DVD Upconversion:Noticeable difference in picture? or sellinggimmick?

the dog from that film you saw wrote:
wrote in message
...
Wrong buddy- Thr conventional dvd player is only sending 480 to tv.
The upconverted is sending 1080. Which has more detail- the 1080 of
course. We're not talking "scaling" there is a noticeable increase
in picture quality



if the dvd is only storing 480 lines of info how do you think the dvd player
is turning that into 1080 ? - where exactly is this 'extra detail' coming
from?


There is no "extra detail" added. We're getting into semantics here,
but claiming interpolation adds detail raises the pucker factor in me.

However, this link explains a benefit to having the DVD player do the
upconversion instead of the HDTV set.

http://askville.amazon.com/upconvert...uestId=5434097

[quote]

Here’s why upconverting is better than letting your TV do it: a standard
DVD stores a digital file, compressed, but it knows what color every
pixel should be in every frame. Therefore, you want to keep that data
digital if you can. I’m simplifying a bit in the following.

With a standard DVD player outputting an analog signal, you’re taking
the pixel data and converting it to an analog signal on a composite,
s-video, or component cable. Your HDTV then reads the analog signal from
its analog inputs, digitizes it (assigning chunks of the continuously
varying signal to pixels), and then applies its own upconversion
circuitry to "fill in" pixels to go from 480i to the native resolution
of the display (that is, the number of pixels your TV has).
[end quote]

- Winfield

Jan B wrote:
On Sat, 01 Mar 2008 10:28:56 -0700, Winfield
wrote:

lbbss wrote:
I have a 42 plasma, so I was wondering if I should buy a upconversion
DVD player. Will I actually notice the difference or is it just a
selling gimmick.
Chances are you will notice a difference. Whether or not that
difference is really better and worth spending money on is anyone's
guess. Welcome to the HD/SD-dvd roulette wheel (see below).


Any samples on the web showing the difference, or
would that not be possible to do, we all have different type of
monitors/ lcd.
Thanks.
We all have different monitors and dvd players, but you seem interested
in just getting a "feel" for the kind of effect upconversion can produce
given a standard 480i dvd source.

The only setup I saw trying to show this difference was at my local Best
Buy. They had a hdtv showing a split-screen movie. One side was
upconverted, the other was not. The upconverted side (of the same
movie) had a bland smoothness to it. "Sky Captain and the World of
Tomorrow" captures this effect rather nicely.

It sounds like you are describing one of those demonstrations that aim
to show the increased clarity with HD vs SD. The original source is in
high resolution.
This does not show what difference an external upscaling (in the DVD
player) would give on DVD material comparing to let the TV do the
upscaling.
Differences from these two scenarios can not be desplayed on a split
screen. You need two identical TV:s (to show it side by side).
/Jan


I'm in agreement with you Jan. I thought about this after posting my
message and realized it's impossible to have a split-screen demo with
true upconversion on one side and 480i/hdtv processing on the other.

However, this demo was not HD vs SD. It was a demonstration trying to
show benefits of doing upconversion on the DVD player side.

winf

the dog from that film you saw wrote:
"Jer" wrote in message
...
the dog from that film you saw wrote:
wrote in message
...
Wrong buddy- Thr conventional dvd player is only sending 480 to tv.
The upconverted is sending 1080. Which has more detail- the 1080 of
course. We're not talking "scaling" there is a noticeable increase
in picture quality



if the dvd is only storing 480 lines of info how do you think the dvd
player is turning that into 1080 ? - where exactly is this 'extra detail'
coming from?




It's coming from interpolating the adjacent pixel information, and using
that to fill things in. This is clearly explained in a number of places.

Google for "pixel interpolation upconvert" and learn grasshopper.



the end result though is there's no extra picture info - which is what the
original poster was claiming.





That's not how I understand it. Additional new pixels are inserted into
the bit stream for each frame, "interpolated" from the adjacent pixels
in the original bit stream. An upconverted 1080 signal contains more
data than an original 480 signal, so it sounds to me like additional
data is being added from somewhere.

