Upconverting

[Moffat Cafe]

Anyone know about this.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

You mean upconversion of SD DVDs?

 

[Moffat Cafe]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
You mean upconversion of SD DVDs?

Yes

 

[GregGreen]

Yeah, most can be set to output 480i or 480p. Only issue would be that it wouild also output your BDs this way -- could be a pain in the ass. I'm assuming you have an external upscaler?

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: GregGreen
Yeah, most can be set to output 480i or 480p. Only issue would be that it wouild also output your BDs this way -- could be a pain in the ass. I'm assuming you have an external upscaler?

I was under the impression that a fair few players (including the PS3?) could do native resolution playback, which would not necessitate setting your video output to 480i-only.

 

[Rio Rebel]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: GregGreen
Yeah, most can be set to output 480i or 480p. Only issue would be that it wouild also output your BDs this way -- could be a pain in the ass. I'm assuming you have an external upscaler?

I was under the impression that a fair few players (including the PS3?) could do native resolution playback, which would not necessitate setting your video output to 480i-only.

I believe that's true. Depends on the player. Also, if I remember correctly, my Blu-Ray player can set the output differently based on whether it is a BD or DVD.

Out of curiosity, why would you want to turn it off? Most BD players upscale very well, and very few displays have such a fantastic scaler that they outperform a BD player's upconversion. It is certainly possible in some case, but I don't think it would be common.

 

[sdifox]

Easiest thing to do is dual connection. So output s-video from the BRD (and keed the hdmi connection too) and then just change to s-video input on your display when you just want non upscaled feed. Assuming your BRD output both at the same time of course, some actually don't, which is just them being cheap.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: sdifox
Easiest thing to do is dual connection. So output s-video from the BRD (and keed the hdmi connection too) and then just change to s-video input on your display when you just want non upscaled feed. Assuming your BRD output both at the same time of course, some actually don't, which is just them being cheap.

Yeah, but then you're using up more inputs on your receiver, you've got to do more programming on your remote, it's another thing to teach people, etc. I'd actually say changing your BR-D player's settings is a lot easier, if it's an option. 🙂

I assume the OP wants to run his DVDs through a dedicated upscaler unit, which could definitely produce some quality gains.

 

[Moffat Cafe]

Originally posted by: Rio Rebel

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: GregGreen
Yeah, most can be set to output 480i or 480p. Only issue would be that it wouild also output your BDs this way -- could be a pain in the ass. I'm assuming you have an external upscaler?

I was under the impression that a fair few players (including the PS3?) could do native resolution playback, which would not necessitate setting your video output to 480i-only.

I believe that's true. Depends on the player. Also, if I remember correctly, my Blu-Ray player can set the output differently based on whether it is a BD or DVD.

Out of curiosity, why would you want to turn it off? Most BD players upscale very well, and very few displays have such a fantastic scaler that they outperform a BD player's upconversion. It is certainly possible in some case, but I don't think it would be common.

The reason I wanted to turn off upconverting is this: I know upconverting works well on my Sony BD Player, but very poorly with burned copies (really distorts the flick).

 

[newnameman]

Originally posted by: Moffat Cafe

Originally posted by: Rio Rebel

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: GregGreen
Yeah, most can be set to output 480i or 480p. Only issue would be that it wouild also output your BDs this way -- could be a pain in the ass. I'm assuming you have an external upscaler?

I was under the impression that a fair few players (including the PS3?) could do native resolution playback, which would not necessitate setting your video output to 480i-only.

I believe that's true. Depends on the player. Also, if I remember correctly, my Blu-Ray player can set the output differently based on whether it is a BD or DVD.

Out of curiosity, why would you want to turn it off? Most BD players upscale very well, and very few displays have such a fantastic scaler that they outperform a BD player's upconversion. It is certainly possible in some case, but I don't think it would be common.

The reason I wanted to turn off upconverting is this: I know upconverting works well on my Sony BD Player, but very poorly with burned copies (really distorts the flick).

What do you mean by "distorts"? Is it an aspect ratio problem?

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: Moffat Cafe
The reason I wanted to turn off upconverting is this: I know upconverting works well on my Sony BD Player, but very poorly with burned copies (really distorts the flick).

Are you certain it's the upconverting and not the loss of quality from re-encoding to fit on a 4.3GB disc?

 

[sdifox]

lol, upconvert a downsampled movie. Just go to a garage sale and pick up a used dvd player.

 

[Moffat Cafe]

Originally posted by: sdifox
lol, upconvert a downsampled movie. Just go to a garage sale and pick up a used dvd player.

