PROGRESSIVE QUOTES

THIRD PARTY QUOTES IN SUPPORT OF PROGRESSIVE SCAN

William F. Schreiber, former Director of the Advanced Television Research Program at MIT (Home Theater, 12/97): "Let’s be perfectly clear about this. Interlaced scanning is a really dumb thing to consider in any new video format. Interlaced scanning was not even a good idea when the U.S. B&W standard was defined in 1941! As your readers are probably aware, interlaced scanning can generate very bad artifacts in a video image, things like 30-Hertz interline flicker, motion errors, and reduced vertical resolution. This is why computer monitors are not interlaced -- the interline flicker would be unbearable. The reason why there are still proponents of interlacing escapes me, especially when considered in the context of digital broadcasting. Progressive scanning is simply more "digital friendly" than interlaced. When digitally coded, a progressive signal requires no higher data rate than an interlaced signal that has half the bandwidth. I have a hunch that the continued advocacy of interlaced equipment originates from foreign-owned consumer electronics companies that are trying to get back the substantial investments they foolishly made in obsolete technology."

Department of Defense (DOD) Reasons for Interest in Progressive Scanned Video and Square Pixel Formats: "We believe that the use of Progressive (Non-Interlaced) scanned video and square pixel formats will greatly improve our information management capabilities. The presentation anywhere in the world of Geospatially related information from multiple sources should support improved decision making. Use of these technologies will provide for improved communications between United Nations coalition teams. Future video systems using these attributes will improve risk management in life threatening situations in the fields of Defense, Medicine, and mitigation of Global Disasters. Progressive scanned video and square pixel formats will also improve visualization in our energy, space programs and others, and greatly enhance the DOD’s massive training and modeling & simulations programs."

Michael Silbergleid (Television Broadcast): "Your decision should be 720-line progressive. Why? It looks better even at a lower number. Looks can be deceiving. And 1080I looks great, at least when there is not a lot of motion in the shot. Remember, an interlace frame is made of two fields that contain half as many lines as a frame that occur at different moments in time. Alvy Ray Smith, on his website at Microsoft says that, to be fair, 1080I should be renamed 540I and 480I should be renamed 240I. The reason for this is simple: In 1/60th of a second, the eye is presented the entire 720 lines of a progressive frame. But in that same 1/60th of a second, the eye is presented only one field - 540 lines - of the 1080 interlaced frame… Oh, by the way, progressive has some other benefits as well: It compresses easier, there are no interlace artifacts, and it converts to interlace a lot easier than interlace converts to progressive."

Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 83, No. 2, Feb. 1995, pgs. 158-174

The Grand Alliance System for U.S. HDTV: "However, the GA will work toward the elimination of interlace in the transmission path in the future."

Dick Wiley Interview (Broadcasting & Cable, 12/4/95): "Our final report will call for migration to an all-progressive scanning system as soon as compression technology permits squeezing lines into it. And I think that will come sooner rather than later."

Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 83, No. 7, July 1995, pgs. 1037-1038

Yoshitaka Hashimoto, Masanobu Yamamoto and Takashi Asaida of Sony Corp.: Cameras and Display Systems: "There are two trends for area sensors in television applications: 1) To further increase resolution and decrease size with higher density pickups and 2) to adopt progressive scanning. By increasing the vertical spatial resolution, image sensors which use progressive scanning are better suited for format conversion and image compression. The demand for these higher density, progressive scan image sensors will be used in the next generation of broadcasting systems, multimedia systems, and electronic still cameras. In the area of computer interface applications, progressive scan and square-pixel structures will be used in order to improve interoperability and image processing."

"In consumer applications, it is desirable to realize a portable still video camera capable of combining both photograph-quality images and high-quality text information. That challenge that camera manufacturers will have to face in the multimedia age is how to integrate broadcasting, communication, and consumer equipment."

"In addition to viewing video images, higher resolution displays are needed for processing alphanumeric data and viewing multiple windows. Thus in order to provide the finer detail, televisions will adopt the characteristics normally found in computer displays. This ability to display finer detail can be achieved by using progressive scanning techniques, reducing line width, reducing the spot size or increasing the number of TV lines."

"Instead of using the interlaced scanning found in conventional TV displays, these computer monitors use progressive scanning to improve resolution and reduce eye strain caused by flicker."

Joe Flaherty, CBS, Senior Vice President of Technology (Broadcasting & Cable, 2/9/98): "There’s no quarrel that 720P is a legitimate format. But I stop at the point of the spreading notion that this is the way to go. There is no equipment, and the rest of the world is 1080I."

James Meyer, Thomson, CEO (The Hollywood Reporter, 1/12/98): "We will not build a product that won’t connect to all formats."

Alvy Ray Smith, Microsoft, (Scientific American, 3/98): "It’s {interlace} a roadblock on the way to convergence. It accommodates only low-resolution text and graphics if you want to avoid flicker… Viewers will need an expensive board to convert interlaced HDTV transmissions to progressive. The board could easily cost $1,000. Even at a price, the de-interlacing will not be perfect and will result in poorer image."

SMPTE, 3/81 Research and development on HDTV in Japan: "Picture quality with 2:1 interlacing is almost equivalent to that of progressive scanning with 60% of the number of scanning lines."