I'm a newb here, but have learned a lot from this board and am trying to get the best out of my setup which includes among other components, a Pioneer 5070 plasma and an Oppo 970 DVD player. I've read a lot of the info on the upscaling feature, and the general consensus is to run 480i, and let the PDP take care of the upscaling.

I did some tests using the THX optimizer test pattern that can be found on some DVDs (Incredibles in my case). The results were not what I expected.

At 480i, there is a very noticeable loss of resolution in the right side of the scale. 480p is a bit better, 720p noticeably better, and 1080i just a bit better than 720p. all tests used the same display settings, connection is HDMI. 480i had the worst, not the best results in this test pattern.

The pattern I tested with is below. The Sharpness bar on the right side will show the results. Can anyone else try this out?

http://www.thx.com/home/dvd/optimizer/img/F10_Labels_bg.jpg

I've read a lot of the info on the upscaling feature, and the general consensus is to run 480i, and let the PDP take care of the upscaling.

The consensus is that 480i to an external scaler is the best option, but best signal to a display is a different matter. People want to believe that their displays deinterlace and scale better than any other device, but it is often not true.

That said, does your display have any sharpness or image enhancement controls that should be turned off?

-Bill

All NR is turned off, sharpness is set to "0".

I see bigger problems in this chart. isn't the second color block from the left supposed to be yellow? When working on a samsung 5054 a couple of weeks ago, when the contrast was too high, yellow looked like that. sort of a grey poupon mustard color.

what bill said... Pick the player resolution that gives you the best image.

Best,
jeff

That chart is a pic from the THX website, not my results.

What about your display? Is that professionally calibrated? If not I wouldn't evaluate any other hardware connected to it, with any conclusions.

No, its not professionally calibrated, nor is it likely to be. That is why I am using the THX Optimizer and will also use AVIA once it gets here. I'm hoping the AVIA also has some resolution test setups. The THX Optimizer has some nice screens for setting brightness/contrast to get the levels set. The picture looks fantastic no doubt. However, nothing I can do to the set will make the 480i equal what the 720p/1080i shows on that test. I'm not complaining about anything, just that it is curious that much of what I have seen posted states otherwise. To me, the Oppo is either doing a very good job of upscaling, or does not do 480i very well. Again, this is just one test pattern. I'm curious to see what AVIA shows.

I have another DVD player kicking around that I hooked up with S-Video. The resolution on the right side of the scale looked similar to the Oppo 480i. I guess this should not be all that surprising.

No one else can run this test?

Well your TV is doing the upconversion when it receives a 480P signal, when it's receieving 480i your tv is doing not only upconversion, but deinterlacing too. If you not happy with those results, the "blaim" is at your TV not the player. The Oppo is a pretty good upscaling player especially for the money. I have a Samsung DLP [1080p] and the picture is best when it receives a 1080i from my Oppo 970 as well.

I'm not trying to put any blame on anything. Just looking to find the best setup and share the results of my testing. My reason for posting this was there are many posts saying to have the Oppo output 480i, and let the display do the conversion. If this resolution test means anything, I dont think that is the best way to do it, at least with the display that I have. I'm in total agreement that the Oppo does a very good job of upscaling, especially after running this test.

New new TV's will sometimes, that's just sometimes, do just as good as some upconverting DVD players. But, you have the Oppo 970, so let it do the work. Let it do the upscaling to 720p if that is indeed your native resolution, and leave that work off of the television. Now your TV is just displaying the information fed to it. I'd rather wear down a player than the TV.

As far as the color goes, you need to decide on what looks best to you. There's a lot of gray areas in 'eye calibration' now-a-days, that is, doing it by what looks good to you. I personally don't use that part of the THX test at all... I just zip through to the 'test scene' and let it play, as those scenes give a good degree of the colors in the film and Incredibles is a good choice because you get red, green, and a lot of other nice colors to look at for its test sequence. If you're watching the TV, set to what YOU prefer. Best advice I can give. Some people prefer the 'blue-ish' look to standard televisions that they've been used to over the years, some people swear by trying to have their color temp as close to 6500k as possible. Me, I'm in between.

The sharpness, places like Cnet will say to keep your sharpness on your TV set to 0 for DVD's, since you're going to bring out edge enhancement and some flaws in the picture with the sharpness. For me, some sharpness is OK, just not too much. There is a significant difference in sharpness using a setting of 23 out of 100 on my TV as opposed to keeping it at zero. And I'm not really sacrificing picture quality there.

Again, it all depends on you. you try and listen to others and suddenly your preferences become more like obsessions and the never-ending trial of adjusting.

The thing is, I dont have a 720p display. Since it is a 1366x768 resolution, I have a "768p" display. The PDP still needs to scale 720p, or 1080i to the native resolution. I didn't use the color part of the optimizer. The only part I really used was the contrast and brightness, and the resolution. I agree that color temp is more of a personal preference.

As far as the Oppo goes, in this resolution test, it does seem best to let the Oppo upscale the image above 480i/p to get the best results. Truth be told, when watching a DVD with any of the resolutions, they all look really good. Its just the geek in me trying to tweak it out a little more.

I agree that color temp is more of a personal preference.
Well there is the industry standard of 6500k, if you really a "geek" you wanna be close that as possible. Most TV's are way off especially if one of those "dynamic" or "sport" presets are used. I'm not familiar with your TV but most has settings like "cinema" "movie" or "NTSC standard" I would choose one of those, then use Avia to calibrate saturation, and hue, also white level, black level and sharpness. Sound&Vision has a test disc which basically the same as Avia[both by Ovation software] that is usually cheaper, if you can find one.

I would like to ask a basic Q? here. If we are calibrating our 970>AVIA to a plasma {mine NECxr5-simialar to a PIO, also I set the plasma setting to 1080i- for cable broadcast}. When we calibrate what setting should we set the DVD player to?? 480i-480p-720p-1080i. I’ll try to recalibrate with the different setting to see if I see a difference.
· I have 6 memory settings.
· Any thought- to save time??

I got my AVIA disc and see the same thing. Here are two pics that show the difference:

Clearly the upscaling is better done by the Oppo. 480i/p look pretty much the same, as does 720p/1080i

Oppo 970 480i
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a370/Cheerleader555240/480i.jpg


Oppo 970 1080i
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a370/Cheerleader555240/1080i.jpg