upconverting dvd players?

[430752]

Anyone have one and done a comparo against a std dvd?

If so, are the benefits noticeable?

I'm running a 50" 720p plasma with a recent sony carousel dvd player, but not upconverting.

Don't wanna go all the way to bluray, just doesn't seem worth it except to make more dough for the studios as I rebuy everything. (And by the way, how does a move made before hi-def suddenly become hi-def blu-ray capable? I even saw "Its a Wonderful Life" on bluray! Go figure)

[dewi1219]

Although many people haven't heard of them, Oppo upconverting DVD players are considered some of the best. Do a Google search to find reviews, etc. But personally I would go (and am going) to Bluray.

I am not an expert, but it is possible to convert old analog film (and older digital recordings) to Bluray because their native resolution is equal to or greater than 1080p. A very good Bluray player such as the Panasonic DMP-BD35K can be had now for $250 or so, and it will play, even upscale your existing DVDs. No need to replace all your current DVDs. So you can have the upscaling feature now for your existing movies and start with Bluray for your purchases from now on. Just my $.02

[stormdog74]

Oppo is a highly respected brand.

Our "old" dvd player died and we bought a new upconverting player and we have noticed a significant improvement. That said, our old player was pretty old, so it may not necessarily be the upconverting we are noticing.

I do find the term upconverting a bit misleading as you are definitely not getting hi def; it does seem better than standard DVD though.

We are holding off on Blu Ray - mostly because I personally think it is on its last legs already, what with the ability to download hi def video. It would be one thing if the player cost around a $100, but most decent ones seem to be selling in the $300 range at the moment, which is a bit much for my taste.

[drumpriest]

I am also no expert, however, movie film granulates to over 3000 points of resolution along the width aspect, so yes, digitizing that film will result in sufficient resolution to generate a 1080p quality level. DVD is, of course, standard to 720x480, or 480i. There are, of course, 480p dvds, and they are more common than not these days.

Upconverting the DVD spec will cause your TV to display using the 720p resolution, rather than the 480 resolution. What this means is that a DVD played back that is of 16:9 aspect will fill your entire screen, as opposed to it being black bar'd on all 4 sides.

This in no way actually increases the resolution, but just uses a stretching kernal to up-res the image. Some better up convert players will have further image processing inline to deal with some of the up res artifacts, like edge pixelization.

Certainly it won't look as good as a comprable blu ray, which will be encoded at 1080p, and will be down converted for your 720p set. A standard bicubic sharpen kernal is likely to be used to do that conversion, and will look great given a reasonable physical screen size.

Upconvert players are pretty cheap these days, but PS 3 is probably still the way to go, as it's both an upconvert DVD player and a blu ray player, plus other media caps, netflix streaming via some cheap PC software to feed it, and those pesky games...

[JoeyGee]

When HD-DVD gave up the fight to BR, I found an HD-DVD player on clearance cheaper than most upconvert DVD players. Since it upconverts and plays HD-DVD's, I picked it up, along with a bunch of clearanced HD-DVD's .

All the standard DVD's we play on it are significantly better than when we played them on a standard DVD player. This is on a 1080p HD TV.

That being said, I would go straight to Blu-Ray now. I would have, but I couldn't turn down the deal I found.

[LCHIEN]

old movies are on analog film, they have almost unlimited resolution so you get to the rain ad focus quality of the film. They can be digitized to Hi-def.

Any TV which has more then 480 lines of resolution (e.g. any TV labeled Hi Def) will be upconverting from std DVDs (480 lines). The so-called up-convertng DVDs do this before the TV and the better ones (eg. the high end Oppos) will interpolate the 480i lines to 720 or 1080 better and do the de-interlacing (go from i to p) so you can get 720P, 1080i or 1080P signals to your TV AND remove the motion and jaggie artifacts better

Its a good qustion if you can see the differences.

[poolhound]

I got one as soon as I upgraded to an HD Tv a few years ago. At the time there were 2 high end panasonic players that were highly reccomended and I got one I think it was an S77 if memory is still functional. IMHO it was well worth it. Aty the beginning of this year LOML got me a PS3 for my birthday so I sold it. I know its more money but with a PS3 you get HD, Blueray, media player, internet access and of course a games console

[TB Roye]

We recently bought a 60"HD DLP TV (rear projection) I then managed to find a Panasonic Blu-Ray Disk player 1080p on Ebay for $249 free shipping and a 15% live cash back. It also came with 4 Blu-Ray movies. It upconverts regular DVDs beautifuly. There is a difference in the picture but not much. There is a big difference between the regular DVD player and the Blu-Ray upconvert. I am sure not all movies will look as great upconverted as the technology has changed dramaticly so some of the older DVDs will not upconvert as well. Interesting a new word "upconvert"'

Tom

[nothing]

Another vote for the Oppo, I haven't seen any blu ray players that upconvert as well as the 981 and 983.

[mmcduffie]

I have an Oppo DV-970HD plugged into my Mitsubishi WD-Y65 65" 1080P rear DLP.

The Oppo does a better job of up converting than the Mitsu does. And it came in a real snazzy black velvet bag.

Michael

[FL Buckeye]

I also have the Oppo 970HD and really like it. I was very disappointed with DVD picture quality on the flat screen with the non-upconverting player we had. The Oppo made it much better. Haven't bothered looking at newer players but there are many cheaper up-converting players available now. But check their reviews before you buy. The avsforum is a good place to start.