Upscaling - does it work?

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frozen001

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#30521 11-Feb-2009 13:33

Note that a few Satellite receivers promote upscaling of the signal to 720p 1080 etc - just wondering what others experience is here

esp with upscaling to 720p with a 720p TV such as a Samsung 42 in plasma 410 model.

my receiver that I bought but not delivered is a Topfield TF5050CI with upscaling - have I wasted my money or not?

Any tricks or tips?

Thanks - Lance

Jaxson

8172 posts

Uber Geek
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Trusted

#195319 11-Feb-2009 14:28

Upscaling and downscaling abilities are built into nearly every TV. If you feed your 720P TV a standard resolution signal, like DVD at 576i for instance, then it must be scaled or it wouldn't display on your TV. At some stage the signal gets massaged from 576 to 720, the native resolution of your TV.

Where the catch is, is that this could be a simple process, or a clever one. Everything is a grid these days, with so many pixels. When you up scale, you have to guess at what goes in the empty pixel spaces. You can get clever and look for edges etc to try and make a good effort at guessing what should go in the gap, or you can just look to the left and copy that colour again etc. This is why low res content displayed on HD tv's can look crap and blocky.

to some degree you get what you pay for, so a good upscaler should give a better signal than say your TV alone, but essentially the low res signal would still be displayed on the TV even if no upscaling had been done to it, as the TV would upscale it itself. Topfield is a good brand though, so you should get a good picture.

Deev8

481 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#195339 11-Feb-2009 16:43

frozen001: Note that a few Satellite receivers promote upscaling of the signal to 720p 1080 etc - just wondering what others experience is here

Just keep in mind that upscaling can't add detail that isn't there to start off with.

It's a bit like printing a digital photograph - you can print the same photo in a number of diferent sizes, but all the prints contain the same amount of detail, and the bigger prints make it easier to see the 'fuzziness' of the image.