upconverting worthwhile? (1 Viewer)

[steam300]

Hi there,

I have a 37" Sony Bravia M series lcd. The tv is rated for 720p. Currently I have a dvd player connected by component cable to a receiver along with the sound hooked up by digital coaxial. I'm looking at an upconverting dvd player. Either a phillips or Sony 708 upconverting dvd player. Even with hooking up with hdmi, am I gonna notice a definate difference??
I'm not sure about blu ray, as I watch movies in mpeg / h264 via the Xbox360

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

You probably won't see a difference, especially with a screen size of 37". An LCD flat panel HDTV is a fixed-pixel-array design, and it can only display its own native resolution, regardless of the input singal. Also LCD TVs are technically 768p, not 720p, owing to the mechanics of panel production and pixel-shape. Your set always de-interlaces and/or re-scales all inputs to 768p anyway, so it is basically already upconverting your SD DVDs. And even if fed a 720p signal, it is still going to have to rescale that to 768p That kind of double-processing can actually degrade an image. Even if it didn't, and even if the de-interlacer and scaler in the DVD player were better than the ones in your TV, odds are any improvement wouldn't be enough to justify the cost.

Regards,

Joe

 

[JohnRice]

To add to Joe's comments. Upscaling probably won't improve the picture, but you probably will get a very noticeable improvement by having a good player and using hdmi instead of component. Philips makes cheap players and I've lost all faith in Sony. Oppo might be a better choice, though a bit more expensive.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Speaking strictly from personal experience, I haven't seen any difference between component video and HDMI on my system. Of course, I have two Sony DVD players.

Regards,

Joe

 

[JohnRice]

Heh Joe.

My experience is also somewhat limited. But on a system I helped setup with a 720P 32" Toshiba LCD, going from a low price Toshiba DVD player connected with component to an Oppo 980 with hdmi, the difference was staggering. Night and day.