Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Video scalers and video upconversions? Worth it?

I viewed and briefly reported on a friend's upscaling dvdp awhile back.
The results were rather sad.
Hopefully the technology has come along in the past half year in other devices.

arg: one other thing to consider with my post, the audio receiver probably costs about $1500 and the TV (about 60") probably costs about $5000. In which piece of equipment do you think that the manufacturer can cost effectively put the best scaler?

Just something to think about.

The receiver. That big a screen costs serious dough, even for the manufacturer.

LOL!! Wrong!

Actually the screen is not the big price driver. The light engine is from what I've read unless you are talking about a plasma. Then you are Correct.

Rat - Ken's point is still well-taken. It all depends on margins. If the $5,000 grand TV spends all of its money on the screen, the light engine, etc., then maybe it actually has allocated less $ to the scaler. Especially considering some receivers that tout their ability to "upconvert" signals to component or HDMI, etc. - these receivers might spend some considerable money making this function work well.

On the flip side, the receiver doesn't necessarily know what the native display of every individual monitor is, whereas the TV only needs to worry abotu converting a certain finite number of input resolutions (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i) into the sets native display. Typically, the TV will be able to do a better job because the scaler will be specifically designed to makes these conversions. In addition, certain sets have weird resolutions, (1024 X 768, e.g.), requiring some internal scaling no matter what.

My plasma is a weird 768p set, so I leave the cable box on 480i and 1080i (since the majority of HD channels - ESPN and ABC aside - Output 1080i) and let the TV do the work. However, for DVD, to help keep the video and audio in sync, I let the DVD player output a 480p signal (allowing the dvd player do the interlacing), but I let the TV do the scaling. This combination gives me the best picture, IMO.

Thanks for the several replies. I am like several of the posters that I have read about - used to have great plans for HT back in the 90's. Then I had kids and got sidetracked. Now the kids are starting to college and I can turn some attention back to HT. The issue is that technology has not waited on me and in a lot of cases, I am at the edge of my envelope in understanding. Sooo..I'll spend time learning by reading and trying to learn and pop up every now and then when I am missing the point. As an observation, this forum seems a lot more civil than other forums and the members here tend to speak in terms that I can understand. It is appreciated.

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...I am at the edge of my envelope in understanding.

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I understand completely. The days of just plugging it in, and turning it on are long gone. We'll be glad to provide any help that we can.

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...this forum seems a lot more civil than other forums...

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You must've missed the "Surrender" thread. Count your blessings.

The surrender thread?

It was a thread, in the Water Cooler section of the forum, that concerned politics. IMHO, it got out of hand with insults and uncalled for comments that caused some bad feelings. Apparently the forum moderator thought it out of hand as well, as the thread was recently deleted. There have been VERY few threads deleted from this forum, at least in my tenure. That this one WAS deleted indicates how bad it was.

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Especially considering some receivers that tout their ability to "upconvert" signals to component or HDMI

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Please correct me if I am wrong but "upconvert" and "upscale" are two different things.

Receivers upconvert signals from composite, s-video to component or hdmi. They make the signal compatible with the next better output. There is no change in resolution or signal quality, only the type of output available.

"Upscale" attempts to change resolution to a higher level. I don't know of any receivers or pre/pros that do this.

No?