480P Upscaled to 4K Questions

[blurayjunkie]

Has anyone tried a DVD on their 4KTV? Is there any difference between up-scaled 1080P VS up-scaled 4K, or is it too early to tell?

[applemac]

upscaled 1080 will look much nicer than upscaled 480. Esp on larger displays.

[blurayjunkie]

Originally Posted by applemac

upscaled 1080 will look much nicer than upscaled 480. Esp on larger displays.

I agree, but am still curious to see how DVD's look

[Stanton]

Like a lot things with newer TVs (especially OLED), the quality is highly dependent on the source material. A well mastered DVD can look good in 4k, assuming the up-scaling is high quality. Where you run into trouble is when the source bit-rate is bad or there's a lot of "dark" scenes. Same can be said for other material (like cable TV). Obviously, Blu-Ray is more forgiving (mostly due to higher resolution and bit rates), but I own plenty of DVDs that I'm not going to replace just because I upgraded my TV.

[vargihate]

We spent Christmas day at my cousin's house who recently bought the Samsung curved 78" 4K, 3D LED TV. I believe it is the largest from the 7 Series. That was the first time I got to experience with 4K (aside from looking at TVs in stores) and I played many clips on my USB, from 480p to 2160p, viewing them from multiple distance points.

To answer your question, viewing a VOB file at 720 pixel-width was not as bad as I expected but it wasn't good either. When viewed from a distance (was standing about a meter behind the couch, so probably 4 meters from screen) it was fine; much better than watching a SD TV channel (which was terrible).

When I viewed the clip at 100% it was just a small square on the center of a huge screen and it surprised me how (relatively) good it remained when blown up to full size. However, when viewed from a closer distance, say 1-2 meters, then you get to realize how the TV softens everything. I can't explain it technically but it looked like it was like a pastel painting, the same effect you get when you highly reduce the noise of an image in Lightroom.

[whats4k]

Originally Posted by vargihate

When I viewed the clip at 100% it was just a small square on the center of a huge screen and it surprised me how (relatively) good it remained when blown up to full size. However, when viewed from a closer distance, say 1-2 meters, then you get to realize how the TV softens everything. I can't explain it technically but it looked like it was like a pastel painting, the same effect you get when you highly reduce the noise of an image in Lightroom.

That's sounds about right, what you're probably seeing is some form of noise reduction. You can't upscale detail that is not there, so 480 content will look bad on a 4K display. Unlike 1080 material that give a lot more information for the the upscaler to work with.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by whats4k

That's sounds about right, what you're probably seeing is some form of noise reduction. You can't upscale detail that is not there, so 480 content will look bad on a 4K display. Unlike 1080 material that give a lot more information for the the upscaler to work with.

The question the OP asked is will DVD content look worse on a 4K TV than on a 1080p TV. I'm curious about this as well and no one has really answered that yet.

My estimate is it should look about the same since 4K TVs are exactly 4 times the resolution as 1080p so scaling is extremely easy.

[hedliniv]

I am curious about this as well...

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

The question the OP asked is will DVD content look worse on a 4K TV than on a 1080p TV. I'm curious about this as well and no one has really answered that yet.

My estimate is it should look about the same since 4K TVs are exactly 4 times the resolution as 1080p so scaling is extremely easy.

[whats4k]

i'd guess 480p will look better on the 1080 than a 4k. 1080p still exhibits screen door effect and the screen door effect creates a false sense of sharpness, which also can mask a lot more of the poor image quality. Considering 1080p is closer to 480 resolution than 4k is, I would believe dvds should look better on a 1080 set.

I haven't done a direct comparison, but have viewed 480 content on my 4k display and 480 looks like garbage on it. The television cant create detail thats not there. It looks all pixelated.. if I upscale it, the only thing that will happen is all the artifacts will be smoothed out and you get a gaussian blur affect. On sd content say with netflix sometimes it looks like something comparable to VHS.


Others may have a different opinion on the matter however. But me personally 480p looks pretty bad on a 4k set.

[Stanton]

Originally Posted by whats4k

I haven't done a direct comparison, but have viewed 480 content on my 4k display and 480 looks like garbage on it. The television cant create detail thats not there. It looks all pixelated.. if I upscale it, the only thing that will happen is all the artifacts will be smoothed out and you get a gaussian blur affect. On sd content say with netflix sometimes it looks like something comparable to VHS.

Sounds like you need a better scaler (or TV?). You didn't mention where/what was doing the scaling (and you don't have an equipment list), but I process all my analog sources (which are basically 480i) through my AVR to my 4K TV via HDMI and they don't look any worse than my old HDTV (and certainly aren't pixelated). It's not my preferred choice of viewing, but not near as bad as you describe.

[whats4k]

Originally Posted by Stanton

Sounds like you need a better scaler (or TV?). You didn't mention where/what was doing the scaling (and you don't have an equipment list), but I process all my analog sources (which are basically 480i) through my AVR to my 4K TV via HDMI and they don't look any worse than my old HDTV (and certainly aren't pixelated). It's not my preferred choice of viewing, but not near as bad as you describe.

Using the bravia internal 4K upscaling via reality creation for sd upscaling

Not sure how an upscaler can create detail that is absent in the source material. The scaling can only blur/smear the image or blur the image and sharpen the outlines.

however if it's not a case of equipment there is a plausible reason why we see different things, and that could be our subjective perception of what acceptable image fidelity is.

I understand sharpness or perceived sharpness does not necessarily result from resolution. However in this particular case, from my own experience 480 content looks unacceptable.

In hindsight, a few years ago I do not recall DVDs looking as bad on my 1080 display nor my 720. I personally chalked that up to the source material being closer to the screens native resolution and the screen door effect hiding compression artifacts. Even 480p on an sdtv properly calibrated will look good, because it's the native resolution of the source material.

In recent memory however, the only time I've played a dvd, was by accident when I would pull out the dvd instead of the bd. And I would think something was broken until I realized it was a DVDs . But that is my own personal opinion, ymmv depending what the viewer considers acceptable fidelity.

However I don't profess to be an expert on video technology, so you may very well have better insight and knowledge on this matter.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by whats4k

Using the bravia internal 4K upscaling via reality creation for sd upscaling

Not sure how an upscaler can create detail that is absent in the source material. The scaling can only blur/smear the image or blur the image and sharpen the outlines.

however if it's not a case of equipment there is a plausible reason why we see different things, and that could be our subjective perception of what acceptable image fidelity is.

I understand sharpness or perceived sharpness does not necessarily result from resolution. However in this particular case, from my own experience 480 content looks unacceptable.

In hindsight, a few years ago I do not recall DVDs looking as bad on my 1080 display nor my 720. I personally chalked that up to the source material being closer to the screens native resolution and the screen door effect hiding compression artifacts. Even 480p on an sdtv properly calibrated will look good, because it's the native resolution of the source material.

In recent memory however, the only time I've played a dvd, was by accident when I would pull out the dvd instead of the bd. And I would think something was broken until I realized it was a DVDs . But that is my own personal opinion, ymmv depending what the viewer considers acceptable fidelity.

However I don't profess to be an expert on video technology, so you may very well have better insight and knowledge on this matter.

The fact that you don't normally watch any DVDs makes me think you would likely think they looked terrible on a 1080p TV as well. Since 3840x2160 is exactly 4 times the resolution of 1920x1080 everything should scale without looking any less sharp. The DVD may already be somewhat blurry when scaled to 1080p, but 4K will not exacerbate things.

With DVD's anamorphic nature it is never run at it's native resolution or an exact multiple thereof, so a lack of sharpness is unfortunately always present.

[whats4k]

I did watch dvd on my older hdtv also watched it on a 720 display along with 480p compoment, 480i svideo and also owned a vcr.

