TV Upscaling v DVD Upscaling

MisterE

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Hi there,

Just wondering if I could get some advice. I have an old Sony DVD home cinema system and am considering a new LG one that does hdmi upscaling. I have an LG 42LG5020 42" LCD tv which supports full HD (1080p I think). I was just wondering if the upscaling the TV already does from DVD/Freeview is any good compared to an upscaling DVD/Home Cinema. Will I get a lot of improvement?

Cheers

Mr E :cool:
 
I can't comment on the specific scalers but the home cinema scaler is probably better, the scaling on my PS3 is better than on my 32PG6000 so I can speak from a half experienced point of view! Scalers built into TVs generally aren't much good, unless you spend a lot, devoted systems (which yours nearly is at least) are much better on the whole. The best thing to do though is just to test it out, set the DVD player to output at 1080p (your TV should display that), take note of a still image (pause the DVD), then set the player to output at 480p or something and see which looks best
 
I have Hitachi UT42 1080p TV, and a Toshiba DR17DT upscaling (supports 720p, 1080i and 1080p) DVD recorder, which I use to feed the TopUp TV and Sky+ to the TV with (TV only has HDMI input, which will be okay when I get a Foxsat-HDR).

If I turn the upscaling off (ie. 576p) on the DVD recorder, there is a noticeable difference, once I turn it on, the clarity and definition of the picture is much-improved, especially on DVD's.

So in my experience, the DVD recorder does a noticeably better job than the TV, though other TV's might be better at upscaling.

If I watch an HD source such as Sky+ or TUTV+, with the DVDR upscaling off, it feels to me like a SVHS recording (I have an SVHS recorder and thats the nearest I can describe it). As soon as I turn the upscaling on, no matter which mode, it feels like digital TV again, its mainly like watching normal SD, but sometimes, you really do notice marked improvements, especially when showing text etc...

If I watch a DVD with the upscaling off, its pretty okay, better than SD tv with upscaling off. If I watch it with upscaling on, its not exactly HD quality, but its absolutely fantastic, and massively better quality.
 
If you want the best visual performance (including scaling and de-interlacing), you'll have to go through the PC route.

But that's not possible for all. But it is worth considering (especially in terms of price vs performance).

Anyway, in you case, let the Sony upscale the image. It's always best to up-scale from raw data


PS: Enable 1:1 on the LG
 
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Hi,
It's an interesting question really because I know many HDMI DVD players have upscaling on board, the Pioneer DV 400 I have does it to 1080p (that is, progressive or Full HD as it is called). Whether this is more comprehensive than the scaling on a 1080p TV set, for example, I have no idea but my view would be that the DVD player is designed for that media and should be used when playing DVDs. Unfortunately I don't have an HD set yet so I am not able to confirm this with any certainty.

What Hifi had an Upscaling feature in the March issue I think and their findings were that generally speaking the players did a good job and the TV OK but some of the lower AV Amps weren't really cut out for it. Having said that, upscaling AV Receivers/Amps are pretty expensive to start so I suppose for most this isn't an issue. Again, my instinct would be to use the DVD or Blu Ray, HD DVD over the TV or anything else. I wonder if anyone else knows much about this? (please?) :)

Cheers,
Simon
 
As you say Bibby, it depends on the system itself, a good TV will upscale a DVD better than a poor upscaling DVD player, but TVs these days are built to display HD, the scaling is added as a necessity as people wont only watch content of the native resolution of the TV, particularly SD TV, so as a result they don't put a lot of money into the technology which scales the image. More devoted systems will obviously have more advanced systems because that's what they're built for.

As I said before, the best way to judge is to test it out and try to compare between the two :thumbsup:
 
Thanks for all your opinions guys, sounds like it's something worth investigating. I was not sure if it was just a buzz word thing but sounds like it might be quite good. I will need to try and get a demo in a shop I think.

Cheers

Mr E :cool:
 

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