Your 4K TV Is Probably the Only 4K Converter You Need

Megalith

Megalith

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Is this guy right? I finally jumped into 4K with a new LG OLED, and the first thing I noticed was that upscaled 1080p material didn’t look nearly as bad as I thought it would. A fancy receiver that does 4K upscaling is on my list, but do those of you who already have separate scalers see a difference? Ideally, what I want to do is build a new HTPC that is powerful enough to run madVR’s most intensive upscaling options, which may be the best solutions out there.

…your TV's internal scaler is "fine." It will do all this upconverting automatically. Anything you send it, it shows full screen, fully upconverted. This is not to say that all scalers are equal. The best scalers can create an image with much greater apparent detail and lower noise than the worst scalers. I've seen incredibly well-upconverted HD images that were near indistinguishable from real 4K content (and so have you, as a fair amount of 4K content is upconverted before it even gets to your TV). The thing is, the difference between the best scalers in A/V gear and the one in your TV is pretty small (as long as your TV is decent). If you're watching a channel and it looks terrible, chances are the best scaler on Earth isn't going to make it watchable.
 
Don't tell the madVR fanboi's this. They'd rather dump a few grand on video cards to do it. Of course they can tell the difference though, just like people that pay 500 dollars on a speaker shelf.
 
i had to plug a wii-u into a 75" 1080p TV over composite cables a while ago and was suprised how well it scaled... yes it was soft, but not as noisy as you'd expect.
 
I have a 4k TV and it upscales just fine. A friend of mine also turned off the upscaling on his receiver because his TV did a better job. I definitely don't feel like my next receiver purchase is going to be determined by upscaling abilities.
 
Being a gamer I have a video card that has horsepower to spare and I can barely tell much difference between the various madVR formats. Especially considering the nature of most video content anyway.
With the receivers I've had the upscaling functions essentially cripple my ability to game with them. They add random latency and syncing issues.
 
since 4K is exactly 4 times the resolution of 1080p, scaling should be perfect

3840 by 2160 is typical for most sets
 
The new LG OLED is incredible, it's actually too good in some cases. It's hard to watch some of my favorite old movies on it because of how it destroys the illusion when you can see the fake movie sets. The upscaling is great.
 
I'm a madVR nutjob. Your TVs scaler is probably fine for anything you'll need. Native broadcast tv that's 720p and thus not easily scaled through doubling would scale better through madVR but getting live TV through is kinda a pain in the ass. If the sole question is should you care about getting a surround sound receiver that has a fancy video section? Then no, the TV is fine.

For upscaling those dvd rips? I'll still take madVR. Not just for the scaling, but the other image enhancement options it provides.
 
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1080p content scales up to 4k perfectly since it's evenly divisible. 720p content is a little rougher, but the upscaling on my samsung 4k TV does just fine, don't waste money on upscaling at all, all they do is add latency.
 
I can't stand 4k 60fps movies or TV shows.

Something about the extreme realism pulls me out of my suspension of disbelief, and suddenly I'm watching actors in costumes delivering lines on a set, instead of believable characters.

I wonder if the 'uncanny valley' effect is at play here.
 
cuethenoise said:
1080p content scales up to 4k perfectly since it's evenly divisible. 720p content is a little rougher, but the upscaling on my samsung 4k TV does just fine, don't waste money on upscaling at all, all they do is add latency.
Click to expand...

I'd be happier if there were an option to force 2x2 expansion for each pixel so sharp edges don't get blended between two adjacent rows/columns when I feed a 1080p signal into a 4k display. This would be closer fidelity to the original signal (especially when we're talking UI elements) and take less processing. Win-Win. But all my 4k TVs make things smoothed.
 
A big benefit of MadVR is color management and automatic frame rate switching, plus very good frame delivery / low judder.

For those of us who are sensitive to judder, this is a big deal. I have an LG B6 OLED 4k set and a gtx 1080 already... might as well use it!

I do agree tho that embedded scalers are quite good now.
 
IMO the built 4k upscaler makes all lower resolution content look better. I have 3 47" 1080p TVs right next to my 49" 4k, all with PS4s running Destiny. Everyone that walks in the room says the 4k TV looks best by far. I roll my eyes every time I hear someone say 4k TVs are a waste until everything can do 4k. Even DOSBOX 640x480 games look decent.
 
