[severn]

hi..

ive recently changed from a crt to panasonic TXP37X10B..at the same time i bought a humax foxat hd to replace my sky+ box...

so far the best sd picture i can get is through an ixos scart from the humax...more deatailed opn faces than the sky and not as soft as through hdmi
hopefully im sending a 570i picture into the tv and its upscaling to the 1080i/full screen size...

is this going to be the best sd picture possible for me ?
i have heard that i could get a home cinema receiver that would be evan better at upscaling than the humax ?

if so ...how much would a receiver that does this cost ? [possible 2nd hand ]..
does anyone use this method ?
..is there much of an improvement ?
what specs should i look for ?

any other advice for a great sd picture ?

thanks
Jon

[grahamlthompson]

Originally Posted by severn

hi..

ive recently changed from a crt to panasonic TXP37X10B..at the same time i bought a humax foxat hd to replace my sky+ box...

so far the best sd picture i can get is through an ixos scart from the humax...more deatailed opn faces than the sky and not as soft as through hdmi
hopefully im sending a 570i picture into the tv and its upscaling to the 1080i/full screen size...

is this going to be the best sd picture possible for me ?
i have heard that i could get a home cinema receiver that would be evan better at upscaling than the humax ?

if so ...how much would a receiver that does this cost ? [possible 2nd hand ]..
does anyone use this method ?
..is there much of an improvement ?
what specs should i look for ?

any other advice for a great sd picture ?

thanks
Jon

It's not hard to get a better scaler than the foxsat. Your TV however is a different animal it likely has a better scaler than most AV amps. The scaler in my Denon Amp is slightly better than my Sony TV but costing £1000.00 it ought to be. It's likely not worth the effort as some SD sat channels are very ropy anyway. You can't make silk purse out of a sows ear

[severn]

im quite surprised that the foxsat using scart is producing a much better picture than the the sky + using scart.... [using rgb in sky settings...cant see many other of the settings make much difference ]..

anyone got any setings they can recommend to me please ?

thanks

[YellowSphere]

It's not usually worth using upscaling on a lower resolution panel like the X10 as no matter what you scale to externally, the television will have to scale it AGAIN to its own resolution. Its best to, if possible, do scaling in one go, so from a Humax box the best thing would be to use Original or the RGB scart output for SD. However, 1080i might be fine, and if it looks good, go with it.

[wellsyke]

I tried upscaling in my Panny TV rather than the HDR and although the picture was a little better I found the SD resolution HDR menus irritating so I've switched back to outputting HD from the HDR.

[HeadBanger]

I also feed my HDR to a Panasonic but when feeding it 576i the TV/HDR apply a combined softening equivalent to approx 4 notches on the Panny's sharpness control.

I feed upscaled 1080i with overscan off and sharpness at zero and the decent SD channels look fine.

BTW - the Humax should look better than Sky at native 576i as I seem to recall that the Sky boxes internally upscale to 576P and then downscale to 576i for the scart.