Hopefully, this should be a quick question. I have a 720p HDTV that can receive all signals (including 1080p). My upscaling DVD player can display at all signals (including 1080p).

Now the question. Is there any difference to me setting my DVD player to upscale to 720p as opposed to 1080p? Theoretically, the resulting image should be the same since the TV will downscale any higher signal (i.e. 1080p) it receives to a 720p image. But is it better to avoid this downscaling and simply have my player send a 720p signal?

Thanks.

If the TV uses the same sampling/scaling algorithms as the DVD player the picture should probably be indistinguishable, however since there's never any guarantee of that, you'll probably get the best picture quality sending a 720p. The less scaling the better is usually the way to go.

However most 720p TVs are usually some non-standard HD resolution like 1364x768, which means another intermediate scaling is going on no matter what. While it probably doesn't make much difference it might be better to have have the TV downscale from 1080p to the panel's native resolution.

Your best bet is to try it with pictures which have a lot of fine detail and see if one looks better to you.

Also as this is SD DVD being upscaled, I'd guess there's going to be very little difference to begin with.

I was thinking about this with my Oppo. I have a 1080p TV, and the player would output 1080i, and I wanted to do the least amount of conversions, with emphasis in avoiding the de/interlacing as those tend to be worse.

I figured this is how the transformations work, but corrections would be appreciated. I assumed that progressive signals are scaled, but I don't really know how the conversion decision making occurs.

DVD => TV
480i -> 480p -> 720p => 1080p
So the DVD (480i) is de-interlaced, then scaled, then sent to the TV to be scaled again.

Which I chose over:
480i -> 480p -> 1080p -> 1080i => 1080p
This version has 2 de-interlacing steps, 1 interlacing and scaling.

It is because of this I prefer to feed my TV with 720p signals, let the set scale instead of de-interlace.

My set is actually one of the few that has a standard HD resolution of exactly 720, so I guess I should simply output that signal from the DVD player to the TV. Thanks.

First, I'm confused as to why you reference a set capable of 1080p as a "720p HDTV". Seems backwards to me.

Second, for all concerned, I imagine you'd need to figure out what processing chip that your set used for conversions, and then determine the best setup. Without this info, you're simply guessing on what/how many conversions are actually taking place. For example, in which setup does the receiver/player's chip trump the televisions? Perhaps this is more relevant with HDMI connections than analog?

He means it can accept a 1080p signal, but it will downscale that to its native resolution of 720p.

Whooosh!

That is the sound of what you said soaring miles over my head.

Thanks for the help anyway.