Do I Need an Upconverting DVD Player?

An upconverting DVD player reformats regular DVDs for high definintion TVs, but doesn’t actually improve the resolution.

Standard Definition

A Movie DVD contains compressed video at what we refer to as Standard Definition, 480 lines of resolution. DVDs introduced progressive video, which was an improvement over older interlaced signals. Instead of alternating odd and even lines, progressive video presents every line every time. This results in a smoother picture than older television systems were capable of producing.

High Definition

Television has now moved beyond the limits of standard definition. 720p and 1080p dramatically increase the number of pixels displayed on a screen. Screens can display better images, but the medium that distributes the stuff you want to watch lags behind. DVDs are stuck at Standard Definition.

This isn’t the first time that there has been a lag between the ability of a TV to display a better picture and the lack of a medium to store video. VHS (Video Home System), the most popular form of VCR (Video Cassette Recorder)  could only display 240 lines of resolution. I was recently attending a seminar delivered over the course of several weeks, and each week we watched a DVD. There was a problem with the group who had lent the DVDs, and they needed them back. The organizer managed to borrow an alternate copy, but it was a set of VHS tapes. I was amazed at what a difference it made to go back to the old format. Faces were fuzzy and indistinct. I never had a problem with VHS 15 years ago, but once you get accustomed to something better you realize the difference and going back is painful.

The Contenders Vie for the Crown

DVD has not yet been succeeded by another format. HD-DVD and Blu-ray were two new formats that were meant to replace the DVD. One is now defunct, and the other is struggling to gain traction. There is speculation it will never become popular enough to truly replace DVDs. One reason why Blu-ray struggles is that DVDs are really, really inexpensive. This is partly because those who sell DVDs see the end of the line and are rushing to make all the money they can before the gravy train ends. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because they’re the same people who want to Blu-ray to take off. Making DVDs dirt cheap changes people’s expectations of what a movie should cost, so the movie industry is shooting itself in the foot.

Fortunately, the people behind Blu-ray have announced plans to lower costs for the new format in the near future to kick-start the transition. Let’s hope that happens.

The Conversion Experience

Upconverting DVD players are the other reason Blu-ray hasn’t taken off. Older DVD players didn’t always look all that great on the new high-resolution screens. This is because the screens are so precise. To illustrate, let’s assume that you have a bar with 4 lights on it. The lights flash according to a pattern. If you want to display that same pattern on a bar that has 8 lights, it’s easy because you just double the pattern, and wherever light number 1 was flashing, both 1 and 2 now flash. Wherever light number 2 was flashing, both 3 and 4 flash, and so on. The pattern translates easily, because it’s just double. But, what if there are only 6 lights? Now, you can’t just double the pattern, you need to make choices about which lights will flash when to best represent the original pattern, but you’ll never get a pattern that identically represents the original pattern because the math doesn’t divide evenly.

One of the great ironies of Digital television is that it is so precise, it shows up flaws. Older, analog TVs could fudge an image and come out looking OK. It is important that that you feed a Digital TV a properly formatted signal so that it displays correctly. The better the TV the better a good signal will look and the worse a bad signal will look. It cuts both ways.

An upconverter improves the way your existing DVD collection looks on your big screen TV. An upconverter doesn’t improve the resolution, it still works from 480 lines of resolution because that’s all that’s available on a DVD, but it takes the original image and stretches it smoothly over the larger space, fudging the numbers to keep things looking smooth, despite the fact that the numbers don’t translate evenly.

To understand the difference, imagine a balloon with words written on it. Before the balloon is blown up, the words are small and clear and you can read them. An old DVD player playing on a big screen TV is kind of like stretching the balloon with your hands to try and make it bigger. The image will be uneven. An upscaler or upconverter stretches the image smoothly, like blowing up the balloon. The even pressure causes each part of the image to be smoothly stretched as the balloon increases in size. It’s still the same image, starting small and stretched big. Nothing new has been added. High definition is like printing in a large font on a piece of paper. There’s no need to stretch the paper image, it’s already as large as the words on the balloon when the balloon is blown up, and it’s going to be a clearer and sharper than the stretched balloon. Even if the balloon has been stetched smoothly by blowing it up, there’s only so much ink to spread out, and it won’t be as crisp and clear as the printed page, but will still be better than stretching by hand.

In addition to smoothly stretching the image, an upconverter can output video via an HDMI cable, which is a digital cable. Older DVD Players are only able to output analog video. This means that the digital signal from the DVD gets converted to analog for the cable, then when it reaches a digital television, it gets converted back into digital. The conversion process to and from analog reduces the quality of the video signal. By using a digital cable, an upconverting DVD player maintains the digital quality of the picture from start to finish, resulting in a better picture, as long as your TV can accept HDMI.

So, an upconverting DVD player provides a smoother, clearer image on a big screen TV by stretching the image smoothly and delivering it to the TV in a digital format.