Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater upconverting or upscaling DVD players

I was actually talking to a techie today for Samsung. He stated that there is no samsung TV that upconverts or upscales any signal. All it does is some filtering to clean it up, period.
So, I guess the DVD player is an option for at least some improvement. I do not expect HD quality, but would like to see a bump.

Shane D

They are no longer on any Sony Site. The new model (995), uses HDMI for upscaling. I had actually been leaning more towards the 5 disc version, IF I upgrade the TV.

Shane D

Cool unit, but not cheap! How does it work on regular cable?

Shane D

Shane, the Samsung "techie" apparently wasn't techie enough(or there was some miscommunication). Any 720 pixel set, for example, when it's fed 480 material from standard definition TV or standard DVDs, has to upscale the 480 to 720 so that all the pixels are filled; otherwise a complete picture couldn't even be displayed.

Really? The explanation that I was given is that the TV just accepts what it gets and cleans it up a little. This made sense to me since my present TV is capable of 720p/1080i, but does nothing at all with my cable picture. DVDs are better, but NOWHERE near HD quality.
So, do you think this because they are fixed pixel sets? My set is technically as much a 720p TV as a new Samsung, isn't it?
As you can tell, I am woefully ignorant on the subject, so I would appreciate any input.
If I can get more info from you guys, I will call Samsung and Toshiba again tomorrow.

Thanks.

Shane D

Shane, your last info wasn't entirely clear. Are you saying that your set is or isn't a fixed pixel set? If a set doesn't have a fixed pixel display(most of the Samsung sets certainly are fixed pixel)then no scaling takes place because it's irrelevant to creating the picture. So, it wouldn't take place in the set and no scaling("conversion")in a player, receiver or separate processor would be relevant to such a set either, since there aren't any pixels that need filling.

Just to clear things up John, my present set is a Toshiba 42H82, rear projection TV. I am considering getting a new TV, which would be a DLP (Samsung or Toshiba, probably).
So, are you saying that all DLP/LCD/Plasma TV's upscale to 720p or 1080p? If that is so, then why would anybody buy upconverting DVD players? Also, if you have a fixed pixel set, have you ever compared the two methods?

Thank you!

Shane D

Here's an example...maybe it will help. When I watch DVD's through the Xbox, they all play at 480p. When I play games through the 360, then they follow the resolution that the game is capable of, i.e. 1080i, 480p, or 720p.

DVD Players that upscale, would generally upscale the signal from 480p to 720p or 1080i (most LCD's, Plasmas, etc. can support this -- at least mine does). There are a couple of players out on the market that will upconvert to 1080p, but they are still fairly expensive, and you would require a TV/projector that is capable of handling 1080p (another expense).

If someone were to be looking for a TV capable of handling 1080p (again, expensive) then you might as well just get an HD-DVD or BluRay player (again, fairly expensive, unless you want a buggy Toshiba). This way, you would be getting true 1080p through your player, and your tv wouldn't bat an eye.

Hope that helps a little.

Okay Shane, I took a look to see what the 42H82 is, and found that it's a CRT set, which means that it doesn't use a fixed pixel screen, so disregard the parts of the discussion referring to upscaling pixels.

Yes, all DLP/LCD/Plasma HDTVs have to upscale incoming material which is lower than their 720 or 1080 "native resolution" in order to display a complete picture. Why then with such a TV would anybody buy an "upconverting" player? One reason is that the somewhat misleading use of "upconverting" leaves some(who aren't aware that the TV has to upscale if it's not done earlier)with the impression that the DVD material is actually converted to real HD quality. Another buying point is that the player may(or may not)do a better job of scaling DVD content than the circuitry in the TV itself. There's no way to say which method would work better as a generality, since TVs and players differ and each combination would have to be tried to see which was better in a particular case. Note that the scaling done by a player only affects DVDs and that the TV set processing has to be relied on with broadcast TV programming if it has to be scaled.

Thanks for the info. I do understand the principle of upscaling, but I am just wondering about what tool does it best.

Shane D