Running 1080p rips through a normal DVD player

This might seem like a daft question, but BEAR (

) with me:

I've just got myself a new 1080p telly, but have held back on getting a next-gen player, as I want to see who wins the 'war' as it were.

So, for the interim, I've got myself a nice little Sony DVP-NS78H upscaling player, as these apparently work well with the Samsung I've bought.

What I'm wondering though - if I get some HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs, and then rip and convert to avi and burn onto normal DVD, will the output through onto my new telly (regardless of upscale settings - I suspect these would be irrelevant in the circumstance) come out at 1080p res? Yes, I know it won't be true 1080p.. not even upscaled, but will the rips retain the picture quality given that they'd be ripped at a high resolution?

When you say rip to avi and burn to a DVD, do you mean DivX/xvid? If so, then no. Your DVD player can only play up to a certain resolution 720 x 576.Therefore, there will be no extra detail to be seen. It will be a fairly clean conversion though, but no clearer than a DVD. In my opinion, the best way to access HD content is to build or buy a PC, then play the 'rips' with Windows Media Center. Also this will upscale your DVDs too.

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But it depends on the quality of the rip surely?

Surely if I were to get a portioned avi rip totalling, say, 16gb in size for a 2 hour film, the implied increased resolution of the rip will show a quality increase on the telly?

Yes if you played the original HD file. But if you're converting so that your DVD player will read it, then you have to down convert it, which mean reducing resolution, the effect of which results in less detail being displayed.

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But it depends on the quality of the rip surely?
You can convert WAV to MP3, but at a variety of different bit rates.

Audio is a slightly different ballgame. But it's kind of like trying to play 24bit Audio in standard CD players.

Last edited by dfgh : 10-01-2008 at 02:32. Reason: Thought I'd elaborate

Biffo the Bear · 10-01-2008, 02:29

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When you say rip to avi and burn to a DVD, do you mean DivX/xvid? If so, then no. Your DVD player can only play up to a certain resolution 720 x 576.Therefore, there will be no extra detail to be seen. It will be a fairly clean conversion though, but no clearer than a DVD. In my opinion, the best way to access HD content is to build or buy a PC, then play the 'rips' with Windows Media Center.

Hmm.. might have to get myself a DVI to HDMI adapter in that case! Thanks for the info both

bobcar · 10-01-2008, 02:30

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When you say rip to avi and burn to a DVD, do you mean DivX/xvid? If so, then no. Your DVD player can only play up to a certain resolution 720 x 576.Therefore, there will be no extra detail to be seen. It will be a fairly clean conversion though, but no clearer than a DVD. In my opinion, the best way to access HD content is to build or buy a PC, then play the 'rips' with Windows Media Center.

A DVD doesn't contain 720x576 full bits of information though it's much less than that (because of compression) so if the rip is at a much higher data rate then it can contain more information. However the encoding is unlikely to be as good as a professional DVD so it will have to be at a higher rate to get the same quality.

Having said that (assuming he gets extra information in) a simple upscaling DVD player (or the upscaler in the TV which might be as good) is unlikely to make use of this. He would need to play via an expensive dedicated video processor to get the benefit (min £1500 starters). So it would be a lot cheaper as well as better to get high definition players to start with.

The way the war is going anyway it makes sense to get BluRay and only get HD-DVD as well if you can accept the loss in a couple of years.

dfgh · 10-01-2008, 02:37

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A DVD doesn't contain 720x576 full bits of information though it's much less than that (because of compression) so if the rip is at a much higher data rate then it can contain more information. However the encoding is unlikely to be as good as a professional DVD so it will have to be at a higher rate to get the same quality.

Having said that (assuming he gets extra information in) a simple upscaling DVD player (or the upscaler in the TV which might be as good) is unlikely to make use of this. He would need to play via an expensive dedicated video processor to get the benefit (min £1500 starters). So it would be a lot cheaper as well as better to get high definition players to start with.

The way the war is going anyway it makes sense to get BluRay and only get HD-DVD as well if you can accept the loss in a couple of years.

