Upscaling dvd players

[charlesr]

I've read a lot of conflicting stuff about this.

In theory, as long as the DVD player does 480p, that's as good a signal as it gets, so you should let the TV do the upscaling (presuming you have a swanky expensive TV with a good scaler).

Where this falls down is most 480p players just have component, whereas perhaps an upsacaling set will have hdmi.

erm. I'm confused.

I'm currently using my xbox (xmbc) as an upscaling dvd player via component and it looks pretty good to me. Perhaps I should answer my own question and change the output resolution

Anyone got any opinions on this?

[Freddo]

It really depends on the TV / DVD player combination, there's no 100% right answer for every case, Ideally you want the deinterlacing done as well as possible ( which is rarely done perfectly even by some big brand DVD players, and especially on PAL dvds because of the difficulty of 2:2 pull down ) and then you want to scale it as well as possible, and as few times as possible, so either once in the TV or once in the DVD player but not like scaling to 720p in the player then having the TV do 720-1366x768 up scaling or anything like that.

[EvilBoris]

It always seemed quite logical that TV scalers were built for speed over quality , whereas a DVD not being live can be buffered for a short period of time and afford to have slightly more intensive processing applied. The other thing with upscaling is that alot of TVs will allow you to disable overscan from 1080p sources, an option you won't get if you are feeding the TV a 480p image.

[huxley]

Been mucking about with the old Xbox in the living room this evening and updated to the latest build of XBMC. The xbox is set too 720p and connected via componant to the 50" rplcd we have in there. Dvd playback is better than the samsung dvd my folks just got and thats connected via hdmi!

[RLench]

Where this falls down is most 480p players just have component, whereas perhaps an upsacaling set will have hdmi.

And what's wrong with that? The scalers in budget DVD players are almost always terrible and, more than likely, inferior to the one in your TV anyway. Let your TV do the scaling and de-interlacing unless you're using an external video processor

Most important rule of AV (and this applies to everything): a good example of old technology is superior to a bad example of new technology. A good DVD player with component is better than a bad DVD player with HDMI. I had two DVD players at one point - a non-upscaling, 480p-only, Denon 1720 and an upscaling, HDMI-equipped, Toshiba SD360. Long story short, the SD360 was abysmal and was quickly given away...the Denon 1720 is still in my bedroom as it's got an excellent image and I see no reason to upgrade it

btw if you did buy an upscaling player just for the sake of using HDMI (as I did), you could just set it to 480p/576p and let the TV do the scaling. This is what I did and found that I got a better image than setting my DVD player to output 720p/1080i

[Leon Retro]

I bought the latest Phillips Upscaling DVD player for £45. Does 1080P/HDMI etc....

I'm using it in 480P at the moment, and the difference in quality over my old player, even my consoles, is fantastic.

I was watching a good quality dvd, and everything was sooo much clearer. I could see spots and hairs on peoples faces. It wasn't flattering, but showed the boost in image clarity.

The reason I bought it, is because I don't want to wear-out my consoles using dvds. I read a lot of very positive reviews, and I thought the price was good,. It turned out to be excellent.

[djjimbob]

If you've spent about a grand on a TV you would hope it upscales better than a sub 100 DVD player.

Also, letting a budget player upscale (especially all they way to 720p) can introduce issue like lip synching.

[smouty]

I'm using my recently built HTPC to upscale to 720p.
There is a noticeable improvement in picture quality over my SD DVD player and a little bit better than XBMC.
In the HTPC I'm using an ATI 2600XT HDMI with AVIVO and I think the extra PQ comes from post processing and vector adaptive de-interlacing but it did take a fair bit of fiddling to get to this point which you wouldn't have with either a stand-alone upscaler or XBMC.
But it is a one box solution for HD-DVD/Bluray/DVD/HD mkv etc.

[Lyris]

Software-based PC players and the Xbox Media Center will look better than most of the cheap upscaling players in the scaling department. The deinterlacing on the other hand will usually let them down with them not being able to adapt for tricky mixed video/film content well. So you're more likely to see jaggies or a loss of detail in moving areas.

If your TV properly handles 480i or 576i, you don't need the upscaling or even deinterlacing player at all. But almost no TVs are good at those.