i dont get it...why does ps3 owner wants upconvert function??? - Page 2

I'd have to agree based on the screen caps here. Clearly, PS3 480p SD-DVD is better than Pioneer DV-490v 1080i. I cannot image PS3 1080i SD-DVD getting much better than what we see in the Ice Age cap... but we'll never really know for certain unless we try it.

As for the Underworld caps, I am speechless. I see no significant difference... but there is very, very slight difference if you look at the eyebrow and pores. BD has a very, very slight advantage.

-T

Amen to that, I can't stand to watch SD-DVD on anything other than my HD-A1.

Well I will admit the Blu-Ray is noticably clearer
in many of the Top Tier movies
..... While the Movie is Playing
Photo's do not do the BR images justice at all

Remember,
these stills are captured on a $100 camera by an amature photographer

The original photos, native out of the camera...where detail is already lost
are about 1.7Kb and 2300 pixels wide.
They have been scaled down to under 1/10th of that .... about 75 mb and downsized to 800 pixels wide for web upload/display.

Also the 1080p Blu-Ray's are being shown here on a 1365x768 native display

Blu-Ray IS definately worth the money,
even more so if you have a 1080p display

My main point I was making
was that up-converting DVD players were a waste of money
for SD DVD's...provided your set has good built-in scalers.

Completely Untouched by photoshop, other than cropped
and downsized/down res'd to reduce file/upload to my webserver.

SD DVD up-converted (480i>1080i>768p) Pio DV-490V HDMI


Blu-Ray (1080p>1080i>768p) PS3 60g HDMI


....the details I noticed immediately:




The jaggies and stepping are gone at the claw shaddows, line between snow/sky is more defined.



Fine details in fur show up in the BR,
sharp black line between eyelid and eyeball, no stepping around iris.



Again more fur detail, cracks in nose are more visible (looks life-like in full size in person)
...also a small ripple in the snow where both front fangs penetrate, not visible in SD

Here's another scene from Ice Age II

PS3 SD @ 480p


Blu-Ray @1080i

To those that do not see the significant improvements in all these screen shots, I don't know what to say. I'd call the difference dramatic.

Once you get down to clearly resolving individual hairs, how much further do you think you can go period?

I am floored everytime I see screen shots and see these comments, I wonder who is fooling themselves here. I am of the opinion it is those that have no desire to move beyong standard NTSC or Pal definition that are really fooling themselves.

Shot selection is also in question. Close ups are always "money shots" on SD DVD. They always look great. The differences between HD DVD/BD and SD DVD can be easily seen when you look at landscapes and wide angle shots.

Those last comparison shots were spot on with the differences I always see between HD DVD/BD and SD DVD. And back on topic, depending on your equipment, a good 480p DVD player with a good display can rival a upcaling player and actually surpass the lower end upscalers. Most often the issues with upscaled DVD come from added noise and macroblocking none of which was shone in any of those original shots.

I am an owner of Underworld evolution and I must say that in the picture above I can not tell any difference. But when I pop them both in my blu ray player, well, there is no comparison, the Blu ray version blows it away hands down. You don't have to study it or anything, all you have to say is "WOW". I must also say that as an owner of the A2 and the PS3, the A2 does look better then the PS3 in SD-DVD play back, though its much harder to tell, but there is a difference.

I also have the 50A2000, and I recommend getting the wild and Underworld evolution to watch, those movies have such a high resolution its almost unbelievable, they rank up there with KOH.

The real problem is the Pioneer DV-490v is doing such a bad job of upconverting. An upconverting player should never add jaggies.
Perhaps going 480i->1080i->768p is the problem. I wonder what the 720p output looks like.

Well I would rate that particular upconversion as poor. Sorry I did not get what the crux of the thread really was.

Mathematically speaking, scaling does not add any new information to the picture that was not there already. It cannot make something have more detail than it already has. I suspect most people buying into upscaling DVD players are really just experiencing a placebo effect.

No, screen shots have shown scaling players work and some of them work extremely well.

But I agree it does come down to which does the better job, your external scaler (highly likely) or you display (not near as likely) or the player (somewhat likely)

It is not creating new data, it is keeping all the data intact through better de-interlacing and scaling than the display is all.