--
jer
email reply - I am not a 'ten'

On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:43:50 -0600, Jer wrote:

the dog from that film you saw wrote:
"Jer" wrote in message
...
the dog from that film you saw wrote:
wrote in message
...
Wrong buddy- Thr conventional dvd player is only sending 480 to tv.
The upconverted is sending 1080. Which has more detail- the 1080 of
course. We're not talking "scaling" there is a noticeable increase
in picture quality

{someone else clearified, altough the quating is messed up}

if the dvd is only storing 480 lines of info how do you think the dvd
player is turning that into 1080 ? - where exactly is this 'extra detail'
coming from?


It's coming from interpolating the adjacent pixel information, and using
that to fill things in. This is clearly explained in a number of places.

Google for "pixel interpolation upconvert" and learn grasshopper.


the end result though is there's no extra picture info - which is what the
original poster was claiming.


That's not how I understand it. Additional new pixels are inserted into
the bit stream for each frame, "interpolated" from the adjacent pixels
in the original bit stream. An upconverted 1080 signal contains more
data than an original 480 signal, so it sounds to me like additional
data is being added from somewhere.

More pixels are created. The upsampling (to smaller pixels) can be
done differently in different units and give better or worse results
and allow a closer viewing distance with less stair casing in edges
etc. (but of course it can not really create details from nowhere).

However, the argument was about the fact that this is also performed
by an HDTV when fed the original DVD data. No difference IN PRINCIPLE
when performed in the DVD player. (Well field sequence information
from the disc could make a difference, but I hear that such info is
often wrong anyway.) See also older posts about scaling twice ...
/Jan

On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:16:30 -0700, Winfield
wrote:

[quote]

Here’s why upconverting is better than letting your TV do it: a standard
DVD stores a digital file, compressed, but it knows what color every
pixel should be in every frame. Therefore, you want to keep that data
digital if you can. I’m simplifying a bit in the following.

With a standard DVD player outputting an analog signal, you’re taking
the pixel data and converting it to an analog signal on a composite,
s-video, or component cable. Your HDTV then reads the analog signal from
its analog inputs, digitizes it (assigning chunks of the continuously
varying signal to pixels), and then applies its own upconversion
circuitry to "fill in" pixels to go from 480i to the native resolution
of the display (that is, the number of pixels your TV has).
[end quote]

I've seen this type of argument, over and over, for both audio and
video, but it doesn't prove that in practice, most people can honestly
tell the difference. Here is a reasonable way to find out.

These are the large TVs (and I assume the difference will be most
noticeable for larger screens) that Consumer Reports gives the highest
rating for picture quality derived from the 480p output from a
progressive scan DVD player attached to the component video inputs of
the TV. Has anybody tested any of these TVs with both a DVD player,
like the one Consumer Reports used, and one of the best upconverting
players?

LCDs: Sony KDL-52XBR4, Sharp LC-52D64U, Samsung LN-T5281F
Plasmas: Panasonic TH58P2750U, LG 60PY3D

In article writes:
Wrong buddy- Thr conventional dvd player is only sending 480 to tv.
The upconverted is sending 1080. Which has more detail- the 1080 of
course. We're not talking "scaling" there is a noticeable increase
in picture quality

Well, no it doesn't have more detail.

The image on the DVD is 480, and that is all there is. You can compute
interpolated values for intermediate lines, but that doesn't add detail, it
just fills in probable values in between the data in the lines.

You can do this calculation in the DVD player, or in the TV set.

Alan

In article Jer writes:
g2000hsw.googlegroups.com
In-Reply-To:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Complaints-To:
Lines: 43
Xref: shelby.stanford.edu alt.tv.tech.hdtv:174043

the dog from that film you saw wrote:
"Jer" wrote in message
...
the dog from that film you saw wrote:

if the dvd is only storing 480 lines of info how do you think the dvd
player is turning that into 1080 ? - where exactly is this 'extra detail'
coming from?




It's coming from interpolating the adjacent pixel information, and using
that to fill things in. This is clearly explained in a number of places.

