[merkman]

I did some searching before I created this thread. Looked here in DVD movies, looked in TV shows, the 4K TV forums, and searched online with Google. Wasn't finding anything terribly helpful, and I'm a big Blu-Ray.com fan, so hoping someone won't mind providing some help / suggestions.

So I've gone to 4K. LG 55" E8 TV, Xbox One X, Nvidia Shield (4K), Apple TV 4K, and a Nakamichi soundbar with the firmware update to support Atmos audio. Obviously not as good as a "real" Atmos setup, but is better than without, and I'm in a small condo where I don't turn things up to 11, so it's good for my situation.

That said, I recently decided I wanted to watch "Las Vegas", it's a TV show from NBC, and it's only available on DVD. No Blu-Rays, no 4K. The trouble started when I went to watch my original US-discs. The first two seasons were produced on double-sided discs, you have to "flip" to watch all the episodes. Only my discs seem to have "laser rot" or whatever you want to call it, as they would skip, not play, etc.

Figured ripping might do better, but not really. The same errors seen in the "DVD Player" (game systems, etc.) were problematic in the PC drive. I quickly realized with these shows not available on US streaming services, I was going to have to buy new disc-based copies. Fine, if that's what it takes.

Reviewing prices online, it was clear UK copies were going to be a LOT cheaper than US ones. Amazon had seasons 1-4 of the show for $10 each, where each season in the US was $30-40. I purchased and waited for the UK episodes to arrive. This took a month or longer, as they didn't ship right away and standard shipping from Amazon UK to me is at least two weeks.

Once I got the discs, I confirmed they worked without issues, ripped them into my computer, and put the digital copies on my NAS. All this worked fine, except for the occasional episode being out of order. I'll worry about that eventually. In the meantime, It was after watching a few episodes, I started to get annoyed by the quality.

I get it, DVD wasn't created for a 4K TV, and I don't have the pixel for it to look "ideal". But the more episodes I watch (and I love these shows), the more disappointed I get. Enough so that I thought I'd do some looking online this morning.

Obviously some players upscale content better than others. But with my region 2 discs, trying to play them on most DVD players will cause issues. And while I see DVDFab 11 has a "converter" that will upscale DVD video to 4K... does it work? Almost ALL the reviews are on the DVDFab website, or covering OLDER versions, not the latest one. So I don't know WHAT to think about that software.

So that's where I'm at. Wondering if I need to re-rip my discs, because I should have ripped them at a higher quality? Is there no point, because I'd be "putting lipstick on a pig"? Or are there really upscalers that might be worthwhile?

Would love to hear your thoughts. If you made it all the way to the end, thanks for taking the time. Cheers!