Does anyone have any experience with the scaling engine in the newest Sony LCD TVs? They call it "X reality pro" whatever that means.

I've pretty much decided that my new TV will be a Sony, so I wanted to know if it might be decent at scaling SD. I've owned a Sony HD CRT with their second-gen scaling engine and it was pretty decent so I don't know if they've improved it or if it's gotten worse with SD over time.

Thoughts, observations?

I've got a 48W605. Haven't used it with SD but it scales 720p to 1080p quite nicely. I can set my BDP-450K to 480p and let the TV do the scaling for some DVDs and tell you what I think. It's supposed to be decent from what I've heard (doesn't show lot of sharpness in the picture but no ringing or such visible artifacts either).

That would be great. I'm actually looking at the North American version of that TV.

My Blu-Ray player cannot output 480i so I could only try 480p processing. Tried some of my Criterion DVDs like Tokyo Olympiad, The Third Man, Do The Right Thing and Spartacus. As far as I could see it passed the test. No visible halos or edge enhancement yet certainly not too soft either. Then I switched the Blu-Ray player to output 1080p and tried the same discs again. Couldn't see any differences (though minor may exist). I wouldn't worry about the scaling engine on this set.

Thanks for testing. I'll probably be feeding it 480p anyway since I have a VP50 that can do deinterlacing pretty well.

I have a Sony KDL-40XBR2. It was their flagship LCD in 2007. I will test its comb filter and scaler in a few days. I have a friend who has 65" Sony from 2012. I cant remember its model but its the flagship model of that year. He likes its comb filter but was not happy with its deinterlacing/scaling. He was comparing its deinterlacing to dvdo edge for reference.


Sony has a technology called superbit processing. It upscales 8bit video to 16bit beyond deep color. Then it upscales resolution to 1080p(or 4k on newest models). Then scales the bit depth down to 12bit(hdmi can only do 12bit). This technology reduces banding to none. I know fo a fact bdp-5000es, 7000es(400 bd changer), s790, 5200,6200 have this technology. I know the high end projectors also use it. I am not sure if it made it into tv sets. I dont see why not.

Now banding is not a much issue on ld as its not compressed. Sony is known to be aggressive on scaling. It works out ok for LD as it doesnt suffer compression artifacts.

how well do you guys figure, in the grand scheme, does my WORST BUY INSIGNIA 46" LCD handle it's scaling
of the direct composite output of my two S-VHS VCRs? ((NO S-VIDEO PROVISIONS ON MONITOR))

JVC HR-S8000U (1988) vs MITSUBISHI HS-U80 (1988)

I worked for worstbuy/magnolia before. I even worked in their service department jeeksquad. Insignia and dynex are mixed bags. I could see part numbers, manufacturers info etc. most were made by samsung and lg for worst buy. All insignia plasmas were rebadged samsungs. Some lcds are unknown (to me)chinese makes. Models up to 2008 sucked. 2009 and up they got gradually better and some matched big name brands in performance. Dynex is generally a notch below bargain brand and insignia is a big name brand alternative with good performance.

I'm interested in the comb filter as well. My SD Sony Wega has a nice 3D comb filter and the luma/chroma coring and gain are adjustable from the service menu. I haven't checked out the service menus on Sony LCDs. The CRTs had everything you could ever want in the service menu but I feel the newer sets are going to be bare-bones