Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Upconverting DVD Players

Hello,

I looked through this forum but could not find any discussion on this topic. If I missed, please direct me.

I am shopping for a 2nd DVD player (bedroom) and I am unsure which to buy. I am curious about the need to have an up converting DVD player. Will most new HD TVs have up converting capabilities or does this really need to be done in the player?

If I have a DVD player outputting 480p, can I just count on the fact that any future HD TV I buy (currently do not have one) will take care of the up conversion for me.

Can anyone recommend a good (technology relevant for a couple years) DVD player for under $200 that will support my journey into HD TV.

My current player is a Panny RV32 and I am quite happy with both the audio and video out of it, but my TV is still a 21 inch tube displaying 480i.

Thanks

Shawn

Shawn, every fixed-pixel(720, 1080)HDTV has to scale the incoming 480 signal(DVD, SDTV)to 720 or 1080 if the player or receiver hasn't already done it. Unless the player or receiver would do a visibly better job of it than the HDTV set itself there's no good reason to not let the set do the job. So, you don't need a new DVD player to "support" HDTV.

No DVD player will get you true HD. WIth that said, I really like my Panasonic S97 and it's upconvertion with my HD front projector.

Oh, and there ARE threads here on the subject.

Let me pull up a few links for ya.

Link 1

Link 2

The second one is many pages long.

Good luck!

The OPPO OPDV971H is worth a look, it plays almost all the formats out there except SACD and just fits in your budget at $199 - Link

The Oppo is great but only upscales and deinterlace over DVI. If you use the component connection it won't use the Faroudja chip and it won't look better than a cheapo DVD player.

In reply to:

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The Oppo is great but only upscales and deinterlace over DVI. If you use the component connection it won't use the Faroudja chip and it won't look better than a cheapo DVD player.

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... but if the TV is doing the upscaling/upconverting it wouldn't matter whether you used DVI or component connection, correct? (assuming the TV's upscaling looks as good as the Oppo's) Do TV's that have that capability do it only through one type of connection, or is it dependent on the TV brand/type? (oy..this getting confusing)

Hi Spoiler,

Yeah, it is confusing. This might help: component-video connections are analog and fully capable of carrying and displaying HDTV resolution. So any 480i or 480p video output from any DVD player via component video connection will automatically be scaled to the HDTV's "native resolution" so the set can display it.

If you decide to use an upscaling DVD player's DVI or HDMI output (this keeps the video in the digital domain) you should set it to the native resolution of your HDTV display (720p for example). Keep in mind that once you use the DVI or HDMI connection, these must be HDCP-compliant (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) so lots of processing bits are used to conduct the handshake between your HDTV and source. Bits used for this are not applied to video conversion, so the resulting image may or may not look as good as good old component-video connections, which bypass the HDCP stuff.

Regards,

Right it wouldn't matter. All I am saying is that the Oppo is a great player for the price. It uses a Faroudja chip to deinterlace video and upscale so you get a very good quality image (usually better than average deinterlacers in tvs) but if you use it with the component connection then the Oppo won't deinterlace/upscale and then you wouldn't get a better image than using a cheap $50 DVD player with your tv. Thus it would be kind of a waste! The Oppo is sought for its great deinterlacing features.

As I have posted on other threads, I have the OPPO and have tried it with 720P and 480P outputs to my Sony 1080P HDTV. I didn't see any difference with the formats. But, that was just me.

I really do like the OPPO and, for the price, it is hard to beat.

Like Nick, I currently am using the Panny S97S with my Sanyo projector. It upconverts over HDMI/DVI and does a very nice job, and yes it does look better than Component, and ALMOST HD like.

Just curious, how long is your cable run to the projector?

Again, another vote for the panny 97...