As far as I've seen so far, the simple answer to that is " no ".
A good explanation follows.........
The effects are at their worst when you are watching a programme that is
originated digitally, broadcast and received digitally, and reproduced on a
pixel addressed display. I currently have three different models of LCD set
in the workshop, and personally, I wouldn't have any of them in my house as
anything other than a second set.
It's also important to note that a conventional TV set "blurs" the image so
that it looks smooth. Since plasma and LCD TV sets have discreet pixels, there
is a much more noticable space between them. 42 inch plasma TVs used to be so
bad that you could see the spaces between the lines at over a foot away.
Hopefully you won't sit so close to the set, but you get my point.
Digital signals are the worse offenders, the analog signal is broken up into
discrete pixels before being recorderd or transmitted. This has nothing to
do with the connection method of your TV set, DVDs, and anything that is
encrypted (digital cable, satellite TV, etc) all are digital and have
a specific number of pixels.
When you play the signal back on a device with a different number of pixels,
some sort of conversion has to take place to map the image from one set of
pixels to the other. Converting the signal to analog and back again has its
charm, it will give you a smoother looking picture.
For example, an LCD TV may have a resolution of 1280 pixels across. Now if you
have a usual DVD, it has the image chopped up into 720 pixels across. If you
display the picture properly, one pixel on the screen to one pixel in the
image, you will see black bars on the sides. DVDs are usualy 520 pixels
high, so a TV with 1280x1024 resolution will "adjust" the horizontal and
just display every vertical pixel twice. This may look odd, but the human
brain can compenstate.
If you get a "widescreen" TV with a horizontal resolution of around 1440 pixels,
then a DVD playes quite nicely by doubling every pixel. This may require a
digital input to the TV because of the high frequency range (bandwidth)
required to carry so many pixels.
The problem with plasma and LCD TVs is the manufacuring of the display. There
is no such thing as a color display, they are really combinations of three
single colors, called primary colors, red, green and blue. You brain
sees combinations of these colors as the entire range of color, but it
is not really there. Each pixel requires three real pixels one of each
color on the display.
Therefore a single 1024 line of pixels is really 3,072 pixels, with 1024
groups of three. This is difficult to produce in high resolution. OLED
(organing light emiting diode) technology will replace this. OLEDs still
have discrete pixels, but the process of putting them on a screen is similar
to an inkjet printer. While a three inch 800x600 pixel LCD screen is almost
impossible to manufacture a 800x600 OLED screen is relativly easy and
cheap.
Since computer processing power is also easy to come by and cheap, in a
few years, a high resolution OLED TV will be availble at a price far
lower than a plasma, DLP or LED screen which will automaticly convert
almost any picture into one that looks good and it will be fast
enough to show motion without artifacts.
Of course, the first OLED TVs will cost around $10,000 but in 20 years
you will see them on cereal boxes.
Living in Isreal brings me an interesting point of view, the TV standard
is PAL, but most of the programs on satellite and cable TV are from the
U.S. in NTSC. NTSC signals have a faster frame rate (30 versus 25), but
a lower resolution (525 lines versus 625). Obviously these have to be
mathematicly converted to fit the taller screens and less frames per
second. The quality of the conversion varies and you see all sorts
"problems" with the picture.
DVDs are not a problem, almost everyone here who has a DVD player has a
multisystem TV set (PAL tuner, NTSC or PAL via the video in) and the DVD
players switch frame rates automaticly. "Zone free" players are the norm
here, if they were only zone 2 no one would buy them.
Geoff.