Question about 1080p Upscaling

[Moffat Cafe]

If I buy a DVD Player with 1080p upscaling and use it with a Hi Def. 720p plasma tv. (not 1080p) what will result? Thanks.

 

[mmntech]

It will upscale the DVDs to 720p or 1080i. Sometimes the player does it automatically, sometimes you have to tell it what resolution to use. Either way it should work.

 

[Slick5150]

Well if you set the DVD player to output in 1080p, you'd get a blank screen because the TV likely wouldn't accept a 1080p signal. But if you set it to 720p, you'll be fine.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

You may want to play around with all your options. If you do get a DVD player that upscales, it's possible that the TV could do a better job on its own. If your plasma is really 1366x768 or even 1024x768 (or something not 1280x720), then it's going to be scaling a 720p signal anyway, so it would first get scaled by the DVD player and then again by the TV.

Might be better to just feed the TV 480p and have it convert it straight to native resolution. I don't know enough about specific models to tell whether a TV is going to be better at scaling than any given DVD player, just that you may not be happy with the results.

In my experience with several DVD players and several resolution settings in upscaling, I haven't noticed nearly as much difference as I saw when I got a calibration DVD and got my brightness, contrast, sharpness, colors, etc. dialed in correctly. The improvement I got going from out of the box calibration on a highly reviewed DVD player and projector to a calibrated setting was a HUGE difference. Playing around with upscaling and where video conversions take place has been much less significant for my situation.

 

[sdifox]

if your tv is 720p, just upscale to 720p. Upscaling to 1080p then have your tv downconvert to 720p is detrimental to picture quality.

 

[s44]

Originally posted by: sdifox
if your tv is 720p, just upscale to 720p. Upscaling to 1080p then have your tv downconvert to 720p is detrimental to picture quality.

But most 720p sets aren't exactly 1280*720 anyway. If it's 1368*768 or the like, it will upscale *from* 720p as well as down from 1080p. So it may be better to feed it 1080p or, as YoYo suggests, 480i/480p.

 

[techwanabe]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
You may want to play around with all your options. If you do get a DVD player that upscales, it's possible that the TV could do a better job on its own.

I wish that were the case. I tried playing a regular DVD player through my Sammy LN46A650 when I first started using it. The picture didn't look very good at all. Then I got my PS3 to watch bluray movies and started watching DVD's on that machine also and noticed DVD's look pretty darn decent. So it seems the bluray player upscales much better than the built in upscaler, assuming there is one. I never checked the menu items for any settings.

 

[Koing]

The tv will have an upscaler built in to it. How else would it display 480i and lower then native resolutions or interlace feeds? LCD and Plasmas are progressive by nature and aren't like the CRT tv's of yesterday year where they were interlaced.

Koing

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: s44

Originally posted by: sdifox
if your tv is 720p, just upscale to 720p. Upscaling to 1080p then have your tv downconvert to 720p is detrimental to picture quality.

But most 720p sets aren't exactly 1280*720 anyway. If it's 1368*768 or the like, it will upscale *from* 720p as well as down from 1080p. So it may be better to feed it 1080p or, as YoYo suggests, 480i/480p.

going from 720p to 1368x768 is a lot easier than 1080p to 1368x720p. TV scalers are not great until you shell out megabucks for the tv so don't make it work harder than you have to.

Obviously if you buy a cheapass dvd upscaler, you maybe wasting money too.