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How effective is a TV's 'upscaling' tech nowadays?

Nickolaidas

Banned
Many new TVs recently boast about having upscaling techniques to make picture by older products and in lower resolutions sharper and better when connected to said TVs giving a kinda fake but not really 4K output.

Basically a DLSS kind of thing.

So how good is this upscaling for those of you who have tried it?

Basically I want to get such a TV in order to improve picture quality when I'll be playing high AAA PC games at 1440p on a 4K TV. With my 5 year old LG 4K TV I can see the picture loss and blur.

How better quality could I get with a newer TV which supposedly upscales the 1440p resolution to something closer to 4K?
 

Filben

Member
They were boasting about this for over a decade, how they can upscale 720p or even sub 720p to 1080p or to 4k like this is a real feature. But practically every LCD/OLED does that. If your TV isn't ten years old (which it isn't) than nothing changed that much.

I've read that Sony's TVs and Apple TVs should be doing a great job at this. But don't expect any wonders, it's still upscaling and it's also nothing close to DLSS, FSR 2.0 or upscaling technique from certain games.

You will always lose information by upscaling because it's simply not there and most 'trickery' do no wonders except DLSS (and maybe FSR 2.0, we'll see that tomorrow when they patch Deathloop). DLSS adds back some kind of "fake" information that works extremely well, however, and is often even sharper than native res; it's usually not as stable in motion but the benefits outweighs this issue heavily in most cases.

Instead of wasting your money on a TV that MAYBE does a SLIGHTLY better job than yours now, I'd try to either run games in native res by scaling down graphics options, use DLSS, wait for FSR 2.0 to arrive in more games, or switch to a 1440p monitor in the meantime. Also, sitting farther away from your TV/display also helps because sharpness and perceptible pixel density decreases with increased viewing distance. Only sit real close when using native res content.

If you really want to get a new TV for that specific use, I'd recommend to try out one first before pulling the trigger. Sometimes I read about people saying "it's so much better!" and then "it's just marketing". I don't know if optimistic people have to justify their new product or if they simply bought a outright better TV altogether so of course the image would look better, no matter of upscaling.

Personally, I don't buy it. I had many different monitors and TVs and all of them had rather poor upscaling, as in "I see it's not native right away". Maybe some TVs do a better job at this than others, but don't expect any sorcery. It will never look as good and sharp as native res (DLSS might be an exception, but that's what your Nvidia GPU is doing, not the TV).
 

Nickolaidas

Banned
They were boasting about this for over a decade, how they can upscale 720p or even sub 720p to 1080p or to 4k like this is a real feature. But practically every LCD/OLED does that. If your TV isn't ten years old (which it isn't) than nothing changed that much.

I've read that Sony's TVs and Apple TVs should be doing a great job at this. But don't expect any wonders, it's still upscaling and it's also nothing close to DLSS, FSR 2.0 or upscaling technique from certain games.

You will always lose information by upscaling because it's simply not there and most 'trickery' do no wonders except DLSS (and maybe FSR 2.0, we'll see that tomorrow when they patch Deathloop). DLSS adds back some kind of "fake" information that works extremely well, however, and is often even sharper than native res; it's usually not as stable in motion but the benefits outweighs this issue heavily in most cases.

Instead of wasting your money on a TV that MAYBE does a SLIGHTLY better job than yours now, I'd try to either run games in native res by scaling down graphics options, use DLSS, wait for FSR 2.0 to arrive in more games, or switch to a 1440p monitor in the meantime. Also, sitting farther away from your TV/display also helps because sharpness and perceptible pixel density decreases with increased viewing distance. Only sit real close when using native res content.

If you really want to get a new TV for that specific use, I'd recommend to try out one first before pulling the trigger. Sometimes I read about people saying "it's so much better!" and then "it's just marketing". I don't know if optimistic people have to justify their new product or if they simply bought a outright better TV altogether so of course the image would look better, no matter of upscaling.

