I saw that the MacBook Pros have an LED screen that does 1920 x 1200, and got the idea that viewing HD was a possibility (iTunes or something perhaps?). Now I understand that there are no Blu-ray drives (yet), but what I was wondering was if the MacBook Pro was capable of upconverting DVDs into HD resolutions like those off-the-shelf upconvertering DVD players you see at the store? I was planning, when watching the movie on a larger screen, or still on the smaller one (though can one enjoy HD quality on a 17 inch screen?).
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Upconversion of DVDs into HD res with OSX
- Thread starter johnnyvenom
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all those upscaling dvd players do is stretch the image up to 1920x1080.so essentially you still get the same picture, just stretched.
this is good because on older non upscaling dvd players, when watching using a full HD tv, youd get black bars around the picture.
on macbook pro, all youd have to do is drag and stretch.
this is good because on older non upscaling dvd players, when watching using a full HD tv, youd get black bars around the picture.
on macbook pro, all youd have to do is drag and stretch.
also, its more a gfx card problem with br you can always use external drives or replacements but br uses a Lot of drm and you need a chip on the gfx card and still can't do things like output it to a tv.
Totally incorrect.
1. On non-CRT HDTVs (both the 1080- and 720-line varieties), upscaling to native resolution has to happen no matter what when displaying SD DVD, whether that process occurs in the player or the TV itself. The whole idea behind "upscaling" DVD players is that in theory the video processing in such a player will do a better job of upscaling the image (i.e. less video artifacts) than the TV's internal processor can. In practice, this isn't always the case, especially on higher-end TVs. This is why companies like Denon can still get away with selling a high-end SD DVD player for $700+ in market where you can buy an inferior upscaling player for under $100. Upscaling is the biggest marketing buzzword on DVD players since progressive scan. Some of the best DVD players ever made (the Denon DVD-2900 is a great example) didn't do internal upscaling at all and they still look better than most of the junky $60 upscaling players that have flooded the market. There's a lot of other factors that go into making a good DVD player, like color accuracy and 3:2 pulldown performance.
2. Black letterbox bars will happen on ANY widescreen program that isn't formatted to 1.78:1 (16:9) on a 16:9 HDTV, no matter what DVD player is in use. 16:9 is a BROADCAST standard, not a film standard. In fact, the majority of commercial films are formated for Academy ratio, which is 1.85:1 and thus, you'll see minimal black bars, even on your 16:9 TV. On Cinemascope/Panavision format (2.35:1) films, the black bars are obviously thicker. If you stretch a commercial widescreen film to fill the entire screen of a TV or computer (the high-res 17" MBP is actually a 16:10 ratio screen), you're either stretching the image out of its original ratio or part of the picture gets cropped. With that being said, black bars are not necessarily a bad thing. If the DVD is formatted for anamorphic, all of the resolution present in the film will get unsqueezed into the picture area, optimizing image quality. In non-anamorphic titles, black bars get outputted as part of the picture information, leaving less resolution in the viewable frame.
To the OP:
You'll never get HD out of an SD DVD. In fact, it'll always look worse on a high-resolution display than it does on a normal SDTV. In fact, full HD has over 6 times the resolution of a DVD. Upscaling adds additional picture information that didn't exist in the original signal so that you aren't watching your SD material in a little box in the center of the screen. With that being said, the MBPs do a pretty decent job at upscaling. After all, we're only talking about a 15- or 17-inch screen here. These problems become much more noticeable on large 50-inch+ TVs.
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non upscaling dvd players output at 576.....upscaling at 1080.
on non upscaling players, the tv will read 576 and display 576, on the middle of the screen.leaving black bars all around.
unless you upscale using tv, but that sucks because often the picture will get cropped..and consequently sometimes subtitles will get cut out
upscaling dvd players outputs the picture in 1080 so that the tv wont have to upscale.which means less messy, no picture getting cropped,or subtitles..
non upscaling dvd players output at 576.....upscaling at 1080.
on non upscaling players, the tv will read 576 and display 576, on the middle of the screen.leaving black bars all around.
unless you upscale using tv, but that sucks because often the picture will get cropped..and consequently sometimes subtitles will get cut out
upscaling dvd players outputs the picture in 1080 so that the tv wont have to upscale.which means less messy, no picture getting cropped,or subtitles..
Tell me about it. I have an old Pioneer Elite DVD player and it blows away most of the cheap "upscaling" DVD players at 480p. It actually rivals some of the not-so-well-mastered high-def discs I have...
Did you even read my post? It's become exceedingly obvious that you haven't. ALL fixed-pixel HDTVs (basically, anything that's not a CRT) have to scale an image that isn't received at native resolution. The black bars you get at the top and bottom of the screen have 100% NOTHING to do with scaling and everything to do with the aspect ratio of the program. You should probably know what you're talking about before you post because you're spreading misinformation. There should be zero difference in how an image actually gets formatted on the screen with either type of player. All I can say is check your TV settings if you're getting black bars all around the image instead of at the top and bottom, because that's not normal at all.
Now, whether the upscaling player makes a noticeable difference in overall image quality is another debate entirely...