Upscaling DVD Player?

Question

We are looking to buy a 1080p HDTV and don't want to make the switch to Blu-Ray so we are looking into DVD Upconverters. I have a few Questions. When I look at the product pages for players online, I see "1080p Upscaling DVD player" but when I look at online reviews I see "This DVD player is equipped with progressive scan". So will these DVD players really make regular DVD's look 1080p? I have also heard that TV's can Upscale DVD's to 1080p or whatever their native resolution is. So if they upconvert, what's the point in buying a Upconverting DVD Player?

Here's one I was looking at. could you tell me if it will upconvert a regular DVD to true 1080p?

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-DVP5982-1080p-Upscaling-Player/dp/B000N254LU/ref=pd_sim_e?ie=UTF8&qid=1204232944&sr=1-1

And the TV I was looking. Will this upconvert to 1080p by itself?

http://www.amazon.com/Westinghouse-TX-42F430S-1080p-LCD-HDTV/dp/B000NIDJ3E/ref=sr_1_22?ie=UTF8&s=audio-video&qid=1204233275&sr=1-22

Answer 1

Ok - let me clue you in.

Standard Def television was designed to fill a nine-inch tube back in the 1940's. Black and white. Color was added later.

A DVD is a high-tech way of holding that nine-inches of video. No more.

Up-converting DVD players do some tricks. They magnify the image and try to "fill in" some rows so it fills a 720 or 1080 data space.

But it really cannot add information.

You are correct that all TV's up-convert. That Westinghouse will take care of it.

Now - a DVD player can usually do a better job of up-converting than a budget TV will do. (There is analog->digital circuits the TV must have that are expensive to do well).  

Some DVD player like the Oppo brand ($150) do a good job of "filling in" the image with few artifacts.

I suspect an Oppo up-converting player will look better on that TV than just sending component video to the TV.  This is because:

- The Oppo units do a good job

- Westinghouse is a budget TV and likely will do a poor job

My advice: Use your existing DVD player until you an afford a PS3 for BluRay.

Answer 2

To get true 1080p your source player and tv needs to be 1080p. Both the philips and westinghouse will upscale a DVD to 1080p viewing. Upconverting players came out first. They realize it could be put in the TV also to eliminate the need for DVD players to have them.

Upscaling basically takes a 480p DVD and stretches it to fill the whole 1080p screen. It's kinda like magnifying the picture. People are going to look short and fat. This is not true 1080p.

Everyone know if your keep enlarging video the quality is going to suck and look blocky.

Answer 3

like you said pretty much all hdtvs have a built in upscaling converter. otherwise we would see dvds as a small box displayed in the middle of the screen. a regular dvd player would essentially be upconverted to the tvs resolution of in your case 1080p. with a dvd upscaler in your dvd player the image is basically being converted twice, and the more times its converted the more room for distortion.  if the dvd upscaler is better than your tvs upscaler than the dvd player would be a good purchase imo.  but unless you get a really good dvd upscaller your $2000 dollar tv is going to do a better job than a $300 player.  imo the best bet is to get a ps3.  the 40gb is pretty cheap now and you get one of the best bluray players on the market. not to mention you can squeeze some call of duty 4 playing in while your not watching movies. not to mention while your not using your ps3 for games or watching movies you can help out mankind by folding@home.  ps3 is one of the best purchases i made for home media in general.

Answer 4

There are "upconverters" and "scalers".  The scalers will give you a much better picture than the upconverters.  The other the thing to remember is that sometimes the TV has the better "upconverter/scaler" and sometimes the DVD player has the better upconverter/scaler.

If I were you, I'd spend the money on an HDTV with superior upconverting/scaling capabilities and stick with an "average" DVD player.  The extra green spent on your TV will make ALL of your video sources look better.  And you might reconsider the Blu-ray Disc.  You can get a decent player for around $300.  The audio alone is worth the price of admission.