DVD upconvert with HDMI?

I have an 8510p which has an HDMI output. I was wondering, if I plug my laptop to my HDTV through the HDMI, will my laptop upconvert a DVD to 720p? I'm debating whether I should use my laptop as a DVD player or not. If it can't upconvert I figured I'd go with a stand alone upconverting DVD player (probably the Oppo 980H). Thanks for the help.

 

yes it will upconvert, but i doub't you'll see a differece, but thats my opinion

 

Thanks for the quick response. Well right now I'm just using my old PS2 to play DVDs in standard def, so I'm guessing I'll probably notice. I've heard the PS2 DVD player isn't that good anymore. Plus, HDTVs aren't that good with standard defintion. For instance, when I switch some of my games from regular to just progressive scan, there is an enormous difference. Oh and do you guys know if I'd have to do anything to enable 720p.

 

Uh honestly i've connected my old ZD8k through SVideo to an HDTV, looks fine. Depending on the DRM settings on your notebook, it may not output to 720p (blame microsoft and the DVD companies). In general, upconverting is very noticeable imo, I watch DVDs upconverted from my PS3 and they look absolutely stunning (it says 1080p, but who knows)

 

Yeah, got the cable and it definitely doesn't upconvert DVDs to 720p. They look worse than my PS2. I guess it's time to get the real dvd player I was looking at. My anime shows look great though.

 

What software are you using to playback DVDs? If you're using VLC or MPC, then the results will be bad.

You should download trial versions of WinDVD and PowerDVD. WinDVD especially has some great features that can clean up, enhance, or sharpen the picture.

Theatertek with FFDshow will provide some truly stunning results, but takes a lot of configuring and tweaking to get just right.

WinDVD or Theatertek will definitely beat the PS3 and Xbox360 in image quality and will at least be on par with a good upconverting DVD player by Oppo or another good manufacturer.

I have an upconverting DVD player by Onkyo and it looks amazing. It blows away the PS3 in terms of DVD upconverting, and makes brings all of my DVDs to look about 80-90% as good as blu-ray and most HD-DVDs (HD-DVDs generally have better transfers and use better codecs than blu-ray).

If you have digital cable with HD service, a good upscaling DVD player will make you wonder why you're paying for the service. It'll even beat DirecTV HD in a lot of cases. For example, Saving Private Ryan was on TNT HD not too long ago. I have the DTS DVD of that movie. The upscaled DVD had just as much detail as the HD broadcast, but none of the compression artifacting that was present in the broadcast. The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition DVDs, the 4 disc sets, also beat the HD broadcasts of the movies. Better color separation, no compression artifacting, more "depth" and "dimension".

So I'd really suggest trying out WinDVD, PowerDVD, or Theatertek. Your results could be drastically different from what you've already tried. If it still doesn't look right, then theres probably something wrong with your Windows installation. Hey, it happens. It is Windows after all

 

I had no idea VLC would make it look bad. Thanks!

 

Yup. VLC doesn't take advantage of any of the advanced features of your GPU to clean up the picture and such ATI and nVidia latest GPU's have some neat features that do deblocking and all of that and its part of DirectX now. Vista Home Premium/Ultimate's built-in DVD decoder, WinDVD, PowerDVD, and Theatertek all take advantage of those features. But VLC just has a basic MPEG-2 decoder that doesn't do anything other than decode and show the video.

I really don't understand how people can use VLC for DVD playback. It just looks bad. It's like a throwback to the WinDVD 1.0 days. WinDVD 2.3 on my old GeForce2 MX with hardware acceleration turned on looked than VLC does now!

 

Okay, now I have about the same level of quality as my PS2. What kind of settings do you use to get the dvd to play upconverted? Just in case, I'm using the trial versions of the software you mentioned and I know my TV is an HDTV (it's the Samsung LNT3253H).

 

You have a pretty decent TV there.

Your PC has an ATI card, right? I can't remember what options the ATI cards have in the drivers... but you can always see what they have. You can also try WinDVD with and without hardware acceleration. If you turn that off, you can use WinDVD's software sharpening features and things like that. But I know the ATI drivers have some things you can mess around with.

For the best advice, you can read around at avsforums. Those guys know what they're talking about. http://www.avsforum.com/ That forum is basically the end all site for getting the best quality out of your video sources.

That Oppo DVD player, though, might be the way to go. I love my upscaling DVD player. I have it upscaling to 720p on a 37" LCD and it looks fantastic.

And its certainly a lot easier to use than a PC

 

Right now, the Oppo would be the easy way out which is looking much better now. But, since I'm still on my break, I figure I'll just work hard and try and save the money. Thanks for the complement on the TV.