Most components show you the input resolution they’re receiving so you can verify. But if you want to test the HD video processing in your A/V receiver or HDTV, make sure you set your Blu-ray player’s output to 1080i.
If you want to test your Blu-ray player’s ability to convert 1080i to 1080p, set it for 1080p output.
Poor deinterlacing produces a moiré pattern.This shows you exactly what does what in your system so you can make informed decisions to maximize the performance of every component in your video chain.
You may find that your TV does a better job than your player. You can also use these patterns to evaluate how well your display, AVR, or surround processor handles this conversion. Spears and Munsil have created a great set of deinterlacing patterns that evaluate how well your Blu-ray player handles the conversion from interlaced to progressive playback (1080i to 1080p). While this represents a very small part of the market, the list may continue to grow. This includes some TV shows (South Park), concert videos, and even a few feature film titles (Short Circuit).
While most Blu-ray software these days is encoded as 1080p/24, a number of titles are still encoded as interlaced 1080i HD. You can probably thank both Spears and Munsil for this! Some early Blu-ray players had chroma upsampling errors, but the latest players have been devoid of the issue. This was a very common trait with progressive-scan DVD players that can also manifest in Blu-ray players. The disc also has patterns to help you set the sharpness, check to see if your display is clipping any pixels from the active image, and evaluate a player for signs of the chroma upsampling error. You can readily see this if you look at these patterns and engage the adjustments. Many so-called enhancements can have pretty severe side effects with fine detail. They can also show the nasty side effects that so many display enhancements can cause.
These patterns feature blocks that will be visible if your display or source components roll off the fine detail that full 1080p can provide. We use these patterns to evaluate Blu-ray players and displays for resolution with 1080p signals. Some other great patterns are the Luma and Chroma Multibursts. A lower clip point (say, 240) provides a bit more contrast and light output at the expense of overall accuracy. To make sure there’s no banding in the gray scale, look at some clips above and below the clip point you choose. You can’t get the full picture by simply looking at the clip points. You should also keep an eye on banding when you set the contrast. We don’t recommend that you set your display’s contrast any higher than clipping at digital 240. But I realize that some people season to taste. To set your contrast properly, you should retain all of the head room in the Contrast test pattern, meaning you should see the stripes all the way up to digital 253. The goal is to maximize your contrast level without adding these artifacts. It also shows any banding in the center area. Since some displays never clip above white, this lets you see how much color shifting you induce in the gray scale as you drive up the contrast. This lets you see exactly where your display is clipping as you adjust its contrast control. High Definition Benchmark’s Contrast pattern features vertical stripes with easily identifiable numerical values that extend throughout the white range. If you set the contrast too high, you’ll get clipping of these signals. This head room extends to the digital value of 255. However, unlike black, a proper monitor setup doesn’t clip (render invisible) the head room above reference white. Like black, white is encoded at specific digital levels, with digital 235 being the standard reference for white. The Contrast pattern here works in a similar fashion to PLUGE Low but for your display’s white levels. It can also be tough to adjust contrast because not every display treats contrast control the same.