I know this was probably discussed before, but I cannot find it:

We have SXRD Sony 60 inch and I am considering Oppo, which would be the 971 with the Faroujda chip. Here are the questions:

1. Will I see a significant improvement in standard definition DVDs?

2. Will the new HD players (BluRay or HD-DVD)produce significant improvement on standard definition DVDs.

Where this is leading is that I would think it wise to wait and not waste $$ if #2 scenario will suffice for both HD and standard Def DVDs.

3d question: Considering that we get an Oppo 971 and when Blu Ray or whatever is bought, nove the Oppo to a standard def TV, will the picture be OK.

THanks guys.

1. Yes, if you use the DVI output of the player.
2. No.
3. Someone is complaining on the 990 forum that the Oppo looks crappy on the analog video output. I haven't noticed that myself.

Cheers,

Thanks Ritz. Appreciated. So, since the new HD playhers won't improve the current DVDs, perhaps they don't contain whatever it is that improves.

Is that assumption correct? Is it the Faroujda chip?

So in that case if I want to use the features of my HDTV (Sony SXRD) when playing current DVDs I would need something like the Oppo 971...Correct?? Thanks for your "inputs" [pun not-intended].

How good any HD-DVD or Blu-ray player will perform with standard DVD's is going to depend entirely on the player. The Toshiba HD players reportedly do a pretty respectable job of upscaling, but it's not any better than the OPPO. The Samsung BD-P1000 has not gotten much attention because it appears to have some significant issues and it lacks support for too many Blu-ray features, so I haven't heard anything about it's performance with DVD's.

When playing DVD's on an HDTV, there comes a point somewhere along the way where the DVD's 480i signal must be scaled up to HD resolution. That can be within the TV itself (the most common way), or in the player itself (as with the OPPO). Which one is better depends on which device has the best scaling and deinterlacing capabilities. I don't know how good your Sony's internal scaler/deinterlacer is, but the OPPO's Faroudja chip does a pretty fine job - better than most typical HDTV's.

How do I control this? I mean what do I need to do to make sure that the TV scales up the resolution, not the DVD player? or vise versa.

Thanks,

The TV will automatically scale the incoming signal to match it's display resolution (it has to), but if the DVD player has already provided the scaling then the TV will simply verify the resolution and then display the signal.

Thanks gonk.

So in a way, I can control the DVD player scale by sending the signal over as 480I and the TV will automatically scale the incoming to match its display resolution. And not the TV.

Yep, I think you've got it. With the DVD player set to 480i, all scaling responsibilities lie with the TV. This is the same premise used by folks with fancy standalone video scalers: they want to get 480i from the DVD player because they only want scaling and deinterlacing to be done by their really smart scaler.

How do i know which has a better scaler, my tv or dvd player. I have a denon 2910 and a sony sxrd 60xbr1. I am not even sure on how to have my TV upconvert the signal. Anyone have any idea?

Your DVD player probably has a better scaler than your TV. The 2910 uses the same Faroudja chip for scaling that the Oppo 971 uses, and the 971 is supposed to do an excellent job of scaling. I haven't heard of a TV that has a built-in scaler of this quality.

And, btw, to have your TV upconvert a signal, all you do is send it a signal that is at below its native resolution. DVDs (NTSC DVDs, anyway) have 480 lines of resolution. If you have an HDTV, it has more than 480 lines of resolution. Any time your TV is displaying anything it is displaying it at its native resolution. If the signal it is sent is not at that resolution, the TV converts it to the appropriate resolution.