upscaling from dvd player

Tillerman08

Apologies if this is a stupid question but here goes anyway-I am looking to buy an upscaling home cinema amp and speaker separates. I already have a full 47" hd 1080i lcd. My question is - Will the amp be able to upscale ordinary dvd's played on an ordinary dvd player or will I have to upgrade to bluray also. Thanks for the help.

conbon

As long as your amp says it can upscale there wont be any probs.
just put your normal video signal into your amp then hdmi out to your tv.
Alot of amps will upscale to 1080i but you will pay more for one that does 1080p. onkyo are good for upscaling.

akaSol

Most good AV/Amps have a video processor to up-scale any analogue signal through them.
Onkyo for example use Faroudja DCDi , this takes your image to 1080i or 1080p.
As with any up-scaling, it causes issues some like the image becomes over crisp, or over soft, edging issues with straight lines etc.
Ideally if your player has a component output use it and give your self a fighting chance.
Just don't expect to say "WOW!"

>Sol

Tillerman08

thanks for the help- I have a bit of research to do so!!!!

Idleater

Tillerman08 wrote: »

thanks for the help- I have a bit of research to do so!!!!

ask why you need to upscale in the DVD player, or in the reciever, if your TV is doing that job already.

You are not going to get any extra quality in the picture (unless the scaler in your tv is particularly crap).

Scaling in the AVR also means you have to do some audio delay because of the image processing time.

axton1

Hi Tillerman,

you could look at an all in one dvd receiver which will do all u want in one easy to use box. I have tried both of the following and they operate well with plenty power. Audica avr-1 (6.1 6x 60w rms) upscales to 720p / 1080i or the Audio Pro dvd-1 ( 2.1 2 x 75w rms ) upscales to 1080p of the two the Audio pro has more facilities ( 2 x hdmi in + scart etc) usb and both have dedicated audio only playback ( which is really good ), so not to be compared with run of the mill av amps. anyway these are just an option if u don't want big units and complicated menus.

andy1249

ask why you need to upscale in the DVD player, or in the reciever, if your TV is doing that job already.

You are not going to get any extra quality in the picture (unless the scaler in your tv is particularly crap).

A very common misunderstanding about what scalers can do and the difference between them , most scalers incorporated into TV's are simple "stretch to fit" type scalers, very simple scaling necessary to change incoming content to the native res of the TV which is the only res any flat panel can work with , whereas most scalers involved in players have advanced interpolation algorithms , with the result that in the vast majority of cases upscaling is immediately noticeable between standard SD players and upscaling players.

The differences between scaling chipsets is vast , with most manufacturers having their own custom made chipsets , such as panasonics " Uniphier " chipset and so on. ( note that no manufacturer is going to put a better scaler into their TV's than into their players .... there would be no profit in that !! Players need to be sold as well !! )

The PS3 probably has one of the best upscalers out there , most likely because of the Cell processor and associated software. No TV scales as good as it , not even the mighty Pioneers.

Whatever you choose , watch out for the upconverting vs upscaling misunderstanding that so many fall into , upconverting is converting analog inputs to digital , usually HDMI and does no scaling. The benefit of this is to just have one HDMI cable going to the TV as opposed to having Scart + S video + compoonent + HDMI and so on.

Keep in mind that no matter how good the upscaling is , none of them can compete with actual original HD content.

andy1249

Scaling in the AVR also means you have to do some audio delay because of the image processing time.

As most upscalers are using HDMI as the output , audio delay is not an issue , audio with HDMI is not concurrent with the video , audio is inserted into the blanking period between video frames , meaning regardless of whether the video is processed by a scaler or not , the audio and video must be re-clocked at the sink , meaning the scaler will not in any way delay the audio.

HDMI devices with audio delay therefore , have other issues and the scaler is highly unlikely to be the cause.
Sky HD for example , has audio delay between HDMI video and optical audio , a result of timing discrepancies between the two interfaces , as the HDMI output does not do surround.

Idleater

andy1249 wrote: »

A very common misunderstanding about what scalers can do and the difference between them , most scalers incorporated into TV's are simple "stretch to fit" type scalers, very simple scaling necessary to change incoming content to the native res of the TV which is the only res any flat panel can work with.

fully understood, but you miss the point that if the TV is going to scale the image _anyway_ you need to question why you are scaling twice.

I think that if the display device can bypass the scaler (mine has "unscaled" as an option) then yes, perhaps the de-interlacer in an AVP might work well, but if you go down that route, then you will get a very small (relatively) 576p image in the centre of the screen. If you don't then the image is being stretched as you mention.

As the OP was talking about plain old DVD, then there is nothing to be gained by purchasing expensive* add on's that serve no extra purpose, and in fact, in the budget that I suspect the OP has, may actually affect the image quality as opposed to enhancing it.