I was thinking of ripping all my DVDs to ISOs or MKV but then someone told me it's better to play them in my HD-DVD player because it upconverts them and will look better than thru the WDTV? Does anyone have any confirmation on whether DVDs look better thru upconverters versus the WDTV?

I was thinking of ripping all my DVDs to ISOs or MKV but then someone told me it's better to play them in my HD-DVD player because it upconverts them and will look better than thru the WDTV? Does anyone have any confirmation on whether DVDs look better thru upconverters versus the WDTV?

I had conversation with WD support last week on this. My question was that a standard DVD played through a cheap, $100 upconverting DVD player displays full screen on a 40 inch Sony Bravia. The WDTV displays the ripped files (VOB) at full height but only 3/4 width of TV with black bars on right and left. This occurs at whatever the WDTV output is set to - Auto, 720p, 1080i etc. and so the WDTV is not really upconverting? The reply was that the 4:3 DVD file needs to be converted. This was also the behavior on my older MVIX 760HD.

I had conversation with WD support last week on this. My question was that a standard DVD played through a cheap, $100 upconverting DVD player displays full screen on a 40 inch Sony Bravia. The WDTV displays the ripped files (VOB) at full height but only 3/4 width of TV with black bars on right and left. This occurs at whatever the WDTV output is set to - Auto, 720p, 1080i etc. and so the WDTV is not really upconverting? The reply was that the 4:3 DVD file needs to be converted. This was also the behavior on my older MVIX 760HD.

Sorry for my confusion, but you said the 4:3 DVD file needs to be converted? Are you saying that we need to convert the DVD file to another format like MKV to have it upconverted?

Sorry for my confusion, but you said the 4:3 DVD file needs to be converted? Are you saying that we need to convert the DVD file to another format like MKV to have it upconverted?
Not clear on this myself. Here is quote from WD support.
"It seems that the problem is the frame width and height of the file, try converting the file and see if that makes a difference. Otherwise there is not much that can be done to correct it other than converting the file."

warunek, it seems to me that your issue has nothing to do with the OPs question. Your issue is that the WDTV does not play video in anything but the original format, which in your case is 4:3. If your DVD player fills the width of your TV with a picture that was originally 4:3, that is called stretching, not upconverting, and it generally make the picture quality worse.

As to the OPs question, I haven't seen any documentation which says that it will upconvert, but it does a fine job of displaying them in 480p. Upscaling/upconverting is mostly a garbage feature in DVD players, in most cases it does not improve the picture. If you have a good quality TV/monitor the video scaler in it should provide you with the best quality picture that a DVD is capable of.

I had conversation with WD support last week on this. My question was that a standard DVD played through a cheap, $100 upconverting DVD player displays full screen on a 40 inch Sony Bravia. The WDTV displays the ripped files (VOB) at full height but only 3/4 width of TV with black bars on right and left. This occurs at whatever the WDTV output is set to - Auto, 720p, 1080i etc. and so the WDTV is not really upconverting? The reply was that the 4:3 DVD file needs to be converted. This was also the behavior on my older MVIX 760HD.

The WDTV is playing it with the correct aspect ratio, your dvd player is stretching it. If you watch anyhting that is 4:3 on a 16:9 tv, unless it is stretched its gonna have bars on the side.

Well, I guess I'll hold off on spending time ripping the DVDs. I'd rather have an upconversion thru the physical disc on my Toshiba HD-DVD player than deal with stretching an ISO on the WDTV.

There seems to be some misunderstanding of terms here. Note, I do not have a WDTV and haven’t paid attention to its features, but I’ll attempt to clear up some things.


Upconversion (or scaling) is the process of converting video from one resolution to a higher one. When using an fixed-pixel HDTV (any non-CRT based HDTV is fixed pixel, ie. it can only display one resolution), something needs to convert the resolution to what the TV natively displays.

The TV itself is capable of doing this, however, another device earlier in the chain can also be used for the scaling (effectively bypassing the scaler built into the TV). Such devices could be an upscaling DVD player, a video processor, or the WDTV (at least I’m assuming it has a scaler built in).


Now that that is out of the way, the issue here appears to be the aspect ratio of the DVD. If you are used to seeing 4:3 movies filling up your screen, that is because you have either your DVD player or your TV set to ‘stretch’ 4:3 content to fill your screen. That in itself has nothing to do with scaling. That is simply based on the aspect ratio controls. Again I’m making an assumption here, but I suspect the WDTV has aspect ratio controls to allow you to do this. Even if it doesn’t however, your TV should have them (in other words, nothing special needs to be done when you rip the DVD).


As to whether to rip your DVD’s to ISO or MKV, or use your DVD player … I’d say that depends on the performance of the scaling in your different devices. There are a few options:

• If your upscaling DVD player has the best scaling performance, you may want to use that if image quality is your main concern.
• If the WDTV is basically as good or better, might as well use that for the convenience (well, once you rip everything, it is more convenient)
• If your TV has the best upscaling, then you can use either the DVD player or the WDTV, but you’d want to set them to output 480p so the TV does the actual scaling.

As to whether to rip your DVD’s to ISO or MKV, or use your DVD player … I’d say that depends on the performance of the scaling in your different devices.



