In my last installment (part 1) I expressed some concern that the HD “upscaling” feature found on some DVD players today was more of a marketing feature than a technical feature that will give you better picture quality from a DVD player.  The reasons “DVD Upsampling” seemed like B.S. to me were twofold.

Upscaling or upsampling DVD players might be a way for cheaper players to offer a tighter picture that can scale pixel per pixel to HD or DTV resolutions.  This could be a benefit if your HDTV has a very poor internal scaler.  HDTVs today have a native resolution and scale everything to “that” resolution.  If you have a CRT based HDTV it scales to 1080i, if you have a fixed display device (LCD, Plasma, DLP) it’s most likely 720P.  So, your DVD player’s 480P images are converted to your TV’s native resolution and “should” do a better job of it than any external box that retails at the $150 range.

Upscaling DVD players don't add anything to the image, you won't get HD from a DVD.  Be patient HD DVD and Blu-Ray are coming. 

What intrigues me is the ‘upscaling’ DVD players like the LG LDA-531 and Samsung’s HD850 provide video to your HDTV in the digital domain, that is they use an HDMI output.  When the DVD player sends video to the TV using HDMI or DVI it’s fully digital, no need to process the video signal to send it through analogue component cables, which could cause some degradation.  So, I had to test one of these for myself.

I had a chance over the weekend to play with one of these DVD players in a head to head video contest against my old faithful Cambridge Audio Azur 540d.  The player in question was the Samsung HD850 complete with HD upsampling and an HDMI output I connected to my Sony LCD rear projector (Grand Wega KF-50WE620).  The Cambridge Audio DVD player should be a far superior player, if for no other reason than it is a more expensive player and designed for a specialty consumer market who desires higher end quality.  The Azur 540d uses MediaTek’s highly rated DACs and it’s always been my assumption that better quality DACs make for better sound and audio quality from your DVD player.  So, even if the Samsung does use some superior technology to do a better pixel overlay on a 720P display device, if it’s using cheaper DACs it’s doing little more than putting lipstick on a pig.

Out of the box the Samsung HD850 had a nice build quality for a sub $150 player, the silver finish and indigo power light is a nice touch, the box has an appeal you wouldn’t mind seeing in your stack.  I hooked it up with the HDMI port.  The Cambridge Audio 540d is  component only.  As I navigated the menu systems I went straight to the display settings.  The menus were intuitive, I have no complaints so far.  The default 480P setting made the menus themselves look a little “soft” they got whipped into shape when I switched to 720P.  I experimented with my Superbit version of Spiderman2, probably the best Superhero movie ever made given the Superbit treatment I’ve always admired.  This is where I started to notice cracks in the veneer of what otherwise seemed like a fine player.  It was way too dark.  I played with the video settings in the DVD player and found a brightness control that allowed me to pump it up. 

At this point I could go “soft” not using the “upsampling” feature at all and I had all the brightness I needed or I could enable 720P and suddenly lose brightness and contrast.  I pumped up the Samsung’s brightness to 5 which was all the way, and it gave the images the brightness I was accustomed to seeing.  This didn’t look half bad on Spiderman 2, I paid particular attention to the daylight scenes and they looked good on 720P when the brightness was all the way up.  However there was a minor problem where I felt the color palette was limited, complexity in skin tones were ‘off’.  Flesh tones are always difficult for video to reproduce, skin is a very complex color and we humans know it very well so much that if it’s not right it sticks out like a turd in a punch bowl.  The two kids Spiderman rescues from impact with the truck had oversatured reddish highlights on their faces instead of the healthful glow of rosy cheeks.  Coloration seemed to be a problem but didn’t really stand out too badly when images were in good lighting.  Pixel overlay seemed right on, I had no problems with fuzziness, flickering, macroblocking or clearly inferior 3:2 pulldown.

I broke out Digital Video Essentials and did a few color test/calibrations so hopefully it would balance the flesh tones.

