Broadband Tech > General Questions > Upverting DVD players vs Blue ray DVD players.

Upverting DVD players vs Blue ray DVD players.

Blu-ray players are backwards compatible, so yes they play regular DVD's, as far as other formats, I can pull out my user guide, but I personally don' mess with anything other then blu-ray, and standard DVD's
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Lightning Bolt Technologies

reply to Snakeoil
I have a Phillips upconvert DVD player that has a USB port. My regular DVDs are upconverted to 1080p and I can play Divx files from a USB drive as well. The regular DVDs look great...not quite as good as blu-ray, but at 49 bucks, it is a great deal. Blu-ray is a waste of money IMO...it was dead before it even got started.

reply to Snakeoil
Upconverted DVD looks better than standard DVD on an HDTV but does not look as good as a BluRay DVD. The larger the HDTV screen, the more obvious the difference.

reply to Snakeoil
It seems that most of the Blu- Ray players are only doing Bluray/DVD and all the DVD - R's/RW formats. But nothing like DiVX.

I personally don't like the idea of up converting, I kind of doubt that technology. You may or may not notice a difference on your 42" 1080P. Though if you want to play other formats why not use the computer we built for you TV?

On a side note, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've EVER seen/heard you ask a technical question... LOL Of course if you were to ask me one of those questions you know I'd ramble on about how great Apple products are...

reply to Snakeoil
Two different animals!

To use the same terminology, DVD is closer to 720 (720x480). Blu-ray is basically 1920x1080. Upscaling a DVD will place that 720x40 picture onto a 1920x1080 screen but it will basically "skip" (edit: or fill in) lines in order to make the picture larger. What you will see is a less "crisp" picture and also you will usually see some "swirling" of colors (pixilating clouds of color). Most TVs will automatically upscale the DVD picture but in many cases it's better to do before the signal is sent to the TV.

Please keep in ind two things... DVD is no where near HD and, there is a video forum for these questions.

Depends greatly on the up converter.

I find my Toshiba DVD Recorders do a better job of upconverting than any of 3 TVs they has been connected to.

It also offers the choice of 480p, 720p, 1081i, and 1080p so connected to a 720p set, it doesn't have to be scaled back to 720p by the set, just set it to that.On a 1080p set you can set it to that. Actually with HDMI connection it will set itself usually. Though my 720p set will do FAUX 1080i, so I have to manually set it 720p to avoid another layer of scaling (back to sets native 720p).

Plus since it is a recorder, I can run my SD sat receiver through it, and have both on a single HDMI TV input and converted.

Good ones don't skip or simple double lines, they interpolate tween lines/pixels, much the way good photo software does when you enlarge/upscale an image.

Yes not as sharp nearly as the true res, but still much better than 700x525 analog was on old projection TV's of equal size (and broadcast analog you are lucky if horizantal was over 400 real lines actually). You only saw 700 lines direct from pro cameras and VTRs. One reason Sat and sometimes Cable look so much better than OTA analog. They get direct feeds, and pro level tuners called demods and equipment all the way.

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»haywardm.com (Hayward's Key West)

reply to Snakeoil
I'd wait with Blue ray DVD players. There are to many complaints about incompatibilities on many forums. It looks like it's not standardized yet as it should be. So, if you buy it now - be prepared to buy a new model soon .
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Keep it simple, it'll become complex by itself...

I'll consider it when they and the disks get remotely close to standard DVR cost. There is no real reason for them to be as expensive as they are.

Recently there have been drops with some of the more basic players, but still 2-3x the price...instead of 5-6x.
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»haywardm.com (Hayward's Key West)

reply to Snakeoil
Good investment for now as you can wait for blu-ray to drop in price and also the movies. I thought about buying a blu-ray player but the movies are very expensive (27.99-34.99 generally) for a new release is a joke in my opinion.
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Team Discovery-Join the fight

reply to Snakeoil
you get what you pay for. A upconverted 1080P image isn't going to be even close to a true blu ray 1080P
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take a 720x480 image and resize it to 1920x1080 to see what i mean.
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When I gez aju zavateh na nalechoo more new yonooz tonigh molinigh - Ken Lee

Just many feel the cost is not in line with the relative worth.

Sure I'd love a Lamborghini or Ferrari... but not really worth the cost unless you have more money than god and don't know what to do with it. Lots of $50K and under cars come close enough for most people

And a lot of the upconversion lack is the original SD delivery... Straight from DVD (downconverted from a HD source vs old SD master) looks very close to 720p HD unless you put you face right in the screen... most cable and boradcast SD does not, because they bitrate limit it.

Broadcast analog will be going away in Feb, and probably Cable a few years after, as the duplication of channels just won't be worth it anymore, with virtually no sets that can receive them.... just the few die hards with converter boxes, that will still get the digital anyways.

Sort of like when UHF tuners/reception were made manditory, for a few years there were UHF to VHF converter boxes but only for maybe 5 yrs max... by then most had bought a new set, or moved up to color anyways (as the nets went full color a couple of years later), which would have a UHF tuner.

By then all channels will likely be HD, with SD content masked. And maybe a few all SD oldie program stations (like say TVLAND), as ED sub channels. With none distributed in analog... already the case really... except local OTA channels they are all D/A converted to analog for basic cable now. That will not last forever after 2/2009, especially with those 70 channels each taking up the space of several HD channels and like 10 ED channels.

Our PBS channel in Miami now has three ED sub channels. 1080i HD for main PBS, and 3 ED for an All Latino, All kids, and all educational subchannels. All are now on the unencryped "local/Public Affairs" digital cable service ATSC sets can recieve without a box. (along with local gov channels, QVC and some low end all Spanish channels,as well as CSPAN 1 & 2)
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»haywardm.com (Hayward's Key West)

You were a HD DVD fan, huh?

reply to dvd536

reply to Snakeoil
If you want a good upconverting DVD player, go with OPPO:

www.oppodigital.com

As for BluRay, the best one, so far, seems to the the Playstation 3.

Whatever version you get, make sure it has an ethernet port so you can upgrade the firmware.

reply to OZO

said by OZO:

I'd wait with Blue ray DVD players. There are to many complaints about incompatibilities on many forums. It looks like it's not standardized yet as it should be. So, if you buy it now - be prepared to buy a new model soon .

reply to Snakeoil
What size is your HDTV? That will make a big difference. On my 720p 42" plasma, I can BARELY tell a difference in an upconverted DVD and a Blu-Ray disc. And I mean BARELY.

I imagine upconverting to 1080p would make the SD DVD picture worse and the Blu-Ray picture better, so your mileage may vary. It seems as if older DVDs (Deep Blue Sea for instance) upconvert like shit, but newer DVDs like Iron Man or Serenity look great.

I just rip all my Blu-Ray discs, convert them to 720p 6500Kbps WMV and stream them to my XBox. They look just as good as the Blu-Ray player connected directly to the TV.

reply to OZO
Well, if you buy a Sony device, you don't have to worry about compatibility: they own the spec.

Now, what you might need to worry about is BD software updates. If a given BDROM requires updated software and your disc-player doesn't have them, the movies may not work for you. This is akin to the periodic updates that you need to apply to a PC, XBOX, etc. if you want to run certain programs. This is part of why the newer Sony's have built-in Ethernet (so that they can fetch software updates).
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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell

reply to tcope

said by Matt :

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I imagine upconverting to 1080p would make the SD DVD picture worse and the Blu-Ray picture better, so your mileage may vary.

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