Upscaling?

loopstah · 7 May 2007 at 16:00

So I finally got rid of my clunky CRT and bought a nice shiny HD LCD.
Now I've heard about this upscaling you can do with your normal DVDs and was wondering:

(a) does it actually make much of a difference?

(b) if it does, can anyone recommend a cheapish, upscaling DVD player.

thanks.

malccy · 7 May 2007 at 17:35

a) on some dvd's

b) Just bought a Phlips DVP5960 for £49.99 which is an upscaling hdmi dvd player with divx, xvid and has a usb at front. No complaints so far but believe if you have the money then the Oppo's are the ones to get.

squiffy · 7 May 2007 at 17:58

a) Yes it does, especially from a HTPC. Use FFDSHOW with setting in resize to the native rez of your panel. You will notice a difference. It'll scale DVD's and DVD's.
b) I use a Oppo 981, scales upto 1080p.

Yaka · 7 May 2007 at 19:07

if you have Xbox lying around get some component cables for it and install Xbmc
it scales dvd fine to either 720p or 1080i and has a host of other features as well

malccy · 7 May 2007 at 21:06

I'd suggest just getting a cheap upscaling dvd player until hd dvd players come down in price which wont be long as China now has licensing which means mass production will soon take place and prices should drop.

loopstah · 7 May 2007 at 22:41

malccy said:
a) on some dvd's

b) Just bought a Phlips DVP5960 for £49.99 which is an upscaling hdmi dvd player with divx, xvid and has a usb at front. No complaints so far but believe if you have the money then the Oppo's are the ones to get.

The Philips sounds good, think I'll hunt about for the cheapest place to buy one.

Thanks

james.miller · 8 May 2007 at 01:11

if your tv's got a good scaler than a cheap player wont make any difference and may possibly be worse. my ps3 doesnt scale dvd's, but yet it puts out a better image than the cheap scaling player that i dont use any more.

fish99 · 8 May 2007 at 01:24

Got a definite improvement on my LG 32LC2D by buying a Sony NS76 upscaling HDMI dvd player (paid £81 for it plus £8 for a HDMI lead). I've done picture-by-picture comparison version my old Philips dvd player (RGB scart), and the Sony is upscaling noticeably better than my TV. In comparison the upscaling of the TV looks a little clumsy.

As James says though, if you have a top quality TV with a good scaler, it's not going to be worth it. If your TVs upscaler isn't the best though (which will show up as a soft SD picture) then give one a try.

Firegod · 8 May 2007 at 15:23

squiffy said:
a) Yes it does, especially from a HTPC. Use FFDSHOW with setting in resize to the native rez of your panel. You will notice a difference. It'll scale DVD's and DVD's.
b) I use a Oppo 981, scales upto 1080p.

Heard good things about that DVD upscaler.