Upscaling SD to HD - can it be worthwhile?

[Gargoyle]

I'm looking for opinions on whether to try to upscale/resize a DVD (using .AVS script) to HD resolution.

My HDTV does a decent job upscaling DVDs (but not great)... the issue is that the DVD is in PAL format, which my old DVD player would play (PAL to NTSC conversion), but the DVD player died, and the replacement Blu-ray player I bought won't read a PAL DVD.
Additionally, the players upscaling is horrible. I tried setting the players output to SD (using a standard NTSC DVD as a test), to let the TV handle the upscaling, but end up with with a distorted aspect ratio.

So, has anyone had any decent results in upscaling a DVD-resolution (720x576) to HD (1280x720)? If so, I'll just convert the DVD to a MKV file, and play it through the Blu-rays USB port.

Any opinions/hints/settings would be appreciated.

[jman98]

If you were converting to 1080p, I'd advise you to give it up. Even the pros can't do that perfectly. The last disc of the BluRays of season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation has 2 seconds that had to be upconverted from SD because they could not find the original camera footage, which could easily have been converted to HD for BluRay. If you know where it is, an experienced video watcher could tell the loss of quality even though it's not horrible.

The "despecialized" unofficial editions of Star Wars IV, V and VI do feature some SD source video upconverted to 720p. It looks pretty darn good to me and I can't tell where they've done it. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but you'll get better results if your source video is progressive. If you want do learn more about those "despecialized" editions, do a web search. A fan in the Czech Republic put them together.

Philips still makes some cheap DVD players for the USA that can still be made region free and will convert PAL to NTSC. For $50 or so for the player, you might do the research and see which ones are still available. I've got one and I use it for DVDs to keep the wear and tear off my BluRay player.

[jagabo]

Try nnedi3_rpow2(2, cshift="LanczosResize", fwidth=1280, height=720). If the video is interlaced you'll need different processing -- try QTGMC() before upscaling. Also change the color matrix: ColorMatrix(mode="Rec.601->Rec.709"). Be sure to use sufficient bitrate.

[yoda313]

fyi to the original poster - if you have an xbox 360 it can play ripped region free pal dvds with no modifications. I have the first season of Stargate Atlantis in PAL when I thought I was getting Ntsc (from ebay didn't read closely enough when I bought em) but I ripped em and burnt to disc and the xbox 360 plays them a-ok.

So if you have an xbox 360 you can just rip them region free and you are good to go. If memory serves the ps3 will NOT play pal discs ripped or otherwise.

Hope that helps....

[Gargoyle]

Thanks to all for the info -

@yoda313 - I do not have an XBox, so that's out...

@jman98 - I did a little poking around, and I think he (Harmy) used an earlier version of nnedi for upscaling, but I don't know for sure if he used anything else.

@jagabo - I will give the nnedi3 a try - it looks promising, and I don't think that it could look any worse than my crappy Blu-Ray players upscaling (but to be honest, that is the only fault that I have with the player; it has a USB input that will play almost any video format, which is really nice).

I'll do some experiments this weekend, and post the results - good or bad.