Personally, I don't buy it. I had many different monitors and TVs and all of them had rather poor upscaling, as in "I see it's not native right away". Maybe some TVs do a better job at this than others, but don't expect any sorcery. It will never look as good and sharp as native res (DLSS might be an exception, but that's what your Nvidia GPU is doing, not the TV).
Great points. I was thinking about scaling down and going for a samsung Odyssey G5 32" monitor at 1440p, 144mhz at about 400 euro.

Edit: But it turns out to be just mediocre on ratings.com
 
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Filben

Member
Great points. I was thinking about scaling down and going for a samsung Odyssey G5 32" monitor at 1440p, 144mhz at about 400 euro.

Edit: But it turns out to be just mediocre on ratings.com
You might want to check out the G7 instead. there's an IPS and QLED curved version of it. It's a bit pricey, though...

Also keep in mind that rtings set the bars ultra high and even a mediocre score there can mean it's gonna be a great display for you.
 

Schorschi

Member
My Sony a90j is very, very good in upscaling this TV is doing an amazing Job...By the way Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising looks very crisp with this upscaling
 

Kuranghi

Member
It's been pretty good for quite some years. Check Rtings for specific model upscaling/downscaling.

No offence but this is a bad reference of a place to get advice on which brand has the best upscaling, rtings do not rate subjective things so they give almost the same number rating for upscaling for every panel they test.

Rtings is great for comparing hard numbers but not this sort of thing, I haven't looked at that "boat" section on an rtings review in years.

You need to check enthusiast TV tech reviews on websites and YouTube and even then you have to take their word for it because theres no way to convey the difference between manufacturers through video as the device you're watching on will influence what you see.
 
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assurdum

Banned
TV Reality Creation it's really great and very close to a DLSS reconstruction, (I dont think it's just upscaling) probably the only best thing of Bravia tv compared the LG. But it doesn't work well with games which already use a reconstruction method.
 
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The Cockatrice

Gold Member
No offence but this is a bad reference to get advice, rtings do not rate subjective things so they give almost the same number rating for upscaling for every panel they test.

Rtings is great for comparing hard numbers but not this sort of thing, I haven't looked at that "boat" section on an rtings review in years.

You need to check enthusiast TV tech reviews on websites and YouTube and even then you have to take their word for it because theres no way to convey the difference between manufacturers through video as the device you're watching on will influence what you see.

Thats because it's a bit of a subjective thing, I think they even mention this. It's almost impossible to compare unless the up/downscaling is really bad or noticeable which hasnt been the case for many years, thats why I said it's been pretty good for several years now for most okay/good TV's.
 

Rea

Member
Reality Creation upscaling mode in Bravia TVs are great. It can even turn on and adjust the upscale level of your liking and use in game mode without any noticeable input lag. I've been using it whenever i played games.
 

Kuranghi

Member
I'd say it goes like this order: Sony, Panasonic, Philips, LG, Samsung and then the rest like Hisense, TCL, etc.

Concerning the top 3 I really think its hard for most people to tell the difference, then LG is like a tiny bit "less good" to me but people could only tell with a side by side and I should also say that my perception of whats best is still subjective, many people probably prefer the LG image even SbS. Then Samsung I think is noticeably more inaccurate/soft and sharpening it introduces artifacts. Samsung also mess with things too much and deviate from the source too much.

At the end of the day just get one of those top 5 and don't worry if you have the money, otherwise get Hisense.

Hisense have great value for money for the HW but they don't have the software/processing to support it. Hence why there's less blooming on 24 zone Sony or 50 zone Samsung than a 120 zone Hisense FALD.
 
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Pagusas

Elden Member
it can be very good, Sony’s upscaling is great, but at the end of the day it’s still working off 2d rasterized data and has no motion vectors or depth data to work with at all, leaving any final results at a deep disadvantage to dlss.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
For video content....they are great these days.
1080 - > 4K looks really good, its clearly NOT 4K but its doing a hell of a job.

For videogames....its still shite, let your console/PC do the upscaling instead.
 

GymWolf

Member
Still pretty shite? low res yt stuff is still gonna look like crap and even playing 1080p on a 4k screen feels wrong (literally tried the GR breakpoint demo on ps5 yesterday), and i always had top tier oled tv.

But i never had a sony oled and i heard that upscaling is their forte.
 
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