Can someone please enlighten me..

I have a Sony SXRD, with a native resolution of 1080P. Is it true that, regardless of the original resolution, the TV always upconverts and displays 1080P? Or will it display 480 as 480, 720 as 720, etc?

If it does always upconvert to 1080P, then I assume the role of an upconverting DVD player is to do a better job of upconverting so that the sony doesn't have to.

If it does not always upconvert, then I can understand the idea the DVD player.

The reason I'm asking is because my parents are moving into a house that came with a Sharp Projector from 5 years ago or so - native resolution of 720. They have a few 'budget' upconverting DVD players (sub $150), and an Xbox360, and I'm curious if it is worth it to get a 'better' player.

Thanks

The SXRD is a fixed pixel display - the final signal sent to the LCoS module must be in the chip's native resolution (in this case, 1080p). That means that the TV must convert any signals using other resolutions to that resolution before displaying it.

The purpose behind upconverting DVD players is to rely on better video scaling than that offered internally by the TV. A good TV and a mediocre upscaling DVD player will be no better than a good TV and a non-upscaling player. Probably the favorite upscaling players on the market at the moment are those by OPPO. I actually just finished beta testing their newest player, which is one of the few players that can output 1080p - you can check out my review if you want. A co-worker and I are planning to try this player out with a new 60" Sony SXRD probably this weekend.

Gonk, as always, thanks for the detailed responses. You're the man around here.

Actually, I have already read your beta review - in fact, I think I have read almost all of the reviews/info on your site. You have quite a comprehensive set of information there - thanks for taking the time to post all of it...

Your post leads me to another question - since the projector I'm talking about has a resolution of 1280 X 720 (and will only be using the component input), I'm thinking outputting at 720 would be my best bet. Is this right? I'm not even sure if it could accept 1080i (if it did, I assume it would scale down to 720 and would be worse than going with 720 in the first place) and I'm pretty certain it can't accept 1080p over component. For these reasons, I have been hesitant to order the oppo for them.

Thanks again - and my apologies if my terminology (scaling, upconverting, etc.) is off.

Cheers.

Info on the projector we inherited from the previous owners found here .

Oh - and I'm very curious to hear of your findings with the Oppo and SXRD - I wonder if the dvd player does a much better job of scaling than the TV. Is it the XBR1, 2 or A2000?

Please let me know your findings.

gonk wrote:

A co-worker and I are planning to try this player out with a new 60" Sony SXRD probably this weekend.

I have that 60 inch Sony SXRD and will be extremely interested in your evaluation, especially an A-B eval'n of 971 vs 981 on the SXRD 60 inch.

Not going to get a chance to try the 971 on his TV (that now lives at dad's house), but I will be interested to see how the 981 works with the SXRD.

lucky boys w/ your SXRD's. A family member has the 70" in his living room and a 50/55" in his den.

I wonder if I can hitch a question on to this thread. Does anyone sense that in the near future (< 6 months), HD-DVD players will be doing upconverting? Or is this already being done? I got the sense in the very limited shopping around I've done that both functions are not yet available in one unit.

The Toshiba HD-DVD players will all upconvert SD DVD's now, assuming that you are using the HDMI output and not the component output (as is true of any upconverting player currently in production). I need to dig back into the Blu-ray players a bit to figure out what they are all doing - I'm pretty sure the PS3 doesn't upconvert SD DVD's since I've seen folks complaining about the omission, but I believe that all of the Blu-ray players (Pioneer BDP-HD1, Panasonic DMP-BD10, Sony BDP-S1, and Samsung BD-P1000) will upconvert to 1080p at the HDMI output.

Denon 2930ci and the big brother 3930Ci, End of Discussion!

Both are mighty nice players, but with the format war bringing HD players like the Toshiba A2 (and soon the A20) that do good SD upconversion as well as offer HD disc support it's hard for many people to justify $850 to $1500 MSRP for a standard DVD player. If you want really good DVD-A and SACD support as well as SD DVD all in one chassis and don't mind the price tag, both are solid options.

My Toshiba A1 HD DVD player does an excellent job of upconversion and, even without the HD DVD capability, I'd heartily recommend it or the other Tosh HD DVD players for that feature alone (and the outstanding audio quality).

However, contrary to Gonk's post, none of the 1st or 2nd gen Toshiba HD DVD players play DVD-A or SACD.

In December gonk wrote:

A co-worker and I are planning to try this player out with a new 60" Sony SXRD probably this weekend.

Presumably gonk was going to write about his opinion in this thread. Gonk: Please let us know your thoughts on this combo, which, I believe was 981 with 60 inch Sony SXRD.

Thanks.

I intended for my post to read that you had to get the Denon ("both" referring to the 2930 and 3930) if you wanted DVD-A and SACD, since none of the HD disc players support both formats - Panasonic's Blu-ray player will to DVD-A and the PS3 will do SACD, but that's about it.

I thought it was something like that, Gonk. I've learned to rely on your accuracy over the years. (Nice to see you're still making a vital contribution here. I don't get by too often these days.)

I did want to jump in, however, in case someone ran out to get an HD DVD player and might be disappointed.