To upscale, or not to upscale.

Just Passing Through

Just Passing Through

The Wildcard
I'm a late comer to the hi-def era, and to be honest, I still prefer to watch SD material, especially TV sourced SD material on my old CRT set. I don't particularly want to be switching on the Home Cinema for every disc, especially when the old telly has built in Prologic, and makes 2.0 material sound really good (sub fan, not a lot of 5.1 Japanese audio out there).

But as I have been watching and rewatching anime on DVD over the past few months, I've made sure to watch a couple of episodes scaled up to see how they fare on an HD set. I figured I'd share what I found, categorised as Worse, Same, Better. The TV is a Panasonic 1080p LCD panel, the video source is a Panasonic Blu-ray player.


The first thing I watched was Steamboy, and as I have found for most film material, upscaling is invariably a good thing. Detail levels were enhanced and the film looked stupendous. Better.

Ah My Goddess TV: Flights of Fancy. This is the Region 1 release from Funimation, not the ADV/Manga release available here. And I found really no difference. It looks just the same upscaled as it does native resolution. I did find that I preferred Urd bigger though, so I watched most of this upscaled. Same.

Salaryman Kintaro: From Artsmagic. This was never the best candidate for upscaling, low budget, simple animation, and it shows. The upscaled image brings out the flaws in the animation to a degree that makes it hard to watch. I stuck with SD for this one. Worse.

Dai-Guard, from ADV had much the same story. It's a simple SD native anime, one of the early computer animated ones, and upscaling it emphasises the simplicity of the colour shading and character designs, it looks better on an SD set. Worse.

Master of Martial Hearts: Manga. Having to watch it was bad enough, but it suffers from an unfortunate NTSC-PAL conversion, which looks worse blown up. Much Worse.

Noir: ADV. This benefits from being animated the old fashioned way, ink on acetate, but upscaling it doesn't add much to the experience. On the bright side, it doesn't detract either. It's the same either way, and I get to enjoy the 5.1 audio I watched most of this upscaled. Same.


Negima!: Revelation The first series animated by Xebec. Just like Dai-Guard, its simple and colourful character design and animation doesn't react well to upscaling. This was one show I watched on SD: Worse.

Vampire Knight Guilty: Manga. Kaze's transfers for this show have been NTSC-PAL nightmares. Every pan or scroll or camera movement has been afflicted with horrific judder. The bigger the screen, the worse it looks. Watch this on as small a screen as possible to minimise the effect. Worse.

Darker Than Black: Manga. It's a fine, detailed anime, which you'd think would be prone to displaying aliasing. There is a bit of that, but not enough to really detract. I could watch this either way. Same.

Eureka Seven The Movie. Manga. Fine upscaled. Would have preferred to see the Blu-ray. Better

Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi: ADV. I was looking forward to watching this upscaled. It's a visually imaginative and diverse show, a lot of Gainax love in it. But upscaled was disappointing, it felt that it lacked detail and was prone to jaggies. SD only for me. Worse.

Cromartie High School: ADV. I try watching this show but I fall asleep everytime. I'm guessing the Same.

The Tower of Druaga: MVM. A recent show, Gonzo brilliance. Crunchyroll offering 720p streams. MVM sourcing a native PAL transfer. It should be built for high definition, right? It's just that the character designs are so simplistic, and usually so small in the admittedly fine background, that upscaling just reveals flaws. I could only watch this on SD. Worse.

Gun Sword: MVM. This was better, although the Japanese DTS sound sucked. The animation is good, the character designs are too, and upscaling reveals no flaws. Same.

Negima S2 + OVAs: Manga. Unlike the first series, this show upscales without issues, and given Shaft's animation, and the sheer preponderance of visual gags, I'd say it's worth the upscale. You just have to remember to skip the opening sequence, or else the compression artefacts will turn the screen to smear. Marginally better.

Millennium Actress: Manga. Movie... Better

Excel Saga: ADV. Now this, as an old show on old DVDs I wouldn't have expected to handle an upscale well. Surprisingly it came out without any major issues. It looks just fine on either format. Same.

