Basically the line doubler in your tv is line doubling in tha analog domain. A progressive dvd player does it in the digital domain and is better at the job. 3/2 pulldown reduces the artifacts in film based stuff. A good line doubler will help ntsc stuff as well. Yes all of that digital to analog conversion is bad. The less conversion you have the less of a signal degradation. But with all of this said it still really depends on how good the doubler is in your set. Some are about as good as a progressive scan dvd player, like the Pioneer elites for example. But most are not and the progessive dvd player will be better. Personally, I am going to keep my current dvd player and use my line doubler until the dvd-a, sacd stuff sorts out and maybe I can get a combination player.
P. Scan DVD Players and HDTV-ready TV's
I have a Loewe HDTV-ready TV with a 16:9 aspect ratio that has built-in progressive scan. I would like to upgrade my DVD player and I've liked what I've read about Pioneer's DV37. What worries me about this player is how compatible/beneficial is a progressive scan DVD player with a HDTV-ready progressive scan TV? Is there signal degradation due to a redundancy in the progressive scan process? Is there signal degradation due to converting from digital to analog in the DVD player, then converting from anolog to digital at the TV's progressive scan processor, then converting back from digital to analog to display the picture? TV's with built-in progressive scan, 3/2 pulldown,line doubling technology offer much improved picture quality of NTSC broadcasts, I'm just wondering if these get in the way of progressive scan DVD players? Any comments or thoughts on this would be appreciated.