Video Asylum

RE: compared to what?

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Jazz Inmate

In Reply to: RE: compared to what? posted by David Aiken on January 20, 2008 at 13:54:41

I'm upscaling DVDs via my PS3, which looks quite good. NTSC broadcasts from the Tivo Series 3 don't look nearly as good. Note that the upscaling and stretching that the plasma is doing to make the broadcast fit on the screen is not doing any favors to the picture. The upscaled DVDs appear in a smaller area of the plasma and look best when it is not stretched to fit.
Yes, as you point out I used the term upsample instead of upscaled which is incorrect. But it's essentially the same idea. The processing generates the illusion of additional data, but if you look or listen closely you can tell there is no additional definition in the picture or the sound, whether you're upsamplinga CD or upscaling NTSC.
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"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)

Edits: 01/20/08

Follow Ups:

RE: compared to what? - David Aiken 22:39:49 01/20/08 (3)
I'm in Australia which certainly makes some differences (PAL instead of NTSC) but it also means I'm not familiar with things like the Tivo boxes which we don't have. We've got cable and off air digital broadcasts but Tivo doesn't sell any of its products here, at least yet.

So, pardon my stupidity but does your Tivo box have the ability to upscale and are you upscaling there or sending a standard def signal to the display? Whichever way you're doing it at the Tivo, change it to the other if you have that option and see which works better. You will get an improvement if the device that does the upscaling after the change has a better upscaling chip than the one doing it beforehand. If the signal is passing through a receiver and it has upscaling options you can try that also.

Stretching the picture doesn't help and I'd simply give that up unless you're worried about plasma burn in.

David Aiken
- RE: compared to what? - Jazz Inmate 11:48:38 01/21/08 (2)
  The Tivo3 is essentially a fancy HD DVR that delivers standard and HD broadcasts. It doesn't do upscaling and I mostly use it to watch HD content at 720 or 1080i. So any standard def images via the Tivo3, the plasma is automatically stretching 4:3 to fit the 16:9 screen and this doesn't bother me enough to change the plasma's settings. For one thing, I risk a different luminescence on the sides of the screen over time if I insist on watching all 4:3 content in the middle of the screen. For another, it looks crappy anyway, so why try to put a silk cap on a pig.
  
  The NTSC image from DVD is another matter, and I do use the upscaler in the PS3 for that.
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  "I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
  - RE: compared to what? - David Aiken 13:13:24 01/21/08 (1)
    If the Tivo signal passes through a receiver and the receiver has upscaling, you may get better results with it but I somehow doubt it.
    
    David Aiken
    - RE: compared to what? - Jazz Inmate 13:40:14 01/21/08 (0)
      Much of the content from the Tivo is already 1080i, so my intention is to pass it unprocessed through the preamp.
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      "I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
      
      Edits: 01/21/08

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