LCD and plasma TVs have a problem: if the movie isn’t being played on the TV native resolution, you will have really bad image quality. This same problem happens with LCD monitors, for example. If you configure your PC to use a video resolution lower than your LCD monitor native resolution – usually the maximum resolution your monitor accepts – the image will be blurred. If you have a LCD monitor try decreasing the video resolution to see what happens and understand this concept.

So we have a problem with TV channels transmitted at a lower resolution than our TV native resolution and DVD movies, as their original resolution is 480i, a.k.a. SDTV. To solve this issue the latest DVD players and both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players feature an “upconversion” or “upscale” feature, which converts the original DVD signal to HD resolution, up to 1080p. All HD TVs also have this feature, tailored to convert channels that are being transmitted with a resolution lower than your TV’s into your TV native resolution.

To keep the cost of these units low, manufacturers use cheap video processors in their units, which do not provide the best quality possible. In fact, one of the main reasons one TV is more expensive than another with the same screen size is the quality of the video processor used. The same idea goes to players.

So we were curious to see the quality of the upscaler used on Sony BDP-S300. To check this we compared the image with the scaler disabled (selecting 480i resolution on the player) with the scaler enabled (selecting 1080p resolution on the player). After that we compared the image generated by the embedded scaler with the image generated by an iScan VP20 external scaler. This device is also known by other names, like external video processor, line doubler or de-interlacer. This unit has the same goal of the internal scaler found on the Blu-Ray player, but it provides, at least in theory, a better image quality, as it uses a high-end processor (this unit alone is three times more expensive than the reviewed player). In order to get the best quality from our external scaler we configured the player to send the movie on its original resolution (480i) to it, so all upscaling processing was done by the iScan VP20.

The upscaler from this Blu-Ray player makes a remarkable job, providing an outstanding image quality improvement for its price range. On the photos below you can compare some images. We are just showing a fragment of the scene so you can see the quality enhancement over small details. For the untrained eye, this unit will provide a quality as good as our expensive external scaler.

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Figure 8: DVD playing at its original resolution (480i) on a 1080p TV.

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Figure 9: Same scene upscaled to 1080p by the player.

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Figure 10: Same scene upscaled to 1080p by iScan VP20.

One more comparison below, this time using an older movie.

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Figure 11: DVD playing at its original resolution (480i) on a 1080p TV.

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Figure 12: Same scene upscaled to 1080p by the player.

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Figure 13: Same scene upscaled to 1080p by iScan VP20.