Upconversion DVD player?

[h linamen]

Does an upconversion DVD player really make enough difference to warrant chucking out the current player to get the upconversion?

[jdc]

depends on your TV?

[davester]

What jdc said. First off, I presume you know that progressive and upconversion only work if you have an HDTV (i.e. 720p or better). All or most of the HDTVs have their own upconverters. Some are good, some are crappy. My Sony HDTV's upconverter is great. Adding an upconverting DVD player (I got it because my old player broke, not because I wanted upconversion) made absolutely no difference to the picture quality. Oh, another thing. Due to the idiocy of the media companies, upconverting is deliberately disabled for most DVDs if you are connected to the TV with anything but HDMI. Annoying but true.

[dk62]

Definitely depends on your TV. Also depends on your current DVD player.

Even with decent TVs, the de-interlacing processor in DVD players is usually better than in the TV. On the othe hand, you have to have a mediocre TV to get advantage of a good upconverting player. Therefore, if you have a decent TV, the quality of the de-interlacing processor in your current player vs that of the new player should be your primary concern (i.e., stick with the old one if it has really good de-interlacer).

If you have an off-brand TV, you may be better off with a good upconverting player (Oppo is my favorite, doing a better upconverting job than most TVs or even HD-DVD and BD players).

[Will Collier]

I don't think so. You can't polish a turd, and you'll never get more than 480 lines of resolution out of a standard DVD, no matter how fancy you get with the "upconverting" circuits.

Then again, an "upconverting" DVD player isn't that much more expensive than a standard one these days, so why not? Just don't expect a massive improvement. You won't get it.

[davester]

dk62, you don't have it quite right. There are two common technologies used in high end DVD players...progressive conversion and deinterlacing. Progressive conversion is the same thing as deinterlacing. Upconverting has nothing to do with deinterlacing.

Upconverting consists of splitting each pixel recorded on the DVD into multiple pixels, which are assigned color/intensity values based on the upconversion algorithms. You actually can "polish a turd" using upconversion algorithms. This has been done for decades in the image enhancement field using a bunch of different techniques that are very similar to sharpening algorithms used in digital photography. The reason this stuff works is that it is possible to detect patterns in the available pixel colors/intensities (for example linear objects) and then enhance those patterns by manipulating the values of the upconverted pixels. The reason this improves the picture is that you are bringing data into the equation (patterns that are cover larger areas of the picture than a single pixel) that are disregarded when you simply send the raw pixel data to the display device.

[Racer X]

do your research. Not all DVD players are equal. They use mpeg-2 hardware decoders, and there are some really cheap and crappy quality mpeg-2 chips out there. How good can the chip be if the whole DVD player retails for $50? My 8 year old Pioneer 5 disk DVD changer has a markedly better picture with a 10 year old magnavox CRT TV than a friend gets from his new Toshiba DVD player and new Apex TV. The Toshiba/Apex pair shows pixelation on scene changes and image jumps when the screen shows the key frames.

[davester]

Ditto what Racer X says. On a good TV, the difference between a good and crappy progressive DVD player (irregardless of upconversion) is quite significant. Those cheapos put out garbage video. Check here for a bunch of reviews of the deinterlacing ability of a bunch of DVD players:

http://69.64.68.156/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi

[deckeda]

Although I don't know specifically about their up-conversion proficiency, I've read nothing but good things about Oppo.

Their players seem to be around $150-$250, and if anyone thinks that's a lot of money for a quality video component ... they've been spending too much time in the Wal-Mart video aisle.

[davester]

Yep, I'd agree that the Oppo is the best standard DVD player out there (as do most of the review sites). However, when I was in the market for a DVD player I ended up getting a Toshiba HD DVD player instead, because it is a great upconverting player, plays HD DVDs too (although that format will probably eventually fade away due to Blue-Ray dominance), was cheaper, and came with a bunch of free HD movies. I think that is still the case, so you owe it to yourself to look at the Toshiba A3.