The Plasma TV Blog

Thinking about the purchase of an upconverting DVD player at this time is comparable to thinking about living in Switzerland during World War II. With a major win brewing between Blu-ray and HD-TV, it might be wise to take a wait and see attitude. In the mean time an upconverting DVD player could be a wise choice. Although the issue of larger capacity is not addressed, the quality of the picture you can now squeeze out of your DVD collection onto your new Plasma, LCD, or DLP television can be mind boggling.

The Upconverting DVD works through the use of a processing chip. The standard DVD resolution is 480i. This refers to the fact that the image is interlacing, with 30 frames consisting of 240 horizontal lines are displayed on the screen per second. Because they are interlacing, there is actually space between the horizontal lines. These spaces are not noticeable at all on the older small screen television, but when shown on larger display screens, the flaws in interspacing and smaller resolution produces flicker, and distortion of detail.

The processing chip used in the upconverting DVD player deinterlaces the picture, converting it to progressive scan, and adjusting the resolution to match the unit receiving the signal. While this might sound relatively simple, it is actually very complex, and made more so because of the lack of standard resolution in either the display units and in the video and film that provide the subjects of the DVD. The processing chip must detect and match the resolution as well as performing the de-interlacing.

There are some very good chips that are quite capable of performing this function, but they must be integrated into the DVD unit properly to achieve the desired result. This means that the best way to test an upconverting DVD player is to actually play some of your DVDs on it, and have them displayed on a TV that matches the one you have at home fairly closely. This might mean walking into Walmart with a stack of your personal DVD collection under your arm, but if you do find a compatible unit for use at home, you are going to have some excellent high definition video movies while you wait out the new technology war.