Playing Standard DVDs Through A 4K Disc Player

[Judge]

Just wondering. I know playing a DVD in a Blu-Ray player on a 4K resolution tv tends to result in an inferior picture.

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However...I've seen a small number of articles that imply that playing a standard DVD through a 4K player can essentially "double upconvert" the picture quality. Making it better than seen through just a Blu-Ray disc player.

Has anyone here used such a 4k Player on a standard DVD who can validate such claims?

It's becoming an issue for me as I may have to replace my tv in the near future. I like 1080p resolution fine, especially when I can upconvert standard 480p DVD to 720 and even 1080p. But if I upgrade to a 4k tv, it won't work to run a DVD with a mere HDMI DVD player that upconverts only to 1080p.

Like so many Samsung owners, my 9 year-old widescreen tv is turning off and off in a loop. Having tried a number of alleged solutions, none of them seem to work permanently. I'm still waiting on the latest "fix" to see if it holds, but I'm not confident it will. Seems Samsung has had to deal with a class action suit on this issue for a number of years without a concise solution, but with multiple claims of defective motherboards and capacitors.

A larger widescreen tv with higher resolution would be nice, but not at the expense of my entire DVD collection.

 

[MildredHubble]

Just wondering. I know playing a DVD in a Blu-Ray player on a 4K resolution tv tends to result in an inferior picture.

However...I've seen a small number of articles that imply that playing a standard DVD through a 4K player can essentially "double upconvert" the picture quality. Making it better than seen through just a Blu-Ray disc player.

Has anyone here used such a 4k Player on a standard DVD who can validate such claims?

It's becoming an issue for me as I may have to replace my tv in the near future. I like 1080p resolution fine, especially when I can upconvert standard 480p DVD to 720 and even 1080p. But if I upgrade to a 4k tv, it won't work to run a DVD with a mere HDMI DVD player that upconverts only to 1080p.

I don't have 4k displays at home. I can say that a while ago I read that the 480p image upscales in integer multiples to 4k so it can "look" better. It all depends on the algorithm the player uses to upscale. Also dvd colour depth isn't great, so while it may look better definition wise, it won't have the colour information that Blu-ray has so it may look a bit muted. The player may have some sort of dithering algorithm to make it appear like there's more colour there but this is just an illusion and it may not work very well for certain movies or old TV series.

Years ago I had an upscaling dvd player that claimed to make DVDs look hi Def. It did make things look a little sharper. But it just couldn't improve colour information that wasn't there, so really all it did was make a dvd look as good as it did on an old CRT display.

There may be some settings on your player that you can tweak the upscaling with. There may be options like "nearest neighbour", "bicubic" and "integer". Based on my understanding integer should be best for DVDs. There may also be some deinterlacing options. I find that you have to experiment to find the one that works best and it may not be the same for all DVDs unfortunately :-/

 

[Judge]

I don't have 4k displays at home. I can say that a while ago I read that the 480p image upscales in integer multiples to 4k so it can "look" better. It all depends on the algorithm the player uses to upscale. Also dvd colour depth isn't great, so while it may look better definition wise, it won't have the colour information that Blu-ray has so it may look a bit muted. The player may have some sort of dithering algorithm to make it appear like there's more colour there but this is just an illusion and it may not work very well for certain movies or old TV series.

Years ago I had an upscaling dvd player that claimed to make DVDs look hi Def. It did make things look a little sharper. But it just couldn't improve colour information that wasn't there, so really all it did was make a dvd look as good as it did on an old CRT display.

There may be some settings on your player that you can tweak the upscaling with. There may be options like "nearest neighbour", "bicubic" and "integer". Based on my understanding integer should be best for DVDs. There may also be some deinterlacing options. I find that you have to experiment to find the one that works best and it may not be the same for all DVDs unfortunately :-/

Thanks, but that sort of thing is not at all what I'm looking for. I want hardcore observation of someone using a standard DVD with a 4k disc player who claims to get an image comparable to a DVD upconverted to 720 or 1080p as viewed on a 4K television.

If I can't figure this out, in all likelihood if I have to replace my existing FHD tv, I will seek to buy another FHD tv, though the pickings these days for 1080p tvs aren't all that good. Time is slowly running out on the FHD tvs still available with retailers. Another frustration is in the subjective nature of what constitutes "an acceptable picture" from one that is unacceptable. Visually speaking I'm as picky as hell. But a lot of folks aren't...at least not like me.