Verge said:
Don't tell the madVR fanboi's this. They'd rather dump a few grand on video cards to do it. Of course they can tell the difference though, just like people that pay 500 dollars on a speaker shelf.
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If I spent a ton of money on something, I'm going to notice a difference. I'll force myself to.
 
Personally, I found the Vizio M55 upscaling did a poor job and there was noticeable latency even using the game mode - I used the Pioneer Eite receiver's upscaling and noticed it was nicer than the M55s, especially on things like the AppleTV menu, sharpness was clear.

However, when I bought a new Samsung KS8000, I cant tell a difference at all between receiver and TV with 1080P content. There were a few years between the Vizio and Samsung, but the Vizio also has other issues with its menu and built in apps, so its software/hardware is half baked compared to the Samsung...
 
The scaler isn't bad in most of the new TVs. I have a few of the LG OLED TVs (including one of the 2017 models.)
But not "... the only 4k converter you need...". That is crazy. :) Both my Receivers (Denon AVR-X7200WA / Pioneer SC-LX901) and my oppo-203 do a much better job at upconverting vs the TV.
Like A LOT better. Playing the Nintendo Switch on a 65" LG G6 with the built in scaler wasn't pretty to look at. It was a ton better with the Pioneer. If i wasn't lazy i'd run all my non-4k content through the oppo.. but that is to much work.
Honestly i was planning to stick to just the TV scaler for most stuff, but i recently had my TV calibrated and the tech suggest I use the AVRs scaler. True enough. Much better. (It was ez to test by a push of a button on the AVR remote app.)

Short version, the scaler in the TVs are "fine" (ones in monitors are NOT.. so have the GPU scale for you.. GPU upconverting is also just "fine" - better to get super powerful GPUs if you wanted to play games in 4k), but there are much better options. The easy way being having your AVR doing it. Of course the fancy AVRs might cost more than your TV :)
 
Ur_Mom said:
If I spent a ton of money on something, I'm going to notice a difference. I'll force myself to.
Click to expand...

There's a whole industry of uber-expensive audio products built on this.

70 year olds who couldn't pass an elementary hearing test, claiming their 5,000 dollar speaker cables add to the spacial intensity.


I don't doubt MadVR and a 1080 can upscale better than a TV. But up close the difference is very difficult to see, and from any normal seating distance it's almost impossible. If they are going for PQ, they'd be much better off spending the 600 bucks on a spectrocolorimeter.
 
My TV and my AV receiver both do 4k upscaling apparently...I think I have the receiver doing it currently, never saw an actual setting on the TV (unless it just does it automatically?).
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
since 4K is exactly 4 times the resolution of 1080p, scaling should be perfect

3840 by 2160 is typical for most sets
Click to expand...

Yeah I have a 540p TV from 2006. It does a perfect half downscale of 1080p material. It looks great. In fact many of my friends have commented how great the picture is or they don't criticise it at all.

Perfect round upscale or downscale should look fine. Its only when you push 720p or 480p into the mix and it doesn't fit or scale perfectly you get issues.
 
Verge said:
There's a whole industry of uber-expensive audio products built on this.

70 year olds who couldn't pass an elementary hearing test, claiming their 5,000 dollar speaker cables add to the spacial intensity.


I don't doubt MadVR and a 1080 can upscale better than a TV. But up close the difference is very difficult to see, and from any normal seating distance it's almost impossible. If they are going for PQ, they'd be much better off spending the 600 bucks on a spectrocolorimeter.
Click to expand...


Yeah folks buying 24bit 192KHz DACS and pushing the audio through classic audiophile speakers from 1978 that only go up to 20KHz. In fact most speakers made today still cut off around that point.
 
My 4K TV scales even 720p content fairly well (this is a 720p movie file scaled to a 1080p resolution at the decoding hardware, THEN upscaled to 4k once the signal reaches the TV), so I was fairly surprised, given my experience with the other 4k (a computer monitor) is drastically different: 1080p resolution scaled to 4k screen has the exact kind of soft blur you'd see if you scaled an uneven resolution, and I saw this with scaled 720p image on my Swift too (which has no internal scaler).

Ironically, 1440p look much better than 1080p does on my 4k monitor. After this experience, I have essentially given up on ever being able to use 1080p as a viable resolution on monitors that are not 1080p native. My 4k tv took me by surprise, but then again, they are much more IQ oriented display devices so it might not be so surprising after all. I might try PS4 pro with 1080p and 4k and test the difference if it EVER gets in stock...
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
since 4K is exactly 4 times the resolution of 1080p, scaling should be perfect

3840 by 2160 is typical for most sets
Click to expand...
That's not 4k, that's UHD. 4k = 4096x2160. UHD = 3840x2160. The former being where "4k" comes from :).

