[smallclone]

Hi, I have an LG OLED. And a Sony 4k Blu Ray player. My Kodi device plays 4k files fine, as does my blu ray player.

But, when I play 1080p files through my blu ray player, which is clunky, my TV says it is being outputted in 2160p. So the Blu Ray player is doing the upscaling.

When I play the same files in Kodi, my TV says they are playing 1080p. I have tried whitelisting - but no joy, any ideas what I can do to make the Kodi device (ODROID N+2) upscale 1080p files to 4k??

Thanks

[Karellen]

When I play the same files in Kodi, my TV says they are playing 1080p

Your TV is performing the upscaling to fit the image on your 4k display. I would prefer the tv to upscale rather than Kodi. TV's are built to do exactly that and most tv's will do it better than Kodi.

[noggin]

Hi, I have an LG OLED. And a Sony 4k Blu Ray player. My Kodi device plays 4k files fine, as does my blu ray player.

But, when I play 1080p files through my blu ray player, which is clunky, my TV says it is being outputted in 2160p. So the Blu Ray player is doing the upscaling.

Yes - on my Sony UHD Blu-ray player it's an option whether all content is scaled to 2160p (aka '4K') or whether it outputs HD in 1080p and lets my TV upscale.  I play HD Blu-rays in 1080p so that my TV upscales, not my Blu-ray player.

When I play the same files in Kodi, my TV says they are playing 1080p. I have tried whitelisting - but no joy, any ideas what I can do to make the Kodi device (ODROID N+2) upscale 1080p files to 4k??

I'd let your TV upscale rather than the N2+ - most TVs will do a much better job than the relatively low-powered upscaling that the AMLogic chipsets in the ODroids have. TVs are designed with increasingly higher quality upscalers.

[smallclone]

Thanks, so why does the TV say that the file is playing at 2160p when played by a blu ray player, but 1080p when played via Kodi? No changes to the TV settings at all.

[Hitcher]

so why does the TV say that the file is playing at 2160p when played by a blu ray player

You answered your own question earlier -

So the Blu Ray player is doing the upscaling.

[smallclone]

so why does the TV say that the file is playing at 2160p when played by a blu ray player

You answered your own question earlier -

So the Blu Ray player is doing the upscaling.

So can Kodi do this upscaling when I play files via the Odroid? Because the TV seems to be doing very little. Thanks by the way.

[noggin]

so why does the TV say that the file is playing at 2160p when played by a blu ray player

You answered your own question earlier -

So the Blu Ray player is doing the upscaling.

So can Kodi do this upscaling when I play files via the Odroid? Because the TV seems to be doing very little. Thanks by the way.

The Odroid hardware does the upscaling (not Kodi specifically) - and thus the quality of upscaling varies platform-by-platform.  The upscalers in most ARM-based boxes like the ODroid are quite average. TVs almost always do a better job.  That's why we have whitelisting.

In most cases it's better to get Kodi to play content in its native resolution, output in that resolution via a whitelisted mode and then get the TV to upscale. I have my ODroid C4 and N2 both configured with 720p50/59.94/60, 1080p23.976/24/50/59.94/60 and 2160p23.976/24/50/59.94/60 modes all whitelisted.  This means 720p content is output at 720p and my TV upscales to 2160p, 1080p stuff is output at 1080p and my TV upscales to 2160p and 2160p content is output at 2160p.

[noggin]

so why does the TV say that the file is playing at 2160p when played by a blu ray player

You answered your own question earlier -

So the Blu Ray player is doing the upscaling.

So can Kodi do this upscaling when I play files via the Odroid? Because the TV seems to be doing very little. Thanks by the way.

What do you mean 'the TV seems to be doing very little'?  What are you comparing its upscaling to?

[smallclone]

You answered your own question earlier -

So can Kodi do this upscaling when I play files via the Odroid? Because the TV seems to be doing very little. Thanks by the way.

What do you mean 'the TV seems to be doing very little'?  What are you comparing its upscaling to?

The Blu ray player. The 1080p files are playing in 2160p when played through the blu ray player but 1080p when played in Kodi.

[smallclone]

You answered your own question earlier -

So can Kodi do this upscaling when I play files via the Odroid? Because the TV seems to be doing very little. Thanks by the way.

The Odroid hardware does the upscaling (not Kodi specifically) - and thus the quality of upscaling varies platform-by-platform.  The upscalers in most ARM-based boxes like the ODroid are quite average. TVs almost always do a better job.  That's why we have whitelisting.

In most cases it's better to get Kodi to play content in its native resolution, output in that resolution via a whitelisted mode and then get the TV to upscale. I have my ODroid C4 and N2 both configured with 720p50/59.94/60, 1080p23.976/24/50/59.94/60 and 2160p23.976/24/50/59.94/60 modes all whitelisted.  This means 720p content is output at 720p and my TV upscales to 2160p, 1080p stuff is output at 1080p and my TV upscales to 2160p and 2160p content is output at 2160p.

But the TV isn't upscaling to 2160p, that's my problem. Yet it does upscale when the files are played through a blu ray player.

[Hitcher]

No, they're being upscaled by your BluRay player which is why your TV says it's getting a 2160p source. And when your TV says 1080p it's getting a 1080p source and then upscaling it to 2160p.

[smallclone]

No, they're being upscaled by your BluRay player which is why your TV says it's getting a 2160p source. And when your TV says 1080p it's getting a 1080p source and then upscaling it to 2160p.

That makes a little more sense. Although I'd never have thought it was the input source info the TV is displaying and not the output.

[Hitcher]

Well the output is always going to be 2160p otherwise it wouldn't fill the screen.

[jjd-uk]

Exactly, all modern displays have a fixed native resolution, so in the case of 4K that's 3840 × 2160, so in the normal viewing modes of any fixed resoltuion display the incoming signal is always upscaled to fill the screen, and as mentioned if it wasn't the image would be in a centered box. There are some TV that do allow this however, sometimes called a dot by dot mode the incoming signal is mapped exactly so 1080p is mapped to 1920 x 1080, thus in the case of 4K display only a 1/4 of pixels would be used (2073K pixels for 1080p vs 8294K pixels for 4K).

With the advent of 4K displays and now 8K displays but with a lot of broadcast content still being SD 480p or 576p signals or HD 720p/1080p, the TV manufactuers have put a lot of investment into improved video processing, particuarly upscalling, as if fed an SD/HD signal the TV is having to make up a lot of pixels, and no one will sell a lot of TV's where SD/HD looks a complete mess. The latest trend in the last couple of years being AI scaling which is why you see Sansung/LG/Sony etc all going on about their superior AI processing to sell their TV's, hence if you have a recent TV from Sansung/LG/Sony then the scaling is likely done better by the TV.

[smallclone]

Thanks for all the replies. I've whitelisted a bunch of HD/2160p resolutions so hopefully the ODroid is doing less work and the TV is doing more.