Blu-ray all hype?

[goraman]

I used to think so but after comparing movies on the new Blu-ray player Blu-rays even sound better than my best DVD's.
Not only is the picture more detailed but colors are far more vivid too.
I was slow to make the move from VHS to DVD and just made the move to Blu-ray. Not bad at all maybe one day I'll get a cell phone.

[DSJR]

Don't these players "improve" standard DVD's as well with up-sampling or some such?

[UV101]

Not really sure what you mean? I assume you questioning the difference is in relation to audio and not the visual element.

Overall if you are asking the question, it's an easy answer, yes unless you are blind!!!!

[Stratmangler]

Don't these players "improve" standard DVD's as well with up-sampling or some such?

They upsample for sure, but that's to change the DVD output to one native to the screen.

If you've never seen a Blu-ray movie played on a decent Blu-ray player then you've never seen what your HDTV is capable of.

[goraman]

Don't these players "improve" standard DVD's as well with up-sampling or some such?

Possibly but the difference between a Blu-ray in these players and even my best DVD's is pretty noticeable.

[goraman]

Not really sure what you mean? I assume you questioning the difference is in relation to audio and not the visual element.

Overall if you are asking the question, it's an easy answer, yes unless you are blind!!!!

Well,I was pretty happy with the DVD player and only saw Blu-ray played on other TV's so I never could do a A/B comparison before.
not being much of a T.V. watcher or a video guy I didn't pay much mind.

I got the Blu-ray player way below cost at $38.00. $179.99 Reg. price so getting it was a nobrainer.
The HDMI cable was a deal too.
Black Friday while supply's last sort of thing,at Walmart the line went on for ever but was worth it.

[UV101]

I've been using my ps3 as my Blu-ray for several years. Not sure why id ever look at a DVD again.

Am I missing the point? Is Blu-ray not HD vs DVD at std definition???

[Eagle owl]

Blu-ray at it's best offers superb picture quality, however, many Blu-ray films don't reach the standard you expect and some are not much better than DVD. If you have just bought a Blu-ray player I recommend Avatar as your first purchase as the picture quality is outstanding.

[sq225917]

I'm when people think the difference wouldn't be so pronounced, Blu-ray at native 1080p has 4 times the pixel data of standard def. Think of video as mp3, dvd as 16/44.1 and Blu-ray is then 24/176.2

The Heath Ledger Batman flick is also superb on Blu-ray

[UV101]

You can add any of the Pixar films to that as well

One of the issues for anyone with a HD tv is the dreadful performance when used with a std def source. Its caused when averages are used to fill pixels in. The recording in a dvd only contain 640 lines and the screen 1080. Somehow the info needs to be spread to average across the additional lines. This is what causes such fuzzy pictures on what are capable of producing razor sharp images. If you want to watch DVD, you are much better with a screen whos native resolution matches std def which mormally means good old crt. We've gone from a era where people wouldn't be happy with poor broadcast reception (snow/grain/ghosting) to an era where crappy huge pixelation where there is an intense amount of changing info (broadcast bandwidth limits) or poor pictures cause by the interpolation type issue described previously.

The answer is simple. The source output resolution needs to match the display resolution and be transmitting at a high enough bitrate to accurately produce a quality picture (and audio of course!)

Step in Blu-ray. Even old films remastered will appear better because they "may" have been remastered from the analogue HD originals. Now the resolution matches and the picture is better. Obviously with the case of films like the Disney remasters, significant work goes into touching up the original work as well

Definately worth it if you have an HD TV in my opinion!