I have been thinking of buying a hd dvd player. My question is since a dvd is only decoded with 480p what does the dvd player do to achieve a higher resolution? Ive been told that the picture looks grainy.Is it worth the extra money? And does anyone recommend anything? Thanks!

Since there are no HD discs yet on the market, what is the point?

All the internal upscaling dvd players i've seen are horrible.

Yeah upscaling is not worth it.

you are not actually making the quality better it is converting it to what it thinks makes it look better and you are actually better off with just using a standard DVD out on a HD set and getting a HD player when there is media for it.

All of the above replys are 100% true!

No. It's not worth the money.
Not yet, anyway!

The replies above are only partially true. A digital HDTV will not have a 480p native resolution like a CRT-based RPTV does. So for LCD or plasma or others you must choose whether your TV or the DVDp has better upconversion. Because it WILL be upconverted. This is why those players exist.

The advantage of the up-scaling DVD player is that the image can stay in the digital domain the entire time it is being processed. The data will be read from the disc, sent through the DVD players scaler then sent digitaly to the set via DVI or HDMI. It will finally be sent through a digital to analog converter for viewing.

Other DVD players will read the data. Convert that data to analog. Then send it to the TV via RGB(analog). The set will convert it back to digital, send it through the scaler and, then covert it back to analog for viewing. This results in more D/A conversions.

If the up-scaling DVD player has a good scaler it should produce a better picture.

I would find a company that has one set up and ask for a demo if you are concerned.

Mav

My HDTV has a zoom feature that enlarges the native DVD resolution to fill the high resolution screen. Thus I have no reason to have the DVD player do the enlarging.

Make sure your HDTV can't zoom the image before wasting money on an upscaling device.

But cant you get a regular progressive scan dvd player with a digital output. I mean dvi or hdmi output is digital regardless of whether or not it is hd.I thought that upconverting DVD players actually increased the resolution from 480p to 1080i/720p.????

We just installed a Denon DVD3910 on a Fujitsu 55" Plasma. The picture quality was unbelievable. We used the HDMI cables to connect to the TV. We set the HDMI output to 720p because that the Native res on the fuji plasma. There was a huge difference in picture quality that i noticed, but the average consumer probably would not be able to see the difference. Still not worth the cheese in my opinion.

By the way, we had two brand new HDMI Cables from M****** C**** bad right out of the box. Not bad for a $129 cable!

Mike

We use the Denon DVD-755s. At around $300 not that much to spend to have the ability to upconvert (looks and sounds great).

Read the above post about conversions again. This isn't the same as figuring out which component will decode your digital audio because that is always analog when it comes out to your ears. Video can now be digital when it comes out to your eyes. It is often better to have this in the player. Of course, some players are much better than others.

Oops. Ignore this post, read below.

This message was edited by Spiky on 03/14/05 11:16 ET.

I have the V.Inc Bravo D2 connected via DVi to a V.Inc Visio 42" Plasma display. I also have a progressive DVD player connected to the same display via the component output. The difference is noght and day. The image from the D2 blows away the component connection. Seeing is believing. Especially when all else is equal...

Let me try that again, I wasn't thinking with my earlier post. Yes, you can get a regular progressive scan player modded with an SDI digital output. This could go to your TV or scaler with an SDI digital input and you would have full digital video path with earlier technology than the current DVI/HDMI setups. Would also be much more expensive.