# DVD upconversion to 720p--noticeable?



## jtodd929 (Oct 24, 2004)

I'm using my only HDMI connector on my TV for TivoHD.

I noticed a new DVD player offers DVD upconversion to 720 (as opposed to my current 480p). But to upconvert it must use the HDMI connector. I was wondering if anybody has experience with this kind of upconversion?

Does this essentially make your DVD videos HD? Is there a strong improvment in picture when going from 480p to 720p VIA upconversion?

How effective is "video scaling"?


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## MikeMar (Jan 7, 2005)

I have an OPPO up converting to our 720p TV

dvd's look GREAT!! not HD, but DAMN good and a lot better than a regular DVD player.

We are not planning on getting a HD/BR for a LONG time since the upconverting is so good.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

Of note, it looks like Warner Brothers will go Blu-Ray only come May. That leaves just two studios, I think, on HD-DVD. Maybe the format war is nearing an end.....


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## Barryrod (Mar 17, 2006)

If you only have one HDMI input (Like me), you can get an HDMI switch like I did from Monoprice. I got their 5 port one and it works great, even comes with a remote. Right now I am only using 2 but I see me using more in the future, like when I get the HDMI cable for the Xbox 360.


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## jtodd929 (Oct 24, 2004)

I like the switch idea. but it appealed to me the idea of getting a good quality video scaler in a receiver. This way, DVD video etc can be improved--which is really the basis of my query: how well does video scaling work?


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## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

Shouldn't the component output also display the upconverted content?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

All HD TVs either upscale or downscale all video to the TV's native resolution. Also many of the new audio/video receivers have upscaling ability built in. 

So the question is where is the best place to have your DVD's upscaled and is it worth it to buy a new DVD player now or to wait until the HD/Blu Ray mess is worked out and get a new HD/Blu Ray player then? 

I have no idea but I am guessing that if you have a good DVD player you are better off letting your TV convert the image and saving up for a HD/Blu Ray player once the format war is settled. 

Good Luck,


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

JimSpence said:


> Shouldn't the component output also display the upconverted content?


The DVD licensing agreement prohibits upconversion over component. You only get upconversion with DVI-CP and HDMI.



 jtodd929 said:


> Does this essentially make your DVD videos HD? Is there a strong improvment in picture when going from 480p to 720p VIA upconversion?
> 
> How effective is "video scaling"?


DVDs are 720x480. HD is 1280x720 or 1920x1080.

An upconverting player cannot add detail to the picture that doesn't exist on the disk. So no, an upconverting player will not give you HD quality. Picture quality on upconverted DVDs is not even remotely comparable to the better Blu-ray disks on larger screens.

If you have a LCD, plasma, DLP, or other digital display, your TV already upconverts all DVDs. Digital displays must upconvert all input signals to their native panel resolution for display. Using an upconverting player simply moves the processing (deinterlace and scaling) from your TV to the DVD player.

Upconverting DVD players can significantly improve the look of your DVDs, depending on (1) the quality of your TV's built-in video processing, and (2) the quality of the video processing in the DVD player. If #2 is significantly better than #1, then you should see an improvement in picture quality. If #1 is just as good as #2, then you will not see an improvement.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that all upconverting players are equal. Output quality of upconverting DVD players varies greatly depending on the technology in the box. If you have a large library of DVDs and want an upconverting player that will produce a noticeable improvement in picture quality on most TVs, then I would recommend you take a look at the Oppo DV-983HD ($200-$300), which should ship in the next month or so.

If you don't have a large library of DVDs, then I would probably just save the money for a quality Blu-ray player like the Panasonic DMP-BD30 (if you have a HDMI 1.3 A/V receiver) or a Panasonic DMP-BD50 (if you don't have a HDMI 1.3 A/V receiver). These Blu-ray players upconvert DVDs too, although not as well as that Oppo DV-983HD.


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## Stephen Tu (May 10, 1999)

> Does this essentially make your DVD videos HD? Is there a strong improvment in picture when going from 480p to 720p VIA upconversion?


