[mrtew]

Originally Posted by hyteckit 

Hmm... seems like neither HDDVD nor Blu-ray won.
Blu-ray hasn't grown since Jan. 2008.

Yeah it sure seems like the whole excitement about HD was the 'war'. With just Blu-ray in the game it's a nice picture and nice sound but no big deal anymore.

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

My guess is that DVDs are good enough, so why plunk $300 down on a Blu-Ray player and rebuy all your DVDs to get a marginally better picture.

I keep reading that kind of thing on this forum over and over. Why would anyone re-buy all their DVDs? They look 3x as good already just by playing them on the Blu-ray player so you'd have to REALLY love a movie to re-buy it on Blu-ray. Only a nut would re-buy all or most of them. The reason for getting a Blu-ray player is for new movies with great effects or animation etc so you don't keep digging yourself even deeper into the old format. Luckily DVD is totally forward compatible. If I could play my old records on my CD player I probably wouldn't have re-bought nearly so many of them as I did and I didn't re-buy all that many!

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Microsoft just doesn't seem to care much about DVD playback. It's been out for how long now? Yet it still has at best mediocre DVD playback.

The upscaling is the only thing that's ever made me consider the PS3. I haven't invested much more in my A/V setup because my TV (LN-S4096) has started to age. The black levels aren't great, and I'm out of HDMI inputs. It's a well rounded TV, I just feel like 1080p video could be lost on it. It's still a good HDTV, I just don't know if it's good enough to put money into for an upscaler.

Depending on my income I might upgrade sometime in the next year or two. Those million to one 1080p Samsung plasmas are looking pretty nice, and they're not very expensive. Really, the only question is if my student lifestyle will make me move to a different place in the next year. I'd hate to move a plasma >40"s around, especially since I drive a coupe. Getting the LCD here was painful enough...

[exca1ibur]

Originally Posted by mrtew 

I keep reading that kind of thing on this forum over and over. Why would anyone re-buy all their DVDs? They look 3x as good already just by playing them on the Blu-ray player so you'd have to REALLY love a movie to re-buy it on Blu-ray. Only a nut would re-buy all or most of them. The reason for getting a Blu-ray player is for new movies with great effects or animation etc so you don't keep digging yourself even deeper into the old format. Luckily DVD is totally forward compatible. If I could play my old records on my CD player I probably wouldn't have re-bought nearly so many of them as I did and I didn't re-buy all that many!

Man, If you think DVD looks as good as Blu-ray, I don't know what to say...

There is no need to repurchase your DVDs when you get a Blu-ray player. The SMART thing to do is buy your FUTURE movies on Blu-ray and play your exisiting DVDs you have on the same player. 'backwards compatibility'

[Eug]

On my 42" LCD from 12 feet, DVD upscaled on my HD DVD player (or my Blu-ray player) looks just fine. On my 90" projector image from 9', it looks usually looks pretty bad, although part of the reason is the Xbox 360's poor upscaling. However, even with a decent upscaler, the image isