Upscaling issue

[shooter3295]

Nonsense,.... you do not buy a BD player,.. HD TV or up scale player to watch movies in 480p. That's a wasted effort.

Any GOOD brand name will do. Samsung,.. Panasonic,...Pioneer,... Sony, etc. Oppo has the best system,... but these players do not sell for $150. You do get what you pay for.

[VinnAY]

Originally Posted by shooter3295

Nonsense,.... you do not buy a BD player,.. HD TV or up scale player to watch movies in 480p. That's a wasted effort.

I agree an upscale player is a waste of $$.

[mugupo]

TV is more important factor for scaling then the player do, what tv your got? I do agree that non hd tv or even 720p tv are best view dvd and sd content due to their lower resolution.

[gonk]

Something is going to scale video when watching DVD's on an HDTV. If the player doesn't, the TV will have to (or a surround receiver with integral video processor, or a standalone video processor). Thus, the question isn't whether or not to have an upscaling DVD player - the question is which component in the signal path does the best job of scaling. In other cases, the player does the best.

[shooter3295]

Originally Posted by gonk

Something is going to scale video when watching DVD's on an HDTV. If the player doesn't, the TV will have to (or a surround receiver with integral video processor, or a standalone video processor). Thus, the question isn't whether or not to have an upscaling DVD player - the question is which component in the signal path does the best job of scaling. In other cases, the player does the best.

MOST TV's on the market today do not UP SCALE. They may "stretch",... or otherwise modify the picture to fill the screen,... but that is not "up scaling" as a player with a specifically designed chip set does it.

Every BD player I've had or seen does up scale DVD's . Some do better jobs at it then others,... depending on the chip set and algorithm used to "up scale". That is what they are designed to do.

On the better players,... this produces an excellent picture,.... not BD,.... but WAY better than standard 480i or 480p DVD,.... and the difference is very noticeable as such.

BTW,.... most 720p TV's will also do 1080i,....even the small Sharp I use in the computer room does,..... it's usually just not advertised.

Many of us still have DVD libraries that we are unwilling to give up. Up scaling is not a waste of money,... it is a very valid solution to preserving that library. It will never replace BD,.... but it will be several years before BD ever replaces DVD. Cost factor of the Blu-Ray disc's ($30+ for BD versus $5-$15 for DVD) and a huge library of DVD's in homes are probably the main factors.

[drummerboy_2002]

Originally Posted by shooter3295

MOST TV's on the market today do not UP SCALE. They may "stretch",... or otherwise modify the picture to fill the screen,... but that is not "up scaling" as a player with a specifically designed chip set does it.

BTW,.... most 720p TV's will also do 1080i,....even the small Sharp I use in the computer room does,..... it's usually just not advertised.

Call it whatever you want, but every flat pannel TV with a set native resolution has to scale the picture to match said resolution. Whether that's done by a line doubling, linear interpolation or some fancy by-cubic interpolation, it's all scaling (up or down). Some methods are better than others, but it still uses the same terminology.
All 720p TV's with built in tuners "do" 1080i. Meaning they are capable of decoding the image and scaling it to fit.

[gonk]

Originally Posted by shooter3295

MOST TV's on the market today do not UP SCALE. They may "stretch",... or otherwise modify the picture to fill the screen,... but that is not "up scaling" as a player with a specifically designed chip set does it.

Aside from some CRT displays (which are a dying breed, to put it mildly), every HDTV on the market has a single native resolution (1920x1080 for 1080p displays, for example). Any video source sent to that TV must be converted to that resolution to be displayed. If the input signal is 480i or 1080i, the TV must also deinterlace it before scaling. Frankly, deinterlacing is the harder of the two tasks, although scaling is often the more discussed step. That's why it is important to understand that scaling will happen somewhere in the signal path - and why it's worth considering at which point you want the scaling to happen.

Originally Posted by shooter3295

Every BD player I've had or seen does up scale DVD's . Some do better jobs at it then others,... depending on the chip set and algorithm used to "up scale". That is what they are designed to do.

When using the HDMI output, this is true - after all, the video processing capabilities required to support Blu-ray result in the player having the necessary hardware to deinterlace and scale SD source material to HD resolutions. When using the component output, copy-protected DVD's are limited to 480p output.

Originally Posted by shooter3295

On the better players,... this produces an excellent picture,.... not BD,.... but WAY better than standard 480i or 480p DVD,.... and the difference is very noticeable as such.

I agree - if you get a really good video processor (such as the ABT2010 used in my BDP-83), DVD can look truly amazing. It is still not true HD, but it allows those huge libraries of existing SD content to look their best.

Originally Posted by shooter3295

BTW,.... most 720p TV's will also do 1080i,....even the small Sharp I use in the computer room does,..... it's usually just not advertised.

True. They will accept a 1080i input, but they will then deinterlace it and scale it down to the native resolution (which is not exactly 720p - it's typically 768 lines with one of a number of possible horizontal resolutions).

[shooter3295]

Originally Posted by gonk

Aside from some CRT displays (which are a dying breed, to put it mildly), every HDTV on the market has a single native resolution (1920x1080 for 1080p displays, for example). Any video source sent to that TV must be converted to that resolution to be displayed. If the input signal is 480i or 1080i, the TV must also deinterlace it before scaling. Frankly, deinterlacing is the harder of the two tasks, although scaling is often the more discussed step. That's why it is important to understand that scaling will happen somewhere in the signal path - and why it's worth considering at which point you want the scaling to happen.

True,.... because the scaling is what is thought to produce the visible result,... it's all about "dots".

I have yet to see a TV that will do the job that a GOOD BD or standalone player will do with up scaling. The three best ,... IMO,.. are the Oppo,... the new Samsungs with the HQV technology and the Toshiba standalone.

The PS3 with the Cell processor is capable of doing a great job also,... the fault lies with Sony and the firmware powering it.

I still think up scale is viable and worthwile technology. Particullarly since BD persists in identifying itself as "high end",... and keeping it's prices inline with that "vision".

Time,... or a higher resulution,.. more "dots",..... will eventually errode that perception.