Is upscaling really worth it?

[bobbysafety]

Hello,

I have a pana full hd lcd screen. I use an old cheap DVD player, through scart. I wish to know if there will be any NOTICEABLE difference if I used a blu-ray player (such as the panasonic dmp-bd45) to play 1980-90 DVDs (for instance Die Hard or The Return of the Jedi).

I sit anywhere between 2 to 4 meters from the screen (7 ft and more I guess).
If I had a blu-ray player, it would mainly be used for viewing conventional DVDs, since blu-rays are still quite expensive here.

Having heard some people say the DVDs will have a near HD quality thanks to the uspcaling process, but others say there will be hardly any difference, I am somewhat lost...

Thank you very much!

[jagabo]

Using HDMI or component instead of composite SCART will give significant improvement. And note that your HDTV will upscale any standard definition video it's given. So the exact amount of difference depends on how good the HDTV's upscaler is. DVDs will not have "near HD quality" with any upscaling player.

You didn't say waat size HDTV you have so it's hard to say exactly how much difference you will see.
http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter

[edDV]

If you aren't going to play Blu-Ray discs, you should wait. Blu-Ray players are getting cheaper and get new features each year.

Try your DVD player at 576i, 576p and 1080i settings. See which looks better to you.

576i places all the load on the TV for deinterlace and upscale.

576p deinterlaces (for 576i discs) in the player but upscales in the TV.

1080i upscales and interlaces in the player. The TV then deinterlaces and rescales for overscan*.

If the player and TV support 1080p, all the work happens in the DVD player. The TV may upscale again for overscan*.


* Some HDTV sets have a no-overscan setting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overscan

[bobbysafety]

Jagabo:
My screen is 42 inches (107cm). I was told by the panasonic salesman that HDTVs do not upscale and that I need a DVD or blu-ray machine to do it. Is that untrue?

EdDV:
Sadly, I cannot configure my DVD player for any such setting...

Thank you both for your advice!

[Jim44]

Jagabo:
My screen is 42 inches (107cm). I was told by the panasonic salesman that HDTVs do not upscale and that I need a DVD or blu-ray machine to do it. Is that untrue?

Untrue, in the sense that an HDTV will take in whatever resolution is supported on it's inputs and upscale them (if necessary) to the fixed resolution of the display.

DVD and BR machines can also do this upscaling.

[edDV]

EdDV:
Sadly, I cannot configure my DVD player for any such setting...

You must have a very simple non-progressive, non-upscaling DVD player. That would be 576i.

[victoriabears]

In a word YES

I mainly watch older material and found that with my 46 inch sony lcd Bravia, even using a Panasonic worldwide vcr looked acceptable, and my vhs to dvd transfers look really good, not HD, on mu upscaling dvd players

[bobbysafety]

Thank you very much for your quick replies!

I will think things through a little bit.

Have a nice day!

[jagabo]

Switching from composite SCART to component or HDMI will get you 70 to 100 percent of the improvement you are going to see. An upscaling player will get you the rest.

[bobbysafety]

And in that case, is the quality of the hdmi cable of any importance? Some cables go for 60$ and others for under 10$. Do you just pay for the brand or what?

[edDV]

And in that case, is the quality of the hdmi cable of any importance? Some cables go for 60$ and others for under 10$. Do you just pay for the brand or what?

In short lengths (<4m) almost any HDMI cable is fine.

Projectors often require long cable runs. In that case you may need to buy a higher quality double shielded HDMI cable but not the expensive brands. Monoprice.com is fine.

[bobbysafety]

Ok, great!

Thanks all for the info.
I'll be sure to get back to you should I have any more questions.

[The_Doman]

Switching from composite SCART to component or HDMI will get you 70 to 100 percent of the improvement you are going to see. An upscaling player will get you the rest.

Most, if not all, European DVDPlayers (and TV's) with SCART will support RGB over SCART.
This ofcourse will give a much superior picture compared to the low quality composite.

Sometimes a good RGB (PAL) signal upscaled by the TV can give better results then using the built in upscalers of the DVD player.

[jagabo]

Most, if not all, European DVDPlayers (and TV's) with SCART will support RGB over SCART.

I didn't realize it was that common.

[pandy]

And in that case, is the quality of the hdmi cable of any importance? Some cables go for 60$ and others for under 10$. Do you just pay for the brand or what?

HDMI shall be cheaper than DVI cable (DVI use more expensive plugs, cables are the same) - so for normal HDMI cable there is no difference between expensive and normal.