It absolutely does _not_ make your DVDs "HD". All it does is change the pixel resolution to (possibly) match that of your TV. It's akin to enlarging a photo in Photoshop. Although you can take pictures of any pixel dimensions & enlarge them to the same size, fundamentally the picture that was originally captured with more pixels is going to look sharper, if you are looking at a large enough size to see the difference. Blu-ray & HD-DVD (though HD-DVD in huge trouble after Warner defection) are kind of like using a 10 megapixel camera vs. a 2 megapixel camera, for a large enough print it's just going to be clearly sharper.

Your HDTV *already does this*, it already upconverts, it has to in order to fill the pixels it has. An upconverting player will only help if it does this better than your set already does. It's really a contest of the scalers to see which does the least damage in the process, it can't add detail that isn't in the original. An (usually slight) improvement can be noticed if the scaler in the player is good while the one in the TV is lousy, although the opposite can also be true, and most often there is very little difference.

For 720p sets, there is an added complication that most such TVs are 1366x768 or some other number not 1280x720, they are using resolutions more common for computers. So the "720p" player's output gets scaled again anyway, which is usually theoretically worse than a single scaling operation.

I think most people are best off sticking with their existing DVD players (make sure to use component output, 16:9 setting) with their new HDTV, and just save up for the cheaper Blu-ray players coming this year.



> Shouldn't the component output also display the upconverted content?


Some silly people, likely lawyers, who don't understand technical things, inserted language into DVD licenses making it a violation to pass upconverted video over component, due to piracy concerns. (Even though upconversion doesn't fundamentally improve the signal over recording the original, and any real pirate just does a direct digital perfect copy of the DVD anyway). So upconverting players don't do it over HDMI, they pass std 480i/p over component, then the set wil upconvert.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

FWIW, I've found that I get a much better picture than my 480p DVD player provides by ripping my DVDs and transferring them to my S3, which is set to output 720p.* (That also gets me Tivo-style playback control, which I miss on the DVD player.) But it depends a lot on the player.

* Over component, no less.


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## Shawn95GT (Oct 7, 2005)

I think the good upconverting players will produce a better picture than letting your TV upscale it just because the DVD Format (the video on disc) is higher resolution than 480p.

If you dvd player dumbs it down to 480p and your TV scales it back up that's two times it's been scaled not to mention the digital to analog conversion.

If the upconvert player is set to the native resolution on your TV it'll get scaled once, hopefully right from the video files on disc. It'll stay digital all the way to the TV too since it requires HDMI.

Now in practice, I have a crappy RCA $100ish upconverting DVD player / recorder. I prefer the look of 480p vs 1080i from it's HDMI ouput.

I think the short answer is 'it depends'. I'd give it a shot if you can buy it some place that'll take it back if you aren't satisfied with it.


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

Shawn95GT said:


> I think the good upconverting players will produce a better picture than letting your TV upscale it just because the DVD Format (the video on disc) is higher resolution than 480p.


The DVD specification supports a maximum resolution of 720x480p.

Commercial DVD titles do not exist with >480p resolution.

_Edit: The above applies to the Americas and other countries using NTSC. PAL DVDs have 720x576 resolution._


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## Shawn95GT (Oct 7, 2005)

bkdtv said:


> The DVD specification supports a maximum resolution of 720x480p.
> 
> Commercial DVD titles do not exist with >480p resolution.


My mistake. I was thinking 480 i/p resolution was 480x480. It must just be the capture hardware I was using. Whenever I do anything with my DV camera it is higher res and it happened to match the dvd std.


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## Stephen Tu (May 10, 1999)

NTSC DVD is 720x480, _interlaced_
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/officialfaq.html#3.4

It was designed for the old 480i interlaced set of a decade ago, not today's sets. It's encoded in a manner that makes it relatively easy to get 480p out of it if from a 24 fps film source, although I believe the content has usually been filtered to avoid interlacing artifacts like line twitter, so you don't get quite the same vertical resolution as a true native 480p encoding.


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

Stephen Tu said:


> NTSC DVD is 720x480, _interlaced_
> http://www.thedigitalbits.com/officialfaq.html#3.4
> 
> It was designed for the old 480i interlaced set of a decade ago, not today's sets. It's encoded in a manner that makes it relatively easy to get 480p out of it if from a 24 fps film source, although I believe the content has usually been filtered to avoid interlacing artifacts like line twitter, so you don't get quite the same vertical resolution as a true native 480p encoding.


It is encoded as interlace, but a progressive flag is supported.