I'm just sick of the technocrats constantly forcing us to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Besides, in this case I'd wager that 75% of my DVDs are unavailable in either Blu-Ray or 4K. (Not that I'd replace them anways. Truth is that I'm perfectly content with 1080p, no matter how they continue to raise resolution.)

I've dug in my feet against Microsoft, and if need be I'll do the same with 4K tv. But yeah- time is running out.

 

[Outdated]

Blueray just never really took off here, except for with a few clowns with too much money. One of my mates bought a blueray player but never found many movies on blueray to play on it.

As for me, I just use torrents.

 

[MildredHubble]

Thanks, but that sort of thing is not at all what I'm looking for. I want hardcore observation of someone using a standard DVD with a 4k disc player who claims to get an image comparable to a DVD upconverted to 720 or 1080p as viewed on a 4K television.

If I can't figure this out, in all likelihood if I have to replace my existing FHD tv, I will seek to buy another FHD tv, though the pickings these days for 1080p tvs aren't all that good. Time is slowly running out on the FHD tvs still available with retailers. Another frustration is in the subjective nature of what constitutes "an acceptable picture" from one that is unacceptable. Visually speaking I'm as picky as hell. But a lot of folks aren't...at least not like me.

I'm just sick of the technocrats constantly forcing us to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Besides, in this case I'd wager that 75% of my DVDs are unavailable in either Blu-Ray or 4K. (Not that I'd replace them anways. Truth is that I'm perfectly content with 1080p, no matter how they continue to raise resolution.)

I've dug in my feet against Microsoft, and if need be I'll do the same with 4K tv. But yeah- time is running out.

If you are thinking about investing in 4k I would suggest you make the salespeople work for it! I would go to a big box store, we have Currys over in the UK, you will likely have something similar where you are I'm sure.

I would take my blu ray player and a selection of DVDs and ask to see the TVs you like playing them! There's no reason why they can't do this, unless they think HDMI cables are secretly snakes lol!

If they want the sale and a happy customer then they should be able to accommodate this no problem!

I would maybe go on a reccie and visit a store and have a wonder round. Take a good look at any TV that catches your eye. Jot down which ones you like within your budget and then maybe look up some reviews online. Then go to the store when you have a bit of a short list. Have another look, take your time and let your eyes adjust to the environment, don't forget your glasses if you wear them.

Be aware that the manufacturers insist that media should be playing on their products that make them look best but they could be rubbish for anything else, so that's why it's important to have dvds you are familiar with.

I personally don't have great eyesight, so to me 4k looks amazing close up, but 10 feet away it looks barely above a standard Def picture. I can just about see the extra detail in 1080p but after a while I kinda don't notice it lol!

 

[Outdated]

I used to get people living in the bush to do a similar thing. I'd give them a home baked DVD with about 5 different movie formats on it to test if the TV could play all of them. The big market brands usually couldn't, it was the chinese generic brands that would play the most formats.

 

[Judge]

If you are thinking about investing in 4k I would suggest you make the salespeople work for it! I would go to a big box store, we have Currys over in the UK, you will likely have something similar where you are I'm sure.

Rest assured, I am most any electronics salespersons' worst nightmare as a potential customer, asking all the questions they likely can't answer. Nope...they don't know squat here locally. Years ago select electronics stores used to have knowledgeable salespersons, but not any more. Here it's all underpaid non-commission sales. Kids who don't know a thing about what they are selling. And they don't care whether you leave happy or not. And most tvs in stores here are actually absurdly connected to attenuated RF cable outlets. I guess they expect their customers to be morons. Let's hope your "Currys" is better than our "Best Buy".

Big box stores? I gave up membership more than a decade ago. Couldn't justify the cost of the membership versus what little I bought each year.

Nope, nope, nope. What I need has to come "from the horse's mouth". Someone with the same concerns and observations, and has the equipment to make the comparison. The maddening thing is that the only two I came across in YouTube were kids demonstrating useless animated features rather than film or television. Leaving me unable to make any real judgment over what they displayed relative to a standard DVD on a 4k player seen through a 4K tv set.

What I am looking for is to be able to cite a 480p DVD upconverted to appear at least somewhere between 720p and 1080p through a 4K player seen on a 4K television set . But so far I have found no one willing to be that specific. In other words I'm not expecting anything better than what I already have. However if this scenario consistently renders a standard DVD worse than what I already have, then I want no part of it.

