Picture Quality Concern
 

For the past few years i been using my xbox 360 to watch dvds. I have a 32" Toshiba and everything was good up until a week ago when the 360 died. I have a backup dvd player in my closet so i hooked it up and i noticed the picture quality is a big step down :( I wanna say its 480p. Any ideas why?

Re: Picture Quality Concern
 

Because DVD's have a resolution of 480p. But it's hard to tell why it looks worse since you have given no detail. Perhaps you have it hooked up using only the yellow composite cable. Maybe it's not set for a 16x9 TV? It could be a lot of things, but you're not going to get much more than 480p (upscaled at max) out of a DVD.

Re: Picture Quality Concern
 

Yeah i only have it connected with the color cables. I think the DVD Player is just out of date. Ive had the thing for 10+ years.

The 360 was always connected with the HDMI cable.

Re: Picture Quality Concern
 

It's definitely your connection more so than the actual player. I'm guessing the player you're currently using has no HDMI input...so by "colored cord", I'm assuming you mean composite cables (red, white, and yellow)? If so...yep, you're probably getting pretty bad picture and sound compared to HDMI. If you can get some component cables (red, blue, green) and an optical audio cable, you'll see a noticeable improvement. Otherwise, just get an upscaling DVD player with HDMI or a Blu-ray player.

I thought the native resolution of DVD was 480i, not 480p? Some DVD and Blu-ray players, at least nominally, upscale the resolution to the 720p/1080i/p. Obviously, it probably just a magnifying glass. I'm finding upscaled DVDs really look like crap on my new plasma :(. But on my brother's old 32 inch 720p set in the basement, an inexpensive Phillips does upscale well enough that it looks presentable. That's with HDMI though.

Re: Picture Quality Concern
 

It's my understanding upscaling only works through HDMI connection. If upscaling player is connected in some other way it doesn't upscale, just plays like non upscaling player.

Re: Picture Quality Concern
 

This is true, for the most part. Most mainstream DVDs are flagged with an image constraint token that blocks 1080i upscaling via component cables...but some smaller releases are not flagged this way. Either way, if you do not have an HDMI output on your player, using component cables will at least output at 480p and will look reasonably good on a mid-sized display (and certainly better than 480i or composite cables).

Re: Picture Quality Concern
 

Well, for the topic above, through composite it is 480i. But DVDs themselves are weird. I never quite figured it out fully, the software controls it so much that you can't even easily tell what format is actually stored on the disc. Part of the problem with DVD is it goes through so many conversions before you see picture. Hence the massive websites we had about the quality of progressive players. And now everyone just wants native 24p mode for their blurays, we're all tired of the fight to get a good pic.

Re: Picture Quality Concern
 

Upscaling can occur in the DVD player, or will automatically occur in the TV (if the input resolution is not the TV's native resolution). Depending on the DVD player brand/model and the TV brand/model, the TV could have better scaling hardware. But that means nothing when you are using the composite (yellow RCA) input is which is less than VHS quality.