That'sAllFolks

I was wondering if special features looked better from a DVD that has been upscaled than from a Blu-ray with special features in SD.

I have never compared and was wondering if anyone has.

Drexl

Is the BD player not upscaling the SD material anyway? If it isn't, I think it would come down to whether the upscaler in the player or the TV was better.

That'sAllFolks

I guess I was wondering if there was only upscaling if the format was a DVD or if the source was 480p regardless of the format.

orangerunner

I assume everything that runs through an HDMI cable upscales to 1080p. If the Blu-ray package says 480p, it just refers to the native resolution.

If you run a Blu-ray with 480p content through the component cables, you will just get 480p or 720p/1080i for the 1080p main feature content.

I guess with all things being equal, the picture should be identical in quality.

Bacon

I'm guessing better on Blu Ray simple because it has a higher bitrate?
or ar the SD bitrates the same

nitin77

if you have selected upsacling ,everything gets upscaled to 1080p, regardless of whether it is the movie or extra features.

As for picture quality, movies do look better upscaled. Special Feature svary because they are usually heavily compressed anyway so upscaling shows up more of the compression too.

orangerunner

I would guess they wouldn't bother re-encoding the extras at a higher bit-rate.

Even with brand new titles, it's possible they encode them at a bit-rate that is DVD friendly and place it on the Blu-ray unless they are specifically HD quality extras. If anyone's feeling ambitious I guess you can read the bit-rate counter display on their DVD & Blu-ray players.

Much of the time they can't even bother adding the extras from the DVD, let alone improve the quality.

That'sAllFolks

If you have a file on a blu-ray disc that is 480, then I would say it does upscale. However, if the file is 1080, but the contents of the file were recorded at 480, I would say no. That is why I initially asked the question. I was thinking of the PD cartoons you buy at the dollar store. Many of these were sourced from video tapes that don't have DVD quality. No matter how you play them, the player thinks the source is 480. The same with DVD quality on a Blu-ray disc. If the player THINKS the source is 1080, then it would not upscale (even if the picture is 480-quality). However if the player thinks the file is 480, it might try to upscale to 1080.

Anybody know for sure?

nitin77

if the file is 1080 form 480, then it doesnt upscale (because the upscaling has been done by disc manufacturer)

RobLutter

Unless you're watching 480p on a 480p set... there's ALWAYS upscaling. I just blew your fucking mind, didn't I?

LCD and DLP TVs nowadays are all 1080p (or 720p) native. So either the TV or the player is going to upscale the image for you unless your source is at the native resolution (in which case it can bypass scaling). Depending on quality of the set or player you are using, it might be better to use one or the other.

DarthMarino

It really depends on the player. PS3 for example does NOT upscale SD material from a Blu-Ray and it looks awful. In this case, SD material looks much better on a standard DVD.

GreenMonkey

This. No matter what, you're getting upscaling, unless you're running an old CRT HDTV. People don't seem to understand this.

It's just a matter of whether your player is doing it, or your TV. "Upscaling" DVD or BD players are just attempting to do better than whatever chip is in your display.

Some people's TVs have better scalers than others.

Josh-da-man

Don't most blu-ray players only output at 1080p?

My Sony only does 1080p that I'm aware of.

I do have a Toshiba DVD Recorder that does 480p/720p/1080i/1080p. I've messed experimented a bit and, at least with my television, the player upconverting DVDs at 1080p looks a bit better than having the television upconvert a 480p signal to 1080p. (Both signals going over HDMI.)

BTW, my Toshiba DVD recorder gives a slightly better picture for standard DVD than my blu-ray player does, though it doesn't deinterlace unproperly flagged DVDs (namely Fox TV like Buffy and X-Files) and will only output 4:3 material pillarboxed over 480p -- any higher and it will only stretch. The Sony blu-ray player will play those DVDs deinterlaced and pillarboxed.

Josh-da-man

Chances are that if the special features are in SD only, then quality wasn't that great in the first place, so upconversion probably won't make much difference. A lot of deleted scenes are poor quality and things like interviews are shot on videotape, so 1080p won't look much different from 480p.

Pizza

I'm not always impressed with upscaled images. Sometimes it magnifies what's wrong with the picture. For example, it'll look grainier.