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## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

bkdtv said:


> The DVD licensing agreement prohibits upconversion over component. You only get upconversion with DVI-CP and HDMI.
> ...


I think I knew that.


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## sender_name (Feb 12, 2005)

I have an Oppo DV-981HD and I like to say the upconverted standard DVD's are 80&#37; hd...I love the divx compatibility as well


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## nhaigh (Jul 16, 2001)

I have a Sony DVPNS77H that upconverts to 1080p on my 60" and it is pretty good and much better than standard DVD on 32" but as the 60" upconverts as well I cannot see a difference between the DVD player upconverted picture and the TV upconverted picture.

When all is said and done though on the 60" the upconverted 1080p pictures from a DVD are no where near as good as the 1080p Blu-Ray natively which is just spectacular. 

It is also worth noting on a 32" 720p screen the difference between the upconverted DVD (at 720p) and the Blu-Ray (at 720p) is not so obvious.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

Let me also add my $.02.......

I have a gen 1 Panasonic A120 DVD player. It's not even progressive. My new TV is the 720p Vizio 37" LCD. I am using a component input on the TV as I do not have anything else on the DVD player.

I think DVDs look fine on the TV, and in the case of most newer DVDs, excellent and very film-like.

I am also using the fixed 720p on the TiVoHD over HDMI and it looks (well, the clear QAM HD channels at least) spectacular. Even the SD stuff looks pretty decent.


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## RonDawg (Jan 12, 2006)

jlb said:


> Let me also add my $.02.......
> 
> I have a gen 1 Panasonic A120 DVD player. It's not even progressive. My new TV is the 720p Vizio 37" LCD. I am using a component input on the TV as I do not have anything else on the DVD player.
> 
> ...


I used to be the type that used to say that upconverting DVD players were a complete waste of money.

That was until the market was flooded with cheap no-name HDTV's that displayed HiDef wonderfully and standard definition poorly. In order to keep the costs down, they skimped on the scaler/deinterlacer circuitry. For these TV's it may be worth it to buy a quality upconverting unit to handle the scaling/deinterlacing instead.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

Agreed. My Vizio 720p 37" LCD really seems to do a good job upconverting the SD TV and the DVDs. I do have TiVoHD fixed at 720p output.


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## ruarmani (Jan 11, 2008)

I am sitting here and thinking what to do ..... let me know what you think if you were in my shoes.

I have just bought Denon DVD-1740, for a great price of $98, it was on sale. I also have Toshiba SD-3800 Progressive Scan which is 5 years old, Toshiba 32" CRT HDTV, 3 years old and Phillips 642 to play PAL dvds and DivX. So, I plugged denon in, first via component and was surprised that my old toshiba picture was a little better, clearer I would say, it had no jugged edges and very little noise, while Denon had both - more noise and edges were not so good. Denon was better than Phillips and PAL dvds looked definitely better. But Denon does not support divx and can not be hacked to be region free, which I can live with. I went and bought HDMI cable, actually HDMI-DVI adapter, my satellite is HD I use DVI cable as TV has dvi input. I plugged it in, set the up-conversion to 720p and saw no difference whatsoever. Compared to my old Toshiba - still not better. Played with set-ups - made it look like toshiba. So I am not sure what to do, to take it back or keep it and see how it looks when I buy another TV set or 1080p projector. I might be too picky, as I did a lot of editing and I can see any bad frame or glitch. 

What do you think? Could it be that old toshiba works better with old tv set and new denon does not fit quite well? May be TV is limited and can not show all what denon player is capable of? Or may be denon player is simply not good enough? I am not ready to buy HD DVD/BR yet, as I have large DVD collections and I would not want to pay for my favorite movies again. Never heard of Oppo though, until yesterday.... Thank you.


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

Ruar,

If you can, I would return that unit. Denon's players are excellent at the high-end (2930ci and 3930ci), but mediocre to poor at the low end. Past models in the Denon 17xx series were *garbage*.

I would keep your old player until you buy a new 1080p TV or projector. Save your money for the Oppo DV-983H ($300) coming in a few weeks. If I was going to buy one DVD player to keep for the next five years, that would be it.

If you need a new player today and you can't spend that kind of money, then take a look at the Oppo DV-980H ($169).


