Video Asylum

TVs, VCRs, DVD players, Home Theater systems and more.

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RE: DVD advice needed, i'm not sold on 'upconverting'

Posted by David Aiken on November 4, 2009 at 20:58:50:
If you were watching them on a high definition display, then the standard DVD was being upconverted. High def displays (both screens and projectors) display at their native resolution. If you feed a standard definition signal to the display, then the display will upconvert it. Alternatively, of course, these days you can upconvert in the player and often even in the AV receiver.

So the standard def DVD and the upconverted DVD would both be displayed at the display's native resolution, with the display doing the upconverting in one case and the player in the other. If they look different, and it is quite possible for them to do so, then the reason for that is that there is a difference in the quality of the upconverting done by the player vs that done by the display. You get to choose which you prefer.

In this case it sounds as if you prefer the display's upconversion to that of the DVD player though you said that they had a different setup for each so I'm assuming similar players and displays were being used for all setups. If not it's going to be impossible to tell from just which parts of each chain were responsible for the difference.

And even though most players these days upconvert, you can always choose to turn upconversion off and have the player send a standard definition signal to your display.

In fact, one of your options is to buy a BD player and have it output both DVDs and BDs in standard def which would allow you to watch BD discs if you have a standard definition display. If you're looking at a player now and a high def display at a later date to replace a standard def display, that could be an option you might want to consider.