How to avoid upscale from HD to UHD? (GZ950)

JMaintz

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Hi there,

New member, and new to Panasonic, in my case the 2019 GZ950.

I'm using the television for BDs and UHD BDs only, and yesterday, as I was calibrating, I noticed that the Panasonic automatically upscales 1920x1080 (a normal Blu-Ray) to 3840x2160. As a result, Blu-Rays looks like upscaled s**t and UHD discs looks, of course, excellent. I should add, my BD/UHD player is an Oppo BDP-103.

My old 2016 LG recognized HD and UHD signals with no problems whatsoever, simply shifting automatically to 1920x1080 when a regular Blu-Ray was inserted, and to 3840x2160 when a UHD was inserted. I would VERY much like for the GZ950 to do the same.

What am I missing in the Panasonic menus? :)

Thanks in advance,
Jesper
 
Sounds like your LG may have simply upscaled better for some reason.
Any HD signal will be upscaled to UHD on any UHD TV otherwise if it's being shown as 1:1 pixels you'll simply have an image showing 1/4 the size of the screen.
 
It has to upscale it. If it didn't you'd end up with huge black borders around the entire picture and you'd only be using 1/4 of your screen.

All TV's upscale everything to fit the number of pixels they have unless you're using something external to upscale before it gets to the TV.

If it didn't, you'd be watching this.
1080p-on-a-4k-tv.jpg
 
Just before I plug in my old LG for a quick test (as the Panasonic looks an awful lot better with HD when I set my Oppo to spit out HD only, thus making the TV display it in 1920x1080):

Did we just discover, why people can't tell the difference between streaming and physical media? :O
 
You're getting the wrong end of the stick here.

Everything you watch on your 4K TV is shown in 4K, it's not native 4K but it is 3840x2160, it's using all the pixels (unless it's in a wider 2.35:1 AR or older 4:3 AR etc) if it didn't you'd be watching 1080p blurays like the picture I showed you above. That's what 1080p looks like on a 4K screen.

as the Panasonic looks an awful lot better with HD when I set my Oppo to spit out HD only

Then the TV is upscaling it.
 
I'm aware of all that, I'm just pointing out, that the upscale looks truly bad, and that the TV should change settings (and, let's call it... priorities?) automatically, based on the source. It doesn't, thus making even a reference Blu-Ray look compromised and Netflix-like. The kind of effect you get when you upscale SD to HD. That is not how it's meant to be.
 
I'm aware of all that...

Your posts and the title of the thread say otherwise.
What settings should it automatically change?

I have my TV with 4 settings on it with different levels of motion settings, contrast, brightness etc, Day, Night, and the barely used Sport and Gaming, I wouldn't have any specific settings for watching different resolution content.

Blurays look fantastic on my 65" Sony LCD 4K TV and it's nowhere near as good as yours.
 
It's nothing to do with the TV, you need to set the Oppo Blu-Ray Player to 1080p when watching standard blu-rays and change it back to 2160p when watching UHD HDR Discs.

That way the TV will do the upscaling to its native resolution of 2160p, and generally this way will produce a better picture than if you let the Oppo do the upscaling

If there's no auto switch setting on the Oppo you have to do it manually depending on what your're watching
 
Well, I'm not trying to act clever or anything (again, my first Panasonic), but as a TV editor for 30 years, I believe my eyes. I'll try a simpler explanation:

Panasonic:
UHD: No problems

HD with 'forced' HD from the Oppo (Oppo setting: Custom Resolution 1080p Auto): TV displays '1920x1080' in upper left corner, as it should.
Verdict: No problems whatsoever. In fact, it looks fantastic, with lots of film grain, rock solid colors and no 'echoing' on the edges.

HD with 'forced' UHD from the Oppo: TV displays '3840x2160' in upper left corner, and that's wrong.
Verdict: Total upscaling problems, fuzzy edges, changing black levels, impossible to calibrate. In other words, a HD-signal zoomed in four times.

So basically, I can see that the TV is excellent - I'm just baffled, that the TV can't tell the difference between HD and UHD automatically and give me the desired info in the upper left corner. The LG recognized it right away (with the 1080p Auto setting on the Oppo). Bu then again, maybe LG and Oppo are better friends than Panasonic and Oppo?
 
It's nothing to do with the TV, you need to set the Oppo Blu-Ray Player to 1080p when watching standard blu-rays and change it back to 2160p when watching UHD HDR Discs.

That way the TV will do the upscaling to its native resolution of 2160p, and generally this way will produce a better picture than if you let the Oppo do the upscaling

If there's no auto switch setting on the Oppo you have to do it manually depending on what your're watching
Ah, sorry - I was writing that exact thing, when you wrote. Seems like I'll have to change it manually on the Oppo. But why the LG just 'ate' them both, we'll never know?
 
Hi

Try setting your Oppo to "source direct" in video output ouput res and "Custom UHD" in custom res
 
Hi

Try setting your Oppo to "source direct" in video output ouput res and "Custom UHD" in custom res
Ah, that actually did the trick - excellent quality, even if the TV says '3840x2160'.

So, what happened here was, that the Panasonic demanded a slightly different setting from the BD-player. Kindda weird, but I can live with weird. :)

Thanks everybody for your responses - and your patience! :)
 
my BD/UHD player is an Oppo BDP-103.

Oppo BDP 103 is not a true UHD player....its 1080p with an option to upscale to 4k.
assuming youve not made a typo ( you really have a 203 ? ) then you need to get a real UHD player and bring dolby vision and HDR into the mix to see what your TV can really do.
 
With my Panny 65GZ950 and Panny UB700 UHD player, 1080p blurays look fabulous and the 4k UHD disc's look super fabulous :thumbsup:
 
I use my Pioneer LX500 in 'Source Direct' and let my Panny FZ802 do the upscaling. Blu ray looks fantastic, certainly far better than 4K images from streaming services.
 

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