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## ruarmani (Jan 11, 2008)

bkdtv said:


> Ruar,
> 
> If you can, I would return that unit. Denon's players are excellent at the high-end (2930ci and 3930ci), but mediocre to poor at the low end. Past models in the Denon 17xx series were *garbage*.
> 
> ...


Thank you. I can return it, no problem. I can wait, it is not a rush for me, I just grabbed denon as I knew it was a good brand and the sale was 55% off. But I don't see any point for keeping it, it looks nice though. But I wonder if I'd see any difference on upconverting dvd players. I hear a lot of good things about Oppo, but never heard of them before. Where is this company coming from? I heard its parent company is BBK which player I saw at my friend's house, it looked ugly and the picture was horrible.


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

ruarmani said:


> Thank you. I can return it, no problem. I can wait, it is not a rush for me, I just grabbed denon as I knew it was a good brand and the sale was 55% off. But I don't see any point for keeping it, it looks nice though. But I wonder if I'd see any difference on upconverting dvd players. I hear a lot of good things about Oppo, but never heard of them before. Where is this company coming from? I heard its parent company is BBK which player I saw at my friend's house, it looked ugly and the picture was horrible.


DVD Benchmark Chart

The benchmarks are based on objective tests of progressive scan performance. They do not rate in upconversion and scaling quality, because those are subjective.

As you can see, Oppo players are up at the top with other players costing 4x to 15x as much. Compare the scores of the Denon 17xx series. The DV-980HD is not yet benchmarked, but you can read the review @ Cnet.

The DV-983HD won't be out for a few weeks, but the prerelease version is said to score 100/100 on the benchmark, the highest of any DVD player ever tested. It also uses one of best scalers available in any player at any cost.


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## Stephen Tu (May 10, 1999)

> I plugged it in, set the up-conversion to 720p and saw no difference whatsoever


On a CRT set, I would think if one wants to try upconversion that you should use 1080i if anything. 99+% of CRTs only display 1080i and 480p/540p natively, not 720p. Though I wouldn't expect a lot of difference especially if you aren't viewing that 32" from very close. If a CRT does true 480p (not 540p scaled which some did poorly), I'd expect 480p usually to be slightly better though.

I would use old player (unless broken), wait until you get a bigger set, and get Blu-ray player at that point (hopefully by then there will be something rough in league with the new Oppo). The Blu-ray should do fine with DVDs, and you certainly don't have to rebuy movies, I certainly don't plan to. I only plan to go high def for new movie discs or if they do some extensive remastering on some classic like _Blade Runner_.


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## ruarmani (Jan 11, 2008)

Stephen Tu said:


> On a CRT set, I would think if one wants to try upconversion that you should use 1080i if anything. 99+% of CRTs only display 1080i and 480p/540p natively, not 720p. Though I wouldn't expect a lot of difference especially if you aren't viewing that 32" from very close. If a CRT does true 480p (not 540p scaled which some did poorly), I'd expect 480p usually to be slightly better though.
> 
> I would use old player (unless broken), wait until you get a bigger set, and get Blu-ray player at that point (hopefully by then there will be something rough in league with the new Oppo). The Blu-ray should do fine with DVDs, and you certainly don't have to rebuy movies, I certainly don't plan to. I only plan to go high def for new movie discs or if they do some extensive remastering on some classic like _Blade Runner_.


You are absolutely right, the tv set has two options, 1080i or 540p. Actually, I played with setting more and noticed when I switched denon to 480p the picture looked nicer, just a little. 720p gives more softness and image get more blurry. I thought it would have something to do with tv being old (well, now three year old tv is old.....what would my parents say...). What I do like is how denon plays PAL dvds, I might keep it for that reason. I don't think, I checked and found no info, Blue Ray or HD DVD are NTSC/PAL and I have quite a lot of PAL movies from Europe. If so, I have 30 days to play with denon, or buy Oppo, but for $300 I could probably buy Blue Ray player in few month time, even now. Blade Runner is a great movie....