At the present time I have both a Sony BD Player and a Sony DVD Player hooked up to a 54 inch Panasonic Plasma TCP54V10 HD tv. Of course the Blue Ray discs look stunning. Upconverted DVDs look very nice indeed. Copies of DVDs look quite good played on the Sony DVD Player, the Panasonic Plasma does an extremely good job with old black & white classic flicks (DVD copies). I was hoping I could eliminate the Sony DVD player by deactivating upconverting on the Sony BD player.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Moffat Cafe

Originally posted by: sdifox
lol, upconvert a downsampled movie. Just go to a garage sale and pick up a used dvd player.

At the present time I have both a Sony BD Player and a Sony DVD Player hooked up to a 54 inch Panasonic Plasma TCP54V10 HD tv. Of course the Blue Ray discs look stunning. Upconverted DVDs look very nice indeed. Copies of DVDs look quite good played on the Sony DVD Player, the Panasonic Plasma does an extremely good job with old black & white classic flicks (DVD copies). I was hoping I could eliminate the Sony DVD player by deactivating upconverting on the Sony BD player.

check your manual or menus, DVD playback may have a different setting than BRD.

 

[Moffat Cafe]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog

Originally posted by: Moffat Cafe
The reason I wanted to turn off upconverting is this: I know upconverting works well on my Sony BD Player, but very poorly with burned copies (really distorts the flick).

Are you certain it's the upconverting and not the loss of quality from re-encoding to fit on a 4.3GB disc?

No compression to fit on a 4.3GB disc, dual layer if neccesary. The copies when played on a DVD player are indistinguishable from the original even on a 60 inch HD Tv. By the way, the reason for the copies is to eliminate the clutter before the actual movie.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: Moffat Cafe
No compression to fit on a 4.3GB disc, dual layer if neccesary. The copies when played on a DVD player are indistinguishable from the original even on a 60 inch HD Tv. By the way, the reason for the copies is to eliminate the clutter before the actual movie.

I can definitely identify with that.

 

[Moffat Cafe]

Originally posted by: sdifox
Easiest thing to do is dual connection. So output s-video from the BRD (and keed the hdmi connection too) and then just change to s-video input on your display when you just want non upscaled feed. Assuming your BRD output both at the same time of course, some actually don't, which is just them being cheap.

Thanks, this is the way I finally went with one exception. Since my component cables were still in place as well as s-video (I have my players and receiver/amp at my dual recliner location with cables routed through basement) I used component rather than s-video.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Moffat Cafe

Originally posted by: sdifox
Easiest thing to do is dual connection. So output s-video from the BRD (and keed the hdmi connection too) and then just change to s-video input on your display when you just want non upscaled feed. Assuming your BRD output both at the same time of course, some actually don't, which is just them being cheap.

Thanks, this is the way I finally went with one exception. Since my component cables were still in place as well as s-video (I have my players and receiver/amp at my dual recliner location with cables routed through basement) I used component rather than s-video.

well, I said s-video just to make sure the upconversion is not happening 🙂

The player can still output 1080p over component, just check your menu system.

 

[Moffat Cafe]

Thanks, will do.

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: GregGreen
Yeah, most can be set to output 480i or 480p. Only issue would be that it wouild also output your BDs this way -- could be a pain in the ass. I'm assuming you have an external upscaler?

I was under the impression that a fair few players (including the PS3?) could do native resolution playback, which would not necessitate setting your video output to 480i-only.

The PS3 can do 480p with HDMI. It can't do 480i over HDMI. It can be set to not upscale DVDs yet will still display the 720p resolution for most games and 1080p for BD and a few games. I used to have mine upconvert to 1080p, but I changed it to 480p and think it's a noticeable improvement. This might not be the case on all TVs. My Pioneer 5080 is 720p (1366x768), so the DVDs get upconverted to 1080p by the PS3 and then scaled to 720p by the TV, which probably isn't good for PQ. Also, my TV has an excellent scaler, so it probably does a better job than the PS3. If you had a budget-brand 1080p TV, then it might look better to have the PS3 upscale the DVD to 1080p than to let the TV's scaler do the work.

I've been wanting to test the PS3 with component cables at 480i to see if it looks better at that resolution than at 480p. I wish they would just let the freaking HDMI cable transmit 480i. I suppose this feature could be added with a future update, but I find that unlikely. I'd hate to have to buy a component cable, run another cable to my TV (I have no other component inputs), and switch between the two connections on both the TV and the PS3 every time I go from watching a DVD to watching a BD or playing a 1080p game. I know I could set up another activity on my Harmony remote, but it seems like such a bother when I should be able to just select 480i with the HDMI cable.

 

[CubanlB]

Um, going from 480p on the ps3 to 480i isn't going to get you better pq on any tv. You would just make the tv de-interlace something that doesnt need to be deinterlaced.

As has been stated already, you going to be dependent on the options of the bluray player concerning dvd playback. No player will upconvert over component, only hdmi, you'll get 480p for dvds. (Unless you hack it) If the source is a bluray then bd player will output usually up to 1080i because of the hdcp requirement for 1080p. (generally)