Forum - View topicThe deal with 'Upscaling'?
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Mr Adventure
 Posts: 1598 |
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Just a question about compairing video quality between standard-def shows that have either been upscaled for a blu-ray release or a show on DVD that is being upscaled by your player. For example, a show like Samurai 7 or Samurai Champloo, does the Blu-Ray release look noticibly different/better then the DVD release played on an upscaling DVD player?
I'm just curious as to what exacly 'upscaling' actually means between these two ways of doing it. |
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albert35077
 Posts: 36 Location: Hanceville, Al |
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To my understanding. A Blu-Ray player will Improve the quality of standard dvd's but I dont believe that it is anywhere near the picture quality of an actual Blu-Ray
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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That is a good question Mr Adventure. I know that upscales are never as good as a born-and-bred Blu-Ray release, but I've never wondered (until now) about how the two different types of upscale compare. Although; both ways require a Blu-Ray player anyway, so I would think (and this is my completely uninformed opinion) that the Blu-Ray release would be superior to the DVD release played on a Blu-Ray player.
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ShinobiX
 Posts: 889 Location: NY |
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Um I m not sure what you're saying but here goes:
Blu-ray is the best thing on the market now. If you want an imax theatre experience get blu-ray. Upscaling regular dvds produces a good picture except the colors are more dull, pay little attention to detail, at times blurry (background), etc. Upscaling is about resolution and pixels: All standard dvds are 480. Upscaling "stretches" it out to 720 or 1080 so it can play on or HDTV. Those are HD pixels. Personally, with anime this shit doesn't matter. They all look the same plus I'm not really a fan of most of the "new" HD anime. The characters look like they were cut out of a cardboard box. The lines are so visible. They stand out. Idk that's just me. |
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hissatsu01
 Posts: 963 Location: NYC |
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First things first - no upscaling, whether done by your player or an upscaled blu-ray release, will ever match decent looking, actual HD video, but it can improve a bit on DVD quality. There's also the matter of many of Funimation's older DVD releases looking terrible, so a new upscaled blu-ray release might look better just because the old release was so bad. When playing a DVD, the quality of the upscaling depends entirely on your player, and that can quality can vary a lot depending on the model. Oppo players and the PS3 are known for having very good upscaling. Chances are a $99 dollar blu-ray player won't have very good upscaling. Blu-ray upscales, such as most of Funimation's blu-rays so far have the potential to look at least somewhat better than than the DVD, but the controversy has mainly been about the way Funimation has been doing their upscales, and the fact that they don't label their releases as upscales so you know what you're getting. Most of Funimation's upscales so far have used noise reduction and edge enhancement to make the video look more "HD," but this doesn't add any detail and can actually remove/blur detail. The examples you give are totally different from one another. Funimation's Samurai 7 blu-ray set is HD, not an upscale, and it's the best looking release of the show that exists. While not perfect, it looks far better than the DVDs. Meanwhile, Samurai Champloo is an upscale, and they went way overboard with noise reduction. It actually has less detail than the original Geneon DVDs. It might look sharper or crisper to people because of the edge enhancement, but as far as I'm concerned the video is a downgrade from the DVDs, though the audio is an improvement. |
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The Naked Beast
 Posts: 1028 Location: A Blue Planet |
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I have only seen one of my anime DVDs on a Blu-ray player (my first generation PlayStation 3). I can say for sure that Sgt. Frog looks better played on my PlayStation 3 while connected via a HDMI cable to a 1080p outputting HDTV.
I am not exactly sure how it converts a 480i standard definition (SD) signal into a HD signal. Maybe this Wikipedia article might answer your question about upscaling? On another note, I have seen a Blu-ray movie on a SDTV. The PlayStation 3 comes with a proprietary RCA cable which lets me watch the Blu-ray movies I have. I watched Iron Man this way and I can also say for sure that it looks better than a DVD version of same said movie. However, it did not look its best as it is downscaled to fit the a 1920x1080 HD signal onto a 480i SDTV I was using to watch the movie. |
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staticlag
Posts: 5 |
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Upscaling introduces blank spaces between the pixels when it enlarges each frame to the larger size. A computer program looks at the surrounding colors and guesses what colors to put into the new blank spaces.