I can spend $200 to get what I already have and am happy with. (A TCL 40 inch tv with 3 HDMI and 1 Optical port) But if I go to 4K, it's likely going to cost considerably more (wanting a larger screen tv plus a top-notch 4K disc player). I could buy another older Samsung FHD tv, but there's no guarantee I might not get the same off/on glitch all over again later in time. So far this has been nothing but another Kobyashi Maru scenario.

All this said along with other rants, it does make me at times wonder what it's like not to have OCD. I wish I wasn't so damn picky...

 

[Metalhead]

I think we all should have 8K curved 3D OLED TVs and watch BetaMax tapes on them.

 

[Judge]

I think we all should have 8K curved 3D OLED TVs and watch BetaMax tapes on them.

LOL. I still miss my Super BetaMax.

 

[Misery]

Geez this is one of those topics where I read through it, ponder it, and realize I didnt understand a bit of it.

I think the last TV I actually personally owned and used was a CRT. Been PC monitors since then, and they're always just "oh gee look, numbers on the box, whatever, if it works without exploding it'll do". That sort. They sure are, er, functional.

it does make me at times wonder what it's like not to have OCD

Well, I've got the PC here on the desk backwards with a million cables hanging off the front of the desk in an incomprehensible spider's web of whatever they all are, lots of random boxes with who knows what, and random CDs buried in pencils for some reason.

As someone with the opposite of OCD, it's kinda like that, but for everything.

 

[MildredHubble]

Rest assured, I am most any electronics salespersons' worst nightmare as a potential customer, asking all the questions they likely can't answer. Nope...they don't know squat here locally. Years ago select electronics stores used to have knowledgeable salespersons, but not any more. Here it's all underpaid non-commission sales. Kids who don't know a thing about what they are selling. And they don't care whether you leave happy or not. And most tvs in stores here are actually absurdly connected to attenuated RF cable outlets. I guess they expect their customers to be morons. Let's hope your "Currys" is better than our "Best Buy".

Big box stores? I gave up membership more than a decade ago. Couldn't justify the cost of the membership versus what little I bought each year.

Nope, nope, nope. What I need has to come "from the horse's mouth". Someone with the same concerns and observations, and has the equipment to make the comparison. The maddening thing is that the only two I came across in YouTube were kids demonstrating useless animated features rather than film or television. Leaving me unable to make any real judgment over what they displayed relative to a standard DVD on a 4k player seen through a 4K tv set.

What I am looking for is to be able to cite a 480p DVD upconverted to appear at least somewhere between 720p and 1080p through a 4K player seen on a 4K television set . But so far I have found no one willing to be that specific. In other words I'm not expecting anything better than what I already have. However if this scenario consistently renders a standard DVD worse than what I already have, then I want no part of it.

I can spend $200 to get what I already have and am happy with. (A TCL 40 inch tv with 3 HDMI and 1 Optical port) But if I go to 4K, it's likely going to cost considerably more (wanting a larger screen tv plus a top-notch 4K disc player). I could buy another older Samsung FHD tv, but there's no guarantee I might not get the same off/on glitch all over again later in time. So far this has been nothing but another Kobyashi Maru scenario.

All this said along with other rants, it does make me at times wonder what it's like not to have OCD. I wish I wasn't so damn picky...

I think what you are essentially wanting to have some assurance of is that your DVDs won't look like an artefact laden broth on the screen.

One way you could almost guarantee this is to use Kodi. It has so many options when it comes to upscaling. But of course if you just want a simple turnkey solution Kodi isn't as simple as a purpose built player.

The problem as I recall each new generation of TV tech, old media ends up being shown for what it is compared to the new tech. I remember seeing the new HD TVs turn up on stores showing MPEG misery scaled up enough to make your eyes jump out and run away screaming! But on an old by comparison CRT made the same image look almost amazing.

I can definitely appreciate though when your favourite movies just don't look right on your snazzy new display, it's hard to stay in your chair!

The cynic in me tells me that the corporations deliberately design TVs with non integer multiple resolutions so consumers who care about such things will reach into their bank account for an extra widget to make there dvds not make their eyes bleed.

