DVD Upscaling ?

[parkimar]

Hi,

I have my system working nicely (except for .mp4 - And I've set an external player for that now, Sage just won't play ball).

I have an nvidia 6200, Nvidia Bronze Codec, and a very recent version of the display drivers from Nvidia (Need access to HTPC to do full check).
When I play DVD's the quality is fine, but no better than using a normal DVD player.

My TV is Samsung DLP running at 720p, I connect via component.

My question is should I expect the quality of DVD playback to be comparable to an upscaling DVD player, or just like a normal DVD player ?

(I downloaded some HD clips from the microsoft website and they look fantastic).

Cheers

Mark

[stanger89]

I'd rate it as on par (maybe better) than most upconverting players. Though how much is really tricky to determine.

One thing you must realize is that even your "normal" DVD player is upconverted by the time you see it, only difference is it's your TV that does it, not the player.

Some TVs upconvert very well, some, not so well. The magnitude of the difference between an upconverting player and a non-upconverting one all comes down to how well the TV upconverts.

[parkimar]

Thanks Stanger,

I guess my TV must be relatively good, else I'd have noticed a difference from when I had my old 30 Dollar WalMart special hooked up to it.

Just wanted to check to see if I needed to do anything else to get upscaling going.

Cheers

Mark

[stanger89]

No, if you're desktop resolution doesn't match the source resolution, and you're playing fullscreen, upconversion is happening.

You could try playing with the sharpening/noise reduction controls in the newer nVidia drivers.

[parkimar]

Thanks,

I'll give them a whirl.

Cheers

Mark

[kpsmith]

My opinion... the samsung DLP sets upconvert very very well. I purchased a decent HDMI upconverting player to replace my old Sharp piece of crap and..... the picture was the same if not worse. Took it back and am still using the Sharp player.

[parkimar]

My opinion... the samsung DLP sets upconvert very very well. I purchased a decent HDMI upconverting player to replace my old Sharp piece of crap and..... the picture was the same if not worse. Took it back and am still using the Sharp player.

Thanks, that reassures me.
I get a bit obsessed about PQ and hoped that the TV was doing the business, but wanted to make sure. - Visually it looks nice, not up to pure HD, but easily acceptable.


Cheers

Mark

[GTwannabe]

From the PureVideo image quality tests I've seen, PureVideo is roughly equal to a $1000 upconverting DVD player, but not as good as a $2000 unit.

Of course, who in their right mind would blow $1-2000 on a DVD player?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by GTwannabe

Of course, who in their right mind would blow $1-2000 on a DVD player?

Well, I would if I didn't have an HTPC

Of course, if I didn't have an HTPC, I'd be looking at more like $20k

[Flips]

I used FFDShow and it looks awesome. Much better than just the standard decoder. The only down side is that the menu cursor doesn't show up, so navigating is a pain. Is that an issue when using the post processing Nvidia decoder?

flips

[Taddeusz]

I have a Sony upconverting DVD player running on my SDTV and I don't believe it scales very well. I get the odd large scanlines on it. PureVideo through SageTV is crystal clear. Much better than the DVD player. Although I do have some issues with color banding but I believe that has to do with the s-video output. Not sure though.

[GTwannabe]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

I have a Sony upconverting DVD player running on my SDTV and I don't believe it scales very well. I get the odd large scanlines on it. PureVideo through SageTV is crystal clear. Much better than the DVD player. Although I do have some issues with color banding but I believe that has to do with the s-video output. Not sure though.

Your player is not upconverting, since you're outputting via s-video to a SDTV. You would need to use HDMI or component-out with a TV that supports the upconverted resolution (probably 1080i)

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by GTwannabe

Your player is not upconverting, since you're outputting via s-video to a SDTV. You would need to use HDMI or component-out with a TV that supports the upconverted resolution (probably 1080i)

I know that, in this case it's down converting and not doing a very good job. Especially considering it should use the exact same process for both. But obviously it doesn't.

[jprine01]

Originally Posted by kpsmith

My opinion... the samsung DLP sets upconvert very very well. I purchased a decent HDMI upconverting player to replace my old Sharp piece of crap and..... the picture was the same if not worse. Took it back and am still using the Sharp player.

I'm sure your using a different TV than me, but I wanted to let others know my experience. I have a Samsung 5687 1080P DLP TV. When I first bought the tv I was using a old DVD player with component output and no upconversion. The first DVD i played I was ready to take the tv back it looked so bad. So i went to circuitcity to pickup a hdmi cable for my set top box, and I just happend to see my exact model tv playing shrek dvd and it looked GREAT!!! So I go check it out, they are using a 1080i upconverting dvd player (connected with component cables). I walked out of the store with one (I connected mine with HDMI), brought it home and the difference was like 8times better then non upconverting dvd player.

With that being said, I can't get my Sage Computer w/Geforce 8600GTS @ 1920x1080 resolution to look nearly as good as my upconverting dvd player does. Sage adds allot of background noise and compression looking stuff where the dvd player doesn't. So in my experience my HTPC looks worse then my 120$ upconverting DVD player. (HOPEFULLY I CAN FIX THAT)

[stanger89]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=523614

[jprine01]

Thanks for the link, I'll defenetly try to calibrate my tv and see if helps.
I just got FFDShow post processing setup and working in sagetv. The upconvertsion and noise reduction makes a big difference but I still have that grainy/ant crawling effect on some details.
I'm going to have to overclock my cpu FFDShow is taking up ~80%CPU on my am2 2.2 X2 @ 1080p! Need to save some room for recording at the same time.

[Flips]

I've been a big fan of FFDShow for quite a while now, but recently made the switch (not sure if I'll be switching back, who knows) to the Nvidia decoder. I finally got the edge enhancement and noise reduction settings to stick after restart (I installed the latest beta drivers, and enabled the control panel with a registry tweak) and I think the video is very close to what I get in FFDShow.

With the latest guide on AVS Forum I got some distracting artificats so really the Nvidia driver (on a 6600GT) looks better. I still need to get a copy of DVE and do a full calibration.

flips