Upconverting DVD players -- do they really make a difference?

[big angry]

I've got a couple of Pioneer DVD players - an upconverting one that I bought about a year ago, and another one that I purchased quite a few years ago when DVDs were first starting to really hit the market.

Anyway, I had the newer one hooked up to my Samsung HD set a few days ago watching Star Wars. Everything looked pretty good, but I got to wondering about my old player which had been doing bedroom duty.

So, I pulled everything out and put the old DVD player in the living room. And what do you know, it actually looks better than the new one. Now mind you, this player was made in like 1999. It doesn't even have progressive scan....this is from back when component video and a DTS decoder were cutting edge tech.
Nothing but a 480i signal and it looks fantastic.

Kinda makes me wonder if all the hype about 1080p upconverting is nothing but a bunch of bunk.

[all_blu_man]

Upconverting does a better job than regular dvds. Did you make sure that the resolution output from your upconverting dvd player is set to 1080p?

[big angry]

Originally Posted by all_blu_man

Upconverting does a better job than regular dvds. Did you make sure that the resolution output from your upconverting dvd player is set to 1080p?

My TV doesn't do 1080p. I did try it at both 720p and 1080i (using both HDMI and component cables) and I still can't see any real difference between that and the older player.

[cawgijoe]

Upconversion does make an improvement to the picture, but it's not the panacea or replacement for HD (Blu-Ray) that some folks claims it is. It all comes down to lines of resolution.

[sardaukar1977]

I have heard that upconverting does work, but I can't tell the difference between upconverted and regular. Someone told me it was because my tv automatically upscales, so I really don't know.

[tiger roach]

There are so many variables that it really is difficult to to a true A-B comparison.

One thing I am sure of, blu-rays look better than DVDs on my rig, upconverted or not.

[NutsAboutPS3]

Originally Posted by big angry

My TV doesn't do 1080p. I did try it at both 720p and 1080i (using both HDMI and component cables) and I still can't see any real difference between that and the older player.

If your TV is 1366x768, as many are, then you may well get a better picture if your player doesn't upconvert. If your player upconverts to 720p, then the TV will resize again to 768p. On the other hand, if you just output 480i to the TV, the TV will do a single conversion from 480i to 768p which may well look better than having two levels of conversion.

[olitas]

Upconverter processors are like CPU processor, some are stonger and others not. A DVD movie is actualy recorded in 480i so anything over 480i depend on the quality of the converter. You can also buy seperate converters up to 5000$ for home consumers that will upconverte any source, not just DVD, a 5000$ converter while even clean-up a 1080P signal.
If your looking for a blu-ray that has the best DVD-upconverter, panasonic right now does the best one, if you can still find the bdps10 it's the best one ever (but it's just HDMI 1.1, so no HD sound streaming), if you can't find it bdps30-50 still have a better processor than any other compahy in the same range of price, but all these 1080p upconverter must be hooked in HDMI to by-pass the upconverter that is already in the TV.

Any other technical question right me

[dieheart]

I have a question,

I have a HTPC, and I use it when ever I want to watch DVD because the picture quality shows up better than even my upscaling ps3. Why is that? What makes it more confusing, is that my HTPC is hooked up to the tv via VGA cable, not HDMI. Does the ps3 upscaler just suck?

[Marcusarilius]

Originally Posted by big angry

I've got a couple of Pioneer DVD players - an upconverting one that I bought about a year ago, and another one that I purchased quite a few years ago when DVDs were first starting to really hit the market.

Anyway, I had the newer one hooked up to my Samsung HD set a few days ago watching Star Wars. Everything looked pretty good, but I got to wondering about my old player which had been doing bedroom duty.

So, I pulled everything out and put the old DVD player in the living room. And what do you know, it actually looks better than the new one. Now mind you, this player was made in like 1999. It doesn't even have progressive scan....this is from back when component video and a DTS decoder were cutting edge tech.
Nothing but a 480i signal and it looks fantastic.
Kinda makes me wonder if all the hype about 1080p upconverting is nothing but a bunch of bunk.

Have you tried it with a BD player and watched an upconvert DVD on 1080p?

[Jordahn]

Originally Posted by big angry

I've got a couple of Pioneer DVD players - an upconverting one that I bought about a year ago, and another one that I purchased quite a few years ago when DVDs were first starting to really hit the market.

Anyway, I had the newer one hooked up to my Samsung HD set a few days ago watching Star Wars. Everything looked pretty good, but I got to wondering about my old player which had been doing bedroom duty.

So, I pulled everything out and put the old DVD player in the living room. And what do you know, it actually looks better than the new one. Now mind you, this player was made in like 1999. It doesn't even have progressive scan....this is from back when component video and a DTS decoder were cutting edge tech.
Nothing but a 480i signal and it looks fantastic.

Kinda makes me wonder if all the hype about 1080p upconverting is nothing but a bunch of bunk.

Your older DVD player was probably a better quality player to begin with. The first VCR I bought was a 2 head mono Orion from Wal-Mart back in 1992. Since then, I've owned a Sharp 4 head stereo VCR that ate tapes in three years and then a SONY 4 head stereo VCR with picture quality softer than the Orion. Needless to say, the Orion is still my favorite.

[WickyWoo]

Part of the secret of effective up-converting (which the TV does anyway, even if the player doesn't) is the first process - de-interlacing 480i video to 480p video

DVD video is almost universally stored at 480p. It makes compression easier, so even i sources are converted to p before compression and authoring

[welwynnick]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

DVD video is almost universally stored at 480p. It makes compression easier, so even i sources are converted to p before compression and authoring

'fraid not. DVD is stored as 480i or 576i. There are some other obscure interlaced video formats in the standard that no-one uses, but its basically interlaced SD, be it NTSC, PAL, or SECAM.

There's been a lot of confusion over this, perhaps because modern players don't need separate de-interlacing stages. In many cases, the integrated MPEG2 decoder itself does the de-interlacing, but de-interlacing still has to be done.

It's only BD & HD discs that (usually!) have progressive video actually encoded on the discs themselves. I agree that for films, this makes a lot of sense, even though the format departs from broadcast TV standards.

regards, Nick