DescentBB

Hey folks,
I ran across something I wasn't aware of in the DVD \"biz\". something called \"upconverted\" hidef. It's supposed to get regular DVD \"near\" to 1080 rez. There are players by big names that price under a hundred bucks.

My question is: are they any good?

I noticed that the BlueRay players have this feature as well, but there's no way I'm paying $300 plus. This seems like a nice compemise... if it works.

thanks

sounds like digital zoom+interpolation. test live in store?

My brother says his up converting DVD player is pretty spiffy, I would think it all depends on the quality of the interpolation software/hardware.

The video card in my Media Box also does a pretty good job, but don’t expect to get awesome results from poor starting material.

The quality is a bit better than straight DVD quality, as the upconversion smooths things relatively well. But it's really nowhere near true 1080p (e.g. Blu-Ray). Things look nicely smoothed with upconversion, but they are clear and sharp with Blu-Ray.

For that $100, you might be able to get a good Blu-Ray drive for a PC - that's what I'm using with my 1080p TV set, and I've found it's actually quite handy to have a media center box in my livingroom. I run almost everything through it - Blu-Ray and DVD movies, NetFlix streaming, casual browsing, home movies, etc.

Your HD TV already scales lower resolutions up for you, since otherwise standard resolution inputs would appear windowboxed. I guess the theory is that some DVD players have 'better' interpolation algorithms than some TV's? Just keep in mind that it's not like an upscaling DVD player can actually add any information to the video that wasn't already there. It can only interpolate differently--think when you enlarge an image in a paint program.

Foil, thanks, but I have no real desire to get blu-ray anything on principle alone. That, and it's too far a stretch from the TV to my computer. Besides, my wife is nearly blind and it would be impossible for her to figure out the whole computer thing (there are other factors involved there that I'm not going to go into)

I didn't really expect the res to get close to 1080. that sounded too much like marketing to me.

Really Jeff? I'll look into my box's specs and see if that's lined out (I'm not going to hold my breath)

Spidey, yeah to the material you start with. I've seen some disks that will show nearly 1080 through my old DVD player. I figure they formated it in some kind of hi-def before the whole digi ware on the format.

ok.. TV has an interpoled Aspect Ratio of 14:9 \"enhanced\"
oh.. for a KDL-40S4100 (Sony Bravia)

It’s true that all HD TV’s already up convert, but from my own experience they don’t do as good a job as my video card, or my brothers DVD player.

I have compared my sat picture straight to the TV and then through my video card, and the video card beats the straight thru hands down, especially on the artifacts elimination.

Yea, Duper those are “Enhanced for Widescreen” DVDs, AKA “anamorphic”.

Duper wrote:Foil, thanks, but I have no real desire to get blu-ray anything on principle alone.

Not sure what the problem here is but no matter.

Duper, I have the LG BD300 and it is quite useful. It upconverts and also interfaces with Netflix over your network. For $9.99 a month I can get all the TV shows and movies I want streamed over the internet directly to my player, with many titles in HD. There is no limit on how many we watch. That $9.99 also includes 1-at-a-time Blueray disks unlimited. I just ran a network cable over to the TV wall. There is a device called ROKU that has no disk capability but will stream Netflix. It was about $100. Not sure what it is now. The LG costs about $350.

(this sounds like Netflix comercial)

But hey, thats a LOT of content.

VonVulcan wrote:

Duper wrote:Foil, thanks, but I have no real desire to get blu-ray anything on principle alone.

Not sure what the problem here is but no matter.

Basically, I'm still really peeved about Sony locking out the market to Blue-ray only. .. so I went and bought a sony TV ... go figure.

Sony didn't do anything, Toshiba quit.

Blu-Ray was the better format anyway. Some TV's and players that upconvert to a better job than others. You'll be able to tell it's been upconverted, there will be flaws in the picture. How bad depends on the equipment. Some look fairly nice, some dont.

IIRC, the major difference between 'regular' DVD quality and 'upspec' DVD quality is the bitrate.

Standard def DVD (PAL) is around 4096k KPS - which fits around 2.5 hours of content on a single layer DVD (4.5 gig or DVD-5), where as hi-quality DVDs use 9716 kbps which would give you just over an hour on a standard single-layer DVD. I'm not sure of the comparitive bitrates for NTSC.

Granted I'm not an expert, but most DVDs that ship nowadays seem to be dual layer DVD (DVD-9) discs - which allows for the higer-res video as they have twice the storage.

Is the above correct, or am I way off base here?

The up-coverters work.

I had a Standard DVD Player/Up-Converter to 1080p, and it works great on my 42-inch LCD...

The one I got was a WalMart special for $40 and it did the job nicely... until the CD Tray broke.. then I went out and got a Blu-Ray player that also up-converts.

And I have to tell you - between the Blu-Ray player and the UpConverter.. side by side you can tell a difference and if you are *looking* for the differences you will notice them. But the avg. watcher who just passes by would tell you that the up-converter did an excellent job.

This coming from someone who has owned both - the Up-Converter is a pretty good value and does the job nicely.