What is a dvd upscaler?

Question

What is a dvd upscaler?

Answer 1

It's a piece of technology in a dvd player that makes your dvds look better on a High definition TV than if you were using an old style, non-upsclaing dvd player. If you don't have a high def TV then don't bother getting an upscaler.

I don't know the technical details but it uses a system that kinda fills in the gaps between pixels by working out what should be there

The upscaling player is basically a halfway-house between old-style dvds and HD-dvd/blu ray. Especially useful if you don't want to invest in new technology just yet.

I bought one it really does make a huge difference to all my old films.

The newer dvd format machines have one built in so your old dvds don't become redundant.

Answer 2

DVDs are standard definition-480 resolution. HDTV s are 720P or 1080P. In order to display an SD picture on a HD set, it has to be up-scaled. Additional lines of resolution are added until the resolution is increased to the native resolution of the TV. This process is much more complicated than it sounds and can degrade the picture. All HDTVs have these up-scalers so that they can display an SD signal input to them. There are stand alone up-scalers which do a much better job of up-scaling than the TVs. Using one of these, an SD signal will look much better than if the TV's up-scale were used. These up-scalers can cost thousands of dollars. There are up-scaling DVD players which can do a better job of up-scaling DVDs than the TV. Cheap ones, however, can't. Generally, we're talking about DVD players with up-scalers that are close to $300 and more. As TVs have improved, more and more, their performance in up-scaling has improved. So, in some cases, the TV may do a better job of up-scaling than even the $300 DVD up-scalers.