Questions on 1080p upconverting DVD movie?

Question

In your 1080i LCD TV (most people have that type), can you see the difference on the DVD movie that is played by regular DVD player (i.e.720x480) and 1080p upconverting DVD player from 1-2 meters away? If you have 1080p LCD TV instead, can you see the difference?

Answer 1

I have both 1080p LCD monitors and a 1080p DLP televison, and I'm a videohead, so I have some experience here.

Whether you can see the difference between an SD resolution video like DVD (720x480 IS standard definition, in fact, it's based on the D1 standard for SD, it's not "slightly more than" SD) and something higher resolution is based on the size of your screen versus the viewing distance. At 1 meter, a person with normal vision will see the full benefits of a 1080p display that's 24" or larger... at 2 meters, you're going to need something more like 48".

Now, of course, no upconversion will replace real HD. A 1080p image contains six times as much spatial information as a 480p image.... you can't just make that magically appear. Upscaling algorithms use smoothing, edge enhancement, and other tricks to make a picture look better in HD, but they can't perform miracles.

With a modern display, you really won't see any difference between 1080i and 1080p upscaling of a DVD. The reason for this is simple: your TV is always displaying in 1080p, even if you feed it a 1080i signal. LCDs, DLPs, and some other modern displays simply can't display an interlaced picture -- they always scale to native resolution and they always convert to progressive video. With real HD video, a native 1080p video has some advantage over a converted one, but with DVD upscaling, you're not going to see any significant difference.

Well, usually not. Every device that's doing upscaling runs some kind of algorithm. If you have a very high quality and a cheap DVD player, you may find the TV itself does better DVD upscaling, so feed your TV a 480p signal for the best look. If the DVD player has a better upscaler, it's possible that a 1080p output from the DVD player would look ever-so-slight better than the 1080i to 1080p conversion on the TV.. but  you'd have to really close, I suspect.  

Answer 2

the 720x480 is just slightly better than SD video.

the 1080 is nearly double the resolution. most people can tell the difference.up-converting is done with DSP,and would only improve

the dvd slightly.

Answer 3

I have a Denon DVD player that scans 480, 720, and 1080 through an HDTV/monitor, and I really can't see any difference. But, then again, I usually watch older movies.