That being said, I'm fairly sure a decent blu ray player will be almost guaranteed to make dvds look ok for your average consumer. But I don't think you necessarily fall into that bracket

 

[Jordy]

At most you will lose less quality when it's upscaled by the player Vs on your TV. If I would watch dvds I wouldn't worry about quality because it's not going to be great anyway

 

[Duncan74]

Watchable but not beautiful.

Upscaling done via my Sony amp to HD is better than that in the Panasonic tv taken to 4k.

But a lot well depend on the size of tv. I'm 'only' watching on a 42" so that's fine. If you are on a 80"

 

[Judge]

I'm only looking for results no better than that which one would get upscaled at 720p to 1080p (from the perspective of a 1080p tv set). Though even with a 4K player and a 4K tv, all DVDs are no created equal. I have a library of between 300 and 400 DVDs. Some are better than others, and not necessarily in terms of when a film or tv show was made. Making it that much more difficult to assess how a 4K player might play these discs on a 4K tv set.

From my perspective short of buying another FHD tv, it all looks very bleak. The reality being that if I cannot watch my DVDs from the comfort of my living room, it's less likely that I'd watch them elsewhere at all. Whether from this computer or another FHD tv I'd have to buy to keep the quality factor as it is presently.

But there's still a chance I might have fixed the problem on my Samsung. One can only hope in waiting to see if or when it shuts off and on again in a loop.

 

[MildredHubble]

I'm only looking for results no better than that which one would get at 720p to 1080p. Though even with a 4K player and a 4K tv, all DVDs are no created equal. I have a library of between 300 and 400 DVDs. Some are better than others, and not necessarily in terms of when a film or tv show was made. Making it that much more difficult to assess how a 4K player might play these discs on a 4K tv set.

From my perspective short of buying another FHD tv, it all looks very bleak. The reality being that if I cannot watch my DVDs from the comfort of my living room, it's less likely that I'd watch them elsewhere at all. Whether from this computer or another FHD tv I'd have to buy to keep the quality factor as it is presently.

But there's still a chance I might have fixed the problem on my Samsung. One can only hope.

I definitely understand where you are coming from! It doesn't seem like a big ask that your dvds look as good on a new TV. Also the variability of DVDs can mean a whole host of new problems. I really love watching my Father Ted dvds but they are damn noisy and some devices show up the interlacing artefacts. This is probably due to the low budget recording media and at the end of the day if your TV program is going to be broadcast interlaced at 480i why bother with more high quality in the first place.

Problem is that some old movies haven't been mastered well and 480i raises it's ugly head again but if that 480i has been captured progressively then it's just going to look terrible if the TV doesn't bother with appropriate image processing. I really like the old movie Time Stalkers. But every single format I can find it on is either an interlaced version that has gone direct to progressive scan. Or a horrible VHS capture that is just a pain to watch.

I wish that TVs had some sort of industry standard "CRT emulation mode" where the dvd would just look as good as it did on a SD TV.

It's a real problem. I suspect that the assumption is made that movies etc will be remastered. But there's not always motivation for this, or there's technical limitations. Like with Star Trek DS9 and Voyager. Or as with my example of Time Stalkers.

I sometimes wonder if we should ever have moved on from good old standard Def at all. I can't remember thinking back in the olden days that TV could or should have been higher resolution. It's a can of worms for sure!

 

[Judge]

I definitely understand where you are coming from! It doesn't seem like a big ask that your dvds look as good on a new TV. Also the variability of DVDs can mean a whole host of new problems. I really love watching my Father Ted dvds but they are damn noisy and some devices show up the interlacing artefacts. This is probably due to the low budget recording media and at the end of the day if your TV program is going to be broadcast interlaced at 480i why bother with more high quality in the first place.

Problem is that some old movies haven't been mastered well and 480i raises it's ugly head again but if that 480i has been captured progressively then it's just going to look terrible if the TV doesn't bother with appropriate image processing. I really like the old movie Time Stalkers. But every single format I can find it on is either an interlaced version that has gone direct to progressive scan. Or a horrible VHS capture that is just a pain to watch.

I wish that TVs had some sort of industry standard "CRT emulation mode" where the dvd would just look as good as it did on a SD TV.

It's a real problem. I suspect that the assumption is made that movies etc will be remastered. But there's not always motivation for this, or there's technical limitations. Like with Star Trek DS9 and Voyager. Or as with my example of Time Stalkers.