John states it quite well. At some point the image is scaled...either the dvd player is doing the scaling or the TV/projector is scaling the image to meet it's native rate. The question as John said is which is better? Of course, the size of the display plays an obvious role in if one can see the benefits or drawbacks. For someone to paint with such a broad brush stroke that it's merely a "placebo effect" is incorrect. If you believe only bench tests, then maybe you would enjoy the Secrets of Home Theater site tests on dvd players etc?


Ron

Yup, John nailed it

Dont rush out and get an up-converter (like me)
just because you upgraded to an HDTV

Try to let the HDTV's own scalers do the work first,
If it doesn't upscale well, then look at external upconverters/scalers

I may have just stumbled on a golden combo
with the PS3 and 50" Pio Plasma
(thank goodness the DV490v was only $100 loss)


I imagine an HDTV's internal scaler has to work a LOT harder if the TV's native resolution is 1080 and is being fed a 480 signal
...600 lines is a lot more info to digitally fill than the 288 on my 768p panel

Both images in question are upconverted. One by the Pioneer DV-490v, the other by the TV.
And both would look better than the non-upconverted SD image.

my sony sxrd upscales 480p better than most upscaling players

The 480p image is arriving at the TV as 480p, but the image is being upconverted by the TV. Neither image is 480p as it is being displayed. I agree that the 480p image being upconverted by the TV is superior to the 1080i image reaching the TV from the upconverter. But a non-upconverted SD DVD (480p) image wouldn't look as good as either of these images on the same display. If I'm not mistaken, PioManiac was displaying all images on this TV at 768p. One image is being converted by an upconverter to 1080i before reaching the TV and being downconverted to 768p by the TV and the other image is arriving at the TV at 480p and being upconverted by the TV to 768p. I don't believe either image is being displayed at 480p. I apologize if I misunderstood PioManiac's post.

avsdalesmith,

You did not misunderstand. I tried to explain back in post #30 that the 480p PS3 signal is getting upconverted by the TV, and is not displayed as 480p.

Only real test, for vincentnyc's benefit, is to send the different signals to a display that has several different resolutions... like a CRT.

EDIT: Guess PioManiac was posting at the same time as me.

-T

Be careful, you may be sentenced to read the other 1,076 of them.

Now that's funny.

There has to be something wrong with the SD DVD pictures with jaggies. I don't know if it's bobbing the image when paused (field pause) or what, but it can't look like that in motion.

Well I re-shot the SD DVD, and the same jaggies showed up @ 1080i setting

So I thought I'd try 720p this time...Big improvement
I also added a SD DVD 480p shot from the XBOX 360

1) SD DVD upconverted to output 1080i (DV490V Player) to TV, final dispay 768p


2) SD DVD upconverted to output 720p (DV490V Player) to TV, final dispay 768p
(sorry for the green tint, I was trying to see the diff between component and RGB settings)


3) SD DVD output 480p (XBOX 360) to TV, final dispay 768p
...for some reason the XBOX stretches the picture vertically, weird it doesnt do that with HD DVD's ???


4) SD DVD output 480p (PS3) to TV, final dispay 768p


5) Blu Ray output 1080i (PS3) to TV, final display 768p


From my perspective, to get back to the OP's statement
SD DVD is still worth playing on an HDTV, but only if no BR or HD disc is available.
..probably more-so with a 768 display than a 1080 HDTV though.

And using an Up-Converting player is not necessarily better than feeding
your HDTV a native 480 signal and letting the HDTV's internal scalers do the Up-Conversion/Scaling.

"IF" your HDTV has crap scalers, then look into an up-converter (like the Oppo)
if you still want to play SD DVD's instead of tossing them away.

For me and my PDP-5070HD,
the PS3 is the Best of both SD and HD players
....even though the PS3 doesnt have upconversion firmware yet.

YMMV

I gotta say you are wrong but only partially. Because it definitely doesn't hurt the picture, but doesn't exactly make it all that much greater either.

But I love your analogy!

Depends on your display. My Mits PJ scales the 480P signal form the PS3 as well as my Oppo upconverting player doing it and outputting at 720P. No difference.

You're basing your assumptions on the playback of 1 up convert player? A sub $100 one at that.



http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=131#PioneerDV-490V-S%20(Component)


Not to talk bad on the person's dvd player. But it is not exactly a machine where such dramatic conclusions should be drawn from.