Hi guys,
I am relatively new to the forum but was a long time "lurker" years before (when DVD pirated copies were sold for 300 pesos each) haha.
I am planning to get a DVD player with upscaling features. Question is...do upscalers really do upscale?
I am posting a part of an article in Wikipedia....
Upscaling/upconverting DVD players contain a scaler, which allows the user to convert lower resolution content into a signal that the display device will handle as high definition content. Depending on the quality of the scaling that is done within the upscaling/upconverting DVD player, the resultant output quality of the video displayed may or may not be improved. The idea behind upconverting DVD players is that when a DVD player is connected to an HDTV, especially one of the fixed pixel display type such as LCD, Plasma display, or DLP and LCoS projection TV, scaling happens anyway, either inside the player or inside the TV. By performing the scaling closer to the source inside the DVD player, the video scaler gets to work with the original signal without the concern of transmission error or interference. There exist independent benchmark tests[1] verifying that some upconverting DVD players do produce better video quality. However, under no circumstances will an upscaling/upconverting DVD player provide "high-definition content", since video information can only be retained or lost in each successive conversion step, but not created. Companies such as Denon, Pioneer Electronics, Panasonic and OPPO Digital were among the first to make upconverting DVD players. Now, almost all consumer electronics brands have this product category. Computer software DVD-Video players like PowerDVD and WinDVD tap into a computer's video card in order to upscale a video frame from the DVD content to the user's set output resolution.
A properly-designed upconverting DVD player should have these key parts all with good quality: MPEG decoder, deinterlacing component, and video scaler. Among those, the deinterlacing component is the most important one. If the deinterlacer assembles the video frame in an incorrect manner, no matter how good the video scaler is, it still cannot produce the correct video. On the other hand, some upconverting DVD players use a single chip that contains the MPEG decoder, deinterlacing component and video scaler. This type of chip is often called SoC (System-on-a-Chip). Low cost upconverting DVD players usually feature the SoC design.
Your thoughts guys.
Thanks.