Upscaling to Hi Def
 

"Anthony Haines" wrote in message
...


Thanks to the BBC using video for nearly all their shows over the years,
there's little chance of seeing many old shows in HD.

The Americans, who preferred to use film, can now watch 70s shows such as
Charlie's Angels and Cheers in HD.



hopefully..... some of them were shot on film, but then tranferred to
video for editing - example, dallas - which suddenly started to look crap
when they did this.



--
Gareth.
A french man who wanted a castle threw his cat into a pond.
http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/dsbmusic/

Upscaling to Hi Def
 

On Sat, 18 Mar 2006 13:33:47 -0000, "Nige"
wrote:

Ed wrote:
On Sky news they just showed a Denon amplifer thing that supposedly
upscales DVDs and other sources to Hi Def quality.

What does it really do? Or rather, what does it do to the pictures
coming from a standard dvd player to supposedly make them HD

cheers
ed

It upscales by stretching the picture. It cannot make it HD if it isn't already HD. It will look a mess i
would think.

Nige

There have been upscaling DVD players around for a while. I have a Samsung
HD950. They do a pretty decent job of upscaling although TBH a HTPC can do a
better job. Definitely a better picture on my HD projector than with a standard
DVD player.

--
Nigel Barker
Live from the sunny Cote d'Azur

Upscaling to Hi Def
 

On Sat, 18 Mar 2006 15:23:36 GMT, "Choofie" wrote:

If it ain't filmed in HD, it ain't showing in HD

Pretty much all movies are filmed in a far higher resolution than HDTV & have
been for decades. 35mm film is far higher resolution than even 1920 x 1080i.

--
Nigel Barker
Live from the sunny Cote d'Azur

Upscaling to Hi Def
 

Nigel Barker wrote:
On Sat, 18 Mar 2006 15:23:36 GMT, "Choofie"
wrote:

If it ain't filmed in HD, it ain't showing in HD

Pretty much all movies are filmed in a far higher resolution than
HDTV & have been for decades.

You mean celluloid ?


35mm film is far higher resolution than
even 1920 x 1080i.

Upscaling to Hi Def
 

"Ed" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Sky news they just showed a Denon amplifer thing that supposedly
upscales DVDs and other sources to Hi Def quality.

What does it really do? Or rather, what does it do to the pictures
coming from a standard dvd player to supposedly make them HD

Though you cannot extract any more information from the SD source material
than there is, the question is what is the best way to scale the resolution
of the SD material to the resolution of the panel?

All panels are going to scale the incomming signal to fit the panel, but it
is possible that a scaler built into a DVD, an amp like the Denon or a
dedicated scaler can do the job better. That is better in terms of making
the best job of guessing what the extra scan lines should be (that is, not
just duplicating the lines, for interpolating the lines to "guess" what
should have been there), smoothing out the jaggies and generally doing the
job with minimum of artefacts.

I have a Oppo Digital DVD player that has one of the best built in scalers.
As it can easily switch between a 576p and a 720p signal it is easy to see
whether providing the panel with a higher resolution input improves PQ.
In the case of my Philips HD Ready LCD, feeding it the 720p signal is a
clear improvement.
I have a Panasonic Plasma arriving next week, so am looking forward to see
what difference there is there. If the Panasonic does a better job of
scaling the 576p image than the Philips, then it might not show any
improvement when fed a 720p signal.

However, the Oppo does have a very good scaler, so it will be interesting to
see.

So far, I have been amazed at just how much more information the Oppo is
extracting from SD DVD than I have seen before.
This could just be a factor of it being a better DVD in the first place than
ones I have owned before, but as stated above, there is a clear improvement
in using the Oppo's scaler as well. So it is probably a combination of the
two.

Here is a good explanation of what the Oppo's scaler does, and why it does a
good job of it
http://www.oppodigital.com/opdv971h_moreinfo.html

Loz

Upscaling to Hi Def
 

Thanks to the BBC using video for nearly all their shows over the
years, there's little chance of seeing many old shows in HD.

The Americans, who preferred to use film, can now watch 70s shows
such as Charlie's Angels and Cheers in HD.


Well, not really true, that's a bit unfair when you consider the scale of
budgets vs Audience ratings. Plus the Americans are a bit mental and spend
money shooting everthing on film whether they need to or not. Even sitcoms
are done on 35mm, never mind 16 or super 16! I don't think the BBC could
justify spending the licence fee doing everthing on film.

I suppose the word "repeats" has a bad name, because when you mention it
over here it stirs memories of Dads Army, Vicar of Dibley and Only Fools and
horses again and again and again and again.......
There are thousands of progs out there which should be repeated and never
even make it to UK Gold. Where's the good stuff, wasted sitting in a dusty
archive because to bring it out would upset the repeat percentages,
especially against the audience ratings they would be expected to get.

Upscaling to Hi Def
 

Matt Overton wrote:

Thanks to the BBC using video for nearly all their shows over the
years, there's little chance of seeing many old shows in HD.

