Resolution upscaling

[richieb1971]

Scenario.

TV is 1366x768 with 24p capability.

Your sources vary from upscaling DVD players to BD (PS3). In the middle of all this you have an amplifier/receiver which upscales. How do you set this up?

Obviously 1080p sources just stay 1080p. Is that the best thing to do, set all sources to upscale to 1080p and bypass the upscaler in the amplifier?

Or does this whole scenario not make much difference?

[gand41f]

Originally Posted by richieb1971

Scenario.

TV is 1366x768 with 24p capability.

Your sources vary from upscaling DVD players to BD (PS3). In the middle of all this you have an amplifier/receiver which upscales. How do you set this up?

Obviously 1080p sources just stay 1080p. Is that the best thing to do, set all sources to upscale to 1080p and bypass the upscaler in the amplifier?

Or does this whole scenario not make much difference?

Depends on the quality of various scalers.

Honestly, I have no idea. There are too many variables to give a simple answer. DVDs may look better upscaled to 720p by the player and then to 768p by the TV. (That worked best for me, but then my TV doesn't have 1080p input capability.)

Try them all and let us know?

enjoy
gandalf

[gand41f]

Originally Posted by richieb1971

TV is 1366x768 with 24p capability.

Just occurred to me, do you have the Pioneer 5070 or something? If so, the scaler in than TV is supposed to be very good. I wouldn't be surprised if DVDs look best if you send 480p to the TV.

I remember there were some conflicting reports on how the 72Hz works depending on input (24p, 60i, 60p). You may want to do some searching on that as well, although I assume there's no problem if you can feed it 24p.

enjoy
gandalf

[richieb1971]

This is all theoretical at this stage as I don't own any hardware to speak of.

I am buying the Sony KDL40D3000 HDTV for definate and that should be with me sometime this month. As for the rest of the equipment I'll probably go with a Onkyo since its quite cheaper than the rest for what it does.

I just like to know the best way to do things before I get my stuff, so at least I feel knowledgeable.

[MouseRider]

Actually, if your display has a native 720p resolution, you don't necessary want to scale everything to 1080, you want to scale everything to 720p unless you trust the scaler in your display. And even if you trust your TV's scaler, why process the signal twice (i.e. scale a DVD to 1080 then display scales it back down to 720).

But if you've bought an outboard scaler, obviously you've opted not to trust the scaler on your display for one reason or other.

It's all a matter of which piece of equipment has the better scaler.

For example, at one point, I had a pretty good video processor in my projector, so I left all the scaling, 3:2 pulldowns and deinterlacing to my projector.

Until I upgraded to a outboard scaler that does more and provided better processing, now my project just displays video that has been processed to fit the native panel resolution of the projector, bypassing the processor.

If you had one of these:
http://www.lumagen.com/testindex.php...diance_details

You'd probably run everything through this and have all your sources scaled to fit the native resolution of your display.

[DealsR4theDevil]

Wait im sorry am i hearing this correctly? Some TVs dont require upconvert players and will scale movies to fit the TV resolution? If so does neone know if mine does this (PRO940HD 42" Pioneer Elite)? Right now I am using my PS3 and it upconverts the movies to 1080i. And is this an automatic thing or do u have to preset ur TV to do that? Or did i misunterstand what u guys were sayin?

[gand41f]

Originally Posted by BAND-AID

Wait im sorry am i hearing this correctly? Some TVs dont require upconvert players and will scale movies to fit the TV resolution? If so does neone know if mine does this (PRO940HD 42" Pioneer Elite)? Right now I am using my PS3 and it upconverts the movies to 1080i. And is this an automatic thing or do u have to preset ur TV to do that? Or did i misunterstand what u guys were sayin?

You have a fixed pixel display, the only way it can show images is by converting it to its native resolution. So upscaling/downscaling will happen with any signal that does not exactly match your pixel structure (and since your TV has 1024x768 non-square pixels, that means any input).

The big question is who is better, the player or the display, in doing the scaling and deinterlacing? The player knows more about the source (3:2 film cadence flags and such), while the display electronics knows more about what the panel itself can do. That's why some people swear good upconverting players can make DVDs look much better, and some swear they see no difference. They can be both right.

enjoy
gandalf

[DealsR4theDevil]

So with a PS3 upconverting is it better to set it to 480p and let the TV scale it or have it input at 1080i?

[DealsR4theDevil]

Well i tried out the PS3 upscaling to 1080i and leaving it alone at 480p and i saw little or no difference. Blu-rays (inputed through the PS3 at 1080p/24) look a lot better even though they are also being scaled by the TV. I don't know if its just me but i still think DVDs, even upconverted, look worse on HDTVs than they do on tube TVs (I made this observation on several of my friends TVs). Blu-rays look awesome though.

[gand41f]

Originally Posted by BAND-AID

Well i tried out the PS3 upscaling to 1080i and leaving it alone at 480p and i saw little or no difference. Blu-rays (inputed through the PS3 at 1080p/24) look a lot better even though they are also being scaled by the TV. I don't know if its just me but i still think DVDs, even upconverted, look worse on HDTVs than they do on tube TVs (I made this observation on several of my friends TVs). Blu-rays look awesome though.

Yes, that means your TV and PS3 does upscaling of DVDs equally good. And Blu-rays being sent as 1080p24 and downscaled by the TV is theoretically the best since there is only one scaling going on (1920x1080p -> 1024x768p) and any other method will have at least two scaling steps.

As for your last comment, any non-highdef signal will generally look better on tube TVs (including tube HDTVs). There's something about these fixed panel displays that are not very forgiving on poor quality input. Also, remember the entire toolchain (from cameras to transmitters to TVs) had several decades of fine tuning of standard-def TV signals on tube TVs. Your TV is using a technology that just started up.

enjoy
gandalf

[bootman]

Originally Posted by gand41f

Depends on the quality of various scalers.

Honestly, I have no idea. There are too many variables to give a simple answer. DVDs may look better upscaled to 720p by the player and then to 768p by the TV. (That worked best for me, but then my TV doesn't have 1080p input capability.)

Try them all and let us know?

enjoy
gandalf

It does depend on not only the quality but whether you can turn them off or not.

Example, unless you feed the TV a 1366x768 signal, it's going to scale it.
So you will do at least double processing somewhere along the signal chain.

This is one of the benefit of dedicated scalers.
Feed the scaler a native signal (ex. 480i for dvd) and feed the TV exactly what it needs so that no additional processing takes place.

Remember, anytime you touch the pic, you add artifacts.

BTW, same thing happens to audio.