Thanks for the info, Larry Larry. I admit to being a techno dummy. I did a little research after reading your post. If I can find explanations in pretty plain English, I can understand it, but if it gets too technical, they'll lose me fast. I think what I've been watching is Enhanced Definition (ED) & I assumed it was HD. Thanks for inspiring me to get a little more educated about it.
DVDs are 480i or 480p, depending on DVD. Usually concert DVDs and some TV shows are 480i. Most movies on DVD are 480p. A regular DVD player hooked up with the regular red, white and yellow cables isn't going to do any good to your HDTV. In fact, the picture will look worse than it does on a regular tube SDTV.
The are three kinds of DVD players:
1)
The older legacy DVD Player that I just mentioned with the red, white and yellow ports on the back. Like I said, this is not very good for your HDTV.
2)
A Progressive Scan DVD player. These have Component ports on the back of the unit, i.e. it has the red, blue and green video ports on the back. This will output the video as 480p, aka Enhanced Definition. Depending on your HDTV, these should look good on an HDTV. The reason why I say "depending" is because each TV's upscaler varies in quality. If your TV has a good upscaler built in, your picture should look good.
3)
An Upscaling DVD Player. These DVD players have Component and HDMI ports in the back of the unit. The player will upscale the DVD content and output it as 720p, 1080i, or 1080p, whichever you prefer.
But first let me say that DVDs are 480i or 480p and there's nothing you can do to magically change that to HD. What the upscalers do is make mathematical guesses and fills in some detail in the picture that was never there. This will give you a sharper picture. But again, that extra detail is all mathematical guesses. With Blu-ray, the extra detail is actually there.
Some players and TVs do upscaling better than others. The picture can range from excellent to total crap. The best upscaling DVD players are the Oppo ones but they are ridiculously overpriced. There are some cheap Sony DVD players that do a decent job upscaling.
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