Upscaling or downscaling videos I was wondering, is upscaling from the videoplayer worse then upscaling the video during encode?

For example, consider the original source of a video is 640 x 480. Which of the following will produce better quality on a 800 x 600 display:


Encode video > play in full screen
Resize video to 800 x 600 > encode > play in full screen


?

My assumption is that a lower quality resizing algoritm is chosen during video playback to save cpu. Am I right?
This depends on how much resources you are willing to invest into upscaling content. The default setting for libswscale in VLC seems to be bicubic, if you intend to use more sophisticated resizing filters and a particular target resolution then you should upscale the video during encode this way you also don't have to rely on the capabilities and customizing options of the player device or software.