Receiver Upconversion... Is it real?

[soundjunkie]

I'm trying to help my Dad with a purchase of an updated receiver. I was talking to a salesman at a local appliance/electronics store, and he was telling me that no receiver upconverts to 1080p to match the newer TV's with 1080p pictures. The only conversion taking place is taking signal that is probably compressed and uncompressing it to send across an HDMI cable. He said the picture quaility should be enhanced, but the resolution would still not be "real" 1080p.

My father does have a Sony SXRD 1080p TV, so the question is if "upconversion" is something I should consider as a requirement when looking? He has Onkyo stuff, and would like to stick with the same brand, and we've looked at the 705 and 805 models. Is the so called "upconversion" on the 805 any different or better?

He doesn't have a hi-def player, nor do I think he will ever invest in one unless the come way down in price. He does have HD Directv, though, and OTA HD channels too...

Also, if others may have recomendations of other receivers in the $750 to $900 dollar range, that would be great also...

 

[GlocksRock]

upconversion refers to outputting onto HDMI (or component as the case may be) what was inputted as either composite video, s-video, or component video. What you are talking about is upscaling, and yes it does exist, and some devices do it better than others. Devices that use the Faroudja chip do pretty good, some Oppo dvd players and some recievers have this, but some of the new Onkyo receivers have the Reon-HQV chip that does a better job. The TX-SR875 onkyo has this. http://www.onkyousa.com/model.cfm?m=TX-SR875&class=Receiver&p=i

I just got a RX-V1800 that does upscaling up to 1080p, whereas my old RX-V1600 only does upconversion, but it will deinterlace 480i.

 

[soundjunkie]

Thanks for the note. I understand now, but I guess is it worth the extra bucks to get a receiver that can upscale to 1080p to match the TV's resolution? Is that even possible? Just thinking it would take some of the processing out of the TV, may be a better thing....

 

[GlocksRock]

It may or may not be worth it, a tv will scale/deinterlace any signal that's inputted to it's native resolution, it just becomes a matter of what does a better job of upscaling, the receiver, or tv. I have from my usage of upconverting dvd players, that while it's nice, it doesn't make the picture that much better. You can't create HD from a source that is only SD.