It's more to do with lines of resolution than pixel resolution. I understand where you're coming from, but since a retail DVD should be digitised from the original print then there is nothing he could have that would be better quality and like I said, if he down converts, it's impossible to retain any of the 'HD' from the original HD file.

sancheeez · 10-01-2008, 09:38

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In my opinion, the best way to access HD content is to build or buy a PC, then play the 'rips' with Windows Media Center.

Yup.

I'd go along with that .... thats what I do. VGA from laptop to TV and the results are excellent.

Remember, you'll need a half-decent PC/laptop to play back HD stuff. If you want to play full 1080p, it'll have to be a very good PC. 720p stuff is a bit less demanding.

Oh .... and I don't use Media Centre either (despite it being a Windows MC laptop). I find media player classic, FFDShow and Haali Media Splitter gives me the best (smoothest) results. VLC will play them as well but tends to stall and get jerky when the screen gets busy. No such problems with the MPC setup.

bobcar · 10-01-2008, 10:08

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Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin

It's more to do with lines of resolution than pixel resolution. I understand where you're coming from, but since a retail DVD should be digitised from the original print then there is nothing he could have that would be better quality and like I said, if he down converts, it's impossible to retain any of the 'HD' from the original HD file.

This point is not correct. It's certainly correct that down converting will lose information and once lost that information cannot be put back however not all information relating to the original HD is lost, how much is lost depends on the down convert.

It's certainly possible for an SD file to contain more information than an HD file, in which case that SD file can be up converted into a better HD image than the taking the low information HD file itself (though not from an upscaling DVD player) . In practice however HD files always contain more information than SD files and so have a better output.

Nigel Goodwin · 10-01-2008, 11:07

You obviously can't rip and get more resolution than the DVD supports, but what you can do is rip it to a number of seperate DVD's - say 20 or 30 minutes on each one. This way you can create a much higher quality disc than a normal commercial DVD, although the resolution is no better of course.

webbie · 10-01-2008, 13:04

You can have just under an an hour per single layer dvd at dvd's maximum bit rate - 11.1Mbps. (That includes the sound) That will give the optimum picture per dvd.

bobcar · 10-01-2008, 13:42

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You obviously can't rip and get more resolution than the DVD supports, but what you can do is rip it to a number of seperate DVD's - say 20 or 30 minutes on each one. This way you can create a much higher quality disc than a normal commercial DVD, although the resolution is no better of course.

Ultimately it's about information and whether you can handle the information that's present. There is information about the higher resolution in the lower resolution image if you can get it (a standard DVD upscaler won't).

It is possible for a standard definition file to be able to recreate a better high resolution image than a high definition file but in practice this is not the case because the HD file is always bigger.

If you doubt that it's possible to take a lower resolution image and create a higher resolution one from it then you should see the work that is done on crappy pictures for the police and security services. The human brain does this sort of thing all the time, we just don't notice it.

I must emphasise you are not getting something from nothing, the information has to be present in the first place - all you can get from a blank sheet is a blank sheet. The information doesn't have to be there in the form of number of pixels though it's much easier to process when it is.

bobcar · 10-01-2008, 14:31

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Originally Posted by webbie

You can have just under an an hour per single layer dvd at dvd's maximum bit rate - 11.1Mbps. (That includes the sound) That will give the optimum picture per dvd.

It will given optimum encoding, however the encoding done on a home PC is unlikely to match the encoding done on a top notch commercial DVD.

Biffo the Bear · 10-01-2008, 15:46

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Ultimately it's about information and whether you can handle the information that's present. There is information about the higher resolution in the lower resolution image if you can get it (a standard DVD upscaler won't).

It is possible for a standard definition file to be able to recreate a better high resolution image than a high definition file but in practice this is not the case because the HD file is always bigger.

If you doubt that it's possible to take a lower resolution image and create a higher resolution one from it then you should see the work that is done on crappy pictures for the police and security services. The human brain does this sort of thing all the time, we just don't notice it.

I must emphasise you are not getting something from nothing, the information has to be present in the first place - all you can get from a blank sheet is a blank sheet. The information doesn't have to be there in the form of number of pixels though it's much easier to process when it is.

Well, this is the kind of tangent on which my though process was working i.e. if you have 2 jpgs of the same picture, one being 10k and one being 1MB in size, at a certain resolution both are going to look the same. However, only the larger file will be able to keep its integrity at higher resolutions whilst the other one will just blur if you try to expand.

