Upscaling AV Amplifier

[admin_exported]

Hi all,

I have a fairly poor Satellite receiver which unfortunately only outputs composite to my Plasma TV. Whilst watching football (or for that matter anything) from the box the picture quality is not at all good. I have read that there are upscaling AV amplifiers/receivers that can convert a 576 analogue signal up to 1080p. Does anyone have an opinion on how good my picture might be if I purchased one of these amplifiers and are there any recommendations?

I know that the term 'garbage in/garbage out' is generally accurate, but just how good are these processors these days? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Graham

 

[VoodooDoctor]

From my experience they're good at upscaling. However, upscaling a Composite signal (regarded as the lowest quality) may not be worthwhile. Have you looked at taking the plunge with Sky HD?

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply.

I actually have a S-Video connection as well. Maybe this would be better to upscale. Do you think this would be a better picture, or am I being too hopeful. Sky HD is something for the future, but right now, I can't. i have seen it though. My father has it and it is very good.

Graham

 

[Anonymous]

Graham, you would definitely be better off using the S-Video connection to not only plug into an upscaling amp, but also to plug directly into your tv right now, so you get better results straight away, before you go and buy an outboard upscaler in the form of an av amp. The improvements will only be small though, and you are right that to get a substantial improvement in picture quality, then an outboard scaler such as an av amp is the way to go.

The thing is, to get a really high quality scaler, is not going to be cheap in itself - probably quite a lot more than to simply replace the offending source ie the satellite box. Onkyo's £1000 av receiver is superb value for money as it has really top-notch video processing - HQV (Hollywood Quality Video), which is a proffesional de-interlacing and scaling system that is considered the best on the market. For the lower price of £400, there is another Onkyo receiver with the also top-notch but not as good, Farouja / DCDi video processing system which will also do a really good job getting a clean, stable, progressive, upscaled image to be enjoyed via your plasma.

You could go cheaper than this, but remember that you are already watching upscaled pictures as your tv is scaling the content that is being input from your sat. box. The whole point of using an outboard scaling system is for it to offer better upscaling than the scaling that your tv already offers. For this reason, it defeats the object to get a cheap scaler - it may be worse than the one built into the tv.

So, to get a good scaler then you are looking at paying at least £400, for that Onkyo amp (which has a brilliant price considering what's included). However, if you have £400 then you could buy a Sky HD box for less - at £299.

 

[Anonymous]

Benjamin,

Thanks very much for that very detailed answer to my question. The problem I have is that this system is in Spain, and it is very difficult to get Sky HD over there. There are problems with the size of dish required basically. So, my property over there just has a simple system which has the 2 outputs I have mentioned. I know that S-Video will be better and when I go over to Spain next I will reconnect the S-Video to the plasma and see if it improves the picture much. However, if I put the S-Video connection into the £400 Onkyo amp and let it upscale I take it I will get a better picture. If I put the S-Video connection into the £1000 Onkyo amp I guess I'll get an even better picture. I suppose my next question is:

Does the £1000 amp produce 2.5 times a better picture than the £400 amp?

Also, my current amp is the old (but still awesomely powerful) Yamaha DSPA1. Will the £400 amp sound bad after what I'm used to, and even will the £1000 amp sound worse or have things improved so much that I will be surprised by either of these amps? I take it we are talking Onkyo 605 and 875. Any thoughts on the Yamaha RXV1800 (I really like the sound of Yamaha) and its ability to upscale pictures too.

Regards

Graham

 

[Anonymous]

Your problem's not just with upscaling, I'm afraid. Digital doesn't neccessarily mean better. They've done a great marketing job, but the bottom line is that Digital is great for the broadcaster but not so good for the consumer. There's only so many Bits Sky can throw at their encoded pictures for transmission. Fast moving pictures and solid colours need a lot of Bits to make them look acceptable and so when you've got a lot of sport (fast pans, lots of green) on at the same time, or at the same time as action movies or the Grand Prix or whatever, then picture quality plummets.
Yes, you can upscale the picture, but you can only upscale what's being sent out for you.
I suspect being in Spain won't help either as you are on the edge of the footprint and signal strength will be weaker.