Tsukihime Lunar Legend: MVM. Another surprise. I guess detail and atmosphere count for a lot. I wound up watching this show exclusively on the HD set, upscaling it really brought out the best in the show. Better.

Guyver: The Bioboosted Armour: Manga. On the other hand, this simplistic and old fashioned anime really does belong in the 20th Century and the smaller screen. Worse

Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino: Manga. It's not the most vibrant of animations, and it does have a legacy NTSC-PAL conversion, but I found that upscaling it did it no harm (except the Manga logo on this disc for some reason). I could watch this either way. Same

Urusei Yatsura OVA: MVM An old disc, an older transfer of an even older anime. Small screen is best for this one. Worse

Yugo The Negotiator: ADV See Cromartie High School.

Shikabane Hime: Manga. Now this on the other hand is a Gainax anime that does benefit from the upscale. Enhanced detail, richer colour definition, and given the prevalance of darker scenes, a much better viewing experience over all. Better.

Slayers Try: MVM. Another older series benefits from being a film source. While the upscale doesn't improve the perception of the image, it doesn't harm it either. Same.

Psycho Diver: MVM Not the best video source in the first place, but it doesn't make a lot of difference either. Same.

Cowboy Bebop Remix: Bandai. I started watching this on the big screen to take full advantage of the 5.1 audio, and gradually fell in love with the upscaled image. It's a film source, which helps, but the Bandai discs do have problems with interlacing artefacts that do affect the upscaled image. But on balance it's a better experience. Better.

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: Manga. As good upscaled as it is in standard definition. Can watch it either way, although the action does look better on a bigger screen. Same.

Ghost Sweeper Mikami movie: Manga. I never would have expected this to upscale well, especially as it's a letterbox transfer, very low resolution, and getting on in age too. But I guess it's that film source again. It actually looked better on the HD set. I guess the software does a better job of zooming the image than the zoom in my SD set. Better.

Tactics: Manga. Oh dear. Upscaling this introduces all sorts of artefacts and problems. The image becomes artificially soft, edges are blurred, and all sorts of weirdness happens. This is definitely one for the SD set only. Much worse.

Panda Go Panda: Manga. Miyazaki's Panda movie looks good either way: Same.

Texhnolyze: MVM. Now this has been the ultimate surprise for me. Upscaling this show has really enhanced the atmosphere, brought out the richness and detail in the animation that was previously hidden by the SD set. You hear about US companies upscaling SD anime to Blu-ray and that may make you scratch your head. But if one show deserves being released on Blu-ray, it's Texhnolyze. I don't think I'll ever watch this SD again. Much Better.

I'll add more as I watch them.
 
Yeah, the number of R1 and R2UK DVDs I'm watching these days that make me wish I still had a CRT upstairs is not small. Nanoha and Lucky Star are both series I've watched recently that you don't really want to watch on an HDTV.
 
I watched Lucky Star (R1) on my HD TV and it looked fine, though after some of the terrible messes I've forced that setup to deal with my eyes might have become used to compensating. I watch quite a lot of DVDs on my very high resolution computer monitors so by comparison things tend to look better on the TV in most circumstances :(

Allowing myself to get slightly sidetracked, this seems like a good point for me to ask what the deal is with PAL. Why is it that our UK stuff is still being converted now that technology which can handle both should be widespread? I'm assuming there's no advantage to it (conversions don't tend to make things *better*) and the opportunity for the conversion to be terrible seems ever-present. I was wondering this recently during one of Manga's many moans about the cost of pressing discs, and how it's annoying that they can't just use the exact same discs as other regions where all else is equal because of the arbitrary need to convert to PAL. Especially when it doesn't even make them materially better for what must surely be 99% of the anime-buying market in this country nowadays.

I might just not understand something.

