As an old school web designer, I consider myself to have a firm grasp of what pixels are all about. Back in the early 1990’s I used to optimize the hell out of tiny graphics, manually editing colour palettes and using things like Floyd-Steinberg dithering. Maybe this is why I don’t understand the hype about upscaling DVD players like this one.
The thing with bitmap images (such as video frames) is that you can never add detail to them through image processing. If you downscale them, you lose information, but if you enlarge them you also lose a little bit of sharpness (in all but a few cases which involve ‘nearest neighbor’ scaling). Other types of processing, like sharpening, noise reduction, etc can make an image look a little better, but it wil never add detail that wasn’t originally recorded by the camera.
So why do people spend $3000 on a DVD player that output your 720*576 pixel DVDs upscaled to Full HD (1920*1080 pixels)? Is it the 1080p sticker on the box? In fact, every HD television set will upscale SD (standard definition) content in order to display it full-screen. They might not filter out noise or anything, but if the DVD was properly mastered, there probably wasn’t much to filter in the first place.
If HD is a big thing for you, I recommend getting a Blu-Ray player. Those play DVDs over HDMI. But although most of them use some sort of upscaling, they will only output true HD when playing Sony’s new disc format.
I agree. Bottom line is: Don’t bother buying a HD Ready LCD unless you want to be buying a Full HD screen in about two years (by which time you’ll most likely have a Blu-Ray player in your home).
Then again, having a full HD screen means that all my SD DVD’s are going to look fuzzy (upscaled), right?
I love technology and making things look better, but this means that we will AGAIN be buying all our media AGAIN - just like we did with Vinyl > CD and VHS > DVD and now DVD > Blu-Ray.
Theoretically I have already paid for the ‘royalties’ part of my right to own a copy of ‘Casino’ on a disc. Buying it AGAIN in a Blu-Ray version would - theoretically - mean I should only have to pay for the physical disc it’s on and perhaps a small percentage of the labour (for re-digitizing it). This would mean a much lower price. But will the studios give you a discount if you already own a version of the film / CD? Nope.
And then the industry has the nerve to act is if downloaders of films and music are robbing them!
Comment by suzero — June 22, 2008 @ 8:12 am
Yeah, your SD DVDs will look just as blurry as they always have :). One thing I like about Blu-Ray is that 1080p is close to celluloid in terms of resolution. Anything originally recorded on film (except perhaps on 72mm) is worth getting on Blu-Ray. Much like with audio CDs there’s very little room for improvement (which is why SACD and DVD-Audio flopped).
As for the ‘HD-Ready’ vs “Full HD’ issue, I think that a ‘Ready’ can actually be a sensible buy right now. I have a (good) 32″ HD-Ready TV, and HD channels (usually 720p) look amazingly sharp from 3 metres away. Full HD would be overkill at this size, unless your couch is situated less than 1.5 meters from the screen. For anything under 36″ ‘Ready’ is fine, and many great sets can now be found at bargain prices.
As for buying the same movies again on Blu-Ray, I agree. Movie companies should at the very least clarify whether I bought the rights to a movie or paid for the physical disc when I bought a DVD. And if I did both, I’d like to know how the retail price was calculated. And how they plan to avoid charging me twice for the same thing.
I think I’ll post about this in the future, but it has very little to do with the upscaling issue in this post.
Comment by Roy — June 22, 2008 @ 3:23 pm
I agree with the contention of matching media to the output device. That is why most standard DVD’s would look great on a EDTV (480P).
But the Kaleidescape 1080P Player (KPlayer-6000) is not a DVD player per se. It is a media streaming device.
It does upscale DVD Video to 1080p but it must be ripped to the storage of the player.
Read the artilce linked from S&V (It looks like you got the image of the Kal from there or they used the one you found as well).
This is a great review of the product and talks a little about the chipsets used for upscaling. It appers to this gentleman they are getting better. The Kal cost $4295. Ouch. But you can get an upconverting DVD player for as little as $50.
The bad thing about HD is everyone wants 1080p LCD/Palsma’s but most HD discs are 720P. The best picture will come from matched media and screening device(the devices then does not have to think about it). Most HD Brodcast television is in 720p. If I were buying an HDTV today I would get a 720P. Also realize 1080p is not the end either. I have heard mention of 1600p. When will it stop. When should I jump on (if I haven’t already). 720p is the bang for the buck. Wait for the media to catch up, prices will drop and 1080p will become the BFTB.
Comment by Kerry Webster — June 28, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
By the way, I love your use of flash with WordPress. Nice site. Gives it a unique look while using the WP engine for backend.
Comment by Kerry Webster — June 28, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
I know the Kaleidescape does more than play DVDs, and that there are cheaper options available. But there are also much cheaper media streamers, and I get the feeling this people buy the KPlayer because of the 1080p logo on the box. Even though as far as I can tell it has no option to output real 1080p.
Blu-Ray disc btw does contain 1080p material, so getting a large ‘Full HD’ TV is a good option for movie fans. I’ve not heard of discs that contain 720p or 1080i.
As far as I know, the 720p, 1080i and 1080p formats have been part of the official HDTV standard for ages. Since long before broadcasting any of these standards was technically an option. Anything beyond 1080p is not an official standard, and definitely not going to be mainstream any time soon.
Comment by Roy — June 28, 2008 @ 8:18 pm
i have bought a panasonic plasma telly , a good one ! 42 inch cant remember the number just now … Ive bought an upscaling dvd player a denon 1940 , best in review recently !! connected by hdmi…. but ill be a monkeys uncle if i can see any difference in quality between my original (old) phillips dvd player , the denon with a cheap scart , or the denon with hdmi !!!!
whats going on ? is this all a waste of money ? tv now looks awful because of the size of the screen…. I wanted a cinema experience with dvd’s but am very disappointed.
also not sure how to set the tv up …. Im a photographer so i know how to set up an image but where are all the visual gizmoa to help set contrasts/brightness etc….
im totally confounded by it all.
any help or discussion welcome
cheers
mark
Comment by mark — July 17, 2008 @ 6:33 pm
@Mark: As a photographer you’ll probably know that no matter how you try, you can’t possibly print a 0.4 megapixel image blown up 36 inches and get a decent print quality.
Standard definition video is around 0.4 megapixel (Full HD is only two btw). No matter how good the upscaling algorithms, it’s always going to be fuzzy on a big screen TV.
As for display settings.. a good TV like yours should have plenty of options to control things like contrast, etc…
Comment by Roy — July 17, 2008 @ 8:49 pm