So my problem is that I use my receiver for upscaling, which has an Anchor Bay chip, however; it does not have any aspect ratio controls. As soon as I send my material out at a resolution over 480p my TV will not allow me to zoom on letterboxed material. I've though about buying a DVDO iScan like I mentioned in the other thread, but they're very expensive, especially when I already have a upscaler in my receiver to work with. Is there any way I can put the LD through a device like a DVD recorder that can zoom the material first, then put it through my receiver's upscaler. Here's how I thought it would look like.

Find a DVD recorder comb filters and zooms in the material. It outputs component to my receiver. The Receiver then upscales it to 1080p. A 1080p zoomed in image is sent to the TV in striking clarity.

The "zooming" is a scaling operation. If you send the image through two steps of scaling, the results will be poor. "Striking clarity" is one thing you are guaranteed not to get. This is the reason why something like the iScan is desirable.

Okay that makes sense. So when looking for scalers, how important is HDCP compliance? Does it only matter if I'm using a source like a DVD player that has HDCP compliance?

HDCP compliance is NOT needed. Remember, you are getting a analog signal out of your laserdisc player so there is no copy protection that needs to be managed. All your laserdisc content will play fine.

As for scaling, the best is to use either a high end scaler (this often costs thousands of dollars) or high end receiver if it has a good quality scaler (if they don't particularly tell you what kind of scaler chip they use, most likely this is not the case), you can use a DVD recorder which may have a better comb filter than your laserdisc player so the upscaled image will be better.

I agree with Publius, you should only scale the content with one piece of hardware and it should be the one with the best scaler (as zooming is just a form of scaling).

What kind of TV are you using? Most will have zoom and aspect ratio options regardless of content so that is kind of unusual. I use a projector and there are separate setting for both aspect ratios as well as zoom functions.

That kinder like what was the topic on laserdiscs being viewed on LCD TV or video projector the image is being magnified and it looks a bit rough.

As for DVD recorder wouldn’t you need to first recoded the laserdisc to DVD-RW then use the zoom on some players I have zoom mode on my DVD-RW and Phillips bluray/DVD player which is a gimmick I see the image fine most times but some programs I like to fill the widescreen TV without using the 16:9, so I zoom in few % and leave it at that.

I guess you could also play the content though the pc and use that zoom tool which is fairly good for some images on the internet that are too small to view.

Play the pc output though the TV as some have computer ports or put it though the vidoe projector?

I would not record it to DVD as now you are converting a analog signal to a digital format so your going to get encoding "artifacts/picture quality loss" as well as digital artifacts. Audio will also be degraded to a lossy format. I think most people who use the DVD Recorder method (I don't personally) just pass the composite video through so that the comb filter in the DVD recorder is used instead of the one in the laserdisc player or TV. From the DVD recorder's video out they connect straight to the TV, but not actually recording to DVD.

Lossey I’d rather have it lossey as everyone calls it rather than the soundtrack’s low end being chopped off. Yeah I have noticed the artefacts in the picture even when viewed as normal. Al this bluray nonsense with lossless and some of the discs I have, have had the low end reduced and I think the real reason is because most home set-ups can’t handle it like large glorified cinema PA system can. Otherwise why reduce the dynamics I’d rather have full spectrum and lossy or lossless not that I care to notice it its marginal. Unlike a soundtrack that has clearly had the low end chopped off.

This whole lossey and lossless thing. Its like another way of trying to sale a coffee brand with more caffeine in it, to wake up in the morning.

I passed the laserdisc though another DVD-RW recoded until the power supply failed on it? I have another DVD-RW recoded but haven’t rigged it up as It did make the picture a little bit better when viewing on the CRT.

Okay that makes sense that I don't need HDCP. I saw a Faroudja DVP-1000 on eBay for reasonably cheap, but it doesn't have HDCP so I wasn't sure that I needed that.

My current receiver is a Pioneer VSX-920-K which advertises that it has an Anchor Bay chipset. The internal chipset has only two options for aspect, Through, which just passes the signal through without any change to the aspect, and Normal, which says it will display black bands on either the top and bottom, or on both sides. I've played around with these settings and they don't seem to help. I'm honestly not sure what Normal is even supposed to do.

