1080p@60hz to 4K(2160p)@60hz Nearest-Neighbor Upconverter / Scaler?

ReanimationXP · February 20, 2016

Hi all, I've started a thread on this before, but I didn't explain my issue well enough so I'll try again.

I am looking for a piece of equipment capable of doing Full HD(1080p)@60hz -> 4K(2160p)@60hz "upscaling", except without an upscaling engine like you find in literally every 4K TV on the market. I want a dumb "upconverter"? which does nearest-neighbor scaling aka pixel-doubling aka integer-scaling. Remember what the old MSPaint.exe would produce if you stretched your selection? That's nearest-neighbor.

The Issue
So, the hulking ape in the room - why not use the built-in 1080p->4K scaler on every TV? After all, it's designed to make images look better so why in god's name would you want nearest-neighbor which leaves things blocky? Here's why:

Open each link in a new tab.

Click the picture if necessary such that it is zoomed to 100%.

Flip back and forth between the two tabs, and focus on the piece of paper on the table.
Upscaled - http://orig04.deviantart.net/33ca/f/2014/255/b/0/re5_1440_bilinear_by_aloo81-d7yxxbp.jpg
Pixel Doubled - http://orig00.deviantart.net/9856/f/2014/255/f/8/re5_1440_nearest_by_aloo81-d7yxxb6.jpg

See the issue? These pictures BOTH show a smaller image made larger. One uses "smart" upscaling like you'd find in a TV, the other "dumb" nearest-neighbor pixel-doubling like you find on (very few) monitors. Perhaps "upconversion" if there's a difference. Here, we're converting 720p to 1440p. (1080p->4k is the same thing, this is just easier to observe - still exactly 2x its' height and width, 4x its' pixel count).

The Details

With anything lower than native 4K output from any type of computer (non-bleeding-edge PC's, retro consoles, nay ANY console) scalers /destroy/ the look, as you can see. The top "upscaled" image is what I like to refer to as Cataract Mode. It's because we're applying a scaler that makes guesses, trying to make video artificially "more crisp" from a source that is already as crisp as it can be. It's got nowhere to go but to get worse. You might argue that it's like antialiasing, but you'd be wrong. Antialiasing is only possible on PC because the game engine knows where edges are. It doesn't simply blur them with the color next to them as you might think, it blends them with the color of what's behind it to create the illusion of sub-pixels. (That's why it's so taxing on GPUs - it's actually akin to running at a higher resolution. Simple blurring would be infinitely cheaper.) Any scaler will only be guessing, does not know what's behind the foreground object, and will cause distortion (blur) no matter what. Some argue that only harsh edges are affected and other areas that are more akin to video are actually improved. I disagree. I pointed out the piece of paper, but look at the texture on the blue section of the guy's shirt. The details on the gun. To me, every single part of the upscaled image looks worse than the pixel doubled image.

Almost all 4K TV's do not offer an option to turn this off, with the exception of the fact that if fed an already-4K signal, no upscaling is necessary so it is bypassed. This means my only option is handling the upconversion myself, live, via some other means, then feeding the now-4K output to the TV. It's ridiculous, and I'm losing it wondering why more people aren't upset by this. If you don't see the need nearest-neighbor, you should get your eyes checked. Every TV manufacturer on the planet is apparently blind. Every scaler mfr on the planet is apparently blind. Nobody in China making $12 scalers sees this?! I'm losing my mind trying to understand how someone designs a "4K" standard (2160p) with pixel-doubling OBVIOUSLY being in mind, and then every TV mfr slaps a freaking upscaler inside every single TV set that can't be turned off, and says maybe that's a bad idea. Why'd you even decide on 2160p? Why not 2000p or 3000p? Was it because older content would look shitty? Well, even though 2160p is the perfect resolution - both 720p AND 1080p can both be perfectly nearest-neighbor pixel-doubled to it, guess what - you threw a scaler in and both of them look like garbage - you tried to improve it and won't let me turn off your failure to do so. /rant

The Solution

At present, there isn't one. Fixing this #scalefail boils down to two options:
(a) Appeal to TV manufacturers and get them to understand this is a problem. Beg them to, if possible, provide an option to turn off upscaling engines and instead do "dumb" nearest-neighbor upconversion. This /should/ be possible via a simple firmware update and may even improve input lag. Whether that's possible will vary by model and depends if the scaler is dedicated hardware, or software that can actually be reprogrammed via an update.
(b) Find or make a dedicated nearest-neighbor upscaler that can accept 1080p and output pure pixel-doubled 4k. Doing this in-line before it reaches the TV will bypass the internal upscaler and display perfectly. This will work on every TV regardless of whether or not the Mfr decides to disable their upscaling in the future.

Some links I found below show a scaler on eBay which at least sounds like it does what i'm talking about, but doesn't specifically say nearest neighbor so who knows. Only the price and 'bypass' they mention leads me to believe a traditional upscaler isn't involved, but even if so, it's capped at 30hz (30fps) when lots of consoles output 1080p60hz (60fps). The math behind nearest-neighbor is so fast and cheap that you could use a garbage processor to do it. It would likely cost nothing to manufacture and would introduce next to zero lag. That's why this thing is $12 bucks. HDMI 2.0 probably wouldn't be that much more - it would be the cheapest HDMI 2.0 device there is.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/4K-X-2K-HDMI-Scaler-Converter-Adapter-For-HDCP-1080P-Video-To-Ultra-HD-/301585772074

I'm asking you guys or LinusTechTips to help me make this a reality - you're my only hope. Let's do TV better than TV guys do.