Google for "pixel interpolation upconvert" and learn grasshopper.



the end result though is there's no extra picture info - which is what the
original poster was claiming.





That's not how I understand it. Additional new pixels are inserted into
the bit stream for each frame, "interpolated" from the adjacent pixels
in the original bit stream. An upconverted 1080 signal contains more
data than an original 480 signal, so it sounds to me like additional
data is being added from somewhere.

It may be more data, but it is not more *information*.

The question was is it better to do this in the DVD player, or in the
TV set.

Alan

In article Sam writes:

I've seen this type of argument, over and over, for both audio and
video, but it doesn't prove that in practice, most people can honestly
tell the difference. Here is a reasonable way to find out.

These are the large TVs (and I assume the difference will be most
noticeable for larger screens) that Consumer Reports gives the highest
rating for picture quality derived from the 480p output from a
progressive scan DVD player attached to the component video inputs of
the TV. Has anybody tested any of these TVs with both a DVD player,
like the one Consumer Reports used, and one of the best upconverting
players?

LCDs: Sony KDL-52XBR4, Sharp LC-52D64U, Samsung LN-T5281F
Plasmas: Panasonic TH58P2750U, LG 60PY3D

Yes. However I used an old Panasonic player with 480i output, and
a Toshiba with 1080i output.

The pictures are slightly different, but it is difficult to say which
is better most of the time.

Alan

Alan wrote:
In article Jer writes:
g2000hsw.googlegroups.com
In-Reply-To:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Complaints-To:
Lines: 43
Xref: shelby.stanford.edu alt.tv.tech.hdtv:174043

the dog from that film you saw wrote:
"Jer" wrote in message
...
the dog from that film you saw wrote:

if the dvd is only storing 480 lines of info how do you think the dvd
player is turning that into 1080 ? - where exactly is this 'extra detail'
coming from?



It's coming from interpolating the adjacent pixel information, and using
that to fill things in. This is clearly explained in a number of places.

Google for "pixel interpolation upconvert" and learn grasshopper.


the end result though is there's no extra picture info - which is what the
original poster was claiming.




That's not how I understand it. Additional new pixels are inserted into
the bit stream for each frame, "interpolated" from the adjacent pixels
in the original bit stream. An upconverted 1080 signal contains more
data than an original 480 signal, so it sounds to me like additional
data is being added from somewhere.

It may be more data, but it is not more *information*.

The question was is it better to do this in the DVD player, or in the
TV set.

Alan


Would a 480 native image look the same as a 480 upconverted image on the
same TV?

--
jer
email reply - I am not a 'ten'

On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:16:30 -0700, Winfield
wrote:

the dog from that film you saw wrote:
wrote in message
...
Wrong buddy- Thr conventional dvd player is only sending 480 to tv.
The upconverted is sending 1080. Which has more detail- the 1080 of
course. We're not talking "scaling" there is a noticeable increase
in picture quality



if the dvd is only storing 480 lines of info how do you think the dvd player
is turning that into 1080 ? - where exactly is this 'extra detail' coming
from?


There is no "extra detail" added. We're getting into semantics here,
but claiming interpolation adds detail raises the pucker factor in me.

However, this link explains a benefit to having the DVD player do the
upconversion instead of the HDTV set.

http://askville.amazon.com/upconvert...uestId=5434097

[quote]

Here’s why upconverting is better than letting your TV do it: a standard
DVD stores a digital file, compressed, but it knows what color every
pixel should be in every frame. Therefore, you want to keep that data
digital if you can. I’m simplifying a bit in the following.

With a standard DVD player outputting an analog signal, you’re taking
the pixel data and converting it to an analog signal on a composite,
s-video, or component cable. Your HDTV then reads the analog signal from
its analog inputs, digitizes it (assigning chunks of the continuously
varying signal to pixels), and then applies its own upconversion
circuitry to "fill in" pixels to go from 480i to the native resolution
of the display (that is, the number of pixels your TV has).
[end quote]

- Winfield


The FACT is that it looks just as good letting my tv do it.
Thumper