Upscaling questions

ShiggyWiggy

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I recently ordered myself an 40" M86 Samsung LCD and will be connecting up my Xbox360 + HDDVD drive and an old DVD player.
I've been thinking about getting a new upscaling dvd player for my older DVD collection but have a few questions. - I know the 360 drive will upscale via a VGA cable but I'd rather have a standalone player.

Anyways, Will the tv upscale my current player at all or will I need a new standalone player?
What features should I be looking for - will I notice a difference between 1080i and 1080p upscaling or do all older dvd's upscale to a lower resolution?

I've seen a few players on the likes of amazon for around £40 which look quite good - anyone recommend any players around this price?

Thanks for any info - it's all a bit new to me so i'm still trying to get to grips with what to look for.
 
Hello,

I bought the same TV and have the pioneer upscaling DVD player DV-400.

I found the best image to be when I send 576p to my TV and let the TV do the scaling. (so my DVD player does the de-interlacing)
 
I recently ordered myself an 40" M86 Samsung LCD and will be connecting up my Xbox360 + HDDVD drive and an old DVD player.
I've been thinking about getting a new upscaling dvd player for my older DVD collection but have a few questions. - I know the 360 drive will upscale via a VGA cable but I'd rather have a standalone player.

Anyways, Will the tv upscale my current player at all or will I need a new standalone player?
What features should I be looking for - will I notice a difference between 1080i and 1080p upscaling or do all older dvd's upscale to a lower resolution?

I've seen a few players on the likes of amazon for around £40 which look quite good - anyone recommend any players around this price?

Thanks for any info - it's all a bit new to me so i'm still trying to get to grips with what to look for.

All HDTV's upscale the image, if they did not the picture wouldnt fill the screen.

The real question is would a £40 upscaling player have a better scaling chip than your HDTV and my bet would be no.
 
Anyways, Will the tv upscale my current player at all or will I need a new standalone player?

Yes. All flat screen TVs will scale the incoming video signal to match it's native resolution i.e. the number of pixels the screen actually has.

What features should I be looking for - will I notice a difference between 1080i and 1080p upscaling or do all older dvd's upscale to a lower resolution?

With a good DVD player you will notice the difference IF your TV has a Full HD resolution AND you sit close enough. No, not all older DVD players upscale.

I've seen a few players on the likes of amazon for around £40 which look quite good - anyone recommend any players around this price?

The old adage that you get what you pay for here rings true. The more you pay for a DVD the better the scaling hardware - not all scalers are created equal.

At £40 I believe the DVD player you get will not have a better "scaler" than the one in your TV so you would be better off using your older DVD player and letting the TV do the work.

At £150 e.g. Denon DVD1930 the quality of the electronics may be higher than those built into your TV and thus a better picture will result.

All a scaler does is take an input resolution and "scale" to a higher or lower resolution (normally user specified). Naturally a better scaler does a better job of this complex task and is less likely to introduce picture noise, blocking, etc.

Like any piece of electronics a £40 DVD player naturally has lower spec electronics than perhaps a £1000 TV or a £200 DVD player.

If you watch a lot of DVDs I would recommend at least £100 for a DVD player, preferably a well known and respected manufacturer like Denon.

http://www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/page/moreinfo.cfm/Product_ID/3502

SouthaK
 
Thanks for the replies - how does the connection between the DVD player and tv affect things?
By current player is connected via scart -Would there be any improvements over the picture and sound if I had a player that was connected via component or HDMI instead or again is this going to be pretty much unnoticable?
 
Thanks for the replies - how does the connection between the DVD player and tv affect things?
By current player is connected via scart -Would there be any improvements over the picture and sound if I had a player that was connected via component or HDMI instead or again is this going to be pretty much unnoticable?

Yes there should be an improvement using Component or HDMI over Scart simple due to the fact that they will get the information from your player to the TV better than Scart can.
 
Thanks for that.

Will probably pick up a cheap multi region player with hdmi for watching the SD Dvd's and let the tv do the upscaling.
We could do with another dvd player for the other tv anyway. :)

Thanks again - you've all been very helpful
 

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