Why Upconvert?

[Go Blue]

This may be a stupid guestion, but what is the purpose of upconverting a standard dvd to 1080p if your TV's native resolution is 1080p? Won't the TV convert the 480p to 1080p automatically? If thats the case, what is typically better at upconverting, a new 1080p HDTV or the PS3?

[cathexist]

Even if the TV supports a higher resolution (720p, 1080p), DVDs will only be displayed in 480p, because that is what the signal from the player is.

A player that upscales a DVD has a higher resolution signal, which the TV will then display.

(This is easy to see on a projector, because it will display what resolution it is currently in, I'm sure a lot of TVs do as well)

So it's basically stretching the 480p image across the tv, not upscaling it. Whereas a PS3 would upscale the signal.

[Storm]

Originally Posted by cathexist

Even if the TV supports a higher resolution (720p, 1080p), DVDs will only be displayed in 480p, because that is what the signal from the player is.

A player that upscales a DVD has a higher resolution signal, which the TV will then display.

(This is easy to see on a projector, because it will display what resolution it is currently in, I'm sure a lot of TVs do as well)

So it's basically stretching the 480p image across the tv, not upscaling it. Whereas a PS3 would upscale the signal.

Agreed. No matter you tv resolution, a dvd will always be 480p without upscaling.

[Go Blue]

Why is this different than signals received from a satellite receiver like Dircetv? I have read that if the STB sends a 480 signal to a 1080p HDTV, the HDTV will upconvert it to 1080p.

[cathexist]

Then it would be the receiver upscaling the signal...not the TV

[gand41f]

Originally Posted by schultz

Why is this different than signals received from a satellite receiver like Dircetv? I have read that if the STB sends a 480 signal to a 1080p HDTV, the HDTV will upconvert it to 1080p.

That would be correct for fixed resolution displays (e.g., LCDs, plasmas, etc.). The upconversion has to happen somewhere, for instance if you have a 1080p LCD it has no capability to display anything that is not its native resolution, 1920x1080 pixels, regardless of what you feed it.

It is generally accepted that decent upconverting DVD players do a better job than the TV's internal scaler. Of course that may depend on the quality of both devices, a TV with a good scaler does a better job than a crappy DVD player. YMMV.

enjoy
gandalf

[Sonny]

Up converting is OK the second time I watched "Rat" it was the DVD instead of my Blu-Ray version and it looked really good but its all DIGI Animation so that's why

[Go Blue]

Originally Posted by gand41f

That would be correct for fixed resolution displays (e.g., LCDs, plasmas, etc.). The upconversion has to happen somewhere, for instance if you have a 1080p LCD it has no capability to display anything that is not its native resolution, 1920x1080 pixels, regardless of what you feed it.

It is generally accepted that decent upconverting DVD players do a better job than the TV's internal scaler. Of course that may depend on the quality of both devices, a TV with a good scaler does a better job than a crappy DVD player. YMMV.

enjoy
gandalf

So, is it safe to assume that my Samsung LED DLP does a better job of upconverting the satellite signal than my STB, but probably not as good as the PS3?