Please introduce me to the world of HD/ hd upscaling

ojrules · 13 Jan 2008 at 13:21

i'm pretty knoledgable about pc's, but not when t comes to tv's and hd stuff... i've just oredered a Samsung LE32M86BDX 32", but don't have a bluray or hd dvd drive, but was wondering whether i could upscale the definition usign my pc... or whether it can do any other tricks?...

for instance, the resolution of the tv is 1366 x 768, and it supports 1080i HD, and i thought you needed a lot higher resolution to display that kind of high defeinition... so what kind of quality am i likely to see if i plug this up to my pc?..

Trick · 13 Jan 2008 at 15:37

The interlaced 1920x1080 picture will be scaled down to fit the native resolution of the display. This is why even 1080i sources can look better on native 1080p displays as there's no down-scaling.

Use something like powerstrip to scale you pc content to 1366x768. These are the settings I used in p-strip to get my old 32" lcd running correctly. Note that my display only ran 1360x768 correctly.

It's worth having a look on avforums to check settings for individual lcds.

FFdshow can be used through something like Zoomplayer to get the avi's/dvds played on your pc to upscale to the tv's resolution. These are the ffdshow settings I used:

ojrules · 13 Jan 2008 at 16:03

ah ok thanks very much... so from a standard dvd how would i go about upscaling that to 1080i HD

Trick · 13 Jan 2008 at 16:28

If I can remember correctly, if you use something like zoom player or wmp, as long as ffdshow is told to process all raw video (in the options) then it will upscale all video to the settings you choose in ffdshow. In my case, it was to 1360x768. This meant that the tv didn't then have to re-scale a 1920x1080i source back down to it's native resolution.

ojrules · 13 Jan 2008 at 16:31

ok.. im learning a bit thanks.. i've just installed the programs you advised and tried it on my existign monitor (1280x1024) and used ffdshow to rescale it to that resolution, and i think i can see a noticable quality increase, does that mean thta before i was watchign videos in another resolution like 800x600?!

ojrules · 13 Jan 2008 at 16:34

Trick said:
If I can remember correctly, if you use something like zoom player or wmp, as long as ffdshow is told to process all raw video (in the options) then it will upscale all video to the settings you choose in ffdshow. In my case, it was to 1360x768. This meant that the tv didn't then have to re-scale a 1920x1080i source back down to it's native resolution.

(sorry if i'm running in circles and not properly understanding you

.. its all new to me )

but what if its from a standard dvd...?.. obviously not at a 1080i .. or do i need to start thinking of HD in full resolutions rather than half numbers like 1080i... so does this mean that my tv is really using proper 1080i, or just getting it and downscaling it to its resolution, meaning when i shove a dvd in my comp all i need to do is set ffdshow to 1366x768?.... meaning it isnt true 1080i, it just acepts the signal?..