will playing compressed dvd's on an upconverting player increase quality?

[fonzbear2000]

like many others, i back up dvd's to single layer blank discs-well, i'm thinking of upgrading to high definition and i noticed that there are HD players have up upconversion which will take non HD dvd's and make them look like near HD-what i'm wondering is, will compressed, backed up dvd's be upconverted? if so, is it real a real noticable increase in video quaility? thanks!

[riprat]

I have never tried it but from what I have read it will convert them. But then again, I'm not a real fan of upconverting dvds players anyway. An HDTV has a scaler built in, so you will end up scaling the image twice by using a player that does so. And anytime you screw with a digital image there is a chance of messing it up. If I am wrong on this then please someone correct me.

[sdlehman]

I totally depends on how good your backups are. Garbage in, garbage out.

Stace

[guns1inger]

They will not make DVD look like HD source (or even near HD source), but it will look better than if it is not upscaled. Caveat : not all upscalers are equal, and some are down-right crap and make the image look worse.

However the side effect of upscaling can also be to enhance any flaws you introduced when re-encoding your DVDs. If you are one of those people who believe that 55% in DVD Shrink is acceptable, you may be in for a shock.

[manono]

An HDTV has a scaler built in, so you will end up scaling the image twice by using a player that does so.

Where'd you get that? If your TV has a resolution the same as the scaled video, then the scaling is done only once. For example, I scale DVDs to 720p using my player, and my TV is 1280x720 - the same. If the TV is 1366x768, as many are, then you'd be correct, but that still may not be reason enough to let the TV do the scaling. The scalers in a good DVD player are often better than those in the TV. And by having the player do the scaling (over a DVI or HDMI connection) you keep it digital the whole way, which can help considerably in maintaining the best possible image.

Given all that, it would seem natural that the best arrangement would be to use a digital connection for a *480* signal, and just leave it to the TV to do whatever scaling is needed -- once. Curiously, that is not often the best way to hook things up. HDTV-ready TV's are optimized for 1080i broadcast signals because that's how they are often judged in stores. That, plus any advantage that comes from having a better scaler in the player suggests that having the player upscale the DVD data and then feed that to the TV will give a better result even though a second scaling pass may be needed. There are additional advantages if you watch movies filmed in older 4:3 shape in that the player can put pillar boxes around the movie content without loss of movie resolution because the player is sending a higher resolution signal.

The bottom line is that despite the best efforts of the marketing guys to pull a fast one here, many of the better up-scaling players DO INDEED produce a significantly better image on many HDTV-ready TVs. Some of that is due to the digital connection, but some is also due to the combination of de-interlacing and scaling technologies working well to produce a signal the TV happens to be optimized to display. Combine that with other improvements naturally occurring with each product cycle and you get a better player.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=477740

To answer the OP's question, though, I agree with sdlehman and guns1inger. If the backup was done poorly, or over compressed, or transcoded when it should have been reencoded, a better TV set will show up the deficiencies more readily. Nothing to do with whether or not an upscaling DVD player was used.

[fonzbear2000]

so, it could actually look worse than on a normal non-HD tv and dvd player? not so bad that it would be unwatchable i hope?

[guns1inger]

It depends what you did to it in the first place.

[Rich86]

I have a Sony 1080i upconverting dvd player - connected to a Sharp Aquos 1080p 46" lcd TV.
My standard resolution dvd's look fantastic on this setup - whether originals, or the copies I may have made for playing in the laptop or mountain cabin. It isn't actual High Definition resolution - but ignore those who suggest it isn't excellent - because you will be very pleased and impressed and will enjoy it tremendously. Certainly good enough to wait out the nonsense format battle between Sony & Toshiba to see who becomes the Betamax and who becomes the VHS of the high def dvd world . . . .

