Worth buying upscaling DVD for Benq w100?

[duncanr]

I'm on the verge of buying a Benq W100, and read the following about it on Amazon:

This is a great piece of kit if you utilise the DVI-D connection and hook it up to a DVD player with HDMI upscale ability. straight forward component connection or S-VHS lacks somewhat on the resolution (840x480) but with the HDMI upscale player (I use a Philips DVP5960 (£70 or less) and an HDMI to DVI-D cable...it rocks! It takes a bit of setting up, but is pretty straightforward, and once the resolution is set to 1080i, then it comes into it's own and out performs anything in this price bracket.

I'm a bit confused, since the Benq is only a 480p. Wouldn't it downscale the DVI input back to 480p, or would I really notice a difference using an upscaling player as suggested?

Thanks for any advice.

[bappy]

Can you post the setup you are talking about.

thanks.

Originally Posted by duncanr

I'm on the verge of buying a Benq W100, and read the following about it on Amazon:

This is a great piece of kit if you utilise the DVI-D connection and hook it up to a DVD player with HDMI upscale ability. straight forward component connection or S-VHS lacks somewhat on the resolution (840x480) but with the HDMI upscale player (I use a Philips DVP5960 (£70 or less) and an HDMI to DVI-D cable...it rocks! It takes a bit of setting up, but is pretty straightforward, and once the resolution is set to 1080i, then it comes into it's own and out performs anything in this price bracket.

I'm a bit confused, since the Benq is only a 480p. Wouldn't it downscale the DVI input back to 480p, or would I really notice a difference using an upscaling player as suggested?

Thanks for any advice.

[Gary Lightfoot]

Hi Duncan,

Resolution wise then yes, the source will be upscaled by the player and then downscaled by the pj, and both actions could introduce errors, artefacts and other side effects, but if it looks better to you than what you were originally seeing then it's not necessarily a bad thing. It doesn't sound like it's something you'd need or want to do though. Outputting as 480p rather than 480i may be the biggest improvement and all you really need.

Sometimes after buying something and expecting to see a better image, that's what you will see, and unless there are other factors that aren't considered like how the black and white levels are set from the different players, what he may be seeing is just different levels of calibration. In that case, either player calibrated correctly (set the brightness and contrast for example) will produce the same results. Some players may have errors in certain outputs so the upscaled ones may actually be better, but without a detailed tests and results of all those combinations we don't really know what or why he's come to that conclusion. An ordinary SD player with HDMI may be just as good for example.

Gary

[duncanr]

Thanks Gary

Done a quick bit of googling to find out what you meant by 480i and 480p - so much to learn! At the moment my DVD player is a Toshiba SD-220, which does have component outputs that presumably give 480i. I gather the projector will deinterlace this into 480p anyway, and the only way of telling whether an upscaling, progressive scan DVD player that outputs 480p will look better is to buy one and try it, yes?

Thanks a lot for the help.

[Gary Lightfoot]

Interlaced is a signal that is sent to the pj as two parts, and then put back together by the display. It was done to reduce bandwidth since you only send up half the information at a time. Progressive is a complete image in one go. Sometimes you may find that a player with a progressive output will give a better picture but it can depend on how good the deinterlacer is in the pj..

Digital can be better still since it tends to give a cleaner image since the 0s and 1s will be displayed correctly without any of the foibles of an analogue signal, so in theory it should be as good as the original.

If you have a PC with a vga output and the pj has a vga input, that will give you a progressive image. If you can get the PC to output at the identical resolution as the pj at 60hz you can get a good idea of what a progressive image looks like. PCs can give excellent images with the right graphics card and many people use them as their prime source.

The only way to find out if your pj will look better with a progressive signal other than that is to buy a capable player as you suggest unless you can borrow one.

Gary

[gmp]

I've got a W100 and currently feed it sky hd at 1080i via component and upscaling dvd at 1080i via hdmi-dvi lead. Although only SD pj reviews of how the w100 handled hd signals led to my decision to purchase. The pq of sport and films is an tremendous improvement on previous SD feeds.

[Crocodile JD]

gmp...It is no suprise that HD looks better since you are down scaling a higher resolution source and down scaling is known to work well. However, for films you are adding 2 scaling processes to get back to the same point. Are you sure there is such a big improvement or is there an element of pride involved (which I think is a common traight in the AV circles)?

