Plex upconvert question

[jgmacrum]

Hi there ....

I have a 50" 720P/1080i TV. Currently I'm using a HD-DVD player (which upconverts standard DVDs). Obviously the HD-DVDs (what few exist) look real good, although what I mainly use it for is playing my DVDs. The upconvert on it is noticeably better than playing a DVD with my previous DVD player although as expected noticeably worse than a native HD-DVD. That's how I expected it to be.

I'm considering getting a mac mini and using plex as a media center to do away with all of this. One of the things I wanted to check on first was the upconvert capabilities of Plex, which I've seen referenced in a few places. Would I be correct in my guess that if I ripped one of my DVDs (e.g. via Handbrake) that it would also upconvert in the same manner as my HD-DVD player? What I'd prefer not to have is a noticeable downgrade from my current setup. As an example, the Wii now has Netflix streaming and it is also a noticeable downgrade due to the 420p resolution, so I don't use that.

Also, will Plex upconvert all video material?

 

[itsjustmeee]

I have a newer mac mini with plex and a 46" sony and all of my dvd rips look great. I use MakeMKV mostly, but once in a while I'll use Handbrake. MakeMKV preserves chapter stops, so I tend to prefer it over Handbrake. And as far as "upscaling/up-convert" goes, here's what Wikipedia says about Plex....

"Plex can in addition upscale/upconvert all 480p/576p standard-resolution videos and output them to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p HDTV-resolutions."

 

[jgmacrum]

Thanks for the info.

Yeah, that line is about all that I can dig up, both for plex & xbmc. There isn't a lot of hard information about the quality of the upconvert.

A friend of mine has played around wtih XBMC some, when I talked to him he felt that the quality would be roughly in line with what I have now. I'm planning on noodling around w/ plex on my imac this weekend to see if i like it, but that's not quite the same thing as displaying it on my tv.