How much would SD broadcasts via Sky HD benefit from an upscaling amp?

[admin_exported]

Hello there! I want to buy an av amp to go with a Pioneer 5090, and hook up Sky HD to it. I am a bit confused about the what the benefits of upscaling SD programmes might be. I only want to spend up to £500 on the amp, and I see the Onkyo 606 and Denon 1909 have upscaling to 1080i and 1080p respectively. But is this upscaling only for analogue inputs, or will they upscale SD via the HDMI? And how much would the picture quality improve? I assume the Pioneer will do a good job of upscaling/cleaning the image anyway?

Thanks for any help! I'm still learning!

 

[Clare Newsome]

With that set-up, the Pioneer's upscaling would do the best job - set the Sky box to 'Auto' and let your 5090 do the rest.

You'd need to move up to video scaling at the level of the best @£1000+ amps to start matching/beating the Pioneer's scaling.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you, Clare, for your very prompt reply! It certainly clears things up for me.

 

[Sorreltiger]

I have Sky+HD and a Pioneer 4280XD set up as Claire suggests. SD is perfectly watchable - 'Spooks' on BBC1 (what a shame it isn't HD) wasn't that far behind upscaled DVD last night.

 

[Anonymous]

Yep what clare says! the scaler in your pio is at the very least as good as the very best upscailing amps