Upscale to 1080p on HDTV using component video

[ed klein]

I noticed some high-end Sharp HDTV can upscale to 1080p on the HDMI connection and a true 1080p on the component video connection. (3 video leads red,green,blue)

What is the advantage of this?

How does this work with the digital flag and HDCP on the componet video connection. Maybe less restructions on the component video connection?

[admin]

HDCP only exists on DVI/HDMI. Some manufacturers will refuse to upscale through DVI output without HDCP being present, some will not do it for component (eg. Xbox 360's DVD player can only upscale over VGA and HDMI). I can understand why some don't want to do it through a digital connection without copy protection, but how many people actually rip movies through DVI?

If the TV is native 1080 lines, then no matter what kind of input you feed it, even SD signals, it will have to internally upscale to the native resolution so it can display it. Think LCD monitors and non native resolutions. A good scaler will make the picture look sharp using techniques such as bicubic resize, a bad one will simply "zoom" in on the picture and make everything look blurry. It the TV says it can do upscaling, then it probably has a special chip to do it to improve quality, as opposed to the cheap method.

If your TV does have 1080 lines, it's best to feed it a proper 1080 line signal. Blu-ray/HD DVD is the best bet at the moment. There is a flag in Blu-ray/HD DVD that can be set by studios to limit component output to 960x540 to force people to use HDMI/HDCP, but most studios have said they won't introduce it because too many people are relying on component right now.

HDCP is a pain, but HDMI is the future though, and at the very least, it saves you from connecting a pair of audio cables to the TV (and less cables => better).