Is 1080i upscaling pointless on a 720p screen?

[spaceman763]

Hi All

I was just wondering whether 1080i upscaling feature on the Onkyo 606 would be pointless on a 720p screen such as a Pana 42px80? Currently deciding between the 606 or the upcoming Sony 820. They seem to be pretty similar apart from the upscaling feature. Presumeably the tv will scale Sky SD anyway to an extent?

Regards

 

[onkeh]

TV scalers usually suck, a decent scaler should far outperform it. Also the 606 scales to 1080i and 720p iirc.

 

[kingfats]

. Presumeably the tv will scale Sky SD anyway to an extent?

Regards

Hi spaceman763.
Your TV will upscale any signal sent,which is below it's max resolution.
You've got to decide what does the best job!!
All the best.

 

[Mark.Yudkin]

Scaling to as resolution above that of the TV is not merely pointless, it will result in a significantly worse picture. First you scale up from 576i to 1080i, thereby degrading the picture a lttle (all nonlinear scaling degrades - this is elementary arithmetic), then your TV scales it back down again from 1080i to 720p, thus degrading the picture again. Why degrade it twice when once is sufficient?

Your TV will anyway scale the input. Onkeh's comment is in general incorrect, although there are cases of poor quality TVs that do scale badly.

The scaling on the Onyko 606 is basically a check box feature. Choose the amp (an audio device) based on its sound, not its picture manipulation features.

 

[kingfats]

Scaling to as resolution above that of the TV is not merely pointless, it will result in a significantly worse picture. First you scale up from 576i to 1080i, thereby degrading the picture a lttle (all nonlinear scaling degrades - this is elementary arithmetic), then your TV scales it back down again from 1080i to 720p, thus degrading the picture again. Why degrade it twice when once is sufficient?

Your TV will anyway scale the input. Onkeh's comment is in general incorrect, although there are cases of poor quality TVs that do scale badly.

.

Hi Mark.Yudkin.
Actually scaling goes like this (1080i) 576i > deinterlace 576p > scale 1080p > interlace 1080i send to TV > deinterlace 1080p > downscale if TV lower resolution.
All the best.

 

[YellowSphere]

TV scalers usually suck, a decent scaler should far outperform it. Also the 606 scales to 1080i and 720p iirc.

However, the scaler in the PX80 is not only pretty good, but scaling to a rectangular pixel resolution, not something the scaler in the 606 has the ability to match. In other words, it'll still be scaled by the panel if input at 720p, and that short scale will do no good at all to the picture quality.

 

[jet3d]

i have a panasonic 37" 720 screen, and in my opinion it depends on source.

when using my 360 through component 720p wins hands down,
but when using sky hd i have found that setting the sky HD box to output 1080i rather than 720p looks MUCH better

especially when watching things like sky news, when set to 720p the scrolling text would fuzz then sharpen, but set to 1080i looks better!

even the SD channels look better when sky HD set to 1080i rather than 720p.
HD channels look no different between the 2.

i think alot of this depends on how the source was encoded, and i think sky stuff is interlaced hence setting HD box to 1080i looks better.

 

[jrwagh333]

yeh, it all depends on how the data is encoded in the 1st place.



Sky HD by default record in 1080i so 1080i will look better. because when you try and chnage the settings to 720p. Your tv will have to do some working out 1st and change all the lines around thus making it a bit blurry.

Xbox 360 games, and PS3 games by default are 720p. So if you try and change the settings to 1080i it messes with the picture again.

My advice, stick with 1080i for TV & 720p for games!