[fonzbear2000]

I have a Sony 1080i upconverting dvd player - connected to a Sharp Aquos 1080p 46" lcd TV.
My standard resolution dvd's look fantastic on this setup - whether originals, or the copies I may have made for playing in the laptop or mountain cabin. It isn't actual High Definition resolution - but ignore those who suggest it isn't excellent - because you will be very pleased and impressed and will enjoy it tremendously. Certainly good enough to wait out the nonsense format battle between Sony & Toshiba to see who becomes the Betamax and who becomes the VHS of the high def dvd world . . . .

are the copies you made compressed and backed up on to single layer discs?

[sdlehman]

I have a Sony 1080i upconverting dvd player - connected to a Sharp Aquos 1080p 46" lcd TV.
My standard resolution dvd's look fantastic on this setup - whether originals, or the copies I may have made for playing in the laptop or mountain cabin. It isn't actual High Definition resolution - but ignore those who suggest it isn't excellent - because you will be very pleased and impressed and will enjoy it tremendously. Certainly good enough to wait out the nonsense format battle between Sony & Toshiba to see who becomes the Betamax and who becomes the VHS of the high def dvd world . . . .

This may be true on some titles, but certainly not true on all. Some are simply just mastered poorly with edge enhancement and compression artifacts. Your situation could be different if you are watching on a large screen also. The larger the screen, the more obvious the artifacts become. I watch on a 120" diagonal screen with a front projector and do agree there are some titles that "upconvert" very nicely like Star Wars Episode IV for example. I also have an HD DVD player and watch alot of HD material and the difference is quite noticable. Not trying to scare you away from upconverting, just don't want you to expect too much. So again, if the SD DVD is mastered well you will get nice results. If the SD DVD has been "backed up" and re-compressed then it probably won't look as sharp especially on a large screen.

Stace

[fonzbear2000]

again i ask, will it be so bad that it will be unwatchable?

[on30trainman]

I have done many backups using DVD Rebuilder and either CCE Basic or HC encoders and most look just fine on my 42" 1080p LCD HDTV and upconverted to 1080i with a Samsung DVD-HD860 player, or more recently to 1080p with a new Oppo 980H. Recently I also got a new Pioneer 112D writer and have been redoing some uncompressed backups to Verbatim DVD+R DL and they look somewhat better as should be expected. As others have said - it depends on the quality of the compressed video - using Shrink with a large compression may not look so good, especially if the original was dark and grainy.

[Rich86]

I have a Sony 1080i upconverting dvd player - connected to a Sharp Aquos 1080p 46" lcd TV.
My standard resolution dvd's look fantastic on this setup - whether originals, or the copies I may have made for playing in the laptop or mountain cabin. It isn't actual High Definition resolution - but ignore those who suggest it isn't excellent - because you will be very pleased and impressed and will enjoy it tremendously. Certainly good enough to wait out the nonsense format battle between Sony & Toshiba to see who becomes the Betamax and who becomes the VHS of the high def dvd world . . . .

are the copies you made compressed and backed up on to single layer discs?

Yes - single layer - however, when I make a backup of something for my use, I do not copy everything in order to minimize unnecessary compression since I'm not terribly motivated to include extras on the copy. That being said, I've ended up with DVDShrink "deep analysis" compression ratios of 70% that still look great upconverted to 1080. Like I said earlier - it isn't high definition - but it is very enjoyable.

[fonzbear2000]

using Shrink with a large compression may not look so good, especially if the original was dark and grainy.

asking now for the third time-will it be so bad that it's unwatchable???

[Coolpplse]

using Shrink with a large compression may not look so good, especially if the original was dark and grainy.

asking now for the third time-will it be so bad that it's unwatchable???

That really entirely depends on your tolerance level in enlarged macroblocks that werent present when the video was at its original size.

I guess you could imagine watching a VCD on your current TV, its most likely gonna produce this same effect with a DVD Shrinked movie upscaled to the HDTV. It also entirely depends on the resolution of the HDTV you plan to view it on, 720p, not too big, 1080p, prepare to be blown away in shock from the macroblocks.