Xbmc Upscaling - Is Mine Working? :uhh: Options

[scaramanga07]

Ive recently gone through a hell of a lot of trouble to get my XBMC back downstairs and outputting HD so i can enjoy the benefits of DVD upscaling on my new 37" LCD. Only thing is i cant tell if its actually working or not and if it is it isnt all that good....

I bought the best component cables money can buy (the monster ones) and have XMBC and the DVD output set to 720p. Ive compared the video to a standard DVD player (and a cheap one at that!) and i really cant tell the difference. I expected a lot more.

Is there anyway i might have upscaling disabled? Im running 2.0.1 for t3ch xmbc...

[scaramanga07]

ok, i did the info thingy on my LCD TV and it is outputting at 1280x720... Just dosent look THAT much different. I used the R1 version of fightclub to test it. Didnt look much different at 1080i either.

[mike315]

Upscaling a dvd(480p) to any HD format(720p or 1080i) will likely look the same across the board. You should notice a bit of difference between normal 480p and HD, but not that much. You have to check into the fact that depending on your LCD and how you have it setup, it just might be upscaling whatever it receives to 1080p for you.

I haven't noticed any big differences between 720p and 1080i upscaling with a 480p dvd signal. At least not with the xbox. I honestly prefer 480p via my sony dvd player to my 42" lcd. The dvd player gives a much less grainy picture than xbmc for some reason. Haven't delved into any heavy tweaking with that though...

Now when playing xvid's that are HDTV and upscaling to 720p, it looks awesome. Seems like the upscaler is much more robust when it comes to that.

BTW: Don't spend tons on cables trying to correct your picture issues...they are usually a waste of money. Walmart has philips component and hdmi cables for pretty cheap compared to bestbuy and circuit city.

[cjnic]

You've got to remember that your LCD screen is also de-interlacing and scaling the image to it's native resolution.
If your LCD has better scaling and de-interlacing than what is in XBMC then you more than likely won't see much difference.

As an example I get better DVD playback with XBMC video set at NTSC - 16:9 because that means my Epson projector is doing all the scaling & de-interlacing.

For us UK users the best of both worlds would be to get a PAL interlaced or progressive signal (576i or p) for video playback while still being able to upscale the interface to 720p but I assume having to mod the box to NTSC to enable the HD modes in the first place means that is a no-no.

This post has been edited by cjnic: Feb 1 2007, 10:20 AM