True HD or Upconvert?

[drees5761]

There is a lot of discussions on various forums about Blu ray releases that are not true HD, in other words up-converted from an SD master, especially on Hong Kong releases. My question is how can you tell?. is there a way of proving one way or another if a release is true HD?...

[Johnny Vinyl]

Do the HK releases not indicate what audio is used?

[Jezza]

Originally Posted by drees5761

There is a lot of discussions on various forums about Blu ray releases that are not true HD, in other words up-converted from an SD master, especially on Hong Kong releases. My question is how can you tell?. is there a way of proving one way or another if a release is true HD?...

This isn't really my field, but I do understand parts of it.

Generally, if something is upconverted it's upconverted to 720p, as that's the best you can get out of it. Also it'll be blindingly obvious if something is upconverted or not, whether it be in 720p or 1080p, because from what I've seen generally the image just isn't as sharp as full-HD. Also they'll sometimes state on the case whether it's upscaled or not.

Otherwise may be able to give a more specific ansewer, but that's just my input.

[drees5761]

Originally Posted by John72953

Do the HK releases not indicate what audio is used?

I was talking about picture not sound.

[Johnny Vinyl]

Originally Posted by drees5761

I was talking about picture not sound.

Oops...I meant doesn't it show on the back cover what you are getting?

[nametag]

If the release says it's 1080p or 1080i on the box, my guess is the only way to 'prove' it, is to compare it alongside an upconverted DVD. If it looks basically the same, then it's an SD upconvert.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by drees5761

There is a lot of discussions on various forums about Blu ray releases that are not true HD, in other words up-converted from an SD master, especially on Hong Kong releases. My question is how can you tell?. is there a way of proving one way or another if a release is true HD?...

The best thing to do is do your homework first. The HK releases have a big fanbase and they'll spot a upconvert a mile away. Also if you can't tell if the picture is HD then they've done a half way decent job if it's an upconvert, even upconverts have a high bit-rate.

Just do a bit of homework first if your worried, even if it means waiting to buy the Blu, at least it will give you piece of mind.

[tuxqi]

I've never understood the point of up-converting videos.. if they don't have a HD picture. surely it's better to just put it on BD as it is but just no compression and let the BD player scale it...

or is their a benefit of the company scaling it first rather than the BD player scaling it?

[Pyoko]

Originally Posted by tuxqi

I've never understood the point of up-converting videos.. if they don't have a HD picture. surely it's better to just put it on BD as it is but just no compression and let the BD player scale it...

or is their a benefit of the company scaling it first rather than the BD player scaling it?

One thing is that all players/TV sets are not equal, and some may have better scaling than others. If you upscale before encoding you can ensure it'll look at least somewhat equal, and also allows you to apply some processing and filters to make it look better (though if overdone it's easy to just make it look worse.) In addition if you upscale after encoding you will also upscale (and therefore worsen) any potential compression artifacts, which is not the case if you do it the other way around.

As for the original question, it's not always easy to tell 100%, but generally the image is very soft/blurry, lacks detail, often with ringing around the edges, and the grain size (if still intact) is large and blob-like. But it's one of those things you sort of learn to tell once you've seen enough good and bad HD discs and what true HD scans of film look like.

One more scientific approach is to scale down the image (screenshots) to SD and then scale it back up to 1080p again and compare. If the difference after this process is negligible, then there's a good chance it's an upscale (no HD detail was lost in the downscaling process because there wasn't any to begin with.)

As a recent example there's the release of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. This is what the German Blu-ray looks like, and is true HD. This is what the new US Blu-ray looks like, and is most likely and upscale. Notice the difference in definition and particularly the grain.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

As a recent example there's the release of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. This is what the German Blu-ray looks like, and is true HD. This is what the new US Blu-ray looks like, and is most likely and upscale. Notice the difference in definition and particularly the grain.

If you click between the two pictures she does a little dance! It's GIF time....

[DarknessBDJM]

There is a greater likelihood of unnatural noise and aliasing (jaggies) issues.