Can I "upconvert" video that's not on a (DVD) disc?

[zjohnr]

I'm trying to nibble my way through MultiMedia player reviews. Today one link lead to another and eventually I was looking at this old NYTimes article.
Blu-ray: The Future Has Been Delayed By Eric A. Taub (April 30, 2008) (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/blu-ray-the-future-has-been-delayed/)
The end of the format wars clearly did little to boost Blu-ray’s prospects. Like others, Mr. Rubin said the much cheaper upconverting standard DVD players are winning consumers’ hearts and wallets.Which caused me to "hmmmmmmmmmmmmm" to myself. If everyone else is seeing (sorta) great video quality from their DVDs, why not me? Well, obviously it's because I view my DVDs on a PC.

At the moment the only way I know of do upconverting would be to
Buy a "up-converting" DVD player
If the video is not already on a DVD disc, then burn it to disc.
Play that DVD disc in the up-converting player.

Is it possible to up-convert (DVD) video when it's played back on a PC? How about other video formats?

Or an alternate question, do any of the media player devices which play/stream video from a storage device/server also do up-converting?

Just trying to get a feel for what's out there. As I said in another post, things seem to be changing faster in this area recently ...

-irrational john

[Osamede]

A media player such as a Popcorn Hour will output the video at whatever resolution you want. But so will your TV or projector anyway, so "upconversion" is baked in in any case. I wouldnt worry too much about this.

[zjohnr]

A media player such as a Popcorn Hour will output the video at whatever resolution you want. But so will your TV or projector anyway, so "upconversion" is baked in in any case. I wouldnt worry too much about this.

Maybe I'm not understanding this, but I assumed that "upconversion" involved something more than just displaying the same video in a different resolution. I thought tricks were done with interpolating "extra" lines, possibly other stuff.

If all that was being done was showing the same video on a larger display, then the "quality" would not be any better. In fact, it would look worse, wouldn't it?

-irrational john

[Osamede]

Sure it is but the range of quality differences is small and in any case your display devices is still best suited to know exactly what output it needs.

Lets put it this way: I have an Oppo 980H DVD player and an Infocus In78 projector at home. If there is a difference between the Oppo upscaling the video to 720P and the Infocus taking a 576P PAL feed from the Oppo and upscaling the video itself, I am hard pressed to identify that difference. With the Popcorn hour instead. I can see some differences in some videos but overall its still marginal.

Therefore I'd say upscaling DVD player is more relevent when you are dealing with the really cheap display device like a low end LCD TV or something where they are cutting corners in hidden ways to reach a price point. In such a case sure the onbaord upscaling is likely to be poor and need external help. But really it shouldnt.

[mgraves]

If you're watching DVDs on your PC you are in fact "upconverting" when you put your media player application into full screen mode.

OTOH, I have a 42" Sharp Aquos LCD-TV that has a native 1080 panel. I have a TivoHD and Toshiba HD-DVD as source material.

I compared letting the TV upconvert 525i (SD) channels from the cable TV vs having the TivoHD perform the scaling. The TivoHD did a better job.

Similarly, the HD-DVD player did a better job scaling 525 DVDs to 1080i.

Michael

[Glen_S]

FWIW I have an o!play and wdtv live media player, I am pleasantly surprised how well it plays SD on my 50" 720p plasma, ISO's and video_ts folders from dvd rips show up unbelievably clear, way clearer than from my set-top dvd player (which is non-upscaling) played the same files

Even downloaded 700mb divx and xvid are very sharp and clear, and some mp4's are near blu-ray quality.

I haven't tried the SD dvd's in my blu-ray player yet to compare though.

I think the media players must do some native upconverting somehow, I was watching King Kong (from ISO file on O!Play) the other night and it looked better than most of the high-def broadcast I get (Starchoice satellite)

hth

[FireWire]

You can use mediacoder to resize to 720p, it will improve a little bit and play these files with EP6000B or M6500A or even HDMAX BD200C (a universal HD player) it will up convert to 1080p even

Try it you will see

to convert DVD or BD follow these simple steps:
- Rip disc
- convert video to mp4 (change resolution, size and other)
- mux audio and video back to MKV container

PM me if you want more detail