Yes. If you’re re-encoding, you’re reducing quality, period. It’s like up sampling an audio file to a higher bitrate. You don’t gain anything. You actually LOSE a slight bit by altering it in the first place. I can make a 192kbps MP3 into a 320kbps MP3, but I’m still creating a copy of a copy, and the upsampled file will actually lose quality compared to the original. Make sense?
I’m aware of that. However, I’m going to dare you to see a difference.
There is a very big difference between going from 192 to 320.
However, as we’ve seen, there isn’t as big a difference between 720 and 1080. To be honest, had I not posted those screencaps, I doubt anyone would have had a problem with the 1080i version, had I posted it.