You want the best image quality possible when you collapse into your leather home theater seating after a long day of work. And that means that you will probably want to upscale your DVDs – that is, improve their visuals to match your flat screen TV’s Full HD capabilities. Although a DVD will never look as crisp as a Blu-Ray disc, you can reduce the noise and improve the visuals by using the internal upscaler in your Blu-Ray player or your HDTV.
Many consumers purchase the top-of-the-line Blu-Ray player, only to realize that their HDTV does just as much, or more, when it comes to DVD upscaling. In order for you to watch your DVDs at their peak, you need to understand what upscaling is, and then go through the differences between an upscaler in a flat screen TV and a Blu-Ray player.
DVD players come in two basic varieties – standard and progressive scan. You can learn more about interlaced scan and progressive scan, but all you need to know for now is that DVDs are normally played at 480i or 480p resolution. This indicates that there are 720 pixels horizontally and 480 pixels vertically. When you upscale, you are increasing the resolution.
In technical terms, upscaling uses a mathematical equation to match the number of pixels that your DVD displays naturally with the number of pixels on your flat screen TV. This is usually 1280 by 720 (if your HDTV is a 720p resolution display), or 1920 by 1080 (for those flat screen TVs that are either 1080p or 1080i).
An upscaled DVD image will appear smoother, with more color intensity and a sharper overall visual effect. But before you go out and purchase that super expensive Blu-Ray player that can upscale up to 1080p, check your HDTV.
There are two things you need to consider when you examine your flat screen TV for upscaling purposes. First, what is the resolution of your TV? If it is 720p, you don’t need a Blu-Ray player that can upscale up to 1080p or 1080i, as you won’t get the full effects. Next, see if your HDTV offers its own upscaling technology. A lot of the newer sets out there will allow you to upscale your DVDs without the need for an external upscaler in your Blu-Ray player.
Check with your flat screen TV before going out and purchasing a Blu-Ray player to upscale your DVDs. You might end up saving yourself some money. However, the image quality from a Blu-Ray player will likely be better, but not by much, when compared to that of an HDTV. Just be sure to remember that an upscaled DVD will not be True HD, it can only approximate the resolution of your flat screen TV.
Tags: audio/video, Home Theater