I just got a Sony 4k projector and screen setup (installing tonight :D - been playing on a bedsheet pinned to the wall for the past couple days). The upscaling works great without enough delay to affect us playing games. I haven't had a chance to do a full tweak and test of latency, but I chose the Sony because of its reputation for low-latency gaming.
 
There is no "Good" upscaling. Only "Acceptable". MadVR is by far the best however.

Scaling up by 2x2 doesn't make the scaling better sorry.
It still has to interpolate and fill in the gaps.

2x2 upscaling is going to only benefit if you are doing Point integer scaling. Which is really only useful for old low res stuff. Most TVs and scalars, do NOT do point scaling.
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=203848

The gap from 1080p to 4k, is nearly twice as big as 720p is to 1080p.(4x vs 2.25x) It's only partly masked by the fact there are so many pixels to begin with. But in general, the bigger ratio of upsampling you have to do, the worse it looks.

Take a picture at 960x540 (A PSvita game basically) and then do a generic typical linear upsample to 1080p.

Does this look "good" to you?
https://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/386960x5441920x1088line.jpg (2x2 upsampling to 1080p)

Nothing will generally look better than native. Even if playing a game with a huge amount of SSAA at a lower res vs playing at native with a lower level of SSAA
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=199372
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=199370
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=199371


There are exceptions though, like if you are trying to emulate a CRT with a shader, the higher resolution you do this at (With typically 240p material), the better it will look.
 
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If you really want to improve your 4K experience. You need to get a 4K certified IEC power cable.

It makes a noticeable difference. I tried it on my Bluray of Terminator Genisys and it upscaled it to Terminator 2.....so that's a pretty big improvement.

SVVE756.jpg
 
Bottom line is that I believe the same issues are still present that happened with HD upscaling SD media. It depends on the hardware doing the job and that's not completely dependent to either a tv/player/or converter.

I've got 2 4k TV's. An LG-nonHDR and a HiSense-HDR. The LG up-scales amazingly, so much that honestly it can be hard to see the improvement with 4k discs versus a well encoded Blu-ray via our Phillips 4k player. The HiSense, well that's another story. Native 4k media looks great on it, the SLI-rig and Samsung 4k player, but anything less looks horrific.

Over the course of 10-15 years we had around 4-6 different 1080p TV's ranging from 25"-47" along with upscailing DVD and Blu-ray players. The experiences were equally widely varied. Some were awesome while others no so much.

I think ultimately you need to read the reviews for a TV or player and also take into account the pairing between the two(i.e. you could have a tv really doing the work or vice versa). I'm happy with my HiSense since its mainly used for HDR gaming and 4k but I wouldn't recommend it for someone who has an extensive SD/HD library but it cost me less than $500 new. When we got the LG two years ago it cost us ~$1300.
 
Verge said:
There's a whole industry of uber-expensive audio products built on this.

70 year olds who couldn't pass an elementary hearing test, claiming their 5,000 dollar speaker cables add to the spacial intensity.


I don't doubt MadVR and a 1080 can upscale better than a TV. But up close the difference is very difficult to see, and from any normal seating distance it's almost impossible. If they are going for PQ, they'd be much better off spending the 600 bucks on a spectrocolorimeter.
Click to expand...

The guys over at AVS did a speaker cable test and they made a speaker cable literally out of tin foil and tested it against expensive speaker cables, there was zero difference between the aluminum foil and the expensive cables.
 
I have been getting laughs about this since HDTV first appeared and people were talking about magic upscaling for DVD.

Heck even before that on Photography forums about magic upscaling for pictures.

Decent upscaling is trivial.

A decently tuned bicubic expansion is used by practically every TV and Monitor (and GPU) in existence. It's computationally light and does a great job. It does such a good job that most people can't tell the difference between upscaled 720p and 1080p at all. We have had local OTA-HD stations switch from 1080 to 720 and the only way most people notice is checking the station info that reports it.

Most of the magic upscaling used by a niche group of people is a combination of placebo effect and having algorithms that increase contrast or unsharp mask effects, which should be separate options (again simple and computationally light) or apply in special circumstances while creating artifacts in others, and they only demo where it works, not were it fails.

