Video Up-Scaling Device: From Dvd Quality To True 1080P Hd

[thanchart]

About 2+ years ago,I visited a large semi-conductor company in USA with a small group and they showed a prototype "Up-scaling" box (powered by their new state-of-the-art processor - to show off the chip's capability), and what that box does was to convert a DVD input to true 1080p output with color compensation. The demo showed 2 sets of equipment playing the same movie at the same time.

• One DVD player connected to this box which in turn output to a 36" (I think) LCD TV and
  
• One Blu-Ray Disc player connected to a similar LCD TV
  

We are asked to guess which TV is playing the "low-res" DVD disc and which is playing the "high-res" Blu-ray disc. Amazingly, all of us got it wrong. The DVD-Upscale box-TV setup was up-scaling the DVD output and compensating for better colors "on the fly" and doing it so well that the output was sharper than the Blu-ray output and colors more natural - as if blue is bluer than blue, green is greener than green and red is redder than red! Even all the noise due to scratches on the DVD disc were gone. Amazing!

Question I have - is such a device now commercially available? And has it morph into converting 720p or lower programs into 1080p on the fly? If anyone has seen it, please let us know. It might almost mean the end of having to live with 720p or lower shows.

[astral]

I have not seen a stand alone box, but my Humax satellite receiver up-scales all channels to 1080

with good results.

[Dork]

Yes a standard bluray or media player will upscale a DVD input and output it at whatever you set (480p, 720p or 1080p) I think the main reason that DVD upscaling improves the perceived image is the outputted signal is 480p (progressive) as opposed to 480i (interlaced), not so much because of increased resolution.

I suspect that the reason you couldn't tell the difference in your demonstration is because a 36" screen is not big enough. Increase the screen size enough and an upscaled DVD image will definitely start getting grainy.

Though I am a sucker for wasting money on the latest stuff, if I am honest I don't think I can really tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on even a 46" or 50" except when they are demonstrated side by side in a shop. I have several identical movies in both resolutions and I have tried watching the same scenes one after the other and I struggle to see the difference on a LCD TV. I also have a 1080p projector with a 3.6 metre wide screen and on that I can see a difference between 720 & 1080 but apart from doing nerdy demonstrations to impress my friends, it hardly makes any difference to watching a movie.

I'm sure many will strongly disagree with me but I think it's a bit like doing blind beer tasting on mainstream brands - most people can't tell.