Upconverting to HD

[FireInTheHole]

So I've been reading ads in some flyers from FS and Best Buy etc, about receivers and DVD players that can "upconvert" to HD ie: 1080i, etc. Is this for real? Is it possible to convert from 480 (or whatever a standard DVD is) to an HD signal and have it look good? Are these upconverting boxes worth the money? Just curious, as I don't know much about this stuff, but I do have an HD TV and HD cable box - and the idea of upconverting regular TV channels and DVD's to HD sound appealing - if it's really any good. Any opinions?

[BlackArcher101]

You are as strong as the weakest link.

[Incinerator]

I have a Toshiba upconverting DVD player, it's not true HD as it basically just blows up the pixels to give the picture a higher resolution. I watched the original Star Wars trilogy on it and it's definitely got better PQ than my old Pioneer though, it's just simply amazing.

[Red]

I have the Samsung HD850 upconverting DVD player. Don't see much (if any) difference between this and an older Progressive scan Panasonic. It depends on movies.

The HD upconverting is a bit of a scam because any new tv upconverts anyways. The question is which component does a better job.

I believe the HDMI cable (included with Samsung) makes the only difference, not the player itself. If you decide to get one make sure you chose one with the cable otherwise it will set you back another $50 or so.

The price difference is so small that I figured I may as well try it out. Not dissapointed with the player, but not blown away either. Definetely not as good as 1080i HD.

If I could do it again I'd likely go with a Sony that has SACD and DVD-A support. There's one on the market for under $200. Apparently the SACD sounds great.

Also, make sure you have HDMI input on the TV. With DVI you will need an adapter and those are not cheap either.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by FireInTheHole

So I've been reading ads in some flyers from FS and Best Buy etc, about receivers and DVD players that can "upconvert" to HD ie: 1080i, etc. Is this for real? Is it possible to convert from 480 (or whatever a standard DVD is) to an HD signal and have it look good? Are these upconverting boxes worth the money? Just curious, as I don't know much about this stuff, but I do have an HD TV and HD cable box - and the idea of upconverting regular TV channels and DVD's to HD sound appealing - if it's really any good. Any opinions?

I have to partially disagree with the other posters. A proper resolution upscaler can make a good quality, low-res (480) source look outstanding. It totally depends on the algorithms used in the upscaling.

Almost all TVs use a straight-up stretch upscale, which looks like crap. Nothing will make a bad analog source look good.

DVDs and digital cable/satellite channels can look a lot better with proper upscaling though. I used an application called ffdshow on my PC and hooked my PC to my HD TV set. With some tweaking, the difference was very noticable and it looked great. Not HD-great, but a lot better than just playing the DVD in a regular player. It's not just 'blowing up pixels'.

Like any electronic equipment, some will be **** and some will be good. Check out avsforum.com and hometheaterspot.com for some user reviews on the upscalers you are looking at. You should be able to find some screenshots showing exactly how much improvement you can expect.

[Red]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

I have to partially disagree with the other posters. A proper resolution upscaler can make a good quality, low-res (480) source look outstanding. It totally depends on the algorithms used in the upscaling.

Almost all TVs use a straight-up stretch upscale, which looks like crap. Nothing will make a bad analog source look good.

I agree about analog upconverted, it does look very ordinary as you can see on all 4:3 shows on you HD channels, but the DVD player upconverts a digital source (DVD) not an analog one. Or am I wrong?

When I was doing my research I came across some opinions that upconverting to 720 looks better than 1080. My TV doesn't display 720 so I can't verify.
Best thing to do is to pick up a player from a store with good return policy. Test it out. Rent a movie you already own and test both players at the same time watching the same movie using the split screen.

[nfotiu]

I have the Zenith DVB 318 ( I think the equivalent model in Canada is an LG). It was about a 100% improvement over the decent Panasonic prog-scan it replaced. I've had it hooked up to both a projector displaying a 92" picture and a 50" plasma. Both 768 sources. The best picture is in 1080i mode through components, oddly enough. This makes for a whole lot of scaling and re-scaling, but somehow it looks very good.

Movies look pretty close to the same movies on HBO-HD. I can really only tell the difference on long distance seens, where you can see the resolution is lacking. The colours and blacks are awesome from this dvd player.

My only guess as to why it works so well is that the dvd player has a very good dvd->1080i scaler, and my TVs scalers are very good with 1080i>768.