With so many scalers in the chain, how can I tell which one I'm actually watching?

[Basil Plumley]

So I have a PS3 which outputs at 1080P, an Onkyo DVD player that upscales SD material up to 1080i, Sky HD, a plasma with a built in de-interlacer, a projector with a built in Faroudja scaler, and last and most defo least, an Onkyo 905 with a REON HQV scaler built in.
All my sources are piped into the Onkyo and output via HDMI to each display. The problem is, how do I know what scaler i'm actually watching...
I can't output an interlaced signal from my Onkyo DVD player or the PS3 as they resort to a progressive signal as soon as you attach an HDMI cable - I believe I can only do this out of my Sky HD box.

In reality, i would like to REON in the amp to do all the work as it's the better scaler of them all - how can I make sure this happens?

 

[choddo2006]

So you're using the deinterlacer in the DVD player since it's forcing 576p / 480p out. Don't set the DVD to 1080i.

Depending on what the Onkyo amp is set to output, you're almost certainly using the scaler in that to do 480p/576p to 1080p (or 720p to 1080p / 1080p->1080p for the ps3)

then the px70 is scaling down 1080p to a little over 1024x768

So you're using several and you can't really get away from that.

 

[Avi]

So I have a PS3 which outputs at 1080P, an Onkyo DVD player that upscales SD material up to 1080i, Sky HD, a plasma with a built in de-interlacer, a projector with a built in Faroudja scaler, and last and most defo least, an Onkyo 905 with a REON HQV scaler built in.
All my sources are piped into the Onkyo and output via HDMI to each display. The problem is, how do I know what scaler i'm actually watching...
I can't output an interlaced signal from my Onkyo DVD player or the PS3 as they resort to a progressive signal as soon as you attach an HDMI cable - I believe I can only do this out of my Sky HD box.

In reality, i would like to REON in the amp to do all the work as it's the better scaler of them all - how can I make sure this happens?

Firstly avoid too much processing at each source device. So ideally DVD should be output from the player at 576i/480i over HDMI. Sky HD box will output 576i over HDMI for SD material but only if you're are able to customize EDID if not your stuck with a progressive signal. Blu-ray film material should be output from the PS3 at 1080p/24 if possible or 1080p/60 if not. This vast magority of Blu-ray film material is encoded at 1080p/24 and does not require deinterlacing.

Secondly output a progressive signal from your VP device at a resolution that ideally matches the displays native resolution (unfortunately some displays no not support 1:1 pixel modes). If this is not possible output a higher resolution signal than your displays native res. That way the display will downscale rather than upscale. Configure the display so that it attemps as little additional processing as possible i.e. avoid aspect change, zoom, overscan, noise reduction, sharpness etc.

The reality is it's pretty difficult to minimise processing across the display chain so you may have to settle for a compromise unless you plan carefully what products to select.

Don't forget that each display/source should be calibrated to the display chain for optimum image quality. This bit is just as important as video processing and in many cases may make a more noticeable difference to PQ.

AVI