HTPC Guide: Part 5, Upscaling DVD Video
By Jeffrey | June 27, 2008
Ok, so you’ve got your television channels working in MediaPortal, but you’re not always wanting to watch the latest episode of Fresh Prince so you pop in a DVD, start to watch it, and now you’re increasingly depressed at the video quality.
Seriously! You just spent who knows how much on the ultimate piece of hardware for your home theater, or at least your living room, and now your movies look like they are playing on your old VHS player.
Well, we can fix that. And more than fix that, we can upscale those DVDs at such a professional quality that on an average sized TV they’ll rival HD video. Don’t believe me? Read on.
What Is Upscaling?
Upscaling images are an interesting game. There are a multitude of ways it is done, but for our purposes it really comes down to just two: simply stretching the image to a new size, or processing it while it’s being stretched to retain (most) quality.
Here is an example:
The difference in quality should be immediately obvious.
When your typical DVD player, or your HTPC, is playing a DVD without processing that is essentially what is happening. HD video, on the other hand, has its native resolution at 720p or 1080p, so no stretching needs to occur, and the image is stunning.
Compare the difference between the standard DVD and the HD broadcast of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers:
Again, the difference in quality should be immediately apparent. For example, compare the texture of the bricks. The color difference is not a quality issue, as the HD video is naturally different than the DVD.
So, we know what DVD can do, and we know what HD can do, let’s see what your HTPC can do.
Let’s Upscale!
First off, you’ll need to have ffdshow installed to use this guide, so click here to download the latest version, and install it.
Once it’s installed, go to your Start Menu, ffdshow, and click on Video Decoder Configuration.
When it opens up, click Codecs on the left side, and scroll to the bottom. Under Format, change Raw video to All Supported, if it isn’t already.
Now click Blur & NR on the left side, and set up the options like I have in the image below, making sure you have checked the boxes as well:
Now click Resize & aspect, and change those options to how I have them below. Make sure to change the resolution next to New size to whatever resolution you are running.
Finally, click Settings under Resize & aspect, and change those options to how I have them:
Now change the order of your options on the left side of the ffdshow window so that the options you have checked (Blur & NR, Resize & aspect) are as high as they can go. This ensures that they are processed before any other effects.
Then click OK to save your settings and close the configuration.
Now open up MediaPortal Configuration. Click the plus sign next to DVD and click on DVD Codecs. Change the DVD video decoder to ffdshow Video Decoder. Now click DVD Post Processing, find ffdshow Video Decoder in the list of available filters and double-click it to add it to the box above. Then click the check box next to it to activate it.
Click OK to save your settings and close MediaPortal Configuration.
You’re Done!
That’s it! Now MediaPortal is set up to use ffdshow to process and scale your DVD movies up to whatever resolution you’d like.
Comparison
Here’s how The Two Towers being processed compares to its DVD and HD counterparts, respectively. The left image is the DVD, the middle is the HD, and the last is the processed DVD in MediaPortal.
Topics: Guides |
[...] In the meantime, you can skip on over to the next section of the guide: Upscaling Your DVD Movies In Professional Quality [...]
Posted by: HTPC Guide: Part 4, Set Up Your TV Tuning at SavvyGeek on June 27th, 2008 at 12:30 pmWon’t this affect watching dvds that are in 4:3?
Posted by: Ed on August 20th, 2008 at 12:07 am