Posted on 11/27/2010 2:52:35 PM PST by snarkpup
Blu-ray discs are supposed to represent "the maximum high-definition experience" yet there is little difference in quality to that of a DVD, apparently.
A study by consumer advocate Which? found less than a third of Blu-ray films demonstrate an exceptional difference compared to the equivalent DVD, and with a large gulf between the best and worst, HD quality is inconsistent.
(Excerpt) Read more at reghardware.com ...
This is hogwash... Blu ray is exceptionally better than DVD it’s not even close. Most people don’t have the right tv or don’t know what connections to use.
For any who think HD-DVD is comparable, Toshiba most likely still has unsold equipment they would be willing to sell at a bargain price. If it hasn't already been scrapped.
BlueRay and HDDVD players (I have both) do a great job in upconverting DVD's, not exactly HD quality but close to it!
Pinging the HDTV list..
Well I hope you have a couple left...
I have the Sony Bravia and the Sony Blue Ray, the up scaling is exceptional. 1080i according to the display.
I think you are right. It took me a while to learn, you need four things to see blu-ray. Without any one of them, it ain’t.
1. An HD TV that is 1080p. 720p will not do it.
2. A blu-ray player, or in my case, a PS3 game player.
3. A blu-ray disc. By the way, standard dvd’s look better played on the blu-ray system.
4. An HDMI cable from player to TV.
Leave out any of the above, it might look okay, but it won’t be real blu-ray.
One of my best blu-ray discs is “Patton”. The opening speech in front of the American flag jumps off the screen.
Whoever said you can't tell the difference between 480p DVD and 1080p Blu-ray is full of baloney. Two discs I own--Avatar and Beauty and the Beast Disney animated feature--were bought in editions with both Blu-ray and DVD versions and the jump up in quality to the Blu-ray version is DRAMATIC, with extremely clear colors and astonishing detail in the picture. Beauty and the Beast in Blu-ray is an absolute joy to watch, with background details so sharp it literally pushes right up against the limit of hand-drawn animation.
In short, if you have a 40" or bigger LCD or plasma flat panel TV that does displays 1080p video, it's definitely worth it to go with a Blu-ray player, especially now with the price of Blu-ray players really dropping.
When the vast majority of movies such why would I pay for a blue ray? Higher def won’t make the movies better.
If you're talking about videotaped TV productions of a few years ago or more, that's true; there's no point in going for Blu-ray. Of course, I haven't seen any distributor even try that.
If you're talking about a recent feature film, or one of the many TV shows shot on 35 mm film, then Blu-ray usually makes a difference, because the DVD standard-def format captures less of what's on the film than Blu-ray does. This assumes that the Blu-ray distributors actually rescanned the film at high definition. Up-converting from a standard resolution scan in order to put out a Blu-ray version would be stupid and borderline unethical. Fortunately, out of the many Blu-rays I have viewed I have never seen a case of this.
It's even easier to 'rescan' any digital animated production to hi-def. You type in two numbers on the command line and hit ENTER. A quintillion calculations later, voila!
((Okay, it's a little more involved in that, because you have to continually adjust the framing to account for going to 16:9 from either a narrower or a wider format that the animation was originally designed for.))
With regard to certain older films, including classics such as The Third Man, there is evidently nothing to be gained by rescanning to hi-res, according to reviews I have read on the Blu-ray edition. The restoration job they did is plenty good enough when viewed on a regular DVD.
Apart from the various "nature" discs I have (the BBC's "Life",National Geographic,etc) the most amazing blu ray I've seen is "The Devil Wears Prada".The PQ is,IMO,*beyond* breathtaking.
So we went from "Patton" to "The Devil Wears Prada"??!?!?!?!
I wasn't comparing the films themselves...just the picture quality of the blu rays (both of which I own).Patton is obviously the better film...the more important film.But the picture quality of the "Prada" blu ray is amazing.
Of course, if some people are satisfied with DVD; then I am happy for them. Some DVDs are mastered at a higher bitrate and look pretty good (though many look awful). Some Blu-rays are little more than upconverted DVDs. As someone posted earlier, I check the AVS FORUM and usually know up front if a new Blu-ray release is a waste of time.
I also still buy DVDs. Some movies will not come out on Blu-ray for some time, if at all. Old TV shows and some old movies will only come out on DVD. As great as Blu-ray is, DVD does not suck and is still quite watchable.
And I have not even mentioned audio quality. The lossless audio on Blu-ray blows DVD out of the water.
You’re probably experiencing what is called “Interlacing” which can cause the jagged edges in video..It also happens with sub-titles at times as well..which is why 120 HZ motion correction was created, to help correct this phenomena with sub-titles, in addition to helping to correct motion blurring.
If you have an older High Def tv set; without 120 HZ, then you’ll possibly see artifacting of this nature when watching sub-titles.
Perhaps your dvd player has a switch (found in the settings) that will allow you to change the output display from Interlace to “PROGRESSIVE”. I think many of the newer dvd players do this automatically..but some of the older dvd players have that switch.
I hope this suggestion will help correct this problem.
The Blu-ray experience is orders of magnitude better than DVD.
Somebody's hardware is cheating them.
(( ping ))
DVDs cannot be HD. They are limited to 720 X 480 resolution, while Blu Ray is 1920 X 1080 resolution.
Many good DVD players make DVDs look remarkably good on a quality HD display. Blu Ray does look much better than either DVD or over the air HD on a big HDTV.
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