Lowres video on Hires TV/Monitor

[faunaintestinal]

Old tube TVs had larger 'pixels', I guess, and some blank space inbetween those.
Watching a 480p video on a 42" tube TV was great.
Nowadays the same video looks terrible on a 42" LCD TV or monitor, for instance.
I understand we have a higher resolution and so a higher 'pixel density', and so we see the flaws once invisible on the old and now also rescaled videos.

Isn't there some sort of software filter for emulating pixel density of an old television for better low resolution video playback?
Instead of interpolating pixels when scaling up the image, wouldn't it look better to emulate the pixel matrix of an old screen?
Anyone knows if there's some video filter for software players that does this?

[edDV]

Old tube TVs had larger 'pixels', I guess, and some blank space inbetween those.
Watching a 480p video on a 42" tube TV was great.
Nowadays the same video looks terrible on a 42" LCD TV or monitor, for instance.
I understand we have a higher resolution and so a higher 'pixel density', and so we see the flaws once invisible on the old and now also rescaled videos.

Isn't there some sort of software filter for emulating pixel density of an old television for better low resolution video playback?
Instead of interpolating pixels when scaling up the image, wouldn't it look better to emulate the pixel matrix of an old screen?
Anyone knows if there's some video filter for software players that does this?

If by 480p, you mean a movie DVD there are three normal approaches.

1. Progressive DVD player (480p out)
The DVD player outputs 720x480p and the HDTV upscales to the display native resolution.

2. Upscaling progressive DVD player (1080i or 720p out)
The DVD player upscales 720x480p to 1920x1080i or 1280x720p out and the HDTV rescales to the display native resolution. Yes the video is scaled twice unless the HDTV panel resolution is 1920x1080 with no overscan. 1080i gets inverse telecined or deinterlaced in the TV.

3. Normal DVD player (480i out)
The DVD player outputs 720x480i and the HDTV inverse telecines, then upscales to the display native resolution.

Any of these options can result in the "best" picture depending on the quality of the video processing electronics in the DVD player or HDTV. If the HDTV is top quality, then option 1 or 3 will give best results. The TV is doing most of the "work". If the TV is cheap, an upscaling DVD player may produce the better picture especially if the HDTV is 1920x1080p native with a "no overscan" mode.

Off air 480i presents other issues.

[edDV]

Isn't there some sort of software filter for emulating pixel density of an old television for better low resolution video playback?
Instead of interpolating pixels when scaling up the image, wouldn't it look better to emulate the pixel matrix of an old screen?
Anyone knows if there's some video filter for software players that does this?

No for flat screens. It works the other way. The 720x480 video gets upscaled to the TV native resolution (e.g. 1366x768 or 1920x1080).

Projectors can run in 720x480 mode and still make a large image. In that case there is no electronic upscale processing.

[faunaintestinal]

Thanks for the replies, very informative when targeting hardware players.

I was aiming at software playing at the computer.
Instead of bilinear/bicubic filtering when rescaling, having something like scanlines.
I am searching and finding nothing like it.

[Khaver]

I think just adding scanlines would have the result of a dimmer picture. There are some avisynth plugins (eedi2, needi) that can upscale video quite nicely, though they are not realtime (less than 1 frame per second). Your best bet would be to get a Media Player device that upscales the video and play it back on an HDTV.

[edDV]

Computers can play to an HDTV several ways.

1. HDMI or DVI-D to HDMI
This should be set to the monitor's native resolution (e.g.1366x768 or 1920x1080i). Overscan should be turned off in the display card settings.

720x480p can be upscaled in a software player (e.g. PowerDVD, VLC or Media player Classic Theater) or the player can be set to use the display card for decode and upscale in the display card hardware.

2. VGA (similar to #1 but uses the analog RGB connection)
VGA must be progressive so the player or display card hardware must deinterlace.

3. S-Video 480i or composite 480i
This is a conversion from the same RAMDAC used for VGA and must first be deinterlaced. The output hardware re-interlaces the progressive frames.

If you have these set correctly, then your questions relate to player features.