What Happens When a Blu-Ray Player “Upscales” a DVD?

186 viewsOtherTechnology

I have a pretty large DVD and Blu-Ray collection, and I play all of them with a Blu-Ray player. When I play my DVDs on there, they look nice and sharp, definitely not Blu-Ray quality but still very nice, while when I play an uncompressed DVD rip on VLC Media Player it looks, well, like a DVD. I know my Blu-Ray player isn’t actually adding any detail, and it doesn’t have that weird artificial sharpness, so what is it doing?

In: Technology

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The upscaling software maps the pixels from the original frame to new locations in the upscaled frame. This results in ‘gaps’ in the upscaled frame that then needs to be filled in. The missing pixels then get filled in with the average color and brightness of the neighboring pixels.

More advanced upscaling algorithms analyze the original frame for patterns that can make the process more efficient, while also reducing artifacting and distortion that upscaling may introduce.

You are viewing 1 out of 5 answers, click here to view all answers.