DVD Upscaling-How does it work?

[Bourne1886]

Lately I've been wondering about DVD Upscaling.

I'm not technically minded when it comes to these type of things. So please bear with me. On various forums I have been reading comments from some people who say there is little or no difference in PQ between an upscaled DVD and a BD.

I have watched many DVDs on my BD player and in my opinion there's no way an upscaled DVD matches the quality of a BD. So I disagree big time with what these people are saying, or am I missing something.

Basically My question is "Do BD players automatically upscale DVDs without you having to alter the BD players settings or do you have to turn an upscaling mode on?"

If anybody knows the answer I'd love to know as its been bothering me for some time and I thought the best place to get an answer would be on my favourite BD website.

Thanks.

P.S if there is already an existing post regarding this I apologise in advance.

[JohnAV]

Originally Posted by Bourne1886

Basically My question is "Do BD players automatically upscale DVDs without you having to alter the BD players settings or do you have to turn an upscaling mode on?"

Usually the blu ray player is preset to upscale a 480i recording (SD-DVD) to 1080P output by default settings. This in no way means that a DVD is comparable to a BD as you said, but with a lot of fancy interpolation techniques (varies by type of video processor used) you can noticeably improve the DVD's PQ when upscaled.


see DVD Video Upscaling - Important Facts

[chip75]

As DVD's have a resolution of 720 x 576 (in the UK) every time you play a DVD on a 1280 x 720 or 1920 x 1080 HD Ready or HDTV the image will be upscaled as those TV's only output their native resolution (720p or 1080p), so either the player or the TV will upscale the image (if you plug a DVD player into a HDTV then the TV is doing the scaling).

So technically upscaling is always on it just what is doing the upscaling can give you slightly different results, although I think the PS3 gives you the option to view DVD's at their correct size - which gives the picture a windowed effect if you set the PS3 to display above DVD's resolution (then the TV will be doing the upscaling).

As for the quality difference a good DVD should look great upscaled but if the same title has an equal quality Blu-ray then the BD will always be better. Just pop a PIXAR movie that you have a DVD and BD copy of into your player and compare. The DVD will look great but the BD will just look fantastic. But if you watch something like The Office then the differences won't always be as apparent but there is a difference.

[Bourne1886]

That's for posting.

Even though DVD is no match for BD I still want to squeeze as much out of my DVDs as possible,as not all my favourite films are out on BD yet. I still find it incredible when some people state that they can see very little difference between an upscaled DVD and a BD. When I watch a DVD it looks soft,blurry and lacks detail. I personally think that Upscaling doesn't work that well as I've never seen a DVD get anywhere near the PQ of a BD.

Cheers for your help.

[HomeEntertainment]

From what I've experienced , if you have a good setup and you are playing a good quality dvd the upscaling will make it amazing, so good in some cases that most people wont be able to tell its not a blu ray. On the other hand much older lower quality films on dvd will upscale very poorly.

For example I watched above the rim and even with the upscaling it showed all the low quality imperfections that wouldn't be seen on an older dvd player, whereas a dvd like predator looks absolutely fantastic when upscaled and very clean a crisp.