Is it woth upgrading my Toshiba SD-520E to an upscaler?

tommo111 · 03-04-2007, 7:50 AM

Hi, I've just bought a new Panasonic TH-37PX60 and I'm thinking of changing my Toshiba SD-520E to a machine that can upscale. I'm hearing mixed reports of upscaling and would welcome some advice.

The DVD is currently connected via a scart cable, which is not the best possible combination. I'm looking at either getting some decent component cables and connecting that way or changing to a Toshiba SD-360E/370E or a Samsung HD-860/870 and connecting via HDMI.

Any advice or alternative combinations would be appreciated.

I'm also pretty limited on budget, so I'm not going to be able to splash out on HDDVD or Blu-Ray player.

Andy98765 · 03-04-2007, 8:02 AM

If you current DVD is still running OK and as you connect to a Plasma I would go down the route of connecting via Component cables, remember you need an audio pair as well. Also set your component output to progressive.
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tommo111 · 03-04-2007, 9:16 AM

The DVD is connected to an AV amp via coax so no audio leads required, but thanks for the advice.

roryLCD · 03-04-2007, 2:13 PM

my house mate bought an upscaling denon player (1930) and we noticed there is very little difference between a normal DVD at 576i and the same dvd upscaled to 1080i.

i am in the same boat with an old toshiba, and may be upgrading soon, more for the fact the newer players play div-x's and this means i can watch the shows my brother has on his pc

dont expect upscaled movies to be dramatically different to standard.

DO expect the picture to impove ALOT when you run the DVD through some decent component cables as opposed to the scart lead

nonsoloinglese · 04-04-2007, 8:31 AM

I have a Denon DVD-1920 and a Sony KDL-40W2000 and until yesterday i had them connected via the HDMI connection, the picture that it gave was good but not fantastic and the borders were huge, wasting a lot of my screen. I swapped for a component cable, no upscaling, just using progressive scan and the image is absolutely superb to the point where the quality rivalled 'House of flying daggers' on Blu-ray on the PS3. I am seriously considering getting rid of the PS3 and sticking to the simpler setup, running component through my amp.

An upscaler is not necessary and will depend on it's quality. Some people buy the Arcam's and don't upscale!

Gordon @ Convergent AV · 04-04-2007, 10:13 AM

There is a discussion on scaling on this months podcast. You might find it interesting to listen to.

If you upscale to 1080i then you are asking your tv to do de-interlacing of the 1080i signal then possibly more scaling. Most tv's are poor at de-interlacing 1080i. You may well be better off sending 576p or 720p.

HDMI can be component....what is described as difference between hdmi and component is actually difference between digital and analogue connections. It may well be that the HDMI output of the player has not been configured properly for the display (there are two different flavours of digital signal levels that can come out of an hdmi socket, let alone the various different colourspaces) If incorrect levels are set then you may get a poor image exihbiting some or all of the following, washed out colours, poor black detail, poor white detail, banding/posterisation. Also the digital to analogue conversion in player followed by the analogue to digital conversion in tv, when using analogue component out of player, can actually help to reduce the appearance of mpeg noise. This may also help the analogue signal path look clearer.

Just some additional info for you guys.

JENeric · 04-04-2007, 11:05 AM

In my experience, budget upscaling dvd players are a complete waste of time. If you need a cheap player, thats fair enough. But if your replacing a perfectly good player, because it doesn't upscale for a buget player that does, you will see next to no difference. Stick with what you've got (just connect via componant) or spend a decent ammount (£250+) on a good upscaling player. Both these options will give you picture improvements.

tommo111 · 04-04-2007, 1:44 PM

OK I'm convinced, stick with what I've got an invest in some component cables. I'm looking at some QED Qunex PCV1 cables for about £35, seem to be well rated by everybody. Thanks for the advice all.

garrybibson · 04-04-2007, 8:13 PM

can you buy the £3.50 ones that the patron above reconmended as well, just so you can tell us the difference in quality made by the cables?

Barry

bogart99 · 04-04-2007, 8:43 PM

Ok I've decided to try a set of component cables before buying a new DVD player and going down the HDMI route. My cables will need to be 10m in length . I see one can get OFC or coaxial is there any benefit of one over the other?
Regards