HDDVD vs. Upscaling quality

[Sgt_Strider]

I think you are proving my point. You are not the general public. You're happy to spend the extra money for an HD player, plus the $10-15 or so it costs extra to buy the HD Disc, maybe even pay the few hundred to thousand to convert your old media library. The general public is satisfied with the way DVDs look, upscaled or not, most wouldn't even be able to tell you whether an image was HD or not unless it was side by side with SD or the SD was exceptionaly poor, and so adoption of either format will be a slow creep in the big picture.

I'm satisfied with the way DVDs look upscale, but I can't justify the extra cost of HD, for (in the case of upscaled DVDs) minimal visual increase.

By post processing I wasn't simply refering to the processing done in upscaling the DVD, but the post processing done on the DVD to make it look good in the first place, as opposed to what live broadcast can provide.

The problem is that most people don't have HDTVs in the first place. HDTV penetration in Canada is small. DVDs look good on my analog base TV. HDTV prices are still relatively high and have not reached a point where mass penetration is possible. Until that point is reached, I think DVD will continue to remain dominant.

Seriously though, I don't think it takes a genius to realize the difference between DVD and upscaled DVD and HD. I'm sure anyone with a brain will be able to tell the difference if they did a side by side comparison.

[Mr.Universe]

A bit off topic but what's a good software scaler/up converter for Windows? Sometimes I like to watch DVDs, Divx, etc. full screen on my PC.

[bembol]

I don't think it's IF they can tell the difference but more of their ATTITUDE towards it/most just don't CARE. As my family/friends say, "what's wrong with DVD's?" or "you're just way too picky."

[Tyrant]

Uh no, the Oppo is not standalone DVD player on the market. There is this Denon player that have this video processor (forgot the name) that is supposively the best on the market. IIRC, the player cost about $2000 USD.

I'm aware of the Denon player and it should be noted that I said "one of the best", not "the best" in the initial post.

[Sgt_Strider]

I'm aware of the Denon player and it should be noted that I said "one of the best", not "the best" in the initial post.

This is what you said:

I playback my DVDs via a PC with various filters and software to give it an image quality that arguably surpasses that of one of the best standalone DVD players on the market, which is the Oppo Digital 971HD.

[ShadowVlican]

A bit off topic but what's a good software scaler/up converter for Windows? Sometimes I like to watch DVDs, Divx, etc. full screen on my PC.

MPEG4 (all variants included) can be decoded by ffdshow, which has a builtin resize filter (lanczos# is most popular method)

there's also other filters that sharpen, reduce noise, etc... which all help to make videos look better

to use ffdshow with DVDs, you will lose the hardware acceleration and any of its enhancements, like nVidia's PureVideo

[milhaus]

This is what you said:

Uh, yeah, like Tyrant said: "one of the best" . . .

"I playback my DVDs via a PC with various filters and software to give it an image quality that arguably surpasses that of one of the best standalone DVD players on the market, which is the Oppo Digital 971HD.

[Tyrant]

Yeah, what milhaus said.

[aidzhsiah]

I don't think it's IF they can tell the difference but more of their ATTITUDE towards it/most just don't CARE. As my family/friends say, "what's wrong with DVD's?" or "you're just way too picky."

I agree.

I have a friend who thinks the improvement of component vs composite cables wasn't going to be worth the investment of going down to the store to buy them.

[inaktive]

I think of "upscaling vs HD dvd" to the differece between "High preformance gas and regular" I mean.. you don't really know the difference unless you use it in your high preformance car (I own a crossfire) just like if you watch HD movies then watch upscaled dvds. But that being said If you simply watch upscaled (which is what i do as i own a BUNCH load of regular SD efes and don't want to spend all the money to replace all of them all! ) Maybe when the prices come down lol I'll think of totally switching over to HD Dvd.