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You may see some improvement in the picture quality with an upconverting player. Here is a little background:
Your TV is 720p. This means it can display up to 720 lines of resolution, and is a progressive scan system. A conventional DVD player is 480i, which means it outputs 480 lines of resolution and is an interlaced scan system. In a progressive scan system, all of the lines are painted at once, and the screen is updated 30 times per second. In an interlaced system - what analog TVs can display - alternating scan lines are displayed (interlaced) 60 times per second. The overall frame rate for both systems is 30 frames per second.
With an upconverting player, and any other progressive-scan player, the interlacing is eliminated. There is also some signal processing performed on the picture to improve the appearance of the display. One technique involves interpolating adjacent scan lines to produce a third line that is the arithmetic mean of the two. This reduces "jaggies," or jagged diagonal lines that you sometimes see on large screen TVs. However, the TV itself has upconverting circuitry built in.
There is a good treatment of upconverting players here:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-computers/audio-video/video/dvd-players/reports/how-to-choose/index.htm
As that section of the site is only available to subscribers, here’s a pertinent excerpt:
"Buy a progressive-scan model unless the lowest price is your highest priority. Although you won’t see progressive-scan picture quality on a conventional analog TV, it’s definitely worth getting a progressive-scan player for use with a digital TV, which is capable of displaying the smoother picture these players can deliver. You’ll have a wider choice of products as well, since almost all new players are progressive-scan, and it’s likely you want even have to pay more for this feature.
Don’t pay much more for an upconverting model. A standard-definition TV is unable to display video that’s upconverted to pseudo-HD, so there’s no reason to buy a DVD player with this feature. With an HDTV, this feature may or may not result in better picture quality, depending on your TV.
With an HD picture-tube TV, it’s unlikely that upconverting will improve picture quality. In our experience, 480p signals typically yield the best combination of smoothness and fine detail, and you can get that from a regular progressive-scan player.
With LCD, plasma, and rear-projection microdisplay HDTVs, the story is a little more complicated. These TVs are all fixed-pixel displays that have built-in upconverting capability. It’s possible that a specific DVD player might do the upconversion better than a specific TV, but it’s also possible the TV will do a better job on its own. If you decide to buy an upconverting DVD player to use with any fixed-pixel display, try setting the player to various resolutions—such as 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, or 1080p--and use whichever setting produces the picture quality you deem best." It would thus come down to whether the upconverter in the DVD player has a better signal processing algorithm for producing pseudo-HD output. However, you will definitely get better picture quality on an HD set than you’ll see on an analog set. Another section of the same article I quoted from recommends waiting to buy a Hi-def player until the format war is over (which it basically is now; Blu-ray won) and prices drop. I would recommend getting a progressive scan player with component video output. Wait a while, the prices on Blu-Ray will come down, and there will be more titles available.
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Sources: Cited
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IchtheosaurusRex's Recommendations
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Amazon List Price: $36.99
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Amazon List Price: $149.99
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Amazon List Price: $59.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5
(based on 27 reviews)
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Pay your money and make your choice. I'd take the Sony.
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the process of upscaling and the effects you can expect are quite good explained at the site I linked as source. Here is the summary:
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Visually, there is very little difference to the eye of the average consumer between 720p and 1080i. However, 720p can deliver a slightly smoother-looking image, due to the fact that lines and pixels are displayed in a consecutive pattern, rather than in an alternate pattern.
The upscaling process does a good job of matching the upscaled pixel output of a DVD player to the native pixel display resolution of an HDTV capable television, resulting in better detail and color consistency.
However, upscaling, as it is currently implemented, cannot convert standard DVD images into true high-definition images. In fact, although upscaling works well with fixed pixel displays, such as Plasma and LCD televisions, results are not always consistent on CRT-based high definition televisions.
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So you might expect some difference because the resolution the upscaling DVD-player delivers fit the resolution of the plasma. And there might be another difference if you have connected your old DVD-player using an analog interface, like SCART, video-in, etc. The difference between that and the (digital) HDMI is much bigger than the difference that will be achieved with the upscaling.
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Sources: http://hometheater.about.com/od/hometheatervideobasics/qt/dvdvidupscale.htm
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The thing about standard def DVDs is that they are 480p. That is all you'll get from them. So if you're like me, and your viewing is almost entirely standard def DVDs, the best possible picture you can get will be from a high quality SD display and a DVD player with as little scaling between the two as possible. This is known as pixel-mapping, and only a handful of DVD players, or HTPCs, or high-end video processors can do it: map the signal coming from the player on a pixel-to-pixel basis to the display.
Upscaling to 720 could be a good match for your 720 display however. Upscaling can't add any information to the DVD, so it's not like suddenly everything is in HD. But matching the signal coming from the DVD player to the resolution of the display will help you get the most out of your display. Consider one of the OPPO models -- they're consistently rated among the best, and a great bargain too.
For more on OPPO, see www.oppodigital.com
For more on pixel mapping, and 720p displays that can do it, see http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=748074
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You do need to make sure it says "upconverting" somewhere on the box if you want it to actually upconvert your signal. The link below lists about 50 DVD players that upconvert to 720p and have HDMI output:
http://hdtv.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=75/st=category/popup2%5B%5D=40:1855/popup5%5B%5D=10:372
Prices start at about $40 and go up. The best upconverting player for the money is OPPO. You can find a good review here:
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/reviews/2007/06/oppo_dv-981hd_upconverting_sd_dvd_player.php
Enjoy,
-
Shane Sturgeon
Publisher, HDTV Magazine
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Sources: http://hdtv.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=75/st=category/popup2%5B%5D=40:1855/popup5%5B%5D=10:372
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