I know there was a thread on this but I can not find it.
I am looking to take some standard DVDs and rip them to my computer in high def. I know there is upconversion players that can do this but is there any suggestions to do this for a PC?
I have a HDMI port on my laptop that I wish use to display it on my TV so any tips would be great.
Also any suggestions on a cheaper bluray/hd upconversion standalone player?
Have you seen the difference in video quality between a normal DVD player and an upconverting one? I never have, so I’m just asking how close it comes to actual HD.
it doesnt come anywhere near HD, its better but not HD
lol so ur wanting to take a standard dvd and convert it to HD?
good luck, its not going to be HD.
I’m still looking for software that does this myself. If you happen to sumble upon anything, let me know.
there’s a photoshop plugin called genuine fractals that does this through some complex algorithm (it ‘guesses’ what kind of detail it should add), so one can only assume the same technology can be applied to video (probably in the same way they “remaster” old film for DVD/BD)
read all of this, it will help your understanding of what upconversion does.
saving upconverted material is as dumb as taking a 128bps MP3 and fluffing it up to CD quality and saving that.
good TVs do a great job of upconversion already. upconverting DVD players are for people who went cheap on their TV and want to make up for it with their DVD player. At the end of the day all LCD/plasma TVs are only one resolution output and it’s all about how you convert your source to that resolution.
quoted for those too lazy to click:
I’ve been meaning to write this column for a while, but hadn’t been able to pull the trigger until a couple of comments related to HD DVD’s demise–and the apparent rise of upconverting DVD players–raised my ire. Perhaps you’ve noticed that a lot of HD DVD owners have been commenting on how they don’t regret their purchases because once the studios soon stop releasing HD DVDs, they’ll be left with a good upconverting DVD player that didn’t cost them too much. Also, in exiting the format war, Toshiba’s chief executive, Atsutoshi Nishida, suggested that Toshiba would combat Blu-ray by selling upconverting DVD players that cost less than Blu-ray players and are just as good.
The Oppo DV-983H
The Oppo DV-983H
To call Toshiba’s entry-level HD DVD players (the ones that could be bought for $99 or less at the end of HD DVD’s run) “good” is an exaggeration. In our tests, we found them to be mostly average in terms of their upconverting capabilities (the high-end Toshiba HD-XA2, however, is very good). As far as Mr. Nishida’s suggestion goes, while I’ve never been one to oversell the picture quality of Blu-ray or HD DVD, I’ve also never seen an upconverting DVD player that could match the image quality of a high-definition disc player, particularly when you’re outputting to a larger TV.
Clearly, when it comes to upconverting DVD players, there’s plenty of misinformation floating around. With that in mind, I thought it’d be a good idea to sort through some of frequently asked questions I’ve gotten over the last couple of years as these types of players have gone from being high-end enthusiast products to mainstream players.
- Just what does an upconverting player do?
The elevator pitch behind upconverting (or upscaling) DVD players is that they can make your standard-definition DVDs look like they’re in HD–or at least look more HD-like. However, as any critical consumer knows, there’s often a big gap between marketing lingo and reality, especially when you’re talking about using a microchip (or two) and fancy software algorithms to magically turn one thing into something it isn’t.
An upconverting DVD player is designed to do two things well to help enhance picture quality: Deinterlace the incoming source (the DVD) and scale the image “up” to the higher resolution of the TV.
Explaining how deinterlacing works in a complicated affair, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say that an interlaced image (the i in 480i or 1080i stands for interlaced) is made up of odd and even lines of pixels that are alternately scanned or painted onto your television screen. The problem is, most of today’s TVs–including LCD and plasma–are progressive-scan displays, so things can get screwed up in the exchange from DVD player to TV; those screw-ups are exhibited as little tears in the image (jagged edges or jaggies) and dancing pixels. A good upconverting DVD player properly processes those images and creates a smoother picture that can look sharper on your TV.
- Can an upconverting DVD player really make a DVD movie look like a Blu-ray movie?
No. Compare a DVD to a Blu-ray movie on a TV that’s 32 inches or smaller and the differences aren’t huge. However, it’s pretty easy to tell the two apart when you’re watching on a larger set.