HDMI transmission is purely digital - and to be honest there is only OK or NOT-OK video - especially when equipment use HDCP You can see only video OK or completely lack of video (sometimes this is visible as a color pixel noise) - there is no "subtle differences in tones" as some cable companies advertised their mambo jumbo hyper gold plated cables - good cables are important only in very difficult environment eg long distance (ie close to the max specified by standard or even longer when cable is very good)

[KBeee]

Most, if not all, European DVDPlayers (and TV's) with SCART will support RGB over SCART.

I didn't realize it was that common.

I believe there was an EU regulation that forced all suitable video equipment sold in Europe to have 1 fully wired Scart socket capable of composite and RGB, and in/out stereo audio.
Many manufacturers save money by only having the 1 fully wired Scart required by regulation, and any additional Scart sockets are only partially wired, maybe only giving composite video output, and stereo audio output. They usually hide this penny-pinching by saying something along the lines of
"4 Scart sockets, including 1 full Scart" in their adverts.

[Mike89]

If you have a HD TV that can do 1080p, then you will need an upscaling DVD player if you want to watch the DVD in 1080p. The TV itself isn't going to do that for you. The DVD player is what controls the res of the DVD being played, not the TV. For example, if you don't have a progressive DVD player, you are not going to get 720p even though the TV is capable of displaying it. Same holds if you do not have an upscaling DVD player, you are not going to get 1080p even though your TV is capable of displaying it. I have a 42" LCD HD TV, an upscaling DVD player (hooked through HDMI) and watch all my DVD movies in 1080p. It's the only way to go IMO. It's the best you're going to get without going tru HD Blu-ray. It's looks pretty damn good to me!

[pandy]

If you have a HD TV that can do 1080p, then you will need an upscaling DVD player if you want to watch the DVD in 1080p. The TV itself isn't going to do that for you.

Definitely not - each D TV must support various formats at various inputs and Digital TV receiver with indexed pixels display (LCD, PDP, DLP etc) must resize video signal to the native resolution of display matrix - this is absolutely mandatory feature - quality of those resizers is a different story but most of them are quite good, in many cases far more superior than rescalers embedded to the most available DVD players (good resizer is expensive from circuit point of view).

The DVD player is what controls the res of the DVD being played, not the TV. For example, if you don't have a progressive DVD player, you are not going to get 720p even though the TV is capable of displaying it. Same holds if you do not have an upscaling DVD player, you are not going to get 1080p even though your TV is capable of displaying it. I have a 42" LCD HD TV, an upscaling DVD player (hooked through HDMI) and watch all my DVD movies in 1080p. It's the only way to go IMO. It's the best you're going to get without going tru HD Blu-ray. It's looks pretty damn good to me!

Analog connection sometimes can be better than HDMI.

[jagabo]

All fixed pixel HDTVs (lcd, plasma, dlp) upscale or downscale incoming signals to their native resolution. The quality of the result depends on the quality of the scalers used and the quality of the incoming signal. An HDTV with a good scaler receiving a 480p digital signal can look better than the same TV receiving a poorly upscaled digital signal from a cheap DVD player. The same TV receiving an analog 480i composite signal will usually look worse. But that's because the digital DVD data was reduced to the low resolution and luma/chroma crosstalk of a composite signal, not because of a lack of scaling.

[Mike89]

Analog connection sometimes can be better than HDMI.

But sometimes it's not feasible depending on equipment. With component in you only have stereo sound input. My TV doesn't have a digital in (to take optical out from my Comcast STB). The only way I'm going to get my 5.1 Dolby is through HDMI from my STB (then going through my coax digital out on my TV to my amp).

I could go optical out from STB directly to amp but that causes another problem. I'm already using optical in on the amp from optical out on my DVD player. For some reason my DVD player is not bringing Dolby across the HDMI (only stereo) the way the TV is from the STB (through HDMI). Have to use optical out on the DVD in addition to the HDMI already hooked up.

[pandy]

Analog connection sometimes can be better than HDMI.

But sometimes it's not feasible depending on equipment. With component in you only have stereo sound input. My TV doesn't have a digital in (to take optical out from my Comcast STB). The only way I'm going to get my 5.1 Dolby is through HDMI from my STB (then going through my coax digital out on my TV to my amp).

--cut here--

Ok, then we began talking about audio which is a different story than resizing of the video and video transmission over HDMI (most of the HDMI use 8 bit with broadcast levels between 16 - 235 for Y and for Cx 16-240) - analog component transmission may help due Low Pass filtering (ie reconstruction analog from digital) in presence of slight noise - all that on input of the ADC in TV can create more levels for signal than previously - in some limited way artifacts like banding can be reduced