Next DVD Elektra;  I decided to add complexity to the video by popping in Elektra staring Jennifer Garner.  Early in the film she performs an assassination in shadowy darkness.  There is even a fireplace leaving flickering reflections on everything in that scene to add complexity to video coloration.  My Cambridge Audio recreates this scene perfectly.  The Samsung HD850 looked horrible.  There were no shadowy nuances, anything you were supposed to see that was layered in shadow was lost in a muck of darkness.  The fireplace left cartoonish orange on everything.  What seems like a dance of shadow and fire on my Cambridge Audio was a bloody mess on the Samsung. 

My video testing was far from scientific, I didn’t use any test equipment to calibrate my concern was purely for real world images and enjoyment.  I honestly don’t know what to ”look for” in any video engineering capacity to test differences between these two machines.  I realize comparisons are flawed because the two players aren’t designed to compete with each other in the market, the Cambridge Audio player should be superior and certainly was.  What my testing did prove to me was that this “upsampling” feature offers nothing significant in the way of any technical breakthrough.  It is certainly not HD DVD or anything akin to it.  As I suspected good quality DACs will trump any extemporaneous pixel overlay technology every time.

The other thing I wasn’t expecting was the difference in audio.  I knew the Cambridge Audio’s strong point was audio but I had no idea how significant it would be.  Both players used their digital audio outputs to my Arcam receiver which processed Dolby Digital in all testing.  I assumed any audio differences would be slight as all the player is doing is presenting the receiver with a flat audio signal to process, no DACs involved in the reading of this digital audio signal, so I figured the difference would be minimal.  Boy was I wrong, this causes me to re-think many long standing assumptions I have had about digital playback devices and the role they play in audio reproduction even where no DAC is used.  The assassination scene in Elektra depicted in the image samples below is preceded by a whisper, the ring of metal then a powerful score kicks in as the anti-hero does her dirty work.  It’s a powerful scene, the Cambridge Audio DVD player can make even the most dour film critic say… “That was a good scene!”

The Samsung on the other hand made that whole scene sound flat.  The directional quality on the soundtrack was lost, the left, right – front, rear separation seemed muddled.  Although the surround effects existed, they weren’t as noticeable.  Even the dynamic range was affected, the gentle whisper “I died once” sounds chilling and up close on the Cambridge Audio, on the Samsung it was just a whisper. 

My assumptions about the audio differences is that you’re simply hearing the sound of superior electronics, pure and simple since there can be no processing differences here (both used my Arcam DAC to decode the bitstream).  The Cambridge Audio has a better quality power-supply and likely better optics and subsequent circuitry.  I wonder if the Samsung had some noise issues or electronically minute details in the soundtrack were simply unsustainable through the electronics.

In summary, all is as I suspected in the universe.  The old adage you get what you pay for is especially true for DVD players.  If you’re looking for significant gains from any DVD player in the sub $200 range you have to step up to the plus side of $300 and the score of players that compete on this level.  The likes of NAD, Denon and Cambridge Audio even Onkyo and Yamaha offer quality at affordable prices.  HDMI or DVI outputs on any DVD player should never be considered an image quality boost.  The image quality from any DVD player is dependent on how well it can process the video stored on the disc.

Here are two images; these are as close as I could get to the same frame, the “mark” discusses his misspent life as a ruse to cock his pistol just before Elektra plunges her sai into his back.  The flickering fireplace prevent the Samsung from drawing any perceptible flesh tones from his face, the color of his shirt is also distorted.  It almost seems like the Samsung had a limited number of colors it could paint into image.

The Samsung HD850 has considerable trouble presenting realistic flesh tones under the extra colors of a fireplace in low lighting.

Edit:  I've received a lot of responses on this particular post.  As mentioned above the test is NOT scientific, no test equipment was used.  The video results pictured above were after performing and 'eye' calibration using DVE w/ the new Samsung.  Samsung is connected via HDMI, Cambridge Audio was connected via component toggling back and forth gives the above results.  Unique video settings are saved for the different inputs, in short both are calibrated as best I could. 

True, the comparison is hardly a fair one because the CA DVD player is better and more expensive.  My only point with this post is that the upscaling feature shouldn't be considered important when looking at DVD players.  Upscaling is secondary to the DACs used for video processing.