Upscaling DVD players

[colin rowe]

Are upscaling DVD players all they are cracked up to be? I have a 2 year old Samsung DVD-R136 DVD recorder, with HDMI output. This machine gives to me, an excellent picture on my Panasonic HD TV. Are there any great picture advantages to be had by using an upscaling machine, or is mine doing it already?

[mooblie]

Your TV is already doing an upscaling, so the question really is: will any player you buy do a better or worse job than the TV?

I have a Sony DVP-NS76H upscaling DVD player, feeding a 42" Panasonic HD plasma TV via HDMI. I can't really claim it's better than an old Yelo 800 I used to use to feed the TV's component inputs at SD. They are both pretty good.

[Alan Roberts]

There's a theoretical advantage for an upscaling player: it doesn't have to generate an interlaced SD signal and then upconvert it, it can generate the HD output directly from the data.

My experience with a 1920x1080 plasma, with built-in Freeview and Freesat, is that it makes cleaner Freeview pictures than I can get by feeding it from and external Freeview decoder. So, I suspect that the upscaler in the tv set bypasses interlace when decoding from the internal receivers, producing cleaner signals. So, if you can bypass the interlaced SD stage, you might get better pictures. There's no guarantee of course, but.....

[infocus]

Are upscaling DVD players all they are cracked up to be?
I've heard some claims to the effect of "why bother with Blu-Ray? Just upscale your DVDs with our player!" and I think there's a lot of marketing hype there. (If not downright lies.) As a means of getting every last ounce out of a DVD they may have merit, but I don't expect them to compare with a Blu-Ray player and an HD disc.

[mooblie]

There's a theoretical advantage for an upscaling player: it doesn't have to generate an interlaced SD signal.....

But the upscaling player still has to start from an interlaced signal on the SD-DVD (in most cases)?

[colin rowe]

Thanks chaps.
I will probably try one out, they are not that expensive. I just get fed up with taking the recorder to various shows and Wedding fayres, dealing with that birds nest of wires etc behind the TV.

[Alan Roberts]

But, most dvds aren't of interlaced material, they're progressive, films. And the problem is that a conventional player will make an interlaced video signal from that, which then has to be upscaled, while an upscaling player can generate the HD directly from the data, no need to invoke interlace.

[Dave R Smith]

Octobers AV magazine (Panel beaters p35) say flat screens have reached the holy grail of performance and the big boys are now working on various upscaling technology for websites and SD content to be on HD screens - including upping the frame rate from 50 to 200 fps. Quotes in the article use phrases like 'acceptable' and 'looks like' so it would appear that the next generation of technology will make it compatible with HDV displays, but not of the same quality.

[ClaireTall]

I've heard some claims to the effect of "why bother with Blu-Ray? Just upscale your DVDs with our player!" and I think there's a lot of marketing hype there. (If not downright lies.) As a means of getting every last ounce out of a DVD they may have merit, but I don't expect them to compare with a Blu-Ray player and an HD disc.

I have a Panasonic 42PZ81B, same as Alan's I believe, along with a Panasonic DMR-EX78 upscaling DVD player/recorder. I also have a Playstation for playing Blu-Rays.

My conclusion is that a decent SD DVD upscaled played on the Panasonic looks better than a poor Blu-Ray played on the PS3. I've found many Blu-Rays to be disappointingly poor and some staggeringly good.

[Lusky]

My conclusion is that a decent SD DVD upscaled played on the Panasonic looks better than a poor Blu-Ray played on the PS3. I've found many Blu-Rays to be disappointingly poor and some staggeringly good.

It's all down to the transfer done by the studio, there have been some really shoddy ones done such as Terminator 2. How do you find the PS3s upscaler Claire compared to your Panasonic? I rate it really highly especially as it upscales to 1080p when so many only do 1080i

[Alan Roberts]

That's the real clue, the player must deliver 1080p to the display to avoid all the concatenated scaling.

[branny]

the concatenated scaling.

Interesting! I bet Samuel Johnson missed that word out in his dictionary.

[Alan Roberts]

No, it's in Johnson To link together, to join in a successive order and comes from the latin for chain (catena, from which we also get catenary, the shape formed by a chain suspended from its ends).

Yes, I have got a copy of Johnson, and the full OED :) But I don't spend my life reading them. Concatenation has been in my lexicon for a long time, as has boostrophedonic (which isn't in Johnson, but means "ploughing in alternate directions", i.e. scanning without flyback).

[branny]

Crikey! - My memory always switches to the scenes in Blackadder when words like these are used.

[mooblie]

My contrafibularities to you, branny.

[branny]

Oh, I'm sorry mooblie. I'm inuspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctious to have caused you such pericumbobulations

[Alan Roberts]

Incidentally, Johnson actually did miss out "sausage". Generally, the dictionary is in strict alphabetical order, but sausage is a couple of pages out of sequence, placed after "savoy", as though an afterthought. There are many examples like this, words not quite where they should be.

[muddy]

Incidentally, Johnson actually did miss out "sausage". Generally, the dictionary is in strict alphabetical order, but sausage is a couple of pages out of sequence, placed after "savoy", as though an afterthought.

Surely it should have been placed after saveloy?

I'll get my coat...

[Alan Roberts]

Possibly, but saveloy isn't in there anyway.

[steve]

Whilst I read about the lexographical nympholepsy above here in Florida, I suppose you in Old Blighty are occupied with carphology and floccillation.

