CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[stefuel]

With everything now being displayed natively, and sound processors providing HDMI switching, is there any reason to keep a scaler in the mix? The HD-DVD and BD players do a great job of up-scaling sd dvd's. It seems to me that scalers are quickly becoming ballast.

[goku_mars]

don't be too sure. The next series of tv's with 4000 by 2000 resolution would benefit from a scaler or line doubler or something along those lines.

They are past prototypes for 4k now.

[stefuel]

And just what scaler does that resolution, not to mention who's crt projector can do it.

[Phil Smith]

Those TVs will have built-in scalers, otherwise they wouldn't be able to display normal video material.

Upping the refresh rate is still a useful function of a scaler for CRT. I was eventually going to buy a scaler for that purpose.

[Axatax]

Sure, most modern source equipment can "scale" video. What these types of arguments fail to address are all the functions beside *scaling* that a stand-alone video *processor* provide. I can't recall any stand-alone device manufactured in the past five years that is "just" a scaler, unless you consider something that does 480i/P conversion a scaler (I would argue this is a doubler or deinterlacer).

[Phil Smith]

Toshiba HD-DVD players do a fantastic job of upscaling SD-DVD, and you can buy one of those for $50. Everything else is slowly going HD, which obviously doesn't need scaling. I think Chip makes a valid point.

[r.bauer]

Things that a scaler can offer:
- Display 480i film material at 1440*960@71,93hz
- Display 480i video material at 1440*960@59,94hz
- Display 576i film and video material at 1440*1152@50hz
- Display 1080i50 film and video material al 1080p50
- 1:1,78 aspectratio material: display 1080p23,98 material at 1640*1080p@71,93hz (reduced hor resolution because of limited HDMI/DVI pixel clock of 165Mhz)
- 1:2,35 aspectratio material: display 1080p23,98 material at 1920*817p@71,93hz

It does all of the above with DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

It allows me to connect sources such as a HDTV Cable-receiver and get rid of the 1080i@50hz timing problems.
Connect players like the popcornhour and let it just 'render' the material native and let the scaler do all the de-interlacing.

It allows me to switch all may (HDMI) sources and have a single HDMI connection to my CRT.

I am more and more convinced of the added value of a modern scaler in a high-end CRT homecinema.
Movies look so much better in 72hz compared to 60 hz. The smoothness of pans is so much better. This is something that simply cannot be done by a HD-DVD player or a Blu-ray player.
And also the motion-adaptive de-interlacing of video-sources by modern scalers is unmatched by HTPC's. A scaler gives you much more control over the image than a HTPC.

After playing with HTPC's for many, many years I have stopped doing that and I have introduced a scaler to my HT. It is truly one of the best upgrades In my experience.

I know that many of you are drawn to CRT's because of their low price, but that does not have to stop you from getting the best possible picture from your CRT projector.

[Gary M.]

removed!

-Gary

[stefuel]

I think my thread has been hijacked by a shameless sales ploy

[Gary M.]

[MikeEby]

[stefuel]

[Phil Smith]

My G70 used the same memory block (the infamous Sony memory scheme) for a Dish receiver, PS3 and HD-A1. They were all identical HD signals (porches, timings, etc). My input was a Moome card with gamma. Everything worked great without a scaler, and I fail to see where I could have benefited from one, other than running a higher refresh rate.

But then again, I've never owned a good scaler, so maybe I'm missing something.

[MikeEby]

[stefuel]

[Phil Smith]

[Phil Smith]

[Gary M.]

I don't know if it's just me or not, but it seems that the ones giving scalers down the road have never owned a really good one or used one in their system for a extended amount of time?

if there is someone here who has a scaler that says they no longer need one or it is useless please speak up because this is something not heard very rarely, if at all

like I said in my first post that I removed, you simply cannot get as spot on a calibration without a scaler involved, can't be done, HTPC included, this is not keeping up with the Jones', its demanding as perfect as possible a image with the least amount of error

-Gary

[r.bauer]

[r.bauer]