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## ruarmani (Jan 11, 2008)

I returned the unit. Before I did that I asked personnel at the store to hook denon to best tv set they had. They hooked it up to Sony Bravia 46" and I noticed the same issues I had at home with my Toshiba. Then noticed that Sony performed the same (I used my own dvd) on BR dvd player, so I asked to switch to Sharp Aquos 46" as I noticed the set had beautiful and clear picture in hd. Denon performed the same as at home, tearing and flickering credits, when in menu had a little flickering as well, I checked some scenes I knew well and I would say, I saw no difference, my old Toshiba performed better. I put the dvd into Sharp Blue Ray player - played better then Denon, it was upconverting to 1080p, but no worse than my old tv and dvd player, I would say just the same. So I came to a conclusion that first of all to get a great picture it has to be a perfect match of a tv / projector and a dvd player and now I wonder if upconversion really make sense and if improved the picture. I wonder how Oppo performs as I hear so many good things about it. Guys at the store said I was too picky and my problem was that I used to do a lot of video editing and see everything and that I should buy most expensive equipment to satisfy myself  I don't think so, but I can say now that Denon 1740 is not a good player, it is OK. Interesting, that I read reviews and many of them said something like this: "Spectacular clarity/detail in image" - does this guy know anything about spectacular picture???


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## netsurfer (Jan 16, 2008)

bkdtv said:


> The DVD licensing agreement prohibits up conversion over component. You only get up conversion with DVI-CP and HDMI.
> 
> If you have a LCD, plasma, DLP, or other digital display, your TV already up converts all DVDs. Digital displays must up convert all input signals to their native panel resolution for display. Using an up converting player simply moves the processing (deinterlace and scaling) from your TV to the DVD player.


I would like to focus on the above statements. I am fairly new to this HDTV stuff. First I would like to explain what I have, Then ask some questions.

Recently bought a Toshiba 65HM167 DLP HDTV and a Tivo series 3. Connected to TV using HDMI. The above paragraph says - "Digital displays must up convert all input signals to their native panel resolution for display"

This is not the first time I have read that on these forums. I take that to mean that since my 65HM167 has a maximum (native?) resolution of 1920 x 1080, that even 640 x 480 4/3 content should fill the entire screen, since it is upconverted to 1920 x1080. But it does not on my TV. It displays 4/3 content as 4/3 unless I use the stretch mode. Can anyone explain to me why up converted content, supposedly up to native resolution of 1920 x 1080 does not fill the screen the way HD content does?.

The other statement says "The DVD licensing agreement prohibits up conversion over component. You only get up conversion with DVI-CP and HDMI."

My current DVD player does not have those outputs. I assumed I was up converting but if the above statement is still currently accurate then I guess I should get a new DVD player. Can someone confirm this is still accurate?

One more thing. From some things I have read here, I get the impression that content providers fear perfect copying. I hear that is preventing an HD- DVD recorder from entering the market. Something about how HDMI disables the ability to record from say the Tivo S3 to an HD-DVD recorder, if one existed.

Does anyone know if a HD-DVD recorder might actually be close to coming on the market?


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## netsurfer (Jan 16, 2008)

Stephen Tu said:


> Your HDTV *already does this*, it already upconverts, it has to in order to fill the pixels it has


Are we truly all 100 percent certain that is true?

For my illustration, I will call pixels, lines of resolution.

A 4/3 picture is 640 x 480 lines of resolution. When my 1080P set displays a Standard Definition picture it displays it the full height of the screen but obviously it leaves black bars on the sides because the picture source has no content there to display. I believe that what I am looking at in this case is 640 x 480. The TV is not up converting that signal, in my opinion.

When viewing a High Definition signal, 1920 x 1080 lines of resolution, what happens is that from top to bottom we now have 1080 lines of resolution. In other words, the spaces in between the 480 lines get filled in with more detail. IE - less space between lines equals more detail.

Now, I say that HD adds 2.25 times more lines of resolution both up and down and sideways. That means that a 4/3 High Definition picture would be 1440 x 1080

1080 divided by 3 x 4 = 1440

It also means that a wide screen High definition picture would be 1920 x 1080

1080 divided by 9 x 16 = 1920

So who is right here? Can someone point me to a HDTV manufacturers web site where it specifically states that all signals entering an HDTV are up converted?


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## netsurfer (Jan 16, 2008)

jlb said:


> Let me also add my $.02.......
> 
> I have a gen 1 Panasonic A120 DVD player. It's not even progressive. My new TV is the 720p Vizio 37" LCD. I am using a component input on the TV as I do not have anything else on the DVD player.
> 
> ...


