The 5 Best Upscaling DVD Players of 2021

Upscaling does a good job of matching the upscaled pixel output of a DVD player to the natural pixel display resolution of an HDTV, resulting in better detail and color consistency. However, upscaling can’t convert standard DVD images into true high-definition (or 4K) images.

Upscaling converts low resolution material (most often video or images) into a higher definition. It’s certainly nothing new: upscaling occurs when you output DVD footage to your Full HD television.

An upscaling DVD player will only ever play DVDs it is never going to be able to play a Blu Ray, so it is less future proof. If you’re considering upgrading your DVD player then it’s probably worth spending the extra and investing in a Blu Ray player.

Put your DVD into an upscaling DVD player, connect the DVD player and television with a HDMI cable, and then your DVD will look and sound better with image and audio closer to high definition.

• Best DVD Player Overall: Sony DVPSR510H at Walmart.
• Best Budget: Sylvania SDVD1096 at Amazon.
• Best Features: Panasonic DVD S700 at Amazon.
• Best for Region-Free Capability: LG DP132H at Amazon.
• Best for Accessibility/Readability: Impecca DVHP9117 at Amazon.

Upscaling means low-resolution content will fill your entire TV screen. Upscaled 1080p content on a 4K screen often looks better than 1080p content on a normal 1080p screen. But upscaling isn’t magic—you won’t get the sharp image you would from true, native 4K content.

In fact, while you can quite happily leave the PS5 to do the upscaling of HD Blu-rays and DVDs, if you have a good quality 4K TV you might find you get better results with a Series X if you set the console to output 1080p when watching HD Blu-rays, so that your TV is left to do the 4K upscaling instead.

Changing the aspect ratio on either the DVD player or the display device may cause the picture to become pixelated or provide a poor image. This occurs because selecting from the various aspect ratios, such as zoom, full screen, panoramic or wide, does not display the image in the native resolution.

What TV do I need to use a 4K UHD Blu-ray player? That said, HD Blu-ray discs will be upscaled to 3840 × 2160 (4K) resolution by way of filling in the extra pixels, but the quality will appear noticeably lower-grade than Ultra HD Blu-ray discs (which provides a native 4K image).

If you have a 4K TV and you want to see its best picture, you’ll want a 4K Blu-ray player. Ultra HD Blu-ray discs can hold much more data than standard Blu-ray discs, so they can deliver full 4K resolution along with enhanced color and contrast.

Most of the comparisons use NGU Anti Aliasing very high to double the resolution so differences in chroma upscaling are more obvious. Using an image viewer like IrfanView to switch between images is the preferred way to compare these images. Scrolling doesn’t work as well for noticing differences.

No need to update. Same goes for Potplayer (unless there’s a security fix or missing must have feature) Then run it as is but configure it to save settings to .ini file. Then add MadVR by running the install.bat as admin. Go into Potplayer and set video renderer as Madshi.

The gamut option affects the conversions used by madVR when playing video with different gamuts. The gamma options only have an effect when using ‘tone map HDR using pixel shaders’ for HDR content or when using the ‘enable gamma processing’ option in ‘color & gamma’.

Nearest Neighbor: {super fast} A low quality method, the value of the closest pixel is used. This looks very bad when not doing integer scaling (1x, 2x, 3x, etc.). Configure a custom keyboard shortcut to enable it. Bilinear: {super fast} A low quality method.