Hdmi Upscaling I want to buy a DVD recorder, what does HDMI upscaling mean??
I have an HD ready TV with a HDMI input but how does the upscaling work??
All DVDs are recorded as digital signals on the disc.
An ordinary DVD player converts the digital bitstream into an analogue signal for outputting via the SCART socket.
The analogue signal passing through the SCART lead consists of sound (left/right); picture colour information (relative levels of the Red, Green, Blue signals) and frame/field synchronisation signals.
An old CRT television set would keep all that picture information in analogue form all the way to the phosphor dots on the screen itself.
On a really good quality tv tube (such as a B&O or Finlandia) the number of phosphor dots vastly exceeded the number of pixels on most modern flat screens. This meant that all the information in the analogue signal could be put to good use. In other words - the "resolution" was superb.
A LCD or Plasma tv will convert the information into a form that can drive the "pixels" on the screen. Because there are a finite number of pixels or "cells" they have a fixed resolution, unlike a good CRT.
This "native resolution" may not be a perfect match to the signal coming in.
Also, the action of converting digital to analogue in the DVD player and then back to digital at the tv (to drive the screen) will cause a loss of detail.
Some DVD players are better at this conversion than others, hence the very different prices and quality of DVD players.
HDMI upscaling removes all this uncertanty. The signal remains in the digital domain from disc to screen and the HDMI protocol means that the DVD player will adapt its output to suit what the tv is happiest with (e.g. 1080i or 1080p or 720p so you must not get "hung up" about this - they're all better than the current 625i).
This ensures that you get the best available picture from your DVD.
It really does give a good improvement over using SCART.
However, you should be aware that the quality of DVDs vary considerably. This is because of the way that the algorithm used to encode the signals works.
There is a limited ammount of storage capacity on a DVD and the longer a film is then the greater the risk of over-filling the disc, even DL ones.
Studios get around this by reducing the quality of longer film slightly.
If this is is elegantly done then you won't notice it. If it's clumsily done (and some are very badly done) then you will see the reduced quality, especially in lack of fine detail and poor fast motion resolution. These differences are more noticeable when you're connected by HDMI upscaling.
The HD format, Blu-ray, uses a much higher capacity disc so that the encoding algorithm can be more generous in maintaining high quality all the time. These must be played via HDMI to get the best result.
Sound is also held in the digital domain al the way to the tv so if the disc is encoded in Surround sound and the tv can handle this then it will work properly.
So, after all that, the short answer is - Yes, HDMI upscaling is worth doing, and a lot cheaper than buying Blue-ray players and discs.
But note that while most DVDs will look better, some of the cheaper and nastier DVDs (including pirates and copies from VHS) may not be recorded good enough to take advantage of it (they won't be worse though).
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