euclid said:
Will someone please answer this or give me a link to some pics that are upscaled? I really know nothing at all when it comes to upscaling or 1080p (i?) and all this jazz. Some people around here thought this should have been done when the PS3 launched so this has to be good news for ps3 fans, yes? |
It seems like a lot of people don't know about upscaling and 1080p. Here's a quick primer:
480i/p = 640x480 pixels (standard) or 720x480 (widescreen)
720i/p = 1280x720 pixels
1080i/p = 1920x1080 pixels
LCD and Plasma TVS are "fixed pixel" displays, in other words they display in only one resolution. For example, my 37" displays in 1366x720. They require a scaler to change whatever resolution the source is in to the native resolution, so when I watch standard TV the TV's built-in scaler converts the 640x480 source to 1366x720. If you were to just a straight expansion of the image, you'd end up with a really blocky, ugly picture. So "upscaling" involves performing various techniques to estimate the missing detail. Conversely, my TV would actually downscale a 1080i signal into 720p, which also involves some processing.
All HD TV's have a built-in scaler, but the quality varies greatly. The point of "upscaling" DVD players is to upscale the DVD into either 720p or 1080i/p so your TV doesn't have to do the scaling itself (also, there's some loss of detail going from digital-to-analog cables-to-digital). If your TV has a high quality scaler, you probably won't notice much if any improvement. If your TV has a cheap-o scaler (common on the more budget oriented TVs) you'll notice a much better picture. The PS3's complete lack of a scaler meant that your TV had to do all the work (also, I heard but can't confirm that because it didn't downscale Blue-Ray discs, if your TV was 720p you'd actually get 480p out of the PS3 and then your TV would upscale it, resulting in a major loss of detail).