The basic issue is that the maximum resolution of DVD is 720x480 while Blu-ray is 1,920x1,080. The Blu-ray image is much larger and made up of more information than the DVD image, which is one reason your typical full-length high-definition movie just doesn’t fit on a DVD disc and requires at least double or triple the storage space (some space is taken up by the audio).
I sometimes tell people it’s similar to megapixels on a camera. If you take a picture that was shot on camera with a low-megapixel count (3 or 4 megapixels) and try to blow up (aka scale) the image to print out at 8x10 or larger, the resulting print can look soft or even fuzzy, no matter what sharpening tools you’re using in Photoshop. (In fact, sometimes the sharpeners make the image look worse.)
We recently set up the highly rated Samsung PN50A550 50-inch plasma next to a Panasonic TH-46PZ80U 46-inch plasma and our Editors’ Choice Pioneer PDP-5080HD 50-inch plasma. We hooked up a top-notch $400 Oppo DV-983H upconverting DVD player to the Samsung and had our PlayStation 3 Blu-ray player outputting video to the other two sets. For the test, we used the DVD and Blu-ray versions of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl and synced them on the TVs so they were virtually on the same frame.
While the DVD version looked great for a DVD, it didn’t measure up to the Blu-ray version. The Blu-ray exhibited significantly more detail and better color-saturation. In close-ups of character’s faces, the differences in detail level and sharpness are smaller, but when you get into any scenes involving big depths of field (such as wide shots with sweeping backgrounds), the DVD images appear soft and less three-dimensional by comparison.
Obviously, as you increase your screen size, the differences will seem even more noticeable. Go to a 58- or 61-inch plasma–or a front projector that takes you into the 100-inch range–and you’ll quickly realize having a high-definition source (Blu-ray) is essential if you’re a stickler for image quality.
- Which has more impact on image quality, my DVD player or my TV?
This is where things get interesting. Here’s the problem: Your TV is also equipped with video-processing chips that deinterlace and scale images. And sometimes, particularly with higher-end sets, the TV’s internal processing does a better job than your DVD player.
There tends to be less variance with scaling (most TVs do it well enough) but some sets are blessed with better deinterlacing skills than others. For instance, you’ll potentially see more of a benefit from letting your basic sub-$80 upconverting DVD player do the video processing if you own more of a budget brand set such as a Vizio or Insignia. However, if you own a higher-end HDTV with good standard-def processing, you’ll want your TV to do the work–unless you have a high-end upconverting player (the Toshiba HD-A2 or HD-A3 HD DVD players don’t qualify–sorry).
- All upconverting DVD players have an HDMI connection. What are the benefits of connecting via HDMI?
Currently, you can only upconvert DVDs via HDMI; upconverting is not supported via component video. While HDMI is an all-digital connection and component video is an analog connection, it’s usually very hard to tell the difference between the two.
In my book, the biggest advantage to connecting via HDMI is the convenience of a having a single cable for both audio and video that hooks up to either your TV or AV receiver. It’s just a cleaner setup. The downside to HDMI is that it’s finicky (random incompatibilities can exist between certain products, although the problem is more acute with cable boxes than anything else) while component video is much more reliable.
- What’s the benefit of spending more on an upconverting DVD player?
I personally wouldn’t spend more than $75 on an upconverting DVD player. In fact, I wouldn’t spend any money at all on a DVD player because the PS3 I own does a decent job of upconverting DVDs, and I now play both my DVDs and Blu-ray discs on my PS3. But that’s just me.
There are plenty of enthusiasts out there who have large DVD collections and care deeply about video quality. They’re the ones who buy something like the aforementioned Oppo DV-983H. It’s a great upconverting DVD player and has a few extra features–such as SACD and DVD-Audio playback–that the vast majority of the world doesn’t care about.
If you’re really serious about DVD quality, you want a DVD player that puts out a raw 480i stream over HDMI that you can send to a $2,000 external video processor. I personally would use all that money to buy a PS3 and replace my favorite DVDs with Blu-ray versions as they come out. But again–to each his own.
- What settings should I have my upconverting DVD player set to?
