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