Upsampling Continued…

The other argument for upsampling

Manufacturers realize the scanline phenomenon and so some TVs will double the 480p signal to 960p lines of resolution. Plasma, LCD, or DLP TV's are fixed array screens and MUST do this. Does this mean that upsampling is useless for these TVs? The answer is still no. PCs can offer a higher quality upsample.

In the first example, I did a simple line double. Instead of leaving the black space, I copied the line directly above it. In real-life, upsampling incorporates more advanced algorithms. Unsurprisingly, PC video cards are among the best scalers because they are developed with the mindset that people sit only a foot or two from a monitor. If I gave a school child this picture interlaced close up and asked him to figure out the pattern, he'd be able to fill in the blanks and "guess" what could have been present in the image. Video cards with good multi-tap scalers are able to do the same thing and maximize the resolution possible. In the future, we'll probably see more DVD players and TVs incorporating PC-like graphics processing.

You can guess what the missing data is

A high-quality DVD upsample

Here are a few more examples of real images. Make sure you open up the images at full resolution. Since the scanlines cast a darker appearance to the images, I have corrected the simulated native DVD images for balanced color saturation and contrast as best as possible.

DVD source

HDTV source

DVD source displayed natively

DVD upsampled

HDTV source

No line doubling

Standard Line Double

Enhanced Line Double

Security

The final advantage is security -- not security against hackers, but security in your purchase. DVD upsampling is available in commercial players from Samsung, V Inc., and LG, however due to piracy concerns, these features are only possible on the DVI outputs, making them ill suited for many HDTV/HDTV-ready displays on the market. Second, some DVDs have additional copy protection which will prevent upsampling on these machines. With a PC, it is much easier to circumvent these restrictions, especially when dealing with analog outputs such as component video. This allows you to get the best quality out of your equipment, although without question, circumventing these restrictions for piracy is illegal.