R
 
ilmaestro said:
Yeah, the number of R1 and R2UK DVDs I'm watching these days that make me wish I still had a CRT upstairs is not small. Nanoha and Lucky Star are both series I've watched recently that you don't really want to watch on an HDTV.
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Nanoha looks bad in SD as well though.
LS (Beez) seems to do fine upscaled, for once we got a nice transfer.
 
Really good idea for a thread this one. Last time I watched laputa (on my ps3) I noticed the transfer looked like ass- which is odd seeing as it's from a film source and it's a beautiful film. . Probably worth noting it's the first R2 edition (released by Beuna Vista not optimum) Shortly after it was announced as coming out on Blu, so this is surely worthy of an upgrade purchase!
 
Rui said:
Why is it that our UK stuff is still being converted now that technology which can handle both should be widespread?
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I can only assume that they convert to PAL so as not to shut out the three (or possibly fewer) anime fans who don't have an NTSC compatible television.

What I would say is that now Madman and Beez are doing proper native PAL conversions and not NTSC > PAL jobs (i.e. with 4% speed up rather than blended frames) there is the benefit of the higher resolution.

As for upscaling, I'm happy with viewing most of my DVDs that way, though I do find myself wishing I still had a CRT for some of the older stuff like UY.
 
My (relatively uninformed, possibly hasty) impression from the SD series I've watched on my HDTV is that UK distro picture quality rankings go ADV > MVM > Beez > Manga.

Not that I want to fuel any fires going on elsewhere in the forum, of course. I do miss ADV sometimes though.

I just wish some older DVDs would be re-released if not on BD, at least with a remastered anamorphic transfer. Watching Slayers films windowboxed in the centre of my TV being a case in point (if I zoom in, the subs disappear).
 
So far I have only experienced a few unscaled Anime DVD's on HD TV's. Most only for a few minutes and I watched them some time back.

Howl's Moving Castle: looked superber on HD screen but that looked equally as good on large CRT screen.

Hellsing 13 Part TV Anime: Didn't play well on the HD screen, the image was very blocky through out playback.

Street Fighter 2 Movie: Saw the whole film on HD screen. But my memory of image quality is very vague. But with it been that vague it probably mean the video quality never stand out either being that brilliant or that poor.

Code Geass: First Episode: Not bad but I remember seeing something like either green/yellow dots on the textures through the playback.
 
By default most HD TVs come set to hugely overprocess the picture. Look for options like sharpness, edge enhancement and overscan and turn them OFF. It will look a lot better.

Even if you've got a 1080 native TV and you're watching a 1080 native source most TVs will still scale and process and the picture you see is not 1:1 Turning all that crap off can be like night and day.
 
I watch all my stuff on my new 1080p TV (and before that, 720p). I just give it the old FFDshow and AMD 6870 treatment and everything looks wonderous. My Philips Upscaling DVD player does a good job too.
 
Project-2501 said:
By default most HD TVs come set to hugely overprocess the picture. Look for options like sharpness, edge enhancement and overscan and turn them OFF. It will look a lot better.

Even if you've got a 1080 native TV and you're watching a 1080 native source most TVs will still scale and process and the picture you see is not 1:1 Turning all that crap off can be like night and day.
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Did that day one. Then on day 50, I learned that switching the TV to Game Mode, turns off most of the post-processing that you usually don't have control over, and maxes out the refresh rate, so that gamers get as little as possible input lag.

That improved the situation even further. I'm at the point where I'm only really having issues upscaling animated material. Live action DVDs look just fine for the most part. (Only been annoyed at a couple of the really old discs like Speed + Wargames, and some of the really new ones, where my inner conspiracy theorist reckons they've been deliberately degraded to make the Blu-rays look better.)

Last night I had a look at a couple of episodes of Nabari no Ou: Manga. It doesn't help that the anime has a hyperexposed, washed out pastel colour scheme. Its brightness tends to overwhelm the detail and I noticed that more on a larger screen than the smaller one. Hard edges and fine detail suffer too here, with a fair bit of shimmer and aliasing introduced by upscaling. Worse.
 