I'm not asking whether I can get an HD output from a normal DVD; I know that that can't be done, even with upscaling (I only got the upscaler player so that my old DVDs would look a bit nice!). However, I was wondering that if the source was ripped and encoded at as high a resolution as possible in standard divx/xvid format, possibly even entailing having only 30 to 40 minutes of film on a single DVD because of the resulting file size as Nigel suggested, would this essentially show up as being closer to a 'true' HD quality when played on the telly?

bobcar · 10-01-2008, 16:00

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However, I was wondering that if the source was ripped and encoded at as high a resolution as possible in standard divx/xvid format, possibly even entailing having only 30 to 40 minutes of film on a single DVD because of the resulting file size as Nigel suggested, would this essentially show up as being closer to a 'true' HD quality when played on the telly?

The problem you have is that you can't encode as well a the better commercial DVDs (there are some awful ones out there as well) so what you gain from the higher bitrate you lose from the less efficient encoding.

Since you are investing in the source material maybe it makes sense to buy a player to go with them - they aren't cheap and the price soon mounts up.

dfgh · 10-01-2008, 16:52

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This point is not correct. It's certainly correct that down converting will lose information and once lost that information cannot be put back however not all information relating to the original HD is lost, how much is lost depends on the down convert.

It's certainly possible for an SD file to contain more information than an HD file, in which case that SD file can be up converted into a better HD image than the taking the low information HD file itself (though not from an upscaling DVD player) . In practice however HD files always contain more information than SD files and so have a better output.

Yes it is, if he he made it 9000kbps he'd still be only getting a very good,ver stable SD picture he's not retaining any of the 'HD' . But I'm willing to bet my balls on the fact it won't be any better as a retail DVD at 9000kbps or even about 5000kps to 9000kbps on a variable bit rate.Providing of course the retail DVD.Not least because the original HD file he has is no doubt in x264 or MPEG2 and is already lossy compressed. Like for like, it'll be the same as a retail DVD if not worse and if he does do choose to do it, I hope he's got a fast processor.

Nigel Goodwin · 10-01-2008, 17:03

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Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin

Yes it is, if he he made it 9000kbps he'd still be only getting a very good SD picture he's not retaining any of the 'HD', just producing a more stable picture . But I'm willing to bet my balls on the fact it won't be any better as a retail DVD at 9000kbps or even about 5000kps to 9000kbps on a variable bit rate.Providing of course the retail DVD.Not least because the original HD file he has is no doubt in x264 or MPEG2 and is already compressed. Like for like, it'll be the same as a retail DVD if not worse.

Sony provided their dealers with Linux based demo computers that booted from a DVD (no HDD) and had a DVI video card, complete with a DVI four way splitter, and four DVI/HDMI leads. The DVD it booted from also contained the HD demonstration video, some really stunning scenes, of outstanding quality (as you would expect for a demonstration of HD).

Anyway - after a while we lent one of these to a friend, and he made us a number of other Linux booting HD demonstration disks, using HD clips he downloaded. He also took the original Sony disk and ripped the HD video from it, and created various qualities of normal DVD disks, which he also gave us. The best quality versions of this were absolutely stunning, it wasn't HD obviously - but if you moved back to normal SD viewing distance you couldn't tell the difference - far better than the best commercial DVD's you get, but also far shorter!.

It took him quite a few weeks to do all this, and I've still got a big pile of DVD's he brought back, in all sorts of resolutions, including 720P, 1080i, and 1080P as well.

dfgh · 10-01-2008, 17:17

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Sony provided their dealers with Linux based demo computers that booted from a DVD (no HDD) and had a DVI video card, complete with a DVI four way splitter, and four DVI/HDMI leads. The DVD it booted from also contained the HD demonstration video, some really stunning scenes, of outstanding quality (as you would expect for a demonstration of HD).

Anyway - after a while we lent one of these to a friend, and he made us a number of other Linux booting HD demonstration disks, using HD clips he downloaded. He also took the original Sony disk and ripped the HD video from it, and created various qualities of normal DVD disks, which he also gave us. The best quality versions of this were absolutely stunning, it wasn't HD obviously - but if you moved back to normal SD viewing distance you couldn't tell the difference - far better than the best commercial DVD's you get, but also far shorter!.

It took him quite a few weeks to do all this, and I've still got a big pile of DVD's he brought back, in all sorts of resolutions, including 720P, 1080i, and 1080P as well.

Of course it is, but if the retail DVDs came from an original print and were exactly the same specification as those homemade demo discs, they'd be better. Of course if you max the bit rate on a file that is being created from something of higher quality it's going to look better simply cause it has more info per sec. But as you said it's not 'HD' it just pushing the limits of what SD is capable of.It's kind of like my freeview, it tends to be crisper than Sky, mostly do to with bitrates. But in Biffo the Bears' case, the benefits of the conversion would barely be noticed and be highly impractical.

bobcar · 10-01-2008, 17:18

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Yes it is, if he he made it 9000kbps he'd still be only getting a very good,ver stable SD picture he's not retaining any of the 'HD' .

Sorry but you're wrong about this, it is possible to retain information about the higher resolution in a lower resolution transfer.

I don't know what more I can say on this as it'll just turn into a "I'm right/you're right" argument. I understand it goes contrary to what you consider common sense but it is true - you just have to get your head around information and how it's decoded rather than think about pixels.

Please note I'm not saying upscaled SD by by a standard upscaling DVD player is in any way comparable to HD - it isn't. Biffo's scheme won't work either.

infiniteloop · 10-01-2008, 17:32

the only answer to this is to use a computer or PS3 anyway, forget the DVD player. All that re-encoding to get a poorer result. Not worthwhile.

dfgh · 10-01-2008, 18:15

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Sorry but you're wrong about this, it is possible to retain information about the higher resolution in a lower resolution transfer.

I don't know what more I can say on this as it'll just turn into a "I'm right/you're right" argument. I understand it goes contrary to what you consider common sense but it is true - you just have to get your head around information and how it's decoded rather than think about pixels.

Please note I'm not saying upscaled SD by by a standard upscaling DVD player is in any way comparable to HD - it isn't. Biffo's scheme won't work either.

It just means that if you have a good quality original your conversion will be better.Since lines dictate the boundaries of quality, then ultimately you're a slave to that, no matter how you it's decoded.Otherwise lines(pixels) wouldn't matter at all and emphasis would be placed on tvs that process information better rather than how many lines they're capable of showing.Since 'HD' is defined by the number of lines footage has, what I said is correct. In a higher bitrate you'd only be retaining more information, not more lines, they don't add up to the same thing.Otherwise a DVD authored at 9999999kbps a sec would technically be HD, and it wouldn't.Since Blu-Ray is already capable of higher bitrates, if what you said was true, they wouldn't have bothered with them capable of playing more lines of resolution and same goes for LCDS too.

bobcar · 10-01-2008, 18:32

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It just means that if you have a good quality original your conversion will be better.Since lines dictate the boundaries of quality, then ultimately you're a slave to that, no matter how you it's decoded.Otherwise lines(pixels) wouldn't matter at all and emphasis would be placed on tvs that process information better rather than how many lines they're capable of showing.Since 'HD' is defined by the number of lines footage has, what I said is correct. In a higher bitrate you'd only be retaining more information, not more lines, they don't add up to the same thing.Otherwise a DVD authored at 9999999kbps a sec would technically be HD, and it wouldn't.Since Blu-Ray is already capable of higher bitrates, if what you said was true, they wouldn't have bothered with them capable of playing more lines of resolution and same goes for LCDS too.

As I said there's no point in us arguing about this further. If you do more research on this (the maths is horrendous so if you don't have a degree in maths forget the maths) then it would be good for you to come back here and admit your mistake. As I said it's not intuitively obvious - I have a background in information theory which makes it easier to grasp the concept.

bobcar · 10-01-2008, 18:35

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if what you said was true, they wouldn't have bothered with them capable of playing more lines of resolution and same goes for LCDS too.

Just though I'd clear this up though I did mention it in a previous post - information is lost about missing lines in a down conversion just not all of it and in any case it's much easier to produce an HD image from an HD source, it costs thousands with really fast processors to do otherwise.

dfgh · 10-01-2008, 18:59

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