Upscaling DVDs via Apple TV

[Swiss PAB]

My DVD player upscales DVDs to HD quality. But I want to eliminate my DVD and just use Apple TV. How do I import my DVDs into my iTunes so that when I play these movies via Apple TV they are upscaled to HD quality? Thank you.

 

[blueroom]

Handbrake.

 

[Julien]

My DVD player upscales DVDs to HD quality.....upscaled to HD quality? Thank you.

Actually it's upscale to HD resolution and not quality. You can't make a SD picture to HD quality since it doesn't contain the information.

 

[cardsdoc]

SD content is always upscaled to HD when played on an HDTV (only exception is old HD CRT TV's but hardly anyone uses those anymore). The quality of the upsacle just depends on what device is doing the upscaling. If your Apple TV is set at 1080p the it is doing the upsacaling. If it's set at 480p then your TV is doing the upscaling. Not sure how the apple tv upscaler compares to most DVD players or TV's but SD content from ripped DVD's on my 1080p plasma look pretty good. As mentioned you will not really be getting HD quality.

 

[Boyd01]

I have ripped over 400 DVD movies in Handbrake using the default settings and they look surprisingly good on my 46" Sony and Apple TV. There are a few scenes - mostly really dark ones - that don't always come across so well. I may rip those DVD's again and try higher quality settings. But for the most part, I have been very impressed and the typical movie only takes between 1 and 2 gb.

I also have a blu-ray player and a bunch of disks. They definitely look better, but it depends on the subject material. I'd be wiling to bet that many people wouldn't even notice the difference during casual viewing.

I've never owned one of those upscaling players, but would guess one advantage they have over regular DVD players would be an HDMI interface that preserves the full digital quality of the disk instead of converting to/from analog (such as component video or s-video). Of course, the Apple TV also uses an HDMI interface.