Expand or Shrink

[WuTangDvD]

You have a source video of 1080P but your display is 720P

then

you have a source video of 720p but your display is 1080p


with comes out better? i would think shrinking the image has less bad effects than expanding the image.

i come to that conclusion from a simple experiment of full screening a downloaded video commpared to making the video smaller than its native. does that experiment hold true for TV?

[Baldrick]

Yep, shrinking the source has less "bad effects" than expanding it.

[SatStorm]

With progressive material and a good upscaler/downscaler you won't see many problems (if any) IMO. But the interlace upscaling/downscaling is a nightmare!

The theory sure says downscaling is always better!

[edDV]

Downscaling is always superior to upscaling.

For example a 1920x1080p HD/BD DVD will look better downscaled to 720p than a normal DVD upscaled to 720p. Whether the difference is worth the expense is a personal decision.

[SatStorm]

Hmmm... IMO, upscaling a 576 (PAL) progressive DVD to 720p using demond's video enchancer, won't look very different from downscaling 1080i to 720p. Especially if your TV is <=50" (whatever is HD ready or TrueHD). Also a good DVD player like the pioneer 696 (for us the PAL users) gonna do the upscaling on the fly amazingly good. The scalers inside TVs or DVD players really do the difference on this.

Of course 480 (NTSC) to 720 is a totally different thing... There is a visual difference there for sure.

[edDV]

Hmmm... IMO, upscaling a 576 (PAL) progressive DVD to 720p using demond's video enchancer, won't look very different from downscaling 1080i to 720p. Especially if your TV is <=50" (whatever is HD ready or TrueHD). Also a good DVD player like the pioneer 696 (for us the PAL users) gonna do the upscaling on the fly amazingly good. The scalers inside TVs or DVD players really do the difference on this.

Of course 480 (NTSC) to 720 is a totally different thing... There is a visual difference there for sure.

I think you are saying that upscaling 480p/576p DVD to 720p is good enough given the margial quality of current HD displays and the cost of using a true 1080p source. I'd agree with that.

But given a high quality 720p display and a choice of a downscaled 1920x1080p DVD source vs a 720x480p/576p DVD upscale there is no contest. Any premium Home Theater retail store should be able to demo the difference.