My head hurts: New system. What should scale?

[csmager]

Hi guys. My head's starting to hurt from reading all about this stuff. Not quite sure what to do here (I appreciate it won't make a huge difference!).

I have a

Panasonic TH42PH10 Plasma
Denon AVR-3808
Sky HD
PS3
HTPC

What should do the scaling?!

Take Sky HD - most of the content is 1080i. The Plasma has a resolution of 1024x768. Should the Sky box scale it to 720p? Should the Amp scale to 720p? Or should I just leave it as 1080i until it gets to the Display, and the Panasonic scale it to (essentially) 768p?

I'm lead to believe the scaler in the PS3 is pretty decent, so should I set its output to 720p, let the amp leave it alone and the Display do the final bit of jiggery to get it to fit 768 lines?

I suppose my basic question is: Of the kit I have, which is likely to do the scaling better?

Thanks for any advice!

[lazymatt]

Trust your eyes. Generally the less scaling processes the better, so leave it to your TV. However, give it all a go and see which is best (the PS3, for example, has a pretty decent scaler, so may do a better job than your TV)

[choddo2006]

The Sky box shouldn't scale and it will make a big difference as it's rubbish at it.

All of the content on HD channels is 1080i but the vast majority of the content is 576i.

There isn't really a scaler to speak of in the PS3 so set it to 720p.

[csmager]

Presumably there is a scaler in the PS3 - if not at least for blu-ray discs. I've heard it's pretty decent, so I'll take both of your advice and set it to 720p.

I'll leave Sky so it doesn't touch anything.

Now - is the Faroudja scaler in the Denon likely to be superior to the one in the Panasonic? Should I let the Denon upscale anything shoddy to 720p or deinterlace any 1080i, or should I just leave it as-is until it gets to the TV?

I suppose, as suggested, the best thing to do is try it and use my eyes. I'm not plugging it all in till tomorrow!

[choddo2006]

It will be easy to try both, but my guess is there won't be much difference

[csmager]

From what I've been reading, I'm inclined to agree. I suppose in cheap and nasty tvs, the scalers are rubbish. But it seems this Panasonic's not too bad. Might be best to leave it to the Display, as anything scaled by the amp would have to be rescaled again to fit 768 lines by the Display anyway. Unless the amp happened to have an option to ouput 1024x768 via VGA (which it doesn't!).

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

I would expect the amp to be better at de-interlacing 576i material compared to your tv. In all other counts it's as you've been instructed above. Since you are not sending 576i from any sources it seems this benefit of your amp is worthless.

Gordon

[Fast Jon]

This is a very interesting question. For the average Joe who has just splashed out on an upscaling DVD player, an upscaling amp and a panel of some sort, the probability of achieving optimum image quality must be approaching zero.
Of course, if everybody had gathered around a table 8 years ago and decided that ´high definition´should mean 1920x1080 progressive scan then the word scaling need never have entered the home cinema lexicon...

[rhubarbe]

After taking advice from this fine section I have set all of my sources to 576i (even the Naim DVD5) except my SkyHD (which I leave on 1080i) into a second hand VP30 with ABT102 (bought from these fine forums for just £540) and let the ABT102 deinterlace the lot and the vP30 upscale it all to 720p and I am well happy.

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

Fast Jon,

Unfortunately even if they had come up with 1080P as being HD you would still have to upscale all legacy SD content......and you are also presuming that tv's are not going to become higher resolutions than 1080p.....which I doubt myself.....

Gordon