The Americans, who preferred to use film, can now watch 70s shows
such as Charlie's Angels and Cheers in HD.


Well, not really true, that's a bit unfair when you consider the scale of
budgets vs Audience ratings. Plus the Americans are a bit mental and spend
money shooting everthing on film whether they need to or not. Even sitcoms
are done on 35mm, never mind 16 or super 16! I don't think the BBC could
justify spending the licence fee doing everthing on film.

I suppose the word "repeats" has a bad name, because when you mention it
over here it stirs memories of Dads Army, Vicar of Dibley and Only Fools and
horses again and again and again and again.......
There are thousands of progs out there which should be repeated and never
even make it to UK Gold. Where's the good stuff, wasted sitting in a dusty
archive because to bring it out would upset the repeat percentages,
especially against the audience ratings they would be expected to get.

Most likely there's contractual difficulties, frequently a contract
allowed for a first showing and x repeats.

Others may have been lost for ever, thrown out to make room for later
programmes or the tapes recycled.

--

Peter

Upscaling to Hi Def
 

Peter Hayes wrote:
Matt Overton wrote:

Thanks to the BBC using video for nearly all their shows over the
years, there's little chance of seeing many old shows in HD.

The Americans, who preferred to use film, can now watch 70s shows
such as Charlie's Angels and Cheers in HD.


Well, not really true, that's a bit unfair when you consider the scale of
budgets vs Audience ratings. Plus the Americans are a bit mental and spend
money shooting everthing on film whether they need to or not. Even sitcoms
are done on 35mm, never mind 16 or super 16! I don't think the BBC could
justify spending the licence fee doing everthing on film.

I suppose the word "repeats" has a bad name, because when you mention it
over here it stirs memories of Dads Army, Vicar of Dibley and Only Fools and
horses again and again and again and again.......
There are thousands of progs out there which should be repeated and never
even make it to UK Gold. Where's the good stuff, wasted sitting in a dusty
archive because to bring it out would upset the repeat percentages,
especially against the audience ratings they would be expected to get.

Most likely there's contractual difficulties, frequently a contract
allowed for a first showing and x repeats.

Of course, if the TV bosses were bothered about a show they could make
the necessary calls to negotiate further repeats even though that would
mean drawing up a new contract. And, of course, they just can't be
bothered.

Others may have been lost for ever, thrown out to make room for later
programmes or the tapes recycled.

I remember seeing an article on the news once about a bloke who only
recorded on video tapes once. When everything had been explained to him
he said, "You can record over them again?" :)

Dom

Upscaling to Hi Def
 

"Ed" wrote:

On Sky news they just showed a Denon amplifer thing that supposedly
upscales DVDs and other sources to Hi Def quality.

What does it really do? Or rather, what does it do to the pictures
coming from a standard dvd player to supposedly make them HD

There's only one or two HD-ready *CRT* TVs, and I've not seen any on
the High Street, so almost all HD-ready TVs being sold at the moment
are flat-panels. The ones that I've seen don't seem to have 720 or 1080
lines, but some other number like 768 or 1024 lines.

When showing a standard definition source, a flat-panel will
format-convert the source to its native definition. But when you take
advantage of the upscaling option of one of these DVD players, the
source is format-converted to 720 or 1080 lines, and then
format-converted again by the flat-panel to its native definition - two
format conversions, each blurring the image slightly. It doesn't make
sense.

The upscaling DVD players have HDMI digital outputs - so that's a real
advantage, if you can use it - but it'd be better to leave the player
set to standard-definition output.

--
Dave Farrance

Upscaling to Hi Def
 

"Dave Farrance" wrote in message
...
There's only one or two HD-ready *CRT* TVs, and I've not seen any on
the High Street, so almost all HD-ready TVs being sold at the moment
are flat-panels. The ones that I've seen don't seem to have 720 or 1080
lines, but some other number like 768 or 1024 lines.

When showing a standard definition source, a flat-panel will
format-convert the source to its native definition. But when you take
advantage of the upscaling option of one of these DVD players, the
source is format-converted to 720 or 1080 lines, and then
format-converted again by the flat-panel to its native definition - two
format conversions, each blurring the image slightly. It doesn't make
sense.

The upscaling DVD players have HDMI digital outputs - so that's a real
advantage, if you can use it - but it'd be better to leave the player
set to standard-definition output.

I would have agreed that this arguement makes sense.
However, having recently bought an upscaling DVD I am surprised how much
better the PQ is when fed a 720p upscaled picture from the DVD compared to a
"normal" 576p one.
This is down to the quality of the scaler built into the DVD compared to the
one in the TV.

On my HD LCD it doesn't scale the 720p image to fit the 768 pixels, but
leaves a 24 pixel black border on each side.
Whereas if I feed it a 576p source the TV has to upscale it to 720 pixels.
It is clear my DVD does a better job of scaling than the TV.
This wont always be the case of course, depending on what DVD and what TV
you have.

Loz