Disappointed by HDDVDplayer

AntiRip

Bought a Sony DVD upscaling dvdplayer today and HDMI. I thought why not see near hd on my 40" Samsung LCD TV. But to be honest with you I cannot see any difference in it than my cheap old aldi targa dvdplayer. It's set to 1080i and my LCD TV is fairly new with 1366 x 768 resolution. Tried original dvds and I'm not impressed at all. Waste of e125 plus e40 for the hdmi cable. WOuld u believe they were charging e86 for hdmi cable in currys! Was anybody else not too impressed by these upscaling dvdplayers or maybe i should have waited for the real thing :rolleyes:

leeroybrown

I would wonder if the picture would be better on a native 1080i or 720p set. With 1080i input into your 1366 x 768 set the TV would have to re-interpolate and already modified input. Perhaps this might be resulting in your loss of quality.

That said I've never looked into HD in much depth so I could be miles wide of the mark.

Bob the Builder

Are you playing a HD-DVD?...Try and use the component settings on the tv, similar to those on the HD-DVD player.

Xbox 360 woell you rks similar and I depend on my experiences with the Xbox to that the settings must be kept the same

GrumPy

nevf wrote:

Are you playing a HD-DVD?

\

There not out yet, nor are hd-dvd players.
(well the players are out, but he aint got one) His player just upscales normal dvds via hdmi output.

AntiRip

no, it's one of those upscaling dvd players that upscale your ordinary dvds to 720p/1080i res similar to hd-dvd

AntiRip

Irish GrumPy wrote:

\

There not out yet, nor are hd-dvd players.
(well the players are out, but he aint got one) His player just upscales normal dvds via hdmi output.

thats right, sorry hadn't seen ur post b4 i replied

5uspect

if you want to see improved DVD play back try nvidia purevideo decoder.
You'll need a PC with a 6 series geforce graphics card or later tho.

Its not what you're looking for but its probably better than just upscaling the video to a higher resolution since it does clever things with SD MPEG-2 decoding. Can also do the same with HD content.

Sparky

Don't set it to 1080i. Set it to 720p.
Your TV has to do more work when the picture is interlaced.

I use a samsung upscaling player and I do notice the difference.
Especially on good mastered films like die hard etc.

If you have a crappy mastered dvd, you will notice how crap it is even more when upscaled.

DemonOfTheFall

How much difference did you expect ? At the end of the day you're only watching a normal DVD.

mossym

AntiRip wrote:

no, it's one of those upscaling dvd players that upscale your ordinary dvds to 720p/1080i res similar to hd-dvd

the resolution is different, the source material isn't. You can't get hidef quality from an upscaling dvd player..what you have is not a HDDVDplayer like your title says..you have a normal dvd player.

Basically what this means is that the scaler in your tv is as good as the one in your dvd player.

mathias

I have Sky HD , some of the channels are clearly native HD and some , Like Sky one HD are clearly upscaled , there is no comparison , the upscaled content is nowhere near the quality of true HD .

I wouldnt waste money on any kind of upscaler , save your cash for a true HDDVD or a Blue ray when they come out , Thats November I think.

5uspect

Exactly, you can't add information that simply isn't there. All you can do with a DVD is improve the de-inlerlacing efficiency. Interpolating to a higher resolution can't magically add new data only fill in the gaps with the average of the pixels on either side.

pH

The upscaling DVD player has a slight advantage in that it can scale the picture entirely in the digital world and then send that picture (again digitally) over HDMI. In this scenario the DVD player can also provide a progressive picture at 720p.

A non scaling DVD player builds a PAL analogue picture and sends it over an analogue connection to the panel which then has to re-digitize and scale to the panel's native resolution.

In theory keeping it all digital removes a DAC->ADC step and should give a cleaner picture, but as posters have pointed out it can't make detail where none exists in the source.

slave1

have a Sony upscaler and benched it against my previous Sony, Sony Upscaler had deffo improvements without a doubt on Sony 50" RPG, much more crisper than previous player that was connected via RGB scart, surprised that you have not seen a worthwhile improvement

YoYOPowder

I have the Samsung 40" LCD also and bought a Sammsung HD860 upscaler. Definite improvement over the Black Diamond I had, in fact certain films are simply stunning, having said that I think that some films such as Syria didn't do much for my 40". I think it's a lot to do with the camera work and the way that film was shot. But over all more than pleased. BTW, I have the energy saving on the TV set to medium or high, never anything else, gets rid of the hazy/fuzzy/ distortion look in the background and blacks are much better as is SD TV. Contrast is set to something around 75/80, all other settings are set to 60 odd I think.

YoYOPowder

mathias wrote:

I wouldnt waste money on any kind of upscaler , save your cash for a true HDDVD or a Blue ray when they come out , Thats November I think.

Somewhat disagree. My upscaler cost €140 and Harvey Norman's threw in the HDMI cable and it really is an improvement. Now, personally I dont think that's big money (I guess everybody's circumstances are different though). My Black Diamond cost €80 about three years ago. Bluray and HDDVD will cost big money, there's very little content and you dont know who'll win the War. If you can afford an upscaler IMHO opinion it's worth it.

mossym

YoYOPowder wrote:

Somewhat disagree. My upscaler cost €140 and Harvey Norman's threw in the HDMI cable and it really is an improvement. Now, personally I dont think that's big money (I guess everybody's circumstances are different though). My Black Diamond cost €80 about three years ago. Bluray and HDDVD will cost big money, there's very little content and you dont know who'll win the War. If you can afford an upscaler IMHO opinion it's worth it.

it's worth it if the scaler in the dvd player is better than the one in your tv..otherwise it's not, that's why you'll get different opinions from different people..some see a big difference, others not..

revileandy

Aldi are Doing a Tevion DVD Upscaler this Thursday Sep. 7th for €69.99 which includes a free HDMI cable and built in memory card reader.

I can't imagine the components will be top of the range but it might be worth a look for the price

http://www.aldi.ie/special_buys/productnl_362.html