Outboard Upconverter?

[wulf109]

Is there any way to upconvert a 480i output from and old DVD player to 1080i\P? Any outboard black boxes or any HD TV that will do it?

[Krispy Kritter]

Most TV's will perform the conversion. Even with an upconverting DVD player, you should test which looks better, the DVD player upconverting or the TV.

[manono]

Is there any way to upconvert a 480i output from and old DVD player to 1080i\P? Any outboard black boxes or any HD TV that will do it?

As Krispy Kritter says, if outputting 480i to a progressive display, the display itself will deinterlace and upconvert the signal. What you're asking about is usually called a scaler, an external box sitting in between the DVD player and the TV that will process, deinterlace, and scale the signal before sending it on to the TV set. These things are damned expensive. For example, the highly thought of iScan VP30 costs about 2 grand:

http://www.soundstageav.com/onhometheater/20060901.htm

Here's some information about these things:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=574222

and the AVSForums has an entire forum devoted to them:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=37

In my opinion, unless you're prepared to spend the big bucks for one, your best bet (unless letting the TV do all the work) is just to buy a newer and better DVD player, perhaps one of the good Oppos, or perhaps a Blu-Ray player.

[wulf109]

The reason that I ask this question is that I can't find a new DVD player that will properly handle Dual-layer burned disks. I tried a Toshiba HD player,Philips,Avayon,and Bravo and none of them play Dual-layer disks correctly. My old Apex Ad-660 with a Toshiba 1712 DVD-ROM play them flawlessly but only outputs 480i.
I guess what I'm really looking for is an upconverting DVD player that correctly plays burned Dual-layer disks.
The loaders used in current players are garbage.

[guns1inger]

If you look at the cheaper brands or cheaper end of the branded market then you will probably find the upconvertors are not better and often worse than your TVs built in upscaler. Any cheaper product, beit player or TV, will generally have a very average upscaling capability anyway. You need to pay money to get quality.

Also, most players only upscale through HDMI, although some will do component. Over here they are few and far between - HDMI is definitely the connection of preference.

If you want to keep your current TV and player then you might look at AV amplifiers. Many of the newer ones have upscalers built into to take SD connections and output upscaled through HDMI.

But test drive them with some of your discs first to make sure the quality is actually an improvement over what you have now.

[Krispy Kritter]

And you shouldn't be having trouble playing any discs, SL or DL. I would question your discs/media before blaming the player. If you are using any DL media aside from Verbatim, that is the most likely problem.