Upscaling DVD players

[Hopsta]

This might be a silly Q, but would I benefit from an upscaling DVD player if i'm viewing on a non HD TV? (Sony 100hz CRT)

If so anyone got any recommendations?

[gizze]

No, you need a progressive screen and one that can take 720 or 1080.

However, if you have one of them they upscale everything anyway, so unless you spend serious money on an upscaling player there is no benefit.

General rule of thumb is the upscaler in the screen will be better than in the player untill you get to the £400+ players, then it may start to be a little benefit, but you will need to know what you are looking for, it will not be obvious.

[Hopsta]

In a nut shell I shouldn't bother and just put the money towards a new screen then I guess. I've still got my original DVD player which is atleast 8 years old and hoped i could benefit from a change, but appears not

I don't think my Hi-fi has optical input anyhow to benefit from getting better sound, so will just have to wait for now. Cheers Guy

[gizze]

Pretty much mate.

To be fair alot of the dvd players from back then are still very good, often beating todays players, they were built better then too.

[mb]

You seem to know all about this can you tell me if I should bother with an HDMI cable ?

I have a (cheap) Sigmatek DVD player that upscales connected via SCART to a Toshiba 37AV505D which has 1366x768 pixels.

Is it worth connecting via HDMI or should I just leave it all alone as it is working ?

[Chav]

even at 1920x1200the difference is small. depends on lead length and output quality of each type from the device. a cheapo hdmi cable should only be a fiver or so though.

[gizze]

If you are running scart at the moment then you are only using the interlaced output, which is 720x480i (for ntsc, UK pal is 720x576i).

Being interlaced though you only see half resolution but it alternates with every frame, so you get 720x240 even lines on frame on and then 720x240 odd lines on frame 2, you get this 30 times a second.

By adding the hdmi cable you will allow your player to show you a progressive signal, where they player puts the frames together and shows you one frame of 720x480 30 times a second for a smoother overall image, this alone makes adding an hdmi cable worth while, or you could hook it up component and do the same job.

I always think it is worth getting a progressive signal out of a player, but don't like upscaling, as you end up scaling twice in most cases, scale that 720x240 to 1080i or 720p and then your screen has to scale it to fit the pixels, normally 1024x768, or 1024x720. Even when the screen is 1920x1080, you have overscan where 5% of the image is outside the viewable area, so sending it 1920x1080 still doesn't mean you are sending the screen its ideal resolution.

So, yeah always try and get progressive if possible, but don't worry too much about scaling.

[mb]

Thanks for that - I am a long way down the AV kit learning curve ! Will get an HDMI cable as sounds like it will yield an improvement over the scart cable