I do still have a wii hooked up via composite cable on my 4K display so not all hope is lost.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by whats4k

I did watch dvd on my older hdtv also watched it on a 720 display along with 480p compoment, 480i svideo and also owned a vcr.

I do still have a wii hooked up via composite cable on my 4K display so not all hope is lost.

Why is your Wii hooked up via composite cables? Component cables are far superior.

[niklabs]

I also want to add my thoughts on that how bad an SD content can looks on a big 4K TV. I have a 48" Samsung 4K TV, the model is 48JU6000 and it's considered an entry level 4K TV from Samsung's 2015 list. I have the same issue like the guy with the Bravia: SD content(<720p) is looking like crap! Meanwhile if a watch some true 4K video the picture detail, colors and everything is stunning. Watching 1080p stuff is good enough, but man... 480p is full garbage! It's more than clear to me that the internal scaler in this tv is inferior and I need some good external avr scaler or something? I'm not much into these so can you recommend some good and not much expensive 4k scallers? The tv is great, but the way how it's scalling low resolutions is driving me crazy.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by niklabs

I also want to add my thoughts on that how bad an SD content can looks on a big 4K TV. I have a 48" Samsung 4K TV, the model is 48JU6000 and it's considered an entry level 4K TV from Samsung's 2015 list. I have the same issue like the guy with the Bravia: SD content(<720p) is looking like crap! Meanwhile if a watch some true 4K video the picture detail, colors and everything is stunning. Watching 1080p stuff is good enough, but man... 480p is full garbage! It's more than clear to me that the internal scaler in this tv is inferior and I need some good external avr scaler or something? I'm not much into these so can you recommend some good and not much expensive 4k scallers? The tv is great, but the way how it's scalling low resolutions is driving me crazy.

Just to be clear: SD content looks worse on your 4K TV than on your previous TV (which I presume was 1080p)?

[Geoff D]

My thoughts on DVD upscaling into 4K are here: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...g#post11212075

TL,DR: A well mastered DVD looks fine to me on my 55" Sony 4K, and that's from a viewing distance of 6 feet, never mind the other side of the room.

[niklabs]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

Just to be clear: SD content looks worse on your 4K TV than on your previous TV (which I presume was 1080p)?

Yes, I replaced an old Sony Bravia KDL-32EX720. In the other room I have 40" Samsung UE-40H5030 which also looks bad when watching SD TV channels, but slightly better than my new 4K setup. Ridiculously the best looking tv I have right now is an aging 1080p 22" LG TV Monitor M227WDP. I assume that the thing here that's having a biggest impact on the picture quality is the size of the TV, right? Bigger high resolution screen playing a SD content is going to look worse than smaller screen with the same resolution playing the same SD content. Some people just don't notice the difference and it's fine to them, but I can easly notice the pixelated and noisy picture that my 4K tv is providing when watching SD TV. HD channels looks OK, even to me. When we'll leave alone the SD television? It's a thing of the past , it's 2016. The fun thing is that in the store where a bought this 4K TV it was playing some video demo, you know one of these oversaturated edited scenes for marketing purposes and the picture was amazing and 99% comparable to more advanced 4K and 1080p models like JU6440 and J6300 who were also playing the same video. The best looking tv in the store was Sony W807C, but it was over my budget.
Sorry that I'm talking about how a tv signal looks and not how a bluray does, given the title of the thread also.

EDIT: I found some nice article in the style "Let's watch SD TV on HD equipmeof, it could be fun ,eghh?"
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-happens...tv-on-hdtv.htm

[Derb]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

Just to be clear: SD content looks worse on your 4K TV than on your previous TV (which I presume was 1080p)?

I hear ya. 4K looks like crap on my 12K.

[niklabs]

Originally Posted by Derb

I hear ya. 4K looks like crap on my 12K.

It will for sure.