[quote name='guyver2077']i personally feels that
upconversion is a big marketing ploy.. the quality in improvement is very minimal. Personally i think it makes some older movies look WORSE..
And yes because of stupid standards.. component cables are not able to
upscale...you will max out at 480p[/quote]
[quote name='pacifickarma']The Helios DVD players will
upscale all the way to 1080p via Component.[/quote]
First off upconversion is a totally different thing from upscale. Here is what it is, credit to michaeljhuman @avsforums The link to it is
HERE. Truly go to this forum for all your audio video advice.
What is upconverting?
The answer depends on whether you are talking about DVD players, or AVRs. Upconverting DVD players can output video signals such as 720p, 1080i or even 1080p. That's the way manufacturers use the term for DVD players, and sometimes high definition players.
Upconverting AVRs can convert the video signal to a different type such as composite to component. The reason to consider an upconverting AVR is to be able to make a single connection from your AVR to your TV even though your video sources output different signals.
Upconverting is also known as transcoding.
Some scenarios may be helpful for understanding the process.
Let’s say that you have a game cube connected using its standard composite video cable. Your DVD player is connected with component video. With an AVR that does not upconvert, you would have to run a composite and a component video connection from the AVR to the TV. Depending on what you wanted to watch, you may have to switch inputs on both the AVR and the TV. With an AVR which can upconvert to component video, you can run a single component video connection to your TV.
In another scenario, say your AVR upconverts to HDMI. You have a VHS player connected (for your old Duke's of Hazard recordings,) a DVD player connected with component video, and your PS3 connected with HDMI. Turn on HDMI upconversion, and all your sources are converted to HDMI. You only need run a single HDMI cable to your TV. You can leave your TV input set to HDMI, and do your audio/video switching from your AVR.
Some TVs allow you to have different settings for each input. Using upconversion and switching from the AVR won’t allow you to use that ability on your TV, which is one downside to digitizing the signal, and there have been reports that on some AVRs with some sources, it has not worked correctly. For example, someone reported issues with HDMI upconversion of their old Nintendo game system.
Make sure you understand exactly what the upconversion feature on a given AVR offers, there are a number of variations.
What are deintelacing and upscaling?
Some AVRs have video processing capabilities. The three main abilities are –
• Upconverting from one video type to another (mentioned above)
• Deinterlacing signals
• Changing signals to a different resolution (scaling)
They may have other abilities as well such as noise reduction.
Before going into this topic, it should be noted that AVR video processors often have limitations which make them less useful. A common one, at the time this was written, is that many AVRs cannot deinterlace or scale HDMI signals, only analog. Even if an AVR can process HDMI, many players cannot output 480i over HDMI. They are stuck with 480p. Given that deinterlacing is arguably more important than scaling, that makes your video processor less useful. You may think, well then, I will just use component from my player to output 480i. But that forces a digital to analog conversion that HDMI avoided! You may think ok, I only want AVR video processing for cable/satellite, and I will connect a component video cable. And maybe it will help depending on exactly what your setup is. But you should understand the current limitations of the technology.
Scaling is fairly easy to understand. Video signals are made up of a series of frames. The frame consists of a series of pixels (picture elements.) We create a new frame with more pixels using information from existing pixels.
Deinterlacing involves assembling two fields into a video frame. Each field has half the lines of a video frame, either the even or the odd lines. The process isn’t trivial because the fields were captured at different points in time. For a good picture, a video processor needs to intelligently deal with that. DVD and high definition movies are usually stored at 24 frames per second, while video is commonly output at 30 frames per second. Deinterlacers need to deal with that mismatch (
http://www.dvdfile.com/news/special_...2_pulldown.htm)
Deinterlacing is arguably harder than scaling. Which means that a good video processor in a AVR should be evaluated for its deinterlacer. DVD players are sometimes evaluated using a benchmark such as the Silicon Optix HQV benchmark. The same benchmark can be applied to an AVR. When reading a review on an AVR, take note of how they tested its video processing capabilities.
Most HDTVs have to deinterlace and scale signals which do not match their native resolution. The only exception would be CRT based HDTVs, which are uncommon. Most HDTVs have fixed pixel displays. LCD, Plasma and DLP display technologies are fixed pixel technologies. In fixed pixel displays, each video frame is made up of a fixed number of pixels. For example, a TV with a resolution of 1920x1080 has 1080 rows of 1920 pixels.
If you have a fixed pixel HDTV with a resolution of 1920x1080, it will convert all non 1080p signals to 1080p. Whether they be 480i analog from a cable box, 720p or 1080i they will be converted. Even 1080p inputs may not be exempt from scaling! (see the comments below on overscanning)
You should not consider video processing in a receiver because you think your 1080p TV is not giving you 1080p. It IS giving you that many pixels. The question is whether you can benefit from better deinterlacing and scaling in an AVR.
Turning on scaling may be undesirable. If your TV’s native resolution doesn’t match your setting, you will force multiple scaling to occur. For example, many LCD TVs have a resolution of 1376x768 which is called 720p, but isn’t really 720p. Older plasma TVs may have been advertised as 720p, but their resolution was not 1280x720. Scaling a DVD signal from 480 to 720 and sending that to a TV which does not have a true 720p resolution forces the TV to rescale the signal.
Another mismatch is with 1080p TVs. Even though most should have a true 1920x1080 resolution, they are likely set to to overscan the signal. This means that they crop the edges of the picture (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overscan.) This forces the TV to rescale regardless of what you send it. If you want to avoid this, you have to turn off overscan. If it won’t let you turn off overscan, your TV will always scale no matter what you send it. Even if you output 1080p from a blu-ray player, it will crop and rescan.
AVR video processors may do more than just deinterlace and scale. They may be able to perform tasks like video noise reduction. This can be good or bad. As video noise reduction is removing information, it could result in less detail.
The improvements of video processing can be subtle. Some videophiles have trained themselves to look for known issues, and therefore know what to look for. Untrained viewers may not even notice common deinterlacing issues. Don’t expect dramatic differences.
People looking for an AVR to improve a bad looking cable signal, shouldn’t expect much. Video processors can only do so much.
If you have multiple video processing options such as an upconverting video player and an AVR with upscaling capabilities, you may want to try out various combinations of settings to see which looks best (if any, you may not notice a difference.)
ing Hulk!
