Upconverter DVD players and home video

t-keats wrote on 6/18/2006, 4:49 AM

QUESTION

We have a SONY TRV900, 3CCD mini DV camcorder (SDTV format) we use for "home movies".

Can anyone tell me - If I edit that material in VEGAS 6 and burn it to a standard 4.7GB DVD and play it on an upconverting DVD player through an LCD HDTV -

1- Will it look better than a standard DVD?

2- Will it resemble anything close to HDTV (I know screen shape will still be 4x3)?

3- Has anyone on this forum done this yet?

Thanks

Comments

JJKizak wrote on 6/18/2006, 5:32 AM
It will look the same or better depending on the brand of up converter. Better is "subjective" to the beholder. Some of the newer 1080p hdtvs will upconvert. There are websites who evaluate these things thoroughly and some say maybe it will and maybe it won't look better, depends on your equipment.

JJK
craftech wrote on 6/18/2006, 6:33 AM
Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Some of the players are poor, some are OK, and some are good. Some don't do very well with homemade videos, only with 24p.

I would do a lot of research on these forums. I have a Cyberhome 655. It seems about as good as any. But if you are expecting HD quality from your videos, you may be disappointed with the converters. Just off the top of my head though I would recommend the Sony DVP-NS75H if you ARE interested. You can see the comments about it here. It goes for around $115 shipped.

John
johnmeyer wrote on 6/18/2006, 9:35 AM
I second John's recommendation to research the AVS Forums. You will find your answer there, for sure.
Laurence wrote on 6/18/2006, 9:56 AM
It is my experience that upconvertors don't do as much as you would want. Not too long ago one of my friends bought a brand new uprezzing DVD player to replace his $35 Cyberhome. We tried our best to see a difference on his 50 inch HD Samsung. Neither of us could see any difference whatsoever regardless of what DVD we played. This is most likely because the TV also uprezzes and the uprezzing algorythms are similar. I'm not saying that there was a subtle difference, I'm saying that neither of us could see any difference whatsoever.

More recently, I bought a Cyberhome 655 uprezzing DVD player and tried it with two HD TVs, both Toshibas. On a 23 inch 720P LCD TV, I could see no difference between the standard and uprezzing modes whatsoever. Again I believe that this was because this particular TV uprezzes/downrezzes it's input to achieve 720P. When my DVD player was uprezzing to 1080, the TV was downrezzing to 720P and when the DVD player was outputting SD, it was being uprezzed by the TV to 720P. In any case, no matter how hard I looked I could see no difference.

On my living room 1080 CRT Toshiba, I believe I could see a very slight difference between the different modes. Boy was it subtle though. Anyway, the 1080 uprezzing mode looked really good, especially on closeups of faces with out of focus backgrounds (which seem to show off uprezzing particularly well). After thumbing through the manual I realized that this is because this particular TV is of a vintage where it only uprezzes to 480P on it's own. Most more recent HD TV's would uprez to their maximum resolution and I doubt I'd see a difference.

My conclusion is that for most practical purposes, uprezzing in the DVD player is of no real practical value at all. It might be if it wasn't redundant with the TV's uprezzing, but as things stand, it's just a duplication of what is already there. Uprezzing from the DVD player might have value if you are dubbing a DVD to an HD camera, but even then I think you're further ahead to rip the DVD and resize in Vegas. My opinion is that this feature is not worth much.
filmy wrote on 6/18/2006, 6:44 PM
Your answer depends on the source material. It also depend son how many times you re-encode and what you do to it from source to final oputput.

For example on the large screen HD set - 1080i, no 720 - the difference between 480i and 1080i with a DVD like Monsters, Inc is night and day. Now with burning some of my mini-DV material and doing that, it is sort of hit and miss but I will say this - resizing in Vegas compared to uprezzing with the Cyberhome DVD 655 is also night and day. The DVD player does a much nicer job of doing it.

Now keep in mind that I have not tried things like the new "instant HD" plug in and done a comparison. Nor have I done any sort of testing with things like the new Cineform codecs or any of the "losless" codecs with a workflow to see if the material holds up better, or the same, as simply resizing in Vegas. There are a lot of things that go into all of this and certianly logic says a 78 dollar DVD player is not going to be as good as something like, say, the iScan VP30 which lists at almost 2 grand. But I have not played with that so I can't say.
Laurence wrote on 6/19/2006, 7:09 AM
Just to clarify, I wasn't saying that uprezzing wasn't good. I was just saying that uprezzing in a DVD player is redundant with the uprezzing in an HD TV.
t-keats wrote on 6/19/2006, 9:40 AM
Good answers guys but I guess it's something that just has to be seen.

Filmy - what is "instant HD"?
Laurence wrote on 6/19/2006, 10:09 AM
It's a plugin for HD uprezzing (not Vegas compatible unfortunately):

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/instanthd.html

There's another one by Topaz Labs here:

http://www.topazlabs.com/topazlabs/03products/topaz_enhance/#000003#more
Jayster wrote on 6/19/2006, 11:29 AM
logic says a 78 dollar DVD player is not going to be as good as something like, say, the iScan VP30 which lists at almost 2 grand. But I have not played with that so I can't say.

Depends on what you are wanting it to do. I know someone who paid $1000 for a DVD player. It plays "audiophile quality" SACD, DVD-Audio, etc. I couldn't believe he spent that much! For $40 you can buy a cheapo DVD player that plays PAL, VCD, MP3, does jpg slide shows, and so on. For a lot of people, that's more useful. And an "audiophile quality" DVD player running on an inexpensive stereo system is a waste of money anyway.

If I were even going to consider spending $2k on something like this iScan VP30 (I know that was just an example, but I'll use it for discussion), I would insist with the retailer that I be able to take it home and see for myself what it would do for me.

Along that note, I've seen that a lot of HDTVs don't look good with SD content. That must be due to the quality of built-in uprezzing on the TV. Sounds like it would be a good idea when you are in the retailer to make them play some SD source material (and 480i, not 480p) on the TV you are considering buying.