Upscaling (internal) dvd player for HTPC?

[bigboxes]

I am getting close on building a HTPC and wanted to purchase a Blu-Ray player for the optical drive. I was wondering what made a dvd player an upscaling one. Is it just the processors in the player itself or can we create that function through software (WinDVD, etc.)? Can a high-end tv do the upscaling or is this strictly a function just for the player? I would like to have it as part of the HTPC if at all possible. It will only have one external 5 1/4 bay so I want to choose the optical drive responsibly. I'd rather not have to purchase a stand alone to reside next to it.

 

[sdifox]

err, computers are excellent scalers, in fact, all first gen brd and hd-dvd players were all computers running a very trim version of linux.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: bigboxes
I was wondering what made a dvd player an upscaling one.

All an upscaling DVD player does is feed something other than a 480i or 480p signal to your display. If your computer's DVD player can go to full screen, you've got an "upscaling" DVD player.

And, as mentioned, PCs tend to be on the upper end of the spectrum in this regard.

 

[themisfit610]

Yup, especially if you use ffdshow to handle MPEG-2 decoding, and enable some of its nice features, like sharpening / noise reduction / scaling / dithering.

Some HD-DVD players in particular have incredibly good scalers - I think one of them has hardware that can do real-time edge directed interpolation, which is basically the holy grail of upscaling, and can't be done in real-time yet on the PC.

~Misfit

 

[MrPickins]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Yup, especially if you use ffdshow to handle MPEG-2 decoding, and enable some of its nice features, like sharpening / noise reduction / scaling / dithering.

Some HD-DVD players in particular have incredibly good scalers - I think one of them has hardware that can do real-time edge directed interpolation, which is basically the holy grail of upscaling, and can't be done in real-time yet on the PC.

~Misfit

ffdshow +Media Player Classic FTW!

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Yup, especially if you use ffdshow to handle MPEG-2 decoding, and enable some of its nice features, like sharpening / noise reduction / scaling / dithering.

Some HD-DVD players in particular have incredibly good scalers - I think one of them has hardware that can do real-time edge directed interpolation, which is basically the holy grail of upscaling, and can't be done in real-time yet on the PC.

~Misfit

ffdshow +Media Player Classic FTW!

you got a solution for the dts clipping?

 

[MrPickins]

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Yup, especially if you use ffdshow to handle MPEG-2 decoding, and enable some of its nice features, like sharpening / noise reduction / scaling / dithering.

Some HD-DVD players in particular have incredibly good scalers - I think one of them has hardware that can do real-time edge directed interpolation, which is basically the holy grail of upscaling, and can't be done in real-time yet on the PC.

~Misfit

ffdshow +Media Player Classic FTW!

you got a solution for the dts clipping?

Honestly I haven't had any problems with dts signals when I pass them through s/pdif. Can you give me some more info?

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Yup, especially if you use ffdshow to handle MPEG-2 decoding, and enable some of its nice features, like sharpening / noise reduction / scaling / dithering.

Some HD-DVD players in particular have incredibly good scalers - I think one of them has hardware that can do real-time edge directed interpolation, which is basically the holy grail of upscaling, and can't be done in real-time yet on the PC.

~Misfit

ffdshow +Media Player Classic FTW!

you got a solution for the dts clipping?

Honestly I haven't had any problems with dts signals when I pass them through s/pdif. Can you give me some more info?

This is the truehd crap. or whatever people are ripping from brd and hd-dvd.

 

[themisfit610]

That doesn't really give us any more info..

I've played TrueHD / DTS-HD Master Audio with no problems.

~MiSfit

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
That doesn't really give us any more info..

I've played TrueHD / DTS-HD Master Audio with no problems.

~MiSfit

I'll try to grab the streams info. It happens on some and not others.

 

[Slick5150]

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Yup, especially if you use ffdshow to handle MPEG-2 decoding, and enable some of its nice features, like sharpening / noise reduction / scaling / dithering.

Some HD-DVD players in particular have incredibly good scalers - I think one of them has hardware that can do real-time edge directed interpolation, which is basically the holy grail of upscaling, and can't be done in real-time yet on the PC.

~Misfit

ffdshow +Media Player Classic FTW!

you got a solution for the dts clipping?

Honestly I haven't had any problems with dts signals when I pass them through s/pdif. Can you give me some more info?

This is the truehd crap. or whatever people are ripping from brd and hd-dvd.

What are you outputting the sound with? Analog? Digital? There currently isn't anything PC wise that can bitstream HD audio to a receiver. AMD's newest video cards can do 8-channel LPCM, but that's about it.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Slick5150

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Yup, especially if you use ffdshow to handle MPEG-2 decoding, and enable some of its nice features, like sharpening / noise reduction / scaling / dithering.

Some HD-DVD players in particular have incredibly good scalers - I think one of them has hardware that can do real-time edge directed interpolation, which is basically the holy grail of upscaling, and can't be done in real-time yet on the PC.

~Misfit

ffdshow +Media Player Classic FTW!

you got a solution for the dts clipping?

Honestly I haven't had any problems with dts signals when I pass them through s/pdif. Can you give me some more info?

This is the truehd crap. or whatever people are ripping from brd and hd-dvd.

What are you outputting the sound with? Analog? Digital? There currently isn't anything PC wise that can bitstream HD audio to a receiver. AMD's newest video cards can do 8-channel LPCM, but that's about it.

well, vlc is not having problem with the audio stream out, but the video playback stutters (Opteron 165 OCed to 2.5GHz still doesn't cut it) but when playing back in mpc, the image is fine, the audio sounds like it's clipping. Not happening to all the files, just some. I will pull the stream info when I get home.

 

[sdifox]

Now I feel like an idiot. I don't know what I changed (I disabled and enabled the sound card) and now it works fine... the files I was having problem before now play fine...figures.