I recently purchased a Sony 55" KDS-A2000 Rear Projection TV which has 1080p HD capabilities. Since the Sony is upconverting it's video signal to 1080p, will I improve DVD picture quality by using a DVD player that also upconverts to 1080p such as the new Oppo 981? Thanks for any advice.

I think this is one of those "depends on the components" questions, ie depending on which components you have one will probably be able to do a better job of upconverting than the other.

I *think* that upconverting at the player works slightly better in general -- not sure if this is because the player has access to raw DVD information, or that the players tend to have better upconverting chips in them, or just that squirting the signal out at one resolution then resampling in the TV for upconversion introduces some more degradation.

There's a lot to be said for running digital (HDMI) all the way from DVD to TV but even then it's possible that the TV has to resample even if the signal is coming in digitally at the native 1080p resolution.

This is one of those hard questions since 1080p displays are kinda new and wonderful. Hopefully someone knows more about the new Sony TVs than I do...

Thanks for your thoughts!

This topic has come up a few times in the past, and a quick search may reveal some more information for you.

I like my upconverting DVD player, but one thing that you need to know is that it does not, and will not, no matter what brand/model you buy, turn your regular DVDs into HD-DVD or Blu-Ray quality. Upconverting is basically taking your 480 lines of video and, using mathamatical algorythms, it does a "best guess" average and "inserts" more lines of resolution based off of these mathamatical calculations to make an artificial "higher definition" output.

Make sense?

Anyway, I know that Sirquack went from an upconverting DVD player, to a Home Theater PC, and he can tell you (as would just about anyone with a HTPC) that it is even better at matching the resolution to your display device.

Now, some displays will do the upconvertion for you, some are better than others.

Good luck.

I have a Denon 2910 that upsamples to 1080i running hdmi into a Hitachi 55" plasma wich also has 1080i as it's resolution. I have found that letting the Denon do the upscaling works best. The quality is almost as good as the HD signals that I pull off of Dish Network. Not quite, but almost. If I was going to buy another today I would seriously think about an HD DVD instead, or Blu Ray but I'm still waiting for the format war to be resolved. You can get an HD DVD for less than the Denon. However the Denon also does SACD, HDCD, and DVD Audio amongst others so it has a few other features that are nice. I've also read good things about the Oppo. Just be sure not to put the video signal through too many transitions and you should be OK.

I don't see the point of worrying about upscaling on one model vs another. Upscaling has the same odds of decreasing image quality as it does of improving it.