For player upscaling, typically a good player will do a better job at this, as it has a lot to do with processor speed and the algorithms both of which aren't cheap. For retail upscales, its basically the same thing except they just burn a HD disc of the new conversion. For anime this is actually pretty easy to upscale as long as your source doesn't have a lot of noise in it. |
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Koast
Posts: 36 |
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Probably an improve in quality, but you'd only notice a difference on a HD tv. Other than that to make money of course..! I mean, I'm sure people would be satisfied with regular DVD format.. but if they can release something new and better to make more money then that's another reason..
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Mr Adventure
Posts: 1598 |
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Legit High-Def picture on Blu-ray so blows standard-def DVDs out out of the water I am proud to pay the extra 5 buck (on average) cost of buying the Blu-ray. There is more to Blu-ray then companies trying to shill you for a few more bucks. Its a legit upgrade with practical benefits, worth every penny IMO. And anime in native High-Def is so damn gorgeous too. Thank you hissatsu01, you seem to have figured out what I was talking about and explained the situation fairly well. Seems like its all case by case, but things like DNR and Edge Enhancement can actually make a show look worse. But, the 'Upscaling' part is essentially the same. And interesting news about Samurai 7 being native HD. With the age of the show I thought for sure it had just missed the HD era by a hair. I might reevaluate picking it up then. |
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Koast
Posts: 36 |
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I'm not gonna argue that it won't look wonderful, I'm just saying.. right now, I don't have the money to buy the tv OR the player to see it
 I'm glad though they're backward compatible atleast so I don't have to go and repurchase all of my titles again..
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Annf
Posts: 578 |
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The main point of Blu-ray for standard-def material is the higher bitrate (48Mbps), which allows for compression-noise free video on scenes that DVD (9Mbps) can't handle properly, such as starfields, complex explosions, particle effects, shattering glass, multiple moving scenes scrolling over each other, 5 million mascot character clones bouncing around the screen, etc. Anything with lots of bits moving around the screen at the same time. (The other point is lossless audio.)
A show with mostly talking heads won't benefit much, but some SD-resolution shows are significantly improved on the BD release due to the bitrate. One striking example I saw was the BD release of Eureka 7, where the Trapar particles and explosions had compression artifacts on the DVD version but were clear on the BD version. And one that just came out recently is Mai-Otome: the ending starfield animation on DVD was covered in compression artifact fuzz, but the BD version is clear. The theoretical advantages are moot in the face of the actual results though--it's quite possible to produce low-quality BDs. You'll want to check reports on the actual quality of individual BD releases you're interested in. |
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hissatsu01
Posts: 963 Location: NYC |
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It was the first show Gonzo did in HD. They made a bit of a buzz about that.
FYI, both the My Otome and My HiME blu-rays are not upscales. They may be a few years old and in 4:3, but they're both actual HD. |
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Annf
Posts: 578 |
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2ch and the Anime Production Wiki peg them as digital SD productions, which makes sense for the time period they were made in. Were they an early digital HD production? Reducing the screen caps to 853x480 and then re-sizing them back to 1920x1080 produces a barely perceptible difference. I suppose it's possible they're like Macross F-level resolution with some kind of softening filter. (Not sure the best place to re-host 1920x1080 PNGs, but you have the BDs anyway, so I guess I don't need to for your sake.  )
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hissatsu01
Posts: 963 Location: NYC |
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Apparently so. Even the trailers showing the early version of Mai-Hime on the extras disc don't look like upscales. I don't know what to say about those links you posted except that I think they're wrong. I think a lot of it is assumptions based on age. I know I expected it to be an upscale based on its age, so it was a pleasant surprise. Though shows like GiTS SAC and 12 Kingdoms are older and both are HD.
It definitely wasn't animated in 1920x1080, but even today very little I know of is, except maybe some movies. The detail level varies from scene to scene, but the difference is very noticeable in with the CG stuff. To me the detail level looks about the same as the Code Geass blu-rays (which are known to be kind of soft looking), which kind of makes sense since it's the same studio. I've heard rumors some shows were animated (and still are animated) in 960x540, so maybe it's something like that. Whatever it is, it looks far better than any confirmed upscale I've ever seen. Other shows that are known to be upscales, even those released by Bandai Visual (like Yukikaze and Diebuster), look much softer.
I'd love to post comparison pics of identical scenes, but I don't have a blu-ray drive in my pc, and sold off the DVDs. |
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