I just bought a Samsung Plasma tv which is not not full HD. However, I also purchased the Samsung SH873 DVD recorder with HDD and HDMI 1080p upscaling. The guy at Currys advised me that I would need an HDMI cable to connect from the DVD into the tv.

I am quite confused by all this jargon and not really sure what I have bought and what benefits it gives. Am I right in thinking that despite not having a full HD tv, if I watch a standard dvd on my dvd with 1080p upscaling, I will see full-HD images?

Also, this dvd hdd has a freeview tuner. Does this also mean that it will upscale the freeview broadcasts into 1080p?

I paid £60 for a gold-plated HDMI cable and I have connected it to the HDMI output socket on the back of the dvd and have it running into the HDMI 1 socket on the back of the tv. The tv has another HDMI socket as well. Is this correct?

One final thing, when I browse through the input modes on my tv, I get the regular AV 1 and AV 2, plus an HDD one and an HDMI, However I can never see anything through the last 2 modes. Any advice and enlightenment here would be extremely appreciated!

Many thanks in advance.

When watching a DVD you will see an upscaled picture, this isn’t HD. For HD you need a Blu Ray player or SKY HD or similar.

You can let the DVD recorder doing the upscaling (i.e. set to 720p or 1080i etc). If you don’t then the TV will upscale it anyway.

£60 for a HDMI cable is a rip off (sorry!).

The person who persuaded you to part with 60 quid for an HDMI lead should be shot! I spent 19.99 on mine and that was probably too expensive!

You will not get true HD pictures from your kit. The DVD is not high definition so even though it scales the pictures up to fill a HD screen they will never be as good as a true high definition source. Basically it makes an educated guess about what data to use to fill in the gaps between the standard definition resolution coming off the disk (or the tuner for that matter) and the high definition resolution of the TV.

You say you don't get any picture on the HDMI input on the TV. Do you also have a SCART lead connected? If so you may well be watching via that and not HDMI. Some DVD players/recorders require you to dive into the menu system and turn on the HDMI output.

You can easily test this by playing a DVD and unplugging the HDMI lead. (won't harm anything) If the picture stays on the telly you are viewing it via SCART or even worse via the aerial connection!

That's £60 down the toilet. You could have bought a £10 one and it would have worked the same.

Or indeed a £5 one.

And the gold plating is totally and utterly pointless ....