Just to add, for upscaling purposes, I really want the image to be the same as or better than the CRT experience. Of the 32 shows that I have sampled so far, only 10 have given me a lesser experience. And of those 10, I'd say only four or five are bad enough for me to never watch them upscaled again. That isn't too bad a ratio of good to bad, even if it isn't as impressive as my experience with live action DVDs.

Also it will be a very subjective reaction, will vary from person to person, and also be dependent on the TV, the DVD or Blu-ray player used, and method of upscale. I'd love to try watching these discs on a Plasma screen, alas budget and lack of room prevents.
 
Last night I gave an episode of X: The TV Series a spin on the HDTV. It upscales pretty well for the most part. The Kawajiri style works really well on the big screen, and there is enough detail in the backgrounds and in the character designs to make it worthwhile. The only drawback is that on really thin lines, the finest of detail, some aliasing becomes apparent. It's really only there if you look for it, so I have to say that upscaled, X: The TV Series is marginally better.
 
So I gave a couple of episodes of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2 from Manga a spin on the big TV. Endless Eight upscaled or downscaled, it still makes me want to beat my head against something.

And listening to mono Japanese and stereo English through a home cinema system. You bloody well do notice the difference. But generally speaking, Haruhi upscales well enough, although with the perennial problem of jaggies around fine lines and detail. You have to look for them though. It's definitely a richer experience on the big screen. Better.

EDIT: And once again, the opening sequence is a mess of compression artefacts.

Also watched the Cowboy Bebop Movie from Sony upscaled. A native film source, decent transfer, it upscales like a dream. It's the second best I have seen it. The other time was in a cinema. Good enough on a CRT, upscaled it's Much Better.
 
My first look at Naruto Shippuden through the magic of upscaling. It's not exactly the quality animation that you look for in high definition, and with Madman's iffy transfer, it's a toss of the coin if the episodes upscale well or not. The two that I watched yesterday were great, as good as the CRT experience if not slightly better. But then I skipped back to the start of the disc, where there was an episode that suffers from excessive judder in the pans and scrolls. Upscale, shmupscale, on the big screen the judder was so obvious that it made me queasy. So this one depends on the transfer, which for Naruto has been all over the place since the start of the first series.
 
Haruhi-chan Suzumiya and Nyoron! Churuya-san aren't exactly designed for the larger screen, originating as ONAs, but the bold and bright animation does come across with only the minimal of aliasing. It's as good as the small screen.
 
Just Passing Through said:
Haruhi-chan Suzumiya and Nyoron! Churuya-san aren't exactly designed for the larger screen, originating as ONAs, but the bold and bright animation does come across with only the minimal of aliasing. It's as good as the small screen.
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Yes they are, they're HD. Hence why they have a BD relase in Japan.
 
Reaper gI said:
Just Passing Through said:
Haruhi-chan Suzumiya and Nyoron! Churuya-san aren't exactly designed for the larger screen, originating as ONAs, but the bold and bright animation does come across with only the minimal of aliasing. It's as good as the small screen.
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Yes they are, they're HD. Hence why they have a BD relase in Japan.
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I wasn't talking about the resolution in this case, rather the release format, original net animations, which, as far as I know debuted on Youtube (at least in the West). Not too many people have 37" screens hooked up to their PCs.

You can certainly see that in Nyoron! Churuya-san, as the detail just isn't there to take advantage of a larger screen, the same is true to a lesser extent for Haruhi-chan. But I don't for a moment dispute that they were animated at a higher than SD resolution.
 
Been watching Madlax from ADV upscaled for the first three episodes, and it turns out to be a problem free upscale. It looks the same way on the big screen as it does on the CRT. That said, I never realised before how much Madlax makes use of the extreme close up. Often there is a whole lot of real estate given over to a portion of a face, just an eye, or a cheek, or pursed lips. That's OK in live action, but in anime, where that amounts to a single shade, it doesn't come across as well, especially on an LCD.

Also had a look at Manga's Birdy The Mighty: Decode. and again that's a situation where what you see at SD comes across just as well upscaled to HD. Birdy's a mighty nice animation too.
 
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