My TV is a Samsung Plasma 720p. It does not allow for zoom function if its receiving a signal above 480p. Above that it only allows for 4:3, 16:9, Screen Fit, and Wide Fit. Besides it sounds like from what you guys are saying, putting my signal through a good scaler won't really help that much if I'm just zooming it all in the end.

A good scaler will allow you to avoid zooming in your TV, by placing all your content into an appropriate format. In other words, you can use it on 4:3 LDs to make up a 720p 16:9 frame with black bars on each side & the full image in the center, on 2.35 LDs to make a 720p 16:9 frame with black bars on top & bottom, & on 1.66~1.85 LDs to make a 720p 16:9 frame with minimal bars (details vary depending on the specific scaler ; the worst that can happen is that it will fit the width on the 1.66 ratio, cropping the top & bottom slightly). Then your TV will not do any zooming or fitting at all. It will just show what comes from the scaler, formatted as is.

It sounds like the best option for you is to buy a good scaler so that you can do all the aspect ratio and resolution scaling before the signal hits your TV. I would then just feed a 720p signal into the TV through an HDMI cable from the scaler. Even though you have a 720p set, I would get a scaler that also does 1080p as i'm sure the next TV you buy will support 1080p and that way you can enjoy the full resolution of other content such as blu-ray.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "low end being chopped off" due to the encoding format. The technical specifications for both lossey and non-lossey (lossless) formats allow for very deep base (at least down to 20 hz, which is below hearing). The idea behind lossey is that some of the audio data is lost from the original master recording for the sake of saving space on the disk. If an original recording is converted into compressed audio on the disk, the lossless format should sound better than lossey (regardless of frequency). For example, the blu-ray lossless formats of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD should sound like the orignal recordings at their respect sampling and bit rates (which are beyond what standard CD's offer, for comparison).

I completely agree with you that in 98% of home theater setups I see it's not the audio format that the limiting factor but rather people's equipment. I find that most people ignore the sound system compared to their video. I see people buying expensive TV's and they buy some cheap "home theater in a box" from the local walmart. I think a good balance of 50%/50% on audio/video would do them much greater service (although I have to admit that my audio equipment is far more expensive than my video, but I also prefer to use my home theater as a listening room more than half the time).

I get want you’re saying I just don’t believe all bluray are (and this is for different thread).

I can see the loss in picture when recoding a laserdisc to DVD-RW but it seems to retain the same for same picture framing brightness contrast expect for tiny little things in-between. Anyhow I have seen a really dodgy first edition Event Horizon the scene where one of the crewmen goes inside a the pressure hatch and decompresses the air. Later on when the crew get to him, the flicking of the strobe light produces ugly pixies!

I couldn't agree with you more on some blu-rays not looking/sounding good. Another that comes to mind is the re-release of predator where they applied way to much DNR and all the detail is washed out and people look like they're made of clay. These things however are not an inherent issue with blu-ray technology but simply a poor decisions on the authoring side. Some movies are given a lot of attention and can be made to look really great (even when the source material is sub-par) such as Blade Runner, transformers, Baraka, etc... This is the same case with Laserdisc however. Movies like the Phantom Menace and Jurasic park look like a DVD while some movies (too numerous to name) look rather poor.

I think we've gone off track a bit!

Well that’s sad of 20th century Fox. But what I’ve noticed between the laserdisc and DVD region 2 SE I have also the BBFC cut version SIGH when it already had cut for 1986 or no cut rather as it was the same as the US release.

Its the colour white brightness contrast levels are not correct! There is too much whites which leads to other colours turning cyan green. So both versions are miles from mirrored cinema release prints.

Check one scene where Dutch does a double Dutch dive into the river and then swims for the muddy surface. Note the background its way off being correct and suspect the bluray the so called “cinematic” format as one studio called it, that’s a laugh.

Yeah a bit I think we need to realign the laser tracking to different thread and b**ch about these so called perfect bluray because I have got a pile of these rotten discs.

So does anybody have opinions of the Faroudja DVP 1000. there doesn't seem to be a lot of info about it out there.

What of eBay for any second-hand Faroudja DVP 1000? I even took a look under eBay UK not a dicky bird about it. Expect under the name itself but not the model number.

My 32" LCD LG can zoom/stretch any signal, no matter the resolution. The only problem is that it can be difficult to stretch it to the perfect ratio. I mark my screen off with clear tape, so that helps for the 1.85:1 films at least