Well, the 4:3 aspect ratio thing was his issue. I had no problems with that part. I'll try a couple ripped DVD's and try to do some comparisons.

I'm happy with my Toshiba HD-DVD doing the upconversion but I never had a "wow, that looks HD moment" myself even though people have said my player is really good at upconversion. My TV doing the upconversion was different for lack of a better word. It had less of the grainy effect but it was somewhat blurrier. As for my WDTV, I'm fairly new with it and am learning my way around it. I'm happy it plays all my anime and all my TV shows and movies. Now it's time to test the networking capabilities...

I was just hoping someone here had done some preliminary testing as this is the AVSFORUM with a bunch of studs with massive AV setups.

I was just hoping someone here had done some preliminary testing as this is the AVSFORUM with a bunch of studs with massive AV setups.

I'm surprised no one has. But when all else fails ... do it yourself.

You can get some testing material for deinterlacing and scaling, and compare everything.

I'm happy with my Toshiba HD-DVD doing the upconversion but I never had a "wow, that looks HD moment" myself even though people have said my player is really good at upconversion. My TV doing the upconversion was different for lack of a better word. It had less of the grainy effect but it was somewhat blurrier. As for my WDTV, I'm fairly new with it and am learning my way around it. I'm happy it plays all my anime and all my TV shows and movies. Now it's time to test the networking capabilities...

I don't have a WDTV, so I know nothing about it's scaling capabilities, but the Tosh HD-DVD players were known to have some pretty nice scalers. Generally noticeably superior to the scalers built into most TVs.

There are definitely some TVs out there that have excellent scalers, but I'd say the majority of HDTVs have poor-to-average scalers at best, and you're usually better served by scaling your material to the TV's native resolution before it goes to the set... again, depending on the scaling capability of your other gear. Scalers built into cheap upconverting DVD players tend to be pretty bad, as bad or worse than the one in the TV. Scalers built into good DVD players, like some of the Toshiba HD-DVD players, Oppo, etc., tend to be MUCH better than the TV's scaler.

All that said, it should be pretty easy for you to compare the WD to the HD-DVD and see which scales better.

WHen I watch SD divx/xvid's on my wdtv they look awesome. I am very pleased with how well it outputs SD movies. I have not really tried a comparison.

WHen I watch SD divx/xvid's on my wdtv they look awesome. I am very pleased with how well it outputs SD movies. I have not really tried a comparison.

sorry for my asking, but what TV are you watching these divx/xvid's on?

sorry for my asking, but what TV are you watching these divx/xvid's on?

Panasonic TC-P42X1 (720p)

sorry for my asking, but what TV are you watching these divx/xvid's on?

I missed which set are you using?

FWIW I have 100's of ripped DVD's sitting on a 500gig drive. The WDTV does not up convert. It's simply not needed if your Screen has a decent chip set to do it for you. I see no difference between WDTV video vs my Playstation or other DVD player video.

The sheer convince of having your all video library under one device is awesome.

I'm using a Sony LCD. The difference between it and a top rated OPPO DVD player is negligible, YMMV, IMHO for up conversion.

As far as 4:3 format stretched to wide, IMHO, it sucks depending how good the source is. This can be handled by (most) TV's as an auto setting depending on your taste.

The biggest issues I have are a few of my old concert DVD's are PCM soundtrack only. My WDTV does not pass this thru HDMI, what I get is raw digital noise that will have you leaping for the volume button!!!

The specs say PCM is supported??

The WDTV will pass DTS and Dolby unmolested to my receiver to decode and sound great. Not perfect but not bad for a $99 server.

I have a panny TC-42px1 plasma. I dont have another media player to compare too. But sd dvdrips which are xvid look great!

The biggest issues I have are a few of my old concert DVD's are PCM soundtrack only. My WDTV does not pass this thru HDMI, what I get is raw digital noise that will have you leaping for the volume button!!!

The specs say PCM is supported??


This is the second time I heard this issue mentioned...Everything (except DTS) gets converted to PCM if set to ANALOG and it usually works...have you tried setting to ANALOG? maybe it has to do with the LPCM format (96kHZ/24bit or higher) that WDTV's hardware may not be able to pass-on, but at the same time does not downsample when in digital (RAW) mode...try ANALOG :D

This is the second time I heard this issue mentioned...Everything (except DTS) gets converted to PCM if set to ANALOG and it usually works...have you tried setting to ANALOG? maybe it has to do with the LPCM format (96kHZ/24bit or higher) that WDTV's hardware may not be able to pass-on, but at the same time does not downsample when in digital (RAW) mode...try ANALOG :D

Thanks mytbyte,

Analog? I only show Digital or Stereo for audio settings. If you mean using the RCA jacks, that is not an option. If read from the manual, the digital setting is only for toslink...right. In any case I get noise from either setting. WD's response is "we don't support ISO". WD needs to get on the stick but I'm not holding my breath.

I tried a WAV file and they play fine. I believe they are a form of digital PCM as well. When pcm soundtrack is played my Denon displays the proper LPCM flag, so suspect corruption on the WD side as any standard DVD player will play my video/PCM only DVD's perfectly.

Thanks mytbyte,

Analog? I only show Digital or Stereo for audio settings.

It's summer and I'm slipping :D...I meant stereo, of course...but do retain the optical or HDMI connection, of course...