If you have an HDTV with good video processing, set your upconverting DVD player to 480i (if your TV can accept it) or 480p, and let the TV do the heavy lifting. If your 1080p HDTV isn’t that good, set your upconverting DVD player to 1080p so the TV doesn’t do any processing. If your 720p HDTV isn’t that good, set your upconverting DVD player to 720p, so the TV doesn’t do much processing. The best advice is to experiment and see what combination works best with your gear. There’s no wrong answer–it’s what looks best to you.
- What settings should I use if I have just a standard DVD player and use component?
If you have an HDTV with good video processing, set your DVD player to interlaced (480i) mode. If your HDTV doesn’t have good processing, set your DVD player to progressive (480p) mode. Again, experiment with both if you aren’t sure which to use.
I have seen the difference. On a normal size tv (up to like 42") you can notice a better clarity and picture but obviously its still not close to a actual bluray.
Just my xbox 360 has a poor picture for a dvd on my tv and curious if anyone has a way to rip and rebuild a dvd to a better picture similar to the way the hardware in a upconversion does.
yes, I get that you don’t want the Xbox hardware to upconvert and you don’t want the TV hardware to upconvert, you want your PC software to do this job ahead of time instead of realtime.
no it’s just not a good idea.
I don’t care if its real time or if I need to rip it and reencode it. I just was wondering instead of buying a dvd upconversion player, if I can just rip it to my PC and them play it that way or steam it to my xbox.
but you’re still missing that it ALWAYS gets upconverted… it’s just a matter of who does the upconversion and how good they are at doing it.
it generally never makes sense to upconvert ahead of time and save in the more bloated format.
Isn’t playing a dvd in a normal player over standard RCA jacks just stretch a 480 picture to 1080 while the upconverting does some stuffing in the image to actually make the video 1080 instead of stretching?
what you calling “stretching” is “upconveting”. over the last year or so the quality of how this process is done has a got a LOT better and has really come down in price. the kind of processing that was $1000s a couple years back is now included in $75 DVD players.
any new TV is upconverting the signal unless you got something like a visio (even that might by now). That’s why I quoted the article for you to read.
- Which has more impact on image quality, my DVD player or my TV?
This is where things get interesting. Here’s the problem: Your TV is also equipped with video-processing chips that deinterlace and scale images. And sometimes, particularly with higher-end sets, the TV’s internal processing does a better job than your DVD player.
There tends to be less variance with scaling (most TVs do it well enough) but some sets are blessed with better deinterlacing skills than others. For instance, you’ll potentially see more of a benefit from letting your basic sub-$80 upconverting DVD player do the video processing if you own more of a budget brand set such as a Vizio or Insignia. However, if you own a higher-end HDTV with good standard-def processing, you’ll want your TV to do the work–unless you have a high-end upconverting player (the Toshiba HD-A2 or HD-A3 HD DVD players don’t qualify–sorry).
make sure you get a good upconverting chip
Faroudja DCDI is ok and Silicon Optix Realta HQV video processor is top of the line.
You are getting what you pay for as far as upconverters go.
Ya I have the new vizio 120hz 1080p tv so I am looking to try another player to offset the processing and see if it looks better.
Also debating just getting the Sony BluRay player with HD upconversion in it.
or a PS3 
I was impressed with how it upconverted a 700mb rip of topgear onto a >100" screen (high end 1080p projector).
you could rip them without compression onto your PC or mac and then stream them to the PS3 which would upconvert.
I would never play a PS3 game. I own a 360 elite which i prefer
I’m not even advocating that you buy any games… I’m suggesting you buy one of the best affordable blu ray players that happens to take a variety of sources such as mpeg / avi and also happens to play games.
I’m REALLY, really happy with my Oppo 981. And as the article mentioned, part of this is due to the DVD-A, and SACD playback capabilities. Once you listen to a well-produced SACD (Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms for example), everything else sounds like you’re listening to it underwater.
Well a Sony BluRay player is 249.99 http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Sony-BDPS350-Blu-ray-Disc-Player-BDPS350/sem/rpsm/oid/217061/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do
and a basic PS3 is 399.99 so I am going to go with the BluRay since all I want it for is the DVD/BluRay and I will use my 360 to stream media.
that will work. if you’re just wanting a player prices should be in freefall soon.
I thought there were ways to get the PS3 for in the 200s… I wonder how long before it’s $199 and that DVD player is $99…