CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

slug · Joined: 18 Apr 2010 Posts: 3

Interested in upscaling 720x480 to 1440x960 on a 1080P set. I need that image to stay @ 1440x960, and not stretch to fit the display. Is such a device tangible?

My thoughts - If each pixel is converted to a "larger 2x2 pixel" (8x8 upscaling, if I'm not mistaken?), the picture would be ideal and still cover roughly ~88% of the display.

Forgive my naivety -- it's why I'm here.

slug

slug · Joined: 18 Apr 2010 Posts: 3

Since there are no replys yet, let me rephrase my question:

Does anyone know how to upconvert a 720x480 source to a 1920x1080 signal but leave the picture as a centered 1440x960 image?

TIA,

slug

**ecrabb** · Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2010 9:27 pm Post subject:

What you're talking about is a scaler that can scale 720x480 to 1440x960, then matte that out to 1920x1080 with black matting on all four sides. Good question. I don't know if there's a scaler that can do that or not. Hmm...

Have you tried it, yet? I think you might be surprised to find out that your idea probably won't look as good as you'd think it would in your mind's eye, and that you'd be surprised at how good a decent scaler would look even if the pixels are "molested". Why get so wrapped up about perfect pixel scaling/reproduction when practically any TV you might have been using before was "molesting" the pixels, too. 480i had combing and scan lines, the scan lines didn't touch, color decoders had bleed... Unless you were using an über-high-end studio monitor, the scaler in a good modern 1080p display will reveal far more of the picture than you ever saw using any older CRT TV. It would be on thing if your classic gaming consoles had a digital output, and you were scaling in the digital domain, but you're starting with a low-res analog output, anyway.

If you wanted to take it up a notch from there, you could use an outboard scaler like a used Lumagen for a few hundred bucks that would be more than adequate. Might want to double-check on that though because if it's for gaming, I've heard some scalers and introduce a slight delay that makes gaming difficult.

SC

Cube · Joined: 06 Dec 2009 Posts: 77 Location: IL, USA

I got a Chinese product called HD Box Pro on eBay for about $30. It transcodes YPbPr to RGB VGA, deinterlaces, and upscales to a resolution you choose. I think mine has 1440x900 but not 1440x960, but anyway, it looks good with 480i/p video games. There's no noticeable lag either on the default settings, although if you crank up the motion compensation/temporal smoothing things get blurry and laggy. For what I paid I think it's great. If you're interested there are knockoffs called Hi-Box or something that are supposed to be just as good.

Cube · Joined: 06 Dec 2009 Posts: 77 Location: IL, USA

I should add, if you want to leave the input signal centered/framed with black so you don't get any additional scaling from your TV, just choose a set that offers a "1:1" or "actual pixels" aspect ratio option. I've seen it on mid-higher end models and some monitors. You could also buy a YPbPr video capture card for a PC and set up the scaling exactly how you want, but that's going to be the most expensive option.

jantje112 · Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 314

I think the idea is nice (I used to scale to 960p for laserdisc also) and on a crt projector it's easy to do.

But my personal tought is that it's more anoying to watch an almost full screen (1:1 pixelmapping should do the trick) then the ful 1080p scaling. Dont forget that the modern scalers will do a terrific job upscaling to 1080p and you probably won't see much difference in quality