720p - Upscale to 1080i or Not?

[mremulator]

I recently purchased a Pinnacle ShowCentre 200 (buggy piece of crap ) No auto aspect ratio switching, no auto resolution switching (720p/1080i), it locks up, won't play certain files (that are supposed to), remote control plays up, software on PC is buggy and the list goes on. However, it does let me play HD 720/1080 TS files.

Anyway, I leave the video mode on the ShowCentre set to 1080i for everything, 720p files are upscaled to 1080i this way. My question is.... would I be better playing 720p stuff at it's native resolution or upscaling like I already am?

Roll on Sky HD & HD-DVD I say.

[Bat-man]

Native everytime for me.

[Edit] Oops - I forgot to say that my TV has a native resolution of 720.

[welwynnick]

720p to 1080i is hardly upscaling. The bit rate is essentially the same, so no more information is getting through.

The downside is that if the video is being shown on a fixed-pixel display, that will have to de-interlace any interlaced input, and that is most difficult to do well with 1080i. That is irrespective of the display resolution.

If 720p is available to a display, all it has to do is re-scale to it's native resolution, which is cheaper and easier to do. I think this would usually be the preferred choice.

Many magazine reviews of up-scaling DVD players comment that the 1080i output actually give a poorer result than the 720p. And they think this is surprising. They don't think much.

However, I wouldnt' necessarily say 720p every time. Where the source is 576i, the intermediate processing format is 576p. If the display is not 720p, then if the source then applies 576p to 720p upscaling, the display will have to apply a second round of up-scaling, and this will probably add some degradation to the picture. If that is the case, then outputting 576p to the display is likely to give the best final result if the sources de-interlacing is better than the displays. This will be worth some trial and error testing, but I think using 1080i would usually give the worst possible result.

A bit of suck it and see never does any harm, though.

Nick

[mremulator]

I must admit the 720p stuff actually looks sharper @ 720p. Basically, I'll watch 720 @ 720 and 1080 @ 1080

If only the ShowCentre would auto switch, seriously though guys, the ShowCentre really is buggy and should not be in the shops IMHO.

[Smith2004]

I'm no expert in this, but I would guess that the results obviously depend on the resolution of your screen. I'm using the Philips 37PF9830 (1920 x 1080) along with Samsung HD745 upscaling DVD player, and 1080i looks noticeably sharper than 720p, but the reverse would probably be the case on 1366 x 768 / 1280 x 768 screens.

[mremulator]

Originally Posted by Smith2004

I'm no expert in this, but I would guess that the results obviously depend on the resolution of your screen. I'm using the Philips 37PF9830 (1920 x 1080) along with Samsung HD745 upscaling DVD player, and 1080i looks noticeably sharper than 720p, but the reverse would probably be the case on 1366 x 768 / 1280 x 768 screens.

Pioneer PDP436 1280X768, so I concur with you.

[welwynnick]

Originally Posted by mremulator

Pioneer PDP436 1280X768, so I concur with you.

So you mean 720p looks better? BTW I think the PDP506 is 1280x768 and the PDP436 is 1024x768.

Nick