I’ve been doing a lot of research into DVD players recently. It seems I get ideas for what I could say to the HT consumer world every time I glance at the latest marketing ploy to sell rather inexpensive HT gear. I’m amazed at how “progressive scan” is pushed as a positive feature on DVD players. Digital video has no need to be interlaced for standard old TVs. Saying a DVD player has “progressive scan” these days is like saying a car has wheels. It doesn’t even say how well it performs the job.
The latest hype I’ve been seeing is “upscaling” DVD players like the LG LDA-531 1080i and the Samsung HD931.
The marketing of the players claim:
“Get the most out of your HDTV with a progressive-scan DVD player that offers HD video upconversion for an extremely clear picture.”
They stop short of saying this is an HDDVD player, which is disingenuous, it’s almost a lie. This will lead the average consumer to believe they’re buying a DVD player that will give their HDTV a high def picture. This is absolutely false.
Digital to analogue converter chips in the DVD player make the primary contributeion to your DVD players picture quality. Any fancy pants processes the DVD player claims it can perform after the D/A conversion is through is just extra stuff. It’s unlikely to amount to any noticeable gains in your DVDs image quality. Now, I haven’t actually looked at this phenomena first hand yet, but when I do I will give an explicit report right here on the blog. I plan on investigating this first hand asap at a retailer near me, it is my contention that this upscaling is just smoke and mirrors. I’ve seen a few message board reports on the web including some ‘U-post-it’ reviews of DVD players with this feature and they’ve claimed it makes a considerable difference. But it has all the symptoms of a consumer electronics urban legend.
DVDs are NOT recorded in HD! So there is no way you’re going to get a 720P or 1080i image out of a DVD no matter what processes are taking place after D/A conversion. HD DVD and Blu-Ray are the real high def optical storage medium due out soon, but not yet. So, take these claims with a grain of salt.
Smells like urban legend.
Why is it you only see the “upscaling” feature on DVD players that are found in the $100-$150 dollar range. These are rather cheap DVD players. You can buy dedicated scalers for your HDTV and they cost more than this. Granted the processors involved in scaling images for HD get cheaper all the time, a pleasant side effect of Moore’s Law. (http://www.intel.com/technology/silicon/mooreslaw/) You don’t see this feature emblazoned across the DVD Players by the likes of NAD, Yamaha, Pioneer Elite, Denon which are in more expensive price range. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time. But it’s my contention that even an average TV set will do this better than any set top box.