composite to HDMI help required

[Cardiff_Exile]

Can anyone recommend an AV amp that I can plug a Wii (composite) into and pass the signal to my TV via HDMI? The budget for the amp is £200 - £300. My current speakers are Bose acoustimas 5 III however will be looking for the multi speaker package when I get the flooring sorted. I also have a PS3 and Sky+HD.

My current thinking is the Sony STRDH810 (Richer Sounds) and a £50 converter box from ebay (e.g http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Composite-3RCA-S-video-AV-HD... ) that should do the job for £250 but I worry about the converters and that there is a neater way of doing this.

Thanks

Neil

[dafydd2008]

Just buy a upscaling AV receiver.
This way you can run either composite, HDMI etc as a input and pump this out via HDMI, this way there will
be no convertors etc

[dafydd2008]

Just buy a upscaling AV receiver.
This way you can run either composite, HDMI etc as a input and pump this out via HDMI, this way there will
be no convertors etc

[OldSkoolRS]

I added a HDMI 'dongle' to my Son's Wii after I shortsightedly only installed a HDMI cable in the wall to the family room TV. It works pretty well (the TV itself does the upscaling from a 480p output the dongle provides). It looks noticably better than the composite output did, plus it's tidier as there are no dangling wires, as we also added a wireless Wii sensor bar.

http://www.neoya.com/shop/wii2hdmi/

You pay in $ but they ship to the UK and IIRC it worked out about £35 inc postage. This is much cheaper than buying an AV amp for upscaling. TBH a £300 amp probably won't upscale any better than most half decent TVs anyway, so unless you need an excuse to buy an amp, I wouldn't bother...

If you really want to get the max out of a composite signal, look out for a used Lumagen HDP Video Processor over on AVForums as they seem to have dropped to little over £100 these days (were well over a grand when new!).

[Dr JonboyG]

dafydd2008 said:

Just buy a upscaling AV receiver.
This way you can run either composite, HDMI etc as a input and pump this out via HDMI, this way there will
be no convertors etc

This advice is spot on. It's even posted twice so you can't ignore it

My Onkyo amp is about 4 years old but it does HDMI passthrough (or it would if the HDMI port hadn't broken). I think it's an SR-576 or something.

[Cardiff_Exile]

Thanks for all your advice

The question now is what upscaling receiver do you recommend for my budget?

Neil

[OldSkoolRS]

Sorry to go against the grain here, but upscaling amps in the under £500 catagory aren't likely to do any better job of upscaling than most half decent TVs. I would recommend setting the amp's upscaling to bypass and just use it as a switching hub instead. Then you can compare your BluRay player's upscaling (of DVDs) to the amp's ability and also the TV's ablity.

While you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear as they say, when upscaling is done well it can be impressive: At the extreme end, using a Lumagen Radiance Video Processor can make good DVD transfers look great even on a 10' screen I've found. However on my day to day 40" TV the difference isn't really noticable, so it really depends on screen size/viewing distance. A composite source isn't ever going to be mistaken for HD, but can be made quite acceptable given decent processing.

EDIT: Similar questions asked here:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/video-scalers-video...

Edited by OldSkoolRS on Friday 13th May 18:20

[Cardiff_Exile]

Maybe I should add the most shown TV is peppa pig and the new ‘Jake and the neverland pirates’, the playstaton is used to play music and I don’t own a blue ray disc.

All I’m after is a device to pass the signal as I only have HDMI in the wall. to be honest I doubt I will get extra speakers and stuff in the next 3 years.

Neil

[OldSkoolRS]

In that case just get something like the Cableson 3 way switch in this link:

http://ukhdmi.com/hdmi-switch/?gclid=CL_i4_ve5agCF...

Add the HDMI dongle I linked to above for the Wii to convert it to HDMI output. The PS3 will have a HDMI output and if you should buy any kind of recorder/PVR in the future likely that it will have a HDMI output anyway.

Sorted, for well under £100 and no need to have an amp running with no speakers connected (which will probably be OK, but still a waste of electricity no doubt).