CRT HDTV's incapable of progressive scan?!?

Im not certain about something so im hoping someone can answer me a few quick questions about CRT HDTV's and i want to clear something up for myself.

I know that CRT HDTV's have a native resolution of 1080i, now thats all CRT HDTV's correct me if im wrong. and that if a 720p signal is fed into it the TV always upconverts it to 1080i to match its native res.

-My question is are CRT HDTV's capable of displaying progressive scan? for example 480p or 540p or whatever, can the CRT HDTV truely display 480p/540p?. or do all progressive scan signals get upconverted to 1080 interlace?.

from what im assuming they are INCAPABLE of displaying progressive scan because of the way CRT's work and how they use scan lines and what not..but im only assuming this stuff and i want to know the facts..

-Also another question, do all signals always get "upconverted"?? how come a 720p signal doesnt get "downconverted" to 480p on a CRT HDTV for displaying??

-Also IF CRTHDTV's can display progressive scan why cant they display 720p?? everyone has said the facts state CRT HDTV's are incapable of displaying true 720p, only certain models can display 720p but very few models and none that are in stores like BestBuy or FutureShop..

i hope someone can enlighten me.. thanks alot!! :)

I believe that all HDTV CRTs can display a true progressive scan at 480/540p. It does require some slight reconfiguring of the electron guns compared to 1080i mode but I believe all the CRTs can do it, and it does not require the electron gun to scan any "faster" or "slower" than 1080i mode. On the other hand, 720p would indeed require the electron gun to scan "faster" that is why no consumer CRT HDTV today does it.

All normal SD CRTs can display 480i in addition to 240p. 240p mode though is only used for really old 2D Nintendo games like Street Fighter 2 regular, Super Mario Bros, etc. In 240p mode on a normal SD CRT, you can see black scanlines between the drawn lines, at all times. That is how I identify the mode visually.

I don't think what I just said is common knowledge posted anywhere, but if you find any source that says it please tell me. :) All that I decided for myself via personal observations.

from what im assuming they are INCAPABLE of displaying progressive scan because of the way CRT's work and how they use scan lines and what not..but im only assuming this stuff and i want to know the facts..
-Also IF CRTHDTV's can display progressive scan why cant they display 720p?? everyone has said the facts state CRT HDTV's are incapable of displaying true 720p, only certain models can display 720p but very few models and none that are in stores like BestBuy or FutureShop..:)Computer Display CRTs and a few special HDTV monitors will - the problem is that for a large CRTube progressive scan -the deflection electronics need to be engineered for frequencies and magnetic field that are outside the range and cost of the mass produced components available to the consumer manufacturers
-and - you can read more about this on rbinck's blog - but IMO with a digital HDTV CRT --showing HDTV -the interlace 'flicker' wouldn't be visible unless you are using it as a computer monitor for static text - As a video monitor -which is what HDTV was designed for - the digital frame store and scaler in a quality HDTV make the differences between progressive and interlaced rasters indistinguishable at proper viewing distance showing actual HDTV content :p -a lot of broadcast 'HDTV' was shot as SD video and upscaled by PBS,Fox etc. and still looks like a DVD even when they say it's HDTV - not the fault of the technology or the CRT :rolleyes:

i know CRT monitors like the one im using on my computer this very moment display progressive scan, that i knew for sure. but im not talking about monitors, im talking about HD CRT's on the market..

thanks Porcupine, i also believe it can do progressive scan but ONLY up to 540p..problem is i want to actually confirm this as a fact lol..i saw online afew CRT HDTV's can do 960p..what the hell is that?! LOL.. see what i mean..

i know CRT monitors like the one im using on my computer this very moment display progressive scan, that i knew for sure. but im not talking about monitors, im talking about HD CRT's on the market.. ..Can you say Sandbag?
the problem is that for a large CRTube progressive scan -the deflection electronics need to be engineered for frequencies and magnetic field that are outside the range and cost of the mass produced components available to the consumer manufacturers --again -CRT deflection circuits in large CRTube HDTV Television Sets have a fixed horizontal Sweep frequency because the much more sophisticated deflection components required to double the sweep frequency are not parts available at consumer prices. The same frequencies used in the much smaller CRT Multisync progressive computer monitors - - use commonly available inexpensive parts.

The horizontal scan rate is the same regardless of whether a CRT is displaying 1080i/30 (which is 540 lines in 1/60th second) or 540p/60 (which is also 540 lines in 1/60th second).

A 720p/60 signal is drawing 720 lines in 1/60th second, so the horizontal scan rate has to be higher (you can't draw more lines in the same amount of time unless you draw each line faster). The beam deflection is adjusted so that even though a line is being drawn faster, it takes up the same space on the screen as a lower scan rate.

