Sorry complete novice here... I understand that certain DVD players can now upscale DVDs to a suitable flat panel TV to improve the picture. I film movies and burn to DVD-R using MPEG2 format.
Would a suitable DVD player be able to upscale this footage and therefore improve the quality? Sorry if this is an idiotic question, I have little knowledge in this area.many thanks...

[Welwynnick]

Originally Posted by Cutler

I understand that certain DVD players can now upscale DVDs to a suitable flat panel TV to improve the picture.

Whoever gave you that idea? It's largely marketing spin.

If your player doesn't upscale the video, then the display will always do it anyway!

If the player does upscale the video, chances are it will scale it to a different format to the display, which will then have to re-scale again! That's not desireable for the best PQ.

There may be an improvement if the DVD can perform interlaced-to-progressive conversion better than the display, but that's a big "if".

With regard to DVD-Rs, though, these should be played in exactly the same way as DVDs, though with some degradation visible on hi-def displays.

Just my opinion, Nick

[senu]

It will upscale the Home made DVD video but will not "improve" the quality. ( it may even show up any imperfections the way Hi def displays seem to look worse when you play a vhs tape through them.)

Your TV/ Display upscales to its native resolution anyway and may do a better job than the DVD player.
The promise of better quality PQ via upscaling is a bit of a marketing gimmick .
I have the samsung 950 and use it on 720p on most DVDs . I like to think that it looks better than the 576p. My wife thinks thats just wishful thinking: she sees no difference. I certainly see non when I go up to 1080i!

[hottstuff]

Originally Posted by welwynnick

Whoever gave you that idea? It's largely marketing spin.

If your player doesn't upscale the video, then the display will always do it anyway!

If the player does upscale the video, chances are it will scale it to a different format to the display, which will then have to re-scale again! That's not desireable for the best PQ.

There may be an improvement if the DVD can perform interlaced-to-progressive conversion better than the display, but that's a big "if".

With regard to DVD-Rs, though, these should be played in exactly the same way as DVDs, though with some degradation visible on hi-def displays.

Just my opinion, Nick

yes , i agree.
in my case , my 37pf9830 does a much better job of upscaling from dvd.
when i tried the lg upscaler @ 720p & 1080i , it looked terrible and overprocessed with a dirty noisy picture.
i get a much better result from 576p on my jvc

[rEVILospud]

As others said; it will work but probably not as well as you would hope.
The only way you would gain anything is if the DVD player's scaling was better than that of the TV's scaling and the DVD player was outputting at your TV's native res, so the TV didn't have to do any scaling at all.
For example DVD player upscaling to 720p (1280 x 720) into TV (with worse scaler than DVD player) with native resolution of 1280 x 720, "might" produce a "better" picture.