Steve

[Ford Prefect]

I've recently bought a Sony Blu-ray player, BDP-S350 and decided to do some tests on upscaling etc. because I got a free Blu-ray disc of Casino Royale and I already had it on DVD. I also have a Sony DVD recorder with hard disc and built-in upscaler.
I read an article in What Hi-Fi that stated after considerable testing that upscaled output was superior to SD and although you can upscale at the player, or at the amp, or at the TV, in their tests, upscaling at the player was invariably best.
Now, I don't always agree with the pundits at What Hi-Fi, but in this case my testing confirmed what they had found.
In addition, the blu-ray player upscaling is slightly better than the DVD recorder according to my wife, but personally, I couldn't tell the difference.
So IMHO a good modern DVD (not an old transfer job) played on an decent upscaling player looks every bit as good as the newer and more expensive BD version.
So is it all hype?....er....yes...probably!

[steve]

I can see that a good transfer from digitally originated footage to SD DVD will produce a better result that an analogue derived work, and probably respond better to upscaling. I don't see how the same original material can appear better than when it has been rendered to 1080p directly by high quality encoders and played out at the same resolution. The detail thrown away in creating an SD version cannot be brought back by any upres process. It isn't there to work on.
You need to do the comparison on more than one TV/player combination, and judge the quality in respect of edge artifacts and noise on a selection of scenes, (static/high motion/high contrast/low light etc., and see which one performs best.

Steve

[Robert Horton]

Hi all, I have just found this thread and have a question. I too have been thinking of purchasing an upscaling DVD player and using the HDMI connection to my Panasonic HD TV. Alan, I thought that when we produced DVDs with editing software, the DVD was always interlaced, not progressive. Am I wrong here as obviously a pro gressive signal going to the HD TV should be better. Can you set me right here please.

Thanks

Bob H

[Alan Roberts]

Signals onto DVD can be interlaced or progressive,it's up to you to choose. Compression of originally progressive footage will always be more efficient than of originally interlaced footage because the level of in-built aliasing is lower in progressive. Any footage that has been converted either way will always require a significantly higher data rate because of the inevitable aliasing.

A good cinema release on DVD will look better played on a modern upscaling player than on a player that doesn't upscale, simply because the footage never goes through an interlaced stage.

[Robert Horton]

Thanks for that Alan. At the moment I still use a Panasonic NVGS400. I usually record in 16:9 50i format. I edit in MSP7 and create a lower field first mp2 file. I take this into DVDW2 to produce a PAL DVD. First question would it be better to record in progressive mode, edit and produce a framed based mp2 to take into DVDW2 as I have a HDTV. If I did this would this affect the viewing by others who do not yet have an HDTV. I presume there is no point in recording in 50i and subsequently producing frame based mp2. As you might guess this is not my strong point.

Regards

Bob H

[Alan Roberts]

It's always best not to convert unless you have to.

If you want smooth motion, shoot 50i and stick with it all the way through to the dvd. Only go into progressive if you want the jerky film-look, but if you really do want that, then shoot progressive, edit and output it unconverted. That said, progressive up-scales much better than interlaced does, so you have to make your mind up on what you actually want to achieve.

Hope that helps.

[Robert Horton]

Alan that makes sense and is very helpful, so thank you.

Bob H

[Alan Roberts]

My pleasure

[jgould]

Just bought a Toshiba DR17DT Upscaling DVD Recorder With Freeview from ebay, refurbished with 12 months warranty and as new for £48 delivered and I can honestly say upscaling does make a difference, even my partner noticed it. Still some more left..just type in model number and you will find it

[castman]

Isn't all this up-scaling malarky just a trick of the eye? or perhaps at best better quality components in a standard DVD player. I wouldn't mind betting that a good quality DVD player would produce as good, if not better results than your average up-scaled DVD player.

I remember buying a cheapo DVD player from ASDA for about £15 for my son and the picture looked wonderful and far better than my much more expensive DVD player - at first, until you noticed that it was mainly due to the fact that it was just a more contrasty image, which looked sharper especially on nice on-screen graphics, pretty dire in the shadows of a movie though!

Surly you can't get better than what the original supplys? It's like all these 'clever' tricks you see on CSI where they take a crappy image from a CCTV camera of the villains car across a road then 'enhance' the image to read the number plate - can't be done, if it's not there....it's not there - simples!

[Alan Roberts]

No, it's not a trick of the eye. there are very good scientific reasons why the player can upscale better than the display. When you play a dvd, the video output will probably be 625-interlaced, two fields of 288 lines interlaced. The display then has to create a progressive image from it to feed the higher-definition display.But, it started out progressive on the disk, so why bother going through the interlaced stage? Because there isn't a SD progressive standard, so it makes sense to upscale directly from the progressive data on the disk.

There's no trickery in it. Only7 common sense.

[castman]

No, it's not a trick of the eye. there are very good scientific reasons why the player can upscale better than the display. When you play a dvd, the video output will probably be 625-interlaced, two fields of 288 lines interlaced. The display then has to create a progressive image from it to feed the higher-definition display.But, it started out progressive on the disk, so why bother going through the interlaced stage? Because there isn't a SD progressive standard, so it makes sense to upscale directly from the progressive data on the disk.

There's no trickery in it. Only7 common sense.

I can see that, it sort of makes sense......