HDMI can be confusing for most people, especially when talking about video conversion and up-conversion. The term up-conversion is also referred to as “scaling” and “upscaling” which adds to the confusion. Don’t let these unfamiliar words deter you from reading on, because if you have a receiver that has conversion capabilities, you will want to know what it is used for and how it applies to your home theater setup.
First, a receiver with HDMI conversion such as the Onkyo TX-SR876B means that it will interpret the incoming analog video signal into a digital signal of the same resolution and send it to the television through an HDMI cable. An example would be an analog signal with 480i resolution would be converted to a 480p digital signal so it can be sent through the HDMI cable.
Depending on your television, this specific resolution may create a less-than-ideal viewing experience. As a viewer, you may see broken images and random pixels instead of the colors blending together naturally. This is where the up-conversion comes in.
If your receiver has HDMI up conversion, it will look at the incoming analog video signal and adjust them to make it better match the picture resolution on any high-definition TV it’s connected to. Now, if the incoming signals are already digital, most home audio receivers will pass them through the cable without being altered, no matter what the resolution is. For example, the Samsung PN50B560 has a screen resolution of 720p, but if your home receiver has a resolution of 480p, the scaling circuitry will fill in any additional picture information to “upscale” it to 720p before sending it through the cable.
HDMI Up conversion does not turn a low-resolution image into a high-definition one. The picture will look as good as it can on the display with the information that was added that wasn’t there to begin with.
Written by Chelsey P.