Just wanted to point out that a 37" 16/9 set has the exact same height dimension as a 30" 4/3 set so that is relatively small. Bigger screens would show up bigger differences.


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## Stephen Tu (May 10, 1999)

netsurfer said:


> This is not the first time I have read that on these forums. I take that to mean that since my 65HM167 has a maximum (native?) resolution of 1920 x 1080, that even 640 x 480 4/3 content should fill the entire screen, since it is upconverted to 1920 x1080. But it does not on my TV. It displays 4/3 content as 4/3 unless I use the stretch mode. Can anyone explain to me why up converted content, supposedly up to native resolution of 1920 x 1080 does not fill the screen the way HD content does?.


For 4:3 content, in the non-stretch mode, the TV is adding black pillar box bars to the sides to maintain aspect ratio before upconverting to the 1920x1080. Just because something's upconverted to 1920x1080 doesn't have to mean that all the pixels are going to be used for moving video, here some of them are black. It's just like many broadcasters on their HD stations, that add black bars to the side of SD content, upconvert, and transmit in HD resolutions. Note that many upconverting players do the same thing, pillarboxing 4:3 content (which is a problem with 4:3 letterbox DVDs, often have to turn off upconversion if the TV can't zoom 1080i/720p content).



> The other statement says "The DVD licensing agreement prohibits up conversion over component. You only get up conversion with DVI-CP and HDMI."
> 
> My current DVD player does not have those outputs. I assumed I was up converting but if the above statement is still currently accurate then I guess I should get a new DVD player. Can someone confirm this is still accurate?


It's accurate except that some old model DVD players (some of the first upconverters that came out) were released that upconverted over component before this restriction was enforced & their manufacturers asked to desist. Also some DVD players have been available that were able to be hacked to do this with various methods. And again for the reasons described earlier in the thread, you don't necessarily need a new DVD player.



> One more thing. From some things I have read here, I get the impression that content providers fear perfect copying. I hear that is preventing an HD- DVD recorder from entering the market. Something about how HDMI disables the ability to record from say the Tivo S3 to an HD-DVD recorder, if one existed.
> 
> Does anyone know if a HD-DVD recorder might actually be close to coming on the market?


Not in the U.S. They already exist in Japan. Don't know when/if they will trickle over. Apparently U.S. is not strong market for recordable DVD of any kind, supposedly due to the popularity of Tivo, cable, cable DVRs, sat, sat DVRs, whereas Japan has more market for OTA recording devices. A Blu-ray or HD-DVD recorder would initially record the same way Tivo does, off of ATSC/QAM tuner, possibly w/ cablecard, recording the already-compressed streams. Maybe firewire also (still already compressed). Recording directly off a Tivo, off of say the component inputs, in the past has been very impractical as the cost of HD MPEG encoding has been way too high for a mass-market price. However as stuff like HD camcorders have appeared, the price is dropping and may eventually become feasible, but content providers may enforce some protections.


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## Stephen Tu (May 10, 1999)

netsurfer said:


> For my illustration, I will call pixels, lines of resolution.


You really shouldn't; lines of resolution in video land has a different conventional meaning. Stick with pixels since we are dealing with digital video & digital sets here.



> A 4/3 picture is 640 x 480 lines of resolution. When my 1080P set displays a Standard Definition picture it displays it the full height of the screen but obviously it leaves black bars on the sides because the picture source has no content there to display. I believe that what I am looking at in this case is 640 x 480. The TV is not up converting that signal, in my opinion.


You are incorrect. Your TV is 1920 width x1080 pixels height. In order to fill the 4:3 central portion, it has to create a 1080 pixel tall picture, so it's creating a 1440x1080 pixel picture in the middle and padding out the sides.

If it was not upconverting, using only 640x480 pixels to render, you'd see a very tiny picture less than half the screen height. Some LCD monitors offer this type of display mode, but vanishingly few TVs (none that I know of personally). Xbox 360 playing downloaded web videos also has this mode, native playback.

(As an aside 4:3 SD DVD happens to be 720x480, not 640x480; DVD uses non-square pixels)



> Now, I say that HD adds 2.25 times more lines of resolution both up and down and sideways. That means that a 4/3 High Definition picture would be 1440 x 1080


Of actual picture area, yes. To display the 4:3 DVD in the same size, it needs to upconvert that picture area to that same 1440x1080 box.