As has been pointed out, the cost to make a CRT that can accurately scan faster simply isn't worth it. The mainstream manufacturers don't even want to be making CRT's anymore (although it wouldn't surprise me to see a Chinese company make a 720p or even 1080p CRT at some point if they end up inheriting all of the world's CRT manufacturing).

inherit inherit :) inheriting is good :)

so what is the final verdict? CRT HDTV's CAN and DO display progressive scan at 480p and can do up to 540p, correct me if im wrong..now is this all CRT HDTV's or only a handfull?

I know theres a specific toshiba CRT HDTV that says it has a "user selectable 540p and 1080i" so that means the user can choose to display all signals in 540p or 1080i...correct me if im wrong about this. THANX..

so what is the final verdict? CRT HDTV's CAN and DO display progressive scan at 480p and can do up to 540p, correct me if im wrong..now is this all CRT HDTV's or only a handfull? I know theres a specific toshiba CRT HDTV that says it has a "user selectable 540p and 1080i" so that means the user can choose to display all signals in 540p or 1080i...correct me if im wrong about this. THANX..when you say 540p are you saying that the frame rate is 60/sec or 30/sec - what would be the difference between 1080i/30 and 540p/60 except the lower (top to bottom) resolution - - the 1080i would be giving you 60 fields of 540 unique lines per second -the best HD material available usually comes from film and contains only 24 new frames per second - If it is video game -the frames may refresh at 60 frames per second - but even an XBOX360 doesn't render completely new 2 megapixel video for each frame - I have one - I'd guess about 10 to 20 new frames with the rest interpolated - ...correct me if im wrong about this. THANX

Lol, no way on that last part.

Videogames do NOT interpolate frames. All frames are either calculated and drawn honestly, or they are not drawn at all (when badly programmed games "slow-down"). Almost all XBox, GameCube, and Dreamcast games internally render at a true 480p, 60 whole frames per second. Even on a SDTV, in which case they simply "waste" half of their information (since SDTVs are 480i, the extra lines are simply not drawn).

The PS3 will internally render all games at 1080p, and most games at 60 whole frames per second. Again, half this information is wasted on a 1080i display (on a 720p display, who knows, I don't want to think or talk about it hehe).

The XBox360 internally renders most of its games at a true 720p, most at 60 frames per second, and none of the information is wasted on a LCD HDTV. There's some confusion floating around regarding the XBox360 and a potential ability to "interpolate frames." I suspect this is actually a different feature which I doubt any game will ever utilize. I think it refers to the system's ability to overrender internally at an even higher frame rate, say 120 frames per second or 240 frames per second (you name it), and average out those frames, and thus create a nicely motion-blurred (on purpose) 60 fps output. But that'll never be used I bet, it's not worth it to waste such computational power.

The Toshiba manual does say user-selectable 540p/1080i for 480p source inputs, however it also says that if you input a 480i source, the signal is automatically converted to and displayed as 1080i. That part is a lie though. I'm 98% certain of this using my own keen vision. :) What may be true is that a 480i source is digitally upscaled internally to 1920x1080 for the purposes of consistency and smooth interpolation (especially in the horizontal direction), but I'm pretty sure the next thing that is done is all the even lines are thrown away into the garbage and the final image drawn on the screen is 1920 x 540 progressive, in a true 540p mode (or maybe 480p, I am not sure on that yet, my eyes not bionic enough). :D

The Toshibas only give you the "540p" option when the input is 480p (i.e., you can tell it to display 480p as either 540p or 1080i).

I don't think it's throwing anything away. If the input is 480p/60, it could scale it up to 540p/60 directly. If it scales it up to 1080i/30, technically you may be losing every other (60th second frame), but it's not going to matter with DVD's as they are 24Fps to start with and even 30Fps is more than what is necessary to accurately reproduce the motion. The pull down to 30 Fps doesn't add any new information (it doesn't do interpolation) in fact it distorts the information, which is why good progressive players perform reverse pull-down to eliminate bad frames (it still introduces some motion judder, though--there's no way to convert 24Fps to 30Fps smoothly without interpolating every frame).

I'm with you on the 480i, though. I'm pretty sure my Toshiba is displaying 480i as progressive. I don't think their Cinema mode would make sense if they weren't converting the interlaced input to progressive. Also, I think they're too cheap to support an additional scan rate (480p), so they convert it to 540p.

I don't think it's throwing anything. If it scales it up to 1080i/30, technically you may be losing every other (60th second frame), but it's not going to matter with DVD's as they are 24Fps to start with and even 30Fps is more than what is necessary to accurately reproduce the motion....I agree with you on everything here. It was just a matter of semantics regarding what I wrote earlier. I think maybe the 480i source gets converted digitally to 1920x1080, then half these lines are never drawn (in 540p mode). But absolutely no information is lost in that process, as you said, since the extra lines were extra to begin with.