV (1080i)? Or is this something with the DVD player? When I bought it it was the last one and the box was banged up quite badly, so it's making me a little worried. If anyone has any thoughts, please let me know, and thanks for reading this long post /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif

[Pyocola]

No, what you're seeing is not edge enhancement. This (http://www.videophile.info/Guide_EE/Page_01.htm) is edge enhancement.

I'm not that into stand alone players and HDTVs so I could very well be wrong, but maybe it's the player/TV doing a bad job at deinterlacing the DVDs (blurring/bobbing all the problematic sections)?

[Ty]

Definitely not edge enhancement. Edge enhancement on hi-def sets, especially digital ones like your LCD, usually appear as ringing when it's severe. In other words, like there are slight white rings around the edges of objects.

What you're describing is a bit harder to nail down. Is the transition to blurriness immediate or does it gradually seem to "lose focus" as you describe? Also is the difference just a little noticable or is it dramatic? If the answer to both of those questions are the former, then I'd first suspect that the Samsung player is simply dropping out of film mode due to bad flags on the disc (or flags the Sammy isn't smart enough to handle).

[hidefan]

Pyocola and Xcalibur, first of all, thank you both for your responses /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif I was playing around with resolution settings and when I had it set to 720p the blurriness seemed to disappear completely. I'm not sure if this indicates a problem with the Samsung or not, but based on what you guys have said, I would assume so, and actually, whether this is because it was damaged by a fall or this is just how the Samsung performs, I think I'm gonna take it back and pay a little more money for an Oppo. To answer your question Xcalibur, the transition to blurriness was immediate and would get better for a sec and then go blurry again, back and forth. I'm not a huge videophile (or I should say, my eyes aren't trained as well as some) but it was easily noticable.
Anyway, once again, thanks for your help guys /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif

[Skywise]

It sounds like deinterlacing. The Oppo will also have it as well, but it'll be a bit different. You may see shimmering in parts of the picture instead.

[hidefan]

[ QUOTE ]
Skywise said:
It sounds like deinterlacing. The Oppo will also have it as well, but it'll be a bit different. You may see shimmering in parts of the picture instead.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm probably wrong, but I was under the impression that deinterlacing would only happen if I had the output set to progressive. Is this wrong? When I put them in my pc, WinDVD said that both discs were interlaced,so if I had the output set at 1080i, wouldn't there be no need for deinterlacing?

[Ty]

So you had the Samsung set to output 1080i before? Yeah, it sounds like a deinterlacing/scaling issue like Skywise is saying. Feeding the LCD set 720p is just a better choice anyway since it's closer to the set's native resolution.

[Skywise]

Deinterlacing is still done for 1080i. And as Xcalibur said, unless you have a 1080P set, stick with 720p.

[hidefan]

Ok, thanks for the info guys, I'll make sure to keep it at 720p when I get a new player (yep mine's only 1080i) /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif