....since HDTV's have their own scalers built-in (some good, some bad). Surely if your TV uses a good scaler, it would upscale DVD's to it's native resolution better than a cheap DVD upscaler?

...or have I got it completely wrong?

No, you're perfectly correct - it's most other people who have it wrong - led astray by advertising trying to sell you a new DVD player!.

The only place it is worthwhile is if you have a really poor cheap TV, an external upscaler can make it almost as good as a far more expensive set.

...and I think you're completely wrong.

I bought a Panasonic TX37LZD70 with upscaling and was disappointed with the upscaling when playing DVDs from my Sony DVD player (can't remember the model, but nothing special).

Bought a Toshiba HD-DVD player from Amazon for £60 (one benefit of the format war ending, cheap HD-DVDs too until BluRay becomes a more sensible price) and found a world of difference.

If HD-DVD on a HD-DVD player is 100%, the I reckon standard DVD on HD-DVD is 75%, while standard DVD on standard DVD player may only be 25% (I have The Bourne Supremacy in both formats). Experts may shoot me down, but the HD-DVD made a huge improvement in DVD quality.

but was the Sony DVD connected at SCART? If so, you cannot compare images that have been through digital to analogue conversion and back again then scaled against signals processed only in the digital domain.

There you go, crashed and burnt....

But if you're expecting the TV to upscale SCART DVD output, it ain't gonna do it to anywhere near to playing a DVD on a HD-DVD player.

The HD-DVD players do have a good reputation for upscaling though whereas those upscalers in most DVD players (especially cheaper ones) do not. That's why a lot of people have bought HD-DVD players just for upscaling.

Nigel Goodwin seems obsessed with telling people that all upscaling devices are a ripoff.

Like the other poster I too have a Panasonic Viera tv.

Despite Nigels protests that RGB scart connected to the tv would be as good as HDMI to the tv this isnt the case at all.

All my devices are connected via RGB scart and my 2 dvd recorders and old Sky+160 didnt offer up very good pictures via RGB - and still dont.

The improvement is immediately noticeable on my HDMI devices - the Sky HD box ,the PS3 and the Toshiba HD DVD player- the quality far exceeds that of the RGB connections.

Although it IS a tad better I would be very picky to say the Tosh HD DVD player upscales better than the PS3

Obviously your Panasonic set has a poor upscaler then, which is interesting to know, as I would have expected Panasonics to be good from their past reputation.

According to reports (including your's) the Toshiba HD-DVD players have particularly good upscalers, far better than any normal DVD players.

The PS3 is a good upscaler but the HD DVD player wins by an edge- certainly not by enough to buy one just for upscaling if you already have another upscaling player

think upscalers can take the digital signal and use something akin to interpolation to improve the upscaled HDMI/DVI output.
This of course depends on the quality of both the firmware and/or dedicated hardware.

A TV via scart receives analogue data which would then be converted bach to digital data.

Therefore a good upscaler can help.
However if you already have a DVD player its just not worth it.
Did anyone upgrade just to get RGB?

All upscalers use something like interpolation (though more than that) whether they are external or in the TV they still do this though some are better at it than others.

The conversion from digital to analogue and back again makes a small difference but it is small, you also don't have to upscale in the DVD player to remain in the digital domain. Using HDMI or component does have the advantage of being able to transfer progressive images which can make a big difference depending upon the TV.

It would be well worth upgrading if the DVD player/recorder did not work properly with RGB, the difference there is massive and is much more pronounced and obvious than the difference made by a good upscaler.

What device that didnt offer RGB output could be upgraded?

If anyone had a device that was only composite I would say the change to RGB was more than the improvement between non upscaled and upscaled dvd

I have a Pioneer dvd player connected to my Sony 40inch LCD via component, and also a Pioneer dvr connected via hdmi to upscale. Now the picture on my dvd player is very, very good, I have no complaints about it at all, but the picture on the dvr via hdmi is exceptional. That being said, my dvr is hardly a cheap dvd upscaler as it was quite an expensive machine in the first place, so although my Sony telly may upscale very well, the dvr really improves the picture.

What's the picture like from your DVDR via HDMI but not upscaled (576p)?

..and what is the DVR scaling to?

..and what's the native resolution of the TV?

ie: how many times is the image being scaled before it gets to your eyeballs.

It is still fairly good, but on 1080p it is a better picture. Just a slight jump, but a jump nonetheless.

Scaling to 1080p

Native resolution is 1920 x 1080

How many times the image is being scaled? I really don't know, not really a techie.