[mythtv-users] upsampling/upconverting dvd?

Mudit Wahal mwahal at gmail.com
Wed Jan 4 17:41:49 UTC 2006


Steve,

Faroudja based dvd players (under $500) do excellent job for
upscaling. You dont need to spend $2k :-) My friend bought
harmon/kardon avr 7300 for 1299 from frys. It has Faroudja upscaler
builtin and it does extremely wonderful job. I think it did equally
good compared to Onkyo $2k dvd player which frys was demoing. At frys
store (campbell), we unhooked the onkyo dvd player and ran the video
from a standard dvd player to the avr 7300. Took the component out
from the avr 7300 and hooked upto the projector. There was no loss in
the picture quality. Even the salesman admitted that he cant tell any
difference. He called several other salesguy who regularly demo
(sleep?) in that room.

I think consumer should be aware of terms such as upconvert and
upscale. There is a difference. Right now I see so many dvd players
under $100 touting "upconvert to get digital quality video". All it is
doing is taking video/svideo/component in and DVI/HDMI out. Your video
may not be any better than if you were feeding the
video/svideo/component directly to the TV. All HDTV sets have some
sort of upscaler builtin, because all of these are FPD (fixed pixel
display). They can only show in the one resolution (1280x720,
1366x768, 1920x1080). So, they do need to either upscale or downscale
(when feeding 1920x1080 video to a 1280x720 set).

I've seen a well calibrated software based (ffdshow, DScaler, etc)
software player on windows box. Search google for DScaler,
ffmpeg/ffdshow, etc, you will find great many references along with
before/after pictures. Also Home Theater Computers forum on avsforum
has lot of information on setting up a well calibrated software
player. It goes in details settings for each filter etc. I think Xine
also uses similar filters, so it helps to know what each knob does and
how much it should be turned.

There are pros and cons of hardware vs software upscaling.

The advantage of hardware based upscaling is the ease of use. No
calibration/tinkering/etc, small form factor, quiet, high WAF (Wife
Acceptance Factor). The disadvantage is that the hardware is obsolete
as soon as its out.

Software scaler has advantages that it is never obsolete and tinker
friendly. The main disadvantage is the hardware [cpu, case, hard
drives, fans, etc] required has to be fast, noisy, big, etc etc.

Thanks

Mudit

On 1/4/06, Steve Adeff <adeffs at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mudit Wahal gave a great source, the avsforum, I'll elaborate some more in
> relation to playback on a MythTV machine...
>
> On Wednesday 04 January 2006 09:46, matthew.garman at gmail.com wrote:
> > Looking at standalone DVD players, many of them claim to be
> > "upsampling" or "upconverting".  If I understand correctly, this
> > means that they do some kind of magic to upconvert/upsample the DVD
> > video to 720p or 1080i.
> >
> > If that definition is accurate, does the upsampling make a
> > (positive) difference?
> >
> > And if it does make a difference, is there any way to achieve
> > something similar under MythTV?
>
> It does! and Myth can!
> Set MythTV up to send the signal (720p or 1080i) that your TV uses as its
> native HD mode. If it uses both, I'd suggest 1080i is the one to try and
> accomplish), then tell MythTV to output all video at that resolution and let
> the software do all scaling. This will scale TV to that output. If you plan
> on using Xine or mplayer for DVD's they too will do internal scaling if told
> to go fullscreen at this resolution.
>
> > Basically, I've got a nice HD 720p/1080i TV on the way, and I'd like
> > to consolidate AV equipment as much as possible (i.e., can I do away
> > with the standalone DVD player?  MythTV already lets me do away with
> > the DVR provided by the cable company.)
>
> Xine has worked marvelously as a DVD player with menu support for many of us.
> Its internal scaling and overall video filtering is excellent and with a fast
> enough processor which you'll want for HDTV content, it can do excellent
> upconversion for DVD's in realtime without problem. I'll even go out and say
> Xine will do better than all standalone dvd players, especially the cheaper
> models ($2K and under).
>
> --
> Steve
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