DVDs have changed the way we watch movies and our favorite TV shows, and while the picture quality was the best we could find for some time, DVDs are not HD. It makes perfect sense for us to want to do whatever we can to make our DVDs look better on our HDTVs, and consumer electronics companies know this, but do upconverting DVD players really make DVDs look better? The answer is sometimes; but why not always? The reason why upscaling a DVD can be a gimmick, is because your HDTV already has a scaler built into it. An HDTV has to
have a scaler built in, because there are so many formats and digital TVs can only display one resolution natively, everything else has to be scaled. This isn't the only video that gets scaled, believe it or not most 720p TVs scale 720p content too. The reason isn't a good one, but none the less, the reason is overscan. While there really isn't a good reason for overscan on HDTVs, there used to be, so manufactures actually engineer overscan into their TVs. Sure some newer TVs support 1:1 pixel mapping, but it is almost never the default, if it's supported at all. So now that we understand that all the signals are already being scaled, using a DVD player that scales actually makes the image get scaled twice, and as we all know, anytime you mess with a digital image, you risk mucking it up. Just like anything else in life, no two scalers are created equally, and if the scaler in your DVD player is better than the one in your TV, you are sure to see better results despite the dual conversion. Either way, in a perfect world you would watch a 1080p movie on a 1080p HDTV with 1:1 pixel mapping enabled, and enjoy the movie as it was intended, but in the end, it is really about what looks best to you.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ph @ May 14th 2007 11:10AM
Pretty good article, except for this:
"So now that we understand that all the signals are already being scaled, using a DVD player that scales actually makes the image get scaled twice, and as we all know, anytime you mess with a digital image, you risk mucking it up."
ALL dvd players "muck the image" unless sending the signal either through 480i hdmi (unlikely, and sometimes still is messed with) or through digital sdi (even more unlikely.)
Kevin Murphy @ May 14th 2007 11:19AM
One should, of course, have a progressive DVD player, since the 480i-480p translation is best done with information that only the DVD, and DVD player, have. Past that, you should probably leave it to you set. So these upconverting players are mostly just a waste of money, as the article says.
If you want a useful extra feature, look for DivX (plays AVI files directly) and a good deinterlacer (like Faroudja's DCDi).
mike s @ May 14th 2007 11:59AM
I just feed my 768p LCD 480i over component as it seems to de-interlace better on the tv scaler.
andy @ May 14th 2007 1:58PM
Do any of the cheap upconverting players output in 480i and/or 480p via HDMI?
I'd really like to just do all digital to the TV and let the TV do the scaling.
Paul @ May 14th 2007 2:57PM
An exception to the rule is the Xbox 360 used as a DVD player and outputting to the TV over a VGA connection. In addition to upscaling the picture, the 360's GPU provides "free" 4x anti-aliasing, which is apparently too computationally expensive for most TVs and stand-alone upscaling players to provide. The result, frankly, is difficult to tell from true HD, except that the picture tends to have a slightly "softer" look--which, considering that motion picture film tends to have a soft look anyway, usually isn't what I would call a true disadvantage.
Dan in DCVA @ May 14th 2007 4:48PM
I have to be honest, I love HD as much as the next guy, but right now DVD upscaling has been great in my house. Between the two-year-old whose movies aren't available in HD yet, a "Finance Committee" that is waiting for the end of a format war, and (worst-of-all) crappy HD and Blu-Ray selections, upscaled dvd is where its at.
I have mid-range Mits DLP and a Tosh VHS-DVD burner with upscaling (the wife got to pick) and I am constantly amazed how much better the PQ is compared with the three other DVD players I had running at 480p over component and letting the Mits do the scaling. Its crazy. I was expecting it to be total crap. I watch a ton of SD on my HDTV so I amused to poor PQ.
So here is one anecdotal piece of evidence that upscaling may not be a gimmick.
Joseph Moore @ May 17th 2007 12:16AM
All things being equal, a DVD player will have the scaling advantage over either an outboard scaler or a display simply because it has the raw digital data to work with. It's way to complicated to get into here, but a player that does this properly, such as the reasonably priced OPPO, does wonders ... far from a "gimick."
rmcgraw @ Jun 30th 2007 3:43AM
This article is simplistic at best. First off, MOST HDTVs today CAN display a 1:1 pixel ratio at either 720p or 1080p. The double scaling is old news.
That said, using a OPPO DVD player to upconvert to 720p on a 2nd gen 37 inch Vizio (or Westinghouse) is a good idea because the chip in the OPPO is superior to the chip in the Vizio and it will play out at native 1:1 720p.
All to the good!
What makes no sense (and I've seen this done) is upconverting a DVD to 1080i and then letting the TV do a downsqueeze back down to fit the display. This ends up being the worst of both worlds. Artifacts introduced in the upconvert are then used as picture elements in the downconvert. Whoops.
For those with a better chip in the TV, the lossless digital signal traveling at 480i or 480p over HDMI will give the TV's chip a better (and lossless) signal to work with.