Hello there...

I'm probably answering my own question here, but I'll just go ahead and ask.

I've been updating my old classic TV shows to Blu-Ray when possible... Like Firefly to 1080p [incredible by the way]

But my old tv shows on DVD's [Dad's Army, Doctor Who etc..] on modern TV's and Blu-Ray players don't seem to upscale that great imho. The issue got worse for me when i bought a 40' Sony Bravia. The picture i was getting when the player was set at 1080i or 1080p looked a bit rubbish to me.

But then i noticed on my Sony Blu-Ray player that there was the 'Original Resolution' setting .... Bloody hell the picture improvement was drastic. Sharpe clear fluid pictures. I noticed that the video output was 576p. I thought that 1080i or 1080p would or should be better?

Sorry to ramble on there, but i would just like to know from an expert here is that the correct setting anyway for DVD's on Blu-Ray players?

The correct setting is the one that looks best.

The player or the TV will scale a 576 image to fit the display resolution of the TV. It is entirely possible that the TV is doing a better job of that scaling than the player. In which case leave it as it is.

Equally in a different set up the player could scale better than the TV so you would leave the player set to 1080.

There is no hard and fast rule that applies to every single combination of kit. You simply set the devices up in whatever way works best for you.

Or wait for your favourite films/ tv shows to be digitally re mastered or cleaned.

Shane the film & Braveheart is just amazing !

Star Wars 4,5 & 6 on DVD was just as good as Blu Ray when it was remastered, though I haven't seen it on Blu Ray.

A lot of modern films were not saved at 4K neither, what a waste

I've seen this written in an article somewhere else on the web... I think this is what's happening here.. I'm really surprised how good the picture is tbh.

Thank you for the replies so far...

While i'm here, just a quick question about TV broadcasters like Sky & Virgin broadcasting in 1080i.. Will will ever see the day when broadcasters broadcast in 1080p?

And I've been told that you are better off setting your Sky or Tivo box to 720p, as it's just as good if not better then 1080i... Is that true?

Sorry for the dumb questions, but if you don't ask.... Etc... etc!

Some Freeview broadcasts are in 1080p. In theory there is no reason why Sky or Virgin could not also do 1080p as long as the receivers can handle the format, which may be the limiting factor.


If you did that and plugged the box into a 1080 resolution TV then you would be double scaling all broadcasts since no-one uses 720 in the UK at least.

SD would be upscaled and HD downscaled by the box to 720 then the TV would upscale that to 1080. In the case of HD that won't put back the detail lost in the downscaling in the box. So the result is likely to be worse than sending the raw broadcast resolution to the TV and let the TV do one stage of scaling or let the box scale to 1080 and have the TV do nothing else.

Unlikely as there's no point, the resolution is just the same - some Freeview HD programmes are actually in 1080P25, but the only reason people even know is because the OSD tells them


No it's not - as there are no 720 broadcasts in the UK anyway.

However, by all means feel free to try it, some people claim they prefer it that way - it's a personal setting, set it to how YOU personally prefer.

Here we go again. (Both you saying this and me pointing out this is wrong, perhaps I should keep a stock replay and just cut and paste? )

The spacial resolution of 1080i compared to 1080p is reduced whenever there is any movement so the resolutions are not the same. Of course the TV may recognise that the "interlaced" signal is really progressive in nature (such as when they show a film) and therefore correctly weave the signal in which case it is progressive anyway with the flags just showing interlaced.

Whether anyone notices the difference at all is a separate point, I suspect in most cases not. I certainly couldn't tell just by looking at the picture whether the Freeview transmission was interlaced or not on my set up (other than by freeze framing and looking for interlacing artefacts close up, in normal viewing nope).

And of course 1080i/25 may be better than 1080p25 for moving pictures such as football because of the increased temporal resolution though 720p50 would be even better. (And before you say it yourself you do remember some experiments where viewers felt sick after watching 720p though I can't find any proper reference to this - I've looked in the past).


Agreed, use whichever you prefer even if one mode is technically inferior to the other - it's all about personal preference. If anyone can't tell the difference then it doesn't matter which is used.

Not technically a broadcast but iplayer HD is 720p25.

Cheers for all of the informed replies... I shall take note!