I sometimes wonder if we should ever have moved on from good old standard Def at all. I can't remember thinking back in the olden days that TV could or should have been higher resolution. It's a can of worms for sure!

The one thing that really bugs me at times is to be in possession of those older, grainy DVDs and then find out years later that they cleaned them up when the upgraded them to Blu-Ray format or higher. Something I really didn't discover until this last year when I got Roku.

Example:

My Star Trek (TOS) and Battlestar Gallactica (2004) DVD sets look acceptable upconverted on my Sony HDMI DVD player to 720/1080p, but seeing them streamed through online networks makes it abundantly clear that the Blu-Ray versions are clearly superior. So yeah, at times I'd prefer to see those shows streaming than even bother with my own DVDs. But then there are still many other DVDs of programs I never see streaming. My bad.

With a 1080p tv I consider my situation "having my cake and eating it too". But if I have to go to 4K viewing, it all goes to hell one way or another. Part of me wants to just gracefully accept my DVDs as obsolete, but the other part vehemently rejects the notion. Besides, I can no longer afford to recreate my movie collection in another format, apart from the reality that many titles are either difficult or impossible to get. I'm one of those weird persons who loves a movie or tv show enough to watch them endlessly over and over again.

You see, before my DVD collection I had a comparable VHS videotape collection. This is not something I want to repeat again and again just to make corporations rich and shareholders happy.

 

[MildredHubble]

The one thing that really bugs me at times is to be in possession of those older, grainy DVDs and then find out years later that they cleaned them up when the upgraded them to Blu-Ray format or higher. Something I really didn't discover until this last year when I got Roku.

Example:

My Star Trek (TOS) and Battlestar Gallactica (2004) DVD sets look acceptable upconverted on my Sony HDMI DVD player to 720/1080p, but seeing them streamed through online networks makes it abundantly clear that the Blu-Ray versions are clearly superior. So yeah, at times I'd prefer to see those shows streaming than even bother with my own DVDs. But then there are still many other DVDs of programs I never see streaming.

My bad....

Star Trek TOS and TNG have the benefit of being recorded to film so they have great restoration potential. They had to actually reproduce the TNG ship shots as the original footage when upscaled and cleaned up betrayed the fact that the Enterprise (particularly the B model) was a hand made model. So they painstakingly recreated the action shots and the intro video, right down to the erroneous blue glow in the corner of some shots!

Voyager was captured to super beta or digital beta I believe, hence the lack of upgrade there. I think DS9 has the same problem, at least most of it was video tape.

The restored versions of TOS had to have all the ship shots redone as they were absolutely horrid from an aesthetic point of view!

I have a few TNG dvds and the funny thing is, on an SD TV they look exactly as I remembered from the TV. Very dreamlike fuzziness, like everything was in soft focus that is completely absent from the remasters! I almost thought I had imagined it, but rewatching the TNG Relics episode on my DVD and there is was the slightly misty fuzziness ethereal quality was there. I kinda miss it if I'm honest when I watch the episodes on Netflix.

 

[Judge]

It is a bit irritating to see digital remastering done so well, and yet so piecemeal. Where some sources get the "royal treatment" while others do not.

Reminds me of all those films and shows put to higher resolution, but still suck because they were never actually remastered to begin with. And in their case, the higher the resolution, the worse they look. Even when people pay even more money for them. Maddening!

If it were up to me, I would have passed a law making 1080p the final and standard resolution of visual media. All those actors with bad complexions would have thanked me...lol.

 

[Judge]

Another discouraging thing is that I had forgotten that while my computer's video card and monitor is 1080p capable, my computer's internal DVD drive is only progressive 480p. Yet I can view a movie in my browser on YouTube at a possible 1080p, but never a DVD in my disc drive.

I can hook up a separate DVD player that upconverts to 1080p to my monitor's HDMI port, but with very limited picture controls compared to my Samsung tv. Making me wonder why no one ever considered making internal SATA DVD burners that can upconvert for a PC ?

Doesn't appear that internal Blu-Ray burners have any upconverting capability. Though they can play DVDs at their standard resolution of 480p.

The "method of the madness" being that this engineering forces people to the later standard than to cling to earlier ones. All fine and well, provided you aren't invested in thousands of dollars in DVDs.

 

[Jordy]

You could get a new dvd drive for your pc that isn't ancient and can play 1080p. I imagine you can find a used one for 10-20 dollars.