[mythtv-users] upsampling/upconverting dvd?

[Steve Adeff]

On Wednesday 04 January 2006 12:41, Mudit Wahal wrote:
> Steve,
>
> Faroudja based dvd players (under $500) do excellent job for
> upscaling. You dont need to spend $2k :-) My friend bought
> harmon/kardon avr 7300 for 1299 from frys. It has Faroudja upscaler
> builtin and it does extremely wonderful job. I think it did equally
> good compared to Onkyo $2k dvd player which frys was demoing. At frys
> store (campbell), we unhooked the onkyo dvd player and ran the video
> from a standard dvd player to the avr 7300. Took the component out
> from the avr 7300 and hooked upto the projector. There was no loss in
> the picture quality. Even the salesman admitted that he cant tell any
> difference. He called several other salesguy who regularly demo
> (sleep?) in that room.

true, but be careful, Faroudja apparently has been using a chip they don't 
make for some of their equipment, not all Faroudja chips are the same!  That 
said, my point was that the software players on computers are great, theres 
no need to spend lots of money on a DVD player. 
I recently gave my old DVD player to my parents since I'm using Myth now, and 
I bought a $60 Toshiba player that was all the rage on avsforum etc for being 
a great SACD/DVD-A player (with known hacks to make the quality even better 
if your willing to spend some money and do some soldering). 


Second, if your in a audio/video store with more than one location, ignore the 
salespeople. I can't think of a chain where I'd listen to them. The number of 
times I've gone into a Best Buy, Tweeter, etc (and ESP. Fry's, that whole 
chain is garbage, but man do they have great prices!) and been floored by the 
ignorance of even their senior sales staff...

but if you can't see a difference, then don't bother spending more money, its 
all about pleaseing your eye/ear for as little money as possible.


> I think consumer should be aware of terms such as upconvert and
> upscale. There is a difference. Right now I see so many dvd players
> under $100 touting "upconvert to get digital quality video". All it is
> doing is taking video/svideo/component in and DVI/HDMI out. Your video
> may not be any better than if you were feeding the
> video/svideo/component directly to the TV. All HDTV sets have some
> sort of upscaler builtin, because all of these are FPD (fixed pixel
> display). They can only show in the one resolution (1280x720,
> 1366x768, 1920x1080). So, they do need to either upscale or downscale
> (when feeding 1920x1080 video to a 1280x720 set).

True, Upscale/Downscale is resolution conversion, Upconvert/Downconvert is a 
combination of resolution conversion and output format conversion (svideo to 
Component type thing). So svideo upconverted to HDMI would be Upscale from 
480i and format conversion.

> I've seen a well calibrated software based (ffdshow, DScaler, etc)
> software player on windows box. Search google for DScaler,
> ffmpeg/ffdshow, etc, you will find great many references along with
> before/after pictures. Also Home Theater Computers forum on avsforum
> has lot of information on setting up a well calibrated software
> player. It goes in details settings for each filter etc. I think Xine
> also uses similar filters, so it helps to know what each knob does and
> how much it should be turned.

From what I've seen of DScaler, I don't think it does much more than what I've 
seen mplayer do normally. I don't know too much of Xine, but from what I can 
tell it does the same type of quality scaling as mplayer.

The problem with filtering is that no one filter works for everything. Some 
work well for most and some work great for a few. DVD's are nice since the 
format is pretty much set, you can get a good IVTC filter (like mplayers' 
pullup,softskip) and know you will get great IVTC'd output. Scaling in 
mplayer can also be selected from I think 5 different methods. Etc. Then 
theres regular old deinterlacing which is pretty simple and is a catch-all 
method for the most part since it does not do frame rate conversion.

I don't know what Myth's internal player uses for scaling though...


> There are pros and cons of hardware vs software upscaling.
>
> The advantage of hardware based upscaling is the ease of use. No
> calibration/tinkering/etc, small form factor, quiet, high WAF (Wife
> Acceptance Factor). The disadvantage is that the hardware is obsolete
> as soon as its out.

and quite expensive for good equipment.


> Software scaler has advantages that it is never obsolete and tinker
> friendly. The main disadvantage is the hardware [cpu, case, hard
> drives, fans, etc] required has to be fast, noisy, big, etc etc.

True, but can multitask. Myth in many ways is a an all-in-one 
Scaler/Converter.  I'm currently watching Composite out of my regular digital 
cable box (no svideo! what the hell is comcast doing?! oh well, they said 
early February they will be allowing people to have multiple HDTV boxes) to a 
PVR150 recording at 720x480 and being output at 720p to my 32" 4:3 TV with 
16:9 stretch on. I must say, it looks pretty darn good considering.

-- 
Steve

>
> Thanks
>
> Mudit
>
> On 1/4/06, Steve Adeff <adeffs at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Mudit Wahal gave a great source, the avsforum, I'll elaborate some more
> > in relation to playback on a MythTV machine...
> >
> > On Wednesday 04 January 2006 09:46, matthew.garman at gmail.com wrote:
> > > Looking at standalone DVD players, many of them claim to be
> > > "upsampling" or "upconverting".  If I understand correctly, this
> > > means that they do some kind of magic to upconvert/upsample the DVD
> > > video to 720p or 1080i.
> > >
> > > If that definition is accurate, does the upsampling make a
> > > (positive) difference?
> > >
> > > And if it does make a difference, is there any way to achieve
> > > something similar under MythTV?
> >
> > It does! and Myth can!
> > Set MythTV up to send the signal (720p or 1080i) that your TV uses as its
> > native HD mode. If it uses both, I'd suggest 1080i is the one to try and
> > accomplish), then tell MythTV to output all video at that resolution and
> > let the software do all scaling. This will scale TV to that output. If
> > you plan on using Xine or mplayer for DVD's they too will do internal
> > scaling if told to go fullscreen at this resolution.
> >
> > > Basically, I've got a nice HD 720p/1080i TV on the way, and I'd like
> > > to consolidate AV equipment as much as possible (i.e., can I do away
> > > with the standalone DVD player?  MythTV already lets me do away with
> > > the DVR provided by the cable company.)
> >
> > Xine has worked marvelously as a DVD player with menu support for many of
> > us. Its internal scaling and overall video filtering is excellent and
> > with a fast enough processor which you'll want for HDTV content, it can
> > do excellent upconversion for DVD's in realtime without problem. I'll
> > even go out and say Xine will do better than all standalone dvd players,
> > especially the cheaper models ($2K and under).
> >
> > --
> > Steve
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