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Recently I read in 'The Costco Connection' referring to Blu-ray players "these high-definition players can also "upconvert" your existing DVDs to essentially double their output resolution, which means they will look much better than when they are played on a regular DVD player. (Assuming you have a HDTV & HDMI connection)
Is this true???
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I would think any upconverted player would do..doesn't have to be a bru-ray player (but they are nice to have). I personlly have a Philips.
first of all, because im sorta anal about consumer understanding, would you try saying "upscaling" rather than "upconverting"? Thanks, Ive been training people. (people are mistaking upconverting on receivers as upscaling. hdmi conversion on a receiver means being able to ouput different connections such as component).
newayz...
actually different player upscale better than others. yes blu ray players upscale. the sony is supposed to be middle of the road. my panasonic bd-30 is well below average in upscaling. the better processors include names such as Realta, Reon, Anchor Bay, etc
then realize that most decent tv's also scale. i believe rusty says that using his oppo (well respected value dvd player) is perhaps only marginally better than the processor in his sony sxrd tv.
lastly, upscaling can't work miracles. it is, and always has been, all about the source disc.
back to receivers, some of them upscale as well, and i pretty much recommmend no less than reon/realta if you go that route. if you do, i have read that processing is actually more successful in the receiver as it works AFTER the video and audio have already been split.
heh, i told you it was a can of worms. my vote? buy a blu ray player for NATIVE 1080p, with greater color bitrates/palette/whatever, and lossless audio.
no comparison between upscaling and native. at least if you're not watching either a tiny tv, or from far away, or both.
-j
this seems to be a tag line to replace progressive scan, it all about processing the video image no matter what the resolution.
DVD are recorded in 480, so it doesnt make any sence to me why anything else matters, so long as the DVD player has a good video connection, and processing.
I have a pioneer elite DVD player that is Progressive, and I dont see any diffrent in it vs a new up converting or up scaling DVD player other then the what its called.
But I not saying its not worth it, any good DVD player out now is called upcovering, but I think its dumb that we cant just call it a progressive or HDMI DVD player and not use the confusing tag line, some people think that HD upconversion makes the DVD HD quality, and it not, its just the best way to watch movies in SD.
but I think the Realta processor does millionS of computations per second. "guessing" what any surrounding pixel should be. I could be wrong, but... i guess I don't know what you are saying.
j
ps I completely agree its nothing like the real thing: native hi-def
as long as we understand each other when something is said (progressive,upconvert,upscale,etc.).
You have a great player..that's fine. In my case, I call it the way I see it. All I know is that if I don't set my player upcovert/upscaled to 720p, the video don't look as good but it's also true that crap in still equal crap out.
how can progressive = upscaling, if I was upscaling a DVD to output as 1080i. Progressive does not equal Interlaced. Right? Maybe Gabe knows something we don't.
here's a little bit more.
I guess the advantage of an upconvert DVD player is that it processes the image from 480 to 720 or 1080i/p
But if you send a good 480 signal from a standard or progressive scan DVD player the TV set does the same thing as an upconvert DVD player, it processes the image to it native resolution, and in most cases the TV does a better job then a $100 dollar upconvert DVD player of upconverting.
So if you hookup a upconvert DVD player with HDMI 1.3 and a TV with HDMI 1.3 like the pioneer elite or samsung a650 the DVD player will defult to 480i everytime you turn them both on because the TV talks to the DVD player and they setup eash other this way because the TV has the better processor and if you upscale the image with any dvd player to 480p or greater it will bypass the TV processor, giving you a lower quality image.
so if you get a high end TV set and a basic upconvert DVD player the only advantage is the HDMI connection and nothing more, the only reason you should turn on the upconversion is if the DVD player is better at processing the image then the TV, like in my case I use a sony XBR960 TV and a Pioneer elite DVD player.
and if your not sure which one is better, you can test this with a DVE calibration disc using the test patterns for resolution and motion.
hope this helps
gabe
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