So as we're leaving the HT store yesterday, my Dad asked if he would need a new DVD player.

The sales guy said all he needs is a basic DVD player with HDMI output and let the plasma do the scaling as it will have a better scaler than the DVD players out there.

Is that true? How would this work, then? The DVD player sends a 480i signal to the plasma and it'll then scale it properly? I'm confused. How would the plasma know to scale it?

 

The plasma is going to scale whatever signal you send it to its native screen resolution. I don't have an upscaling DVD player. I do have a player that can send 480P over component to my panel. I saw no difference with 480i or 480p.

You have an upconverting player at home, right? You should take it over to your dad's and see if it makes a difference. It may or may not. I have seen reports on AVS that some panels actually look like crap when you send an upconverted DVD signal too it. So the answer is, experiment.

 

I do, but I don't have a real high end TV, hence my reason for buying one.

Good suggestion. Thanks!

 

I'm just learning about the DVD players... but from what I've read so far... it's best to let the TV do the scaling.

I'm still reading about this which is why I have not purchased a new DVD player just yet. Not sure if I need one that upconverts or not....

 

Let the DVD player send 480P to the display, then let the display do what it wants with it. Many displays will show 480P, others want to scale everything higher - like some scale everything to 1080i, YUCK!). Unless you buy a high end DVD player, chances are the TV will do a better job or allow you to watch it in a better format.

Say your Samsung DLP TV shows 720P. If you let a DVD player upconvert to 1080i, the TV will show it in 1080i instead of letting it's internal scaler bump 480P to 720P, letting you watch a better quality progressive image.

 

i'm new to all this and i'm a little confused...my tv shows 720p and i just bought a sony upconverting dvd player...what should i set the dvd player to? to get the best quality? can someone please educate me a little on this subject...thanks

 

Well personal subjective opinion here, but I can definitely see a quality difference between the players in my TV (32" Sharp LCD). This is no doubt also related to the input methods used (component vs hdmi).

I had a Panasonic RV-31K non-progressive player hooked up to it via component for a week before I decided I couldn't take it anymore - it looked crappy. Great player though, still have it hooked up to a 27" CRT in the bedroom.

So I got a Toshiba SD-3960 progressive scan player, hooked it up via component and there was a noticeable improvement, but not much. This player sucked ass, so I'm sure it could have been better.

Now I've got a Panasonic S-97 upconverting player via the HDMI cable that came with it. The quality is superb. Even old B&W Criterions look excellent. Newer movies look outstanding. There is a very noticeable difference between this player, and the previous two.

 

Try both... I let the DVD player scale to 720p/1080i. However, on my Dad's Pioneer plasma, I'll probably let the TV do the scaling.


It's too bad there aren't any "affordable" players that push 480i through HDMI yet. I know there are a couple in the works, but that would truely be the way to go if you wanted your TV to do the scaling.

 

Did you mistype that? Why would you want 480i? It's created from the progressive images, why not view them directly and full frame?

 

If you have a good scaler in the TV, why change from 480i to 480p in a DVD player and then send that 480p signal to the TV to scale. Why not leave it alone at 480i and let the TV chew on it? My understanding is that is really the way to go if you have a nice TV. But there aren't any "cheap" 480i over HDMI players available.

 

dumb question...how do you let the tv do the scaling?

 

The native format of a DVD is 480i. So, you need a delinterlacer. Some people would rather use the deinterlacer in their $3000 and not the one in their $50 DVD player.

 

The same way the DVD player does.

TVs have a native format. It will convert whatever it's sent to the native format.

So why convert it once to 480p through a DVD player and then send that converted data to the TV to have it scale it again to say 720p?

High end TVs will have much better scalers in them, or so I've read.

 

Most, if not all, upconverting DVD players have options to output 720P, or 1080i. So, you just choose the right format from DVD player and your TV don't need to do any converting.

I had my DVD player outputting in 480P for a while until I noticed the option and the picture quality was slightly better when I set it to right format (720P).

 

I understand.

But a $150 upconverting DVD player isn't going to have better scaling components than some of the higher end TVs. That's why it may sometimes be better to send the 480i over HDMI to the TV and let it scale it.

 

Deinterlacing 480i to 480p isn't rocket science, and should look the same whether the player or the TV does it. It's just putting two frames together. The scaling part is where picture quality changes. The TV will deinterlace the signal before it scales it so it doesn't really matter. Now if you happen to have a $$$$ stand alone deinterlacer that will put two frames together and also discard one every 12th of a second that's a different story... Then of course you need a $$$$ display to show that...

The only way I see a 480i signal helping is if you have an older HDTV that wants to upconvert everything to 1080i. In that case, you wouldn't want to send 480p that just gets interlaced again after that - would make it look even worse than 1080i already does.

I suppose if you were stuck on an island with only crappy cables that 480i would be a better choice because it's half the data per period of time. I doubt picture quality of a DVD would be high on your list of shit to do if you were in this predicament tho...