AV Receiver upscale question.

harsaphes

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 29, 2005
Messages
5,330
Hey. So I'm looking at new receivers for my new 4K TV. They all say they "pass through" and upscale signals to 4K. The Samsung TV also does this. Is this a conflict? Don't I want one device to do this and not both?
Help me out here I'm confused.
Thanks
 
you only want one device to do the scaling. disable any scaling in the amp and let the tv do it. it will probably be better than what the amp will do.
 
Its likely the receiver cannot pass higher bandwidth than HDMI 1.4 can handle.
This means it is ok for 2D 4K movie passthrough and 30Hz PC use with reduced colour (4:2:0) but it cannot handle 4K 60Hz 4:4:4 colour, making it unpleasant for PC use.
 
You will actually have to read the manual for the receiver you are considering. Some will allow you to set upscale or passthrough for each individual program source. If you want the TV to do the upscaling, then set the receiver for passthrough on that program source. Or you could set the receiver to upscale and the TV not to upscale, providing the manual for the TV tells you how to turn off upscaling. But you'll have to read the various manuals of the devices you're considering to determine how they should be set up. Theoretically if the receiver upscales and the signal going into the TV is already 4k, the TV should do nothing. But you'll have to verify that with Samsung.
 
It can depend on the receiver. You'll have to get a pretty expensive receiver to get all the features you want, especially on more than one input. Example: HDMI 2.0, HDCP 2.2, and 4:4:4. Many inexpensive receivers under $700 will do claim they do it, but some of them just on one input. Look through the vendor manual for the information first before buying something. Many just support 4:2:0 with 4K @ 30Hz on pass-through if you look into the detailed specs.
 
I haven't seen any difference in the way my different devices upscale. I let my Denon AVR-X7200WA do the upscaling to 4K and pass it to the TV. I set my Roku 4 to passthrough. The only problem when doing this is that the TV info will always indicate a 4K incoming signal. I have a Sony 4K TV with the X1 processor, so it is probably OK for me to let it do the processing. I set the Denon up to not process if I want to know what the incoming signal is. Of course, hitting the Denon's Info button will give me this information as well. I just had to program the button on the Harmony's touch screen since the hard INFO button it tied to the main device for the activity.
 
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