Why won't some regular DVDs upconvert?
 

I have a Toshiba HD-A30 and also a Sony blu-ray player.. I haven't tried it on the blu-ray player, but I noticed that some DVDs the Toshiba says it won't upconvert (a little window appears on screen saying the DVD prohibited it or something). As an example, the Disney Pocahontas DVD. As it plays, I see that it is reporting just 480p output.

Just curious why this is.

They think HD is a niche format and doesn't want to deal with the war.

Seriously though, I htink most older DVD's do not have progressive scan which keeps them from going past 480. I'm certain more people know though. I have noticed this on a couple of flipper DVD's I got from way back in the day.

Upconversion only works over HDMI. If you player is connected in any other way, you are maxed at 480P.

It's hooked up via HDMI. And most DVDs do upconvert .. but as I said, some don't.

Well, it will work if the disc doesn't have a form of protection. I don't know if it's Macrovision or CSS, but one of those will prevent it. So many commercial discs have it though, so for all practical purposes you could say it doesn't work.

I have an A2 and I've also experienced a couple DVDs that have said something about being prohibited and switching to 480. Over the weekend, this happend with Rob Zombie's re-envisioning of "Halloween." Anyone know why this is?

I don't think it has anything to do with the DVD at all. I've seen this error before, but I reboot my player and it doesn't give it to me the second time. I suspect it's an HDMI handshaking issue.

That's sort of what I suspected.

You're talking about the Image Constraint Token, which seems to be rearing its ugly head for the OP for some season.

The Wikipedia page about it is here.

Does the PS3 have this issue?

I only ask because I played the same disc as bookcase 3 (Rob Zombie's Halloween) via HDMI on my PS3 not too long ago. I didn't get any kind of message pop on-screen regarding any errors.

I have never come across a dvd that has yet to upconvert and I've upconverted thousands of dvds over HDMI on various players. I always check to make sure the display is getting 1080P even. Are these real pressed studio dvds? That's the only thing I can think of.

That only applies to actual HD content. When using component output, players aren't allowed to upscale protected DVDs. I missed the part where he said it was hooked up with HDMI, or maybe I didn't hit "submit" until he posted it.

It's funny how PhantomStranger asks if they are real studio discs. When using component, the bootlegs would actually upconvert while the studio discs would not. :)

If they were not, you wouldn't need HDMI in the first place. Meaning, that's a good thing. :D

My XA1 upconverted Halloween just fine.

Again, I think TB is correct... Reboot and try again, sounds like a handshake issue to me.