> So who is right here? Can someone point me to a HDTV manufacturers web site where it specifically states that all signals entering an HDTV are up converted?


It's just common knowledge. The pixels in a set are fixed in size. If it wasn't upconverting, just displaying pixelixel in a 1:1 fashion, the picture would be tiny, wouldn't fill the height of the display.


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## gatzke (Dec 28, 2007)

netsurfer said:


> So who is right here? Can someone point me to a HDTV manufacturers web site where it specifically states that all signals entering an HDTV are up converted?


It depends on the TV. New TVs have native resolution. For example, a lot of 720P sets are actually something like 1366 x 758. Not sure why, but they stretch or compress all signals to native resolution.

I think I heard there are actually 18 different resolutions in the HDTV standard, 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i. All TVs are supposed to handle those signals by stretching or shrinking the image. There may be some TVs that show the native image with black bars, so you get a small 720P image on your 1080P set.

1080p is not actually one of the standard resolutions AFAIK, but games and HD DVD players are supporting it.

I held out for a 1080p native set. I would rather stretch a 720 p signal to 1080p or de-interlace 1080i to 1080p so you don't lose any information. I now wish I had held out for a 120 Hz system instead of 60 Hz. I have seen some judder in 24 FPS DVDs (I think). I think TV is 30 FPS so a 60 Hz refresh works. DVDs and Movies are 24 FPS so to fit in 60 Hz they do 3:2 pulldown, show a frame 3 times then the next frame 2 times to make 60Hz. 120/30 and 120/24 are both integral, so this is not an issue.


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## dcheesi (Apr 6, 2001)

Stephen Tu said:


> Some silly people, likely lawyers, who don't understand technical things, inserted language into DVD licenses making it a violation to pass upconverted video over component, due to piracy concerns. (Even though upconversion doesn't fundamentally improve the signal over recording the original, and any real pirate just does a direct digital perfect copy of the DVD anyway). So upconverting players don't do it over HDMI, they pass std 480i/p over component, then the set wil upconvert.


The way I heard it, they mandate the use of Macrovision copy-protection on component outputs. Macrovision can't or won't figure out a way to "protect" HD resolution output, so there's no way to follow the mandate while outputting those resolutions over component. Note that other analog output formats, eg. VGA, don't have this restriction (an oversight presumably) so they can upconvert over those outputs.


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## wkearney99 (Dec 5, 2003)

bkdtv said:


> Do not make the mistake of thinking that all upconverting players are equal. Output quality of upconverting DVD players varies greatly depending on the technology in the box.


You are absolutely right about this. I had a Philips DVD/VCR combo unit a while ago and wasn't "unhappy" with it's output but things often didn't seem right. I upgraded to an Oppo-981 and was utterly astounded by how much better the picture was. I borrowed a Silicon Optix test DVD and compared the two. It was utterly pathetic how horrendously BAD the encoder was in the Philips. Like more than 75% of the test examples would fail to render properly. Whereas the Oppo passed all of them!

Then there's the encoder in your TV itself. Some TVs have great encoders, while some are absolutely TERRIBLE. In some cases you absolutely DO NOT want to let the TV do the upconverting. But in others the TV will do a much better job than anything you could hand it from a player. I find the encoder in my Pioneer plasma does a slightly better job upconverting a 720i disc. I've not yet compared how it handles Tivo output. But given then sync pausing between resolution changes I've left the TivoHD set on 1080i fixed for now.

So you really do have to experiment. Having a test DVD helps quite a bit as you can make better comparisons on stable, repeatable material.


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## gatzke (Dec 28, 2007)

jtodd929 said:


> I like the switch idea. but it appealed to me the idea of getting a good quality video scaler in a receiver. This way, DVD video etc can be improved--which is really the basis of my query: how well does video scaling work?


I have an Onkyo Amp that switches video sources and upconverts the signal to 1080p (or 720p). Then you run a single HDMI to your TV from the amp. It simplifies wiring a little to have the amp switch the signal.

We run an old Sony DVD player into the amp through a s-video cable and the amp converts it to 1080p. The result looks good to me, so I have not bought one of the new upconverting DVD players.

So basically, the TV, amp, or DVD player typically can upconvert your signal...


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