I just bought a Sony Bravia 32U300A LCD TV, and after connecting it to my normal DVD player I had a decent picture through component. But it wasn't as I saw it on display at the store where I bought it, so I did some research online and found out that if your TV has a HDMI connection (which it had) it's better you use it to get the preffered picture from a DVD. So then I bought a Panasonic DMR-EH57 with 1080P upscaling. There was a marked difference in picture quality, but with some side-effects: 1.)When I upscaled the picture to 1080P, there was pixelation in the background of some scenes. When I reduced it to 580P the pixelation was gone, but there were still some minor quivering little squares in the background 2.)At 580P the picture (in some scenes) was quite grainy Now the only difference I have is that I'm viewing DVD's thru the HDMI connection. That's it. I can't even upscale without getting pixelation and I feel I've wasted all my money on the Panny. Please, what should I do to remedy this?
Unfortunately I'm not from the US. I live in Sri Lanka, and here we don't even have blu-ray or hd dvd players. They said the Panny one was the best available here (in my country, that is).
There is no hard firm one-size-fits-all answer. Different combos/brands will produce different results. What player were they using in the store that you saw?
Looking at the specs of your tv it may well be able to accept a 1080P signal but its native resolution is 1366 x 768. Therefore you are digitally upscalling a DVD to 1920 x 1080P and then your TV is scaling the image back down to its native 1366 x 768. That can't be good becuase "artifacts" will occur with all that picture processing going on. The best image quality would be achived by a widescreen resolution closest to your TV's native res. This would be 1208 x 720P. Therefore have you tried the panny on upscalling at 720P? I have a Panasonic DMREZ25 (DVR) upscalling recorder on a Toshiba 32" LCD. I do not experiance your problems, but must add that it is difficult to spot the difference on a 32" screen between the upscalled image over HDMI and a quality scart lead. The best DVD's to appreciate the difference are those that are fully computer animated like Monsters ink or Toy story etc.