I think up scaling of SD would be worth looking at if you have an HD display ready to take advantage of HD sources. But even then you are only choosing preference for a scaler within the DVD player over the one built into the display (as all displays have)

Croc

[gmp]

See where you're coming from but as I'm sitting at budget end of AV world I'm worried more about performance than worried about pride! Recognise every set up has potential to be different, but with Benq I actually fed it SKY HD first and thought wow, better than I hoped for. Then moved on to DVD (Philips 5960) by bringing up DVD player from downstairs (pj is in loft conversion) Connected via component and thought it looked poor, enabled prgressive scan and looked worse. Started to worry so then bought HDMI-DVI lead connected up and it looked no better. Then realised that DVD would not upscale via HDMI-DVI (later found out it was known bug). Downloaded software fix and hey presto the pq improved dramatically. When I was having original problems I tried 2 other DVD players via component and was still not happy with pq. Actually agree with what you say about x2 scaling but this set up works for me.

Sky HD is left set at 1080i at all times and don't use auto setting as find that gives best picture on pj and Samsung LCD.

[Crocodile JD]

fair enough gmp Btw is it you that wrote the review on Amazon as you tick all the boxes (Sky HD 1080i, Phillips 5960 etc) just woundered. If not then at least 2 of you think upscaling works for w100

Don't forget tho. when all is said and done you are still watching 845 x 480 what ever you throw at it. Many on here still advocate 1:1 pixel mapping as best to reduces the amount of scaling processes. However, downscaling from HD as mentioned is known to give good results. (SD Pal is also a down scale as well) I remember reading a very favourable review of this projector when I bought mine, which praised its preformance when feed with an HD source. I also have a mate who has this projector and he feeds HD to it via his PS3 which he reckons to give noticable improvements over SD but I haven't seen it myself.

I have this projector, but I just use a prog scan DVD player via component. For me the result is excellent. It is worth playing with the settings, it can make a big difference. I use the following settings (for what it is worth given that it is over component): eco mode, home cinema, IRE 7.5, Colour and contrast I think are around 60, tint is nuetral 50 and brightness I vary from as low as 36 up to 44 depending on the film. The lower you can keep it the better the contrast and therefore depth you get.

At the end of the day if you were a DVD player manufacturer what would you have done to keep SD sales ticking over prior to HD

Croc

[gmp]

Not me on Amazon but there were couple of guys on DVD forum who had w100's and 5960 who were having same problem as me with DVI upscaling software bug. Funny thing was I actually bought the 5960 because of USB connection for viewing photo's and stuff via TV rather than laptop. Was planning to shell out in future on better DVD but won't be bothering now. When ever anyone sees w100 in action they can't believe it is about 1/3rd of price of LCD TV downstairs.

[nwgarratt]

I fed a upscaled image from a Panasonic S52. The W100 downscaled well and it did look better. It was particuarly noticeable with animation and it looked smoother. It was a waste of time setting it at 1080 but 720 did look better than straight 480/576.

However, I prefer Sony players and got a NS76. This will not upscale if the display is SD only. It automatically send 480/576 even when set at 720/1080.

This was doing HDMI to DVI obviously.

[Jonstone]

Although in theory it sounds like upscaling just introduces an extra layer of scaling, it has to be remembered that PAL feeds are generally 720x576 so the image on the benq and similar resolution screens does get downscaled in one axis, but has to be upscaled in the other.

If the benq is particularly bad at upscaling (which at this pricepoint is fairly likely) then you may well get better results from feeding it an upscaled image and letting the benq downscale on both axis as this should be easier for it.

[nwgarratt]

Originally Posted by Jonstone

If the benq is particularly bad at upscaling (which at this pricepoint is fairly likely) then you may well get better results from feeding it an upscaled image and letting the benq downscale on both axis as this should be easier for it.

It is good at both upscaling and downscaling.

[Jonstone]

Originally Posted by nwgarratt

It is good at both upscaling and downscaling.

I was only trying to suggest a possible reason why feeding the Benq with an upscaled image would lead to better results as logic might suggest otherwise.

If people are getting better results with feeding the Benq an upscaled image it would imply that the upscaling being performed by their player is superior to the upscaling performed by the benq

[nwgarratt]

The BenQ is still upscaling though as you said such as when playing NTSC 720 x 480 DVD's to 856 x 480.