I hear you guys, but I'm wondering how to verify on the screen side the incoming signal. On my old Sony plasma, when I switched inputs or when the signal changed, it would display 480p, 720p, etc. but I see no such option on the Panny.
Why? According to htslider over on Green Button:
"Media Center has always had the ability to upconvert DVDs*to HD and output the video with much improved image quality...If you're using VGA,*DVI or playing an unprotected DVD, the DVD standard does allow for upconversion, so Media Center leaves whatever resolution you've selected used and upconverts the DVD to that before outputting it.
Note that if you have a low end or very old video card the upconversion isn't very good (and FFDShow will do a much better job of upconversion), but if you're running at least an ATI X1300 or at least an Nvidia 6600 video card, the upconversion is just as good as FFDShow; possibly better.
If you have one of these cards, hook up your HDTV using DVI,*find out what your HDTVs native resolution is and configure Media Center to use it (using the TV configuration tools within settings).* In our case we use 1920x1080i (1080i in the Media Center resolution list) for everything and DVDs look incredible compared to using our hardware standalone DVD player (we haven't used out standalone DVD player in about 3 years)."
I get an awesome picture on HDTV, but DVD playback looks just okay. I've heard others say that upconverted DVD playback in VMC is comparable to Blu-Ray. As a test, I switched the output in VMC to 480p: everything degrades, but DVD playback looks the same. I suspect VMC is not upconverting, but don't know quite how to verify.
Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I have seen others indicate the display can tell me what it's being fed from VMC. Hoping someone with the same family of Panny plasmas can let me know if such an option exists.
Mike
