AVT-3800 (Scaler) (Doubler)

[Marco in HD]

I'm toying with the idea of getting this to improve the picture quality of my DirecTV SD reception on my HD Hitachi. The Hitachi is up-converting to it's native resolution of 1080i but, I feel the picture might improve if I had a seperate unit do the up-converting.

Anybody ever use one of these?

http://www.avtoolbox.com/avt3700.shtml

Do you know of another type that would do a better job without costing an arm and leg?

[LeeS]

Do you know of another type that would do a better job without costing an arm and leg?
The only experience with one is on a friends CRT front projector. But it was a very expensive unit and it worked well.

Too bad you can test drive the thing :( Maybe someone else has experience in this area. I'm skeptical, at the price it sells for.

Lee

[summerfun]

It seems to me, garbage in, garbage out. You cannot create something from nothing. If the source is SD, you are not going to do much to improve the PQ. Line doubling like a progessive scan DVD player is about as much as you could hope for in improvement.

You will never get an SD signal to look like an HD signal by running it through a box. If you could, we would all be watching everything in HD. The networks would just upconvert all their SD to HD and we would be done.

I love how CSI can always take a picture from a security camera or something that is so blurry you can hardly make out what the object is and turn it into the most crystal clear picture you have ever seen. They can read a license plate from a hundred yards away. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You cannot create resolution.

[57U]

Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You cannot create resolution.Actually, there is new software available that can "create resolution". It doesn't actually create, however, it looks at a number of different images from a "tape" and there is different information on each frame which can then be "added" to give you a much clearer final image.

CSI's are using this to get license plates, clear faces, etc. One famous example is the "backpack" (that contained the explosives) that was photographed at the Atlanta Olympics. This software was able to dramatically enhance the backpack to be able to get information from it that was not visible on the original images.

It doesn't work as fast as what you see on CSI, but it does in fact work.

So, it works to a certain extent on SD to create "virtual HD". Hitachi even calls it that. If you look at "virtual HD" on an HD channel (upconverted SD) you will see a very clear image because the upconversion done by the station is excellent. The more money you spend, the better the final result can be, so these external scalers can help.

[summerfun]

Wow, you learn something new every day. You think this box can do this?

[Marco in HD]

I don't "FOR A SECOND" feel that this scaler will give me an HD picture from an SD source. But, like I said... I feel it's Up-conversion to 1080i is better than the TV's internal up-converter.

The top scaler on the market goes for $1500, that's almost what my TV cost. I don't know if that's cost effective to buy that one... although, you get what you pay for.

They do have a 30 day money back garantee. It's still a lot of cash. To bad the D* networks us so much compression. If they didn't, the picture would look just fine, like OTA SD does.

[LeeS]

Here's a Faroudja box that I bet would do the job :) Price is at the very bottom of the screen.

http://www.marketware-tech.com/farnatratser.html

Lee

[Hippie]

Here's a Faroudja box that I bet would do the job :) Price is at the very bottom of the screen.Lee

Put me down for 3 :D