i'm still figuring out how big a difference an upscaling dvd player will make in the display. if somebody can assure me na malaki, i'll buy one for xmas. together with an hdmi cable.
one other thing i learned is that my tv is actually 'HDTV plasma' but not really 'true HD'. kasi the minimum true HD resolution is 1280x720(720p) or 1366x768 (768p). My tv's resolution is 1024x768. if that's the case, is there any point in buying an HD dvd source (like an HD DVD player or a blu ray player)? wouldn't it be like buying an HD source for a crt?
Higher resolution makes a difference, depending on the size of your screen and your viewing distance. This article gives a good summary:
http://www.carltonbale.com/2006/11/1080p-does-matter/As a rule of thumb, however, at normal viewing distances, its hard to see the difference between 720p and 1080p unless your screen is 60" diagonal or bigger.
With regard to SD vs HD:
HD has a native resolution of up to 1080i so you can output 720p to your TV and the picture quality should be very good.
If you want to emulate this with SD, you will need to de-interlace (from 480i to 480p) and then upscale the picture (480p to 720p). In this process, the quality of the output picture will depend firstly on the quality of the DVD itself (and you will find that the newer DVD's generally have better video) and secondly on the quality of the de-interlacer/scaler.
The best de-interlacer/scaler will be a dedicated video processor which can cost anywhere from PhP100,000 to PhP200,000.
I think that the next best will be a DVD player such as the Oppo (I forget the model) which is supposed to have excellent capabilities. This can cost maybe USD250.
Finally, you have the Pioneer DVD players which can cost you maybe PhP7,000.
In making a decision, the best is to actually test your set-up with a de-interlacer/upscaler and then an HD player. And when you make that decision, keep in mind that the biggest cost will not be the first cost. Its just that the HD DVD software (as compared to SD in the Philippines) typically costs 3 to 10 times more.