So yeah, your TV has all the upscaler you will ever need, and it has always been the case.
 
burton14e7 said:
The guys over at AVS did a speaker cable test and they made a speaker cable literally out of tin foil and tested it against expensive speaker cables, there was zero difference between the aluminum foil and the expensive cables.
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But but but...my 600 dollar shiedling ! :) - I have a older 4k vizio 60 inch - other than drooling over the samusng blacks - I don't see a need to upgrade anything. it has been uipscaling (and spying) on my for a long time and doing a fine job (at both!).
 
groebuck said:
But but but...my 600 dollar shiedling ! :) - I have a older 4k vizio 60 inch - other than drooling over the samusng blacks - I don't see a need to upgrade anything. it has been uipscaling (and spying) on my for a long time and doing a fine job (at both!).
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LOL yea, my vizio likes what i watch too....
 
1080p upscaling to 4k is quite good in almost any TV I've seen
 
Semantics said:
240p signal up-scaling i doubt any 4k tv does it well.
Click to expand...

They have boxes for this, popular, but expensive, in the hardcore retro crowd

Google Frameister

Some folks take this stuff seriously, it's like watching the guys at AVS shame people with their damn near perfect home theaters lol

Check out some of the videos from these guys, they go into a lot of detail into scaling 240p and other retro resolutions - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpvtp7mH0Cdq8FQUxcjDq0Q

For normal TV content, yea, your TV is good enough. For specialty stuff, well, there is a reason specialty equipment exists
 
Azamar said:
I have a 4k TV and it upscales just fine. A friend of mine also turned off the upscaling on his receiver because his TV did a better job. I definitely don't feel like my next receiver purchase is going to be determined by upscaling abilities.
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Mine almost never have been. It's the amount of inputs that generally drive my purchase choices. Well, among of things...like quality.
 
sir-gold said:
I can't stand 4k 60fps movies or TV shows.

Something about the extreme realism pulls me out of my suspension of disbelief, and suddenly I'm watching actors in costumes delivering lines on a set, instead of believable characters.

I wonder if the 'uncanny valley' effect is at play here.
Click to expand...
I realized that with the Hobbit trilogy at a mere 48fps. I was no longer looking through the screen at another world, but movie sets and shit spit out by a computer.
 
Snowdog said:
It's more to do with the crap CGI than frame rate.
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Agreed somewhat. But the actors' prosthetics such as the ears and feet looked obviously fake with the higher frame rate. The sets too. Just everything was so much more obviously artificial.
 
Megalith said:
Is this guy right? I finally jumped into 4K with a new LG OLED, and the first thing I noticed was that upscaled 1080p material didn’t look nearly as bad as I thought it would. A fancy receiver that does 4K upscaling is on my list, but do those of you who already have separate scalers see a difference? Ideally, what I want to do is build a new HTPC that is powerful enough to run madVR’s most intensive upscaling options, which may be the best solutions out there.

…your TV's internal scaler is "fine." It will do all this upconverting automatically. Anything you send it, it shows full screen, fully upconverted. This is not to say that all scalers are equal. The best scalers can create an image with much greater apparent detail and lower noise than the worst scalers. I've seen incredibly well-upconverted HD images that were near indistinguishable from real 4K content (and so have you, as a fair amount of 4K content is upconverted before it even gets to your TV). The thing is, the difference between the best scalers in A/V gear and the one in your TV is pretty small (as long as your TV is decent). If you're watching a channel and it looks terrible, chances are the best scaler on Earth isn't going to make it watchable.
Click to expand...

madVR's upscaling is very good and while most A/V purists would be against using some of the enhancement features there's that too. I'm using it on my system and outputting to a 55" Samsung KS8500. 1080p content looks great on my system, but native 4K naturally looks more detailed obviously. The TV is on my desk and functioning as a monitor, so I can easily tell 4K vs. 1080p, but I'm pretty sure I'd have a tough time telling if I were sitting 5' away or something. (currently, I'm about 36"-40" away from the screen.)

YeuEmMaiMai said:
since 4K is exactly 4 times the resolution of 1080p, scaling should be perfect

3840 by 2160 is typical for most sets
Click to expand...

This is true and pretty much why 4K TVs scale 1080p well.

However, I will say that when watching the same 1080p blu-ray movie off my PS4 which is using the TV's built-in upscaling vs. via my computer using madVR, the madVR is clearly better. I do have some of the enhancement features of madVR enabled, so that's probably why.
 
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