Will HD render scalers obsolete or will it be the making of them?

[PJTX100]

With HD-DVD/BD looming (or already here for some) the fight for that all important single DVI or HDMI socket on your display device will hot up.

Now, one option would be to beef up the AV amp to be a HDMI switching one. But I also suspect you'd be in a jack-of-all trades & master of none situation there.

Hence is a scaler a better answer? But if the player's spitting out true 720p and the display can cope with 720p what's the point of a scaler?

Will a non scaling HDMI switch box suffice?

Or will this brave new HD world make scalers a much more common purchase?

[Nic Rhodes]

Although there is the ability to have 720p HD devices, most rarely work at 720p natively. Dtheatre is a good example. It is both 720p and 1080i, every film I have is 1080i!!

BD and HD DVD are the same coming from a 1080 source material. It is more normally outputted as 1080i, from which a good VP can make an excellent reconstruction. The players also output 720p but it generally looks horrible. SkyHD is no different here either with 720p looking particularly iffy as they have used some poor deinterlacing on a 1080i signal in the box (as opposed to from broadcaster).

If the source material is 720p from a broadcaster / disc then I see lots of sence for retiring VP but as someone who has hundreds of HD films, the vast majority (read ALL) are 1080i and good deinterlacing is needed for HD, just like we want the same from our SD DVD players (SiI504 / Faroudja etc) or SD video processors. HD deinterlacing is no different to SD deinterlacing, some do it well and we love the products, others are a pile of do do.

[PJTX100]

OK, so spit out 1080i from the player and let the scaler downscale it to 720p.

Now, which one to buy?

[Nic Rhodes]

Originally Posted by PJTX100

OK, so spit out 1080i from the player and let the scaler downscale it to 720p.

Thats what I do, if you want awesome deinterlacing in SD only then the VP30/ABT102 is incredible. If you want a great alrounder then Lumagen is you baby, if you want everything, then you need to spend more money!!

Oppo into lumgaen is cool, as you can have Oppos deinterlacing (inc better video stuff) into the Lumagen deinterlacing (analogue) plus HD....and all the other toys.

[sdb123]

So you rate the Oppo feeding a Lumagen scaler then?

[Nic Rhodes]

You have the option of the Oppos better video deinterlacing or the Lumagens better film (more important to ME) if this distinction is important /relevance to you. For me the Lumagen is the much better 'product' but the Oppo does limit you to 480p / 576p digital inputs which some other players do not. The new Oppo will allow a interlaced digital signal which will be fun, expecting my player soon.... . There are ofcourse many other quality players you could use.

[creative-av]

Nic,

Is the Oppo really that much better than the Lumagen at de-interlacing video? I know that the VP30+ABT card is meant to be the best at de-interlacing SD material - especially video - but I would have thought a dedicated vp like the Lumagen would be better than the Oppo???

Steve

[Nic Rhodes]

Steve

no I don't think it is that much better UNLESS you get hung up on jaggies. For me there are many other much more important things to get a good picture and video deinterlaing is well down MY list of priorites. The Oppo excels in it's good MPEG decoder at a good price. The VP30/ABT102 certainly shows it a clean pair of heels re deinterlacing (and scaling). For £170 however it ain't bad!! and is a good place to start. For anyone using a video processor however, the basic advice is to feed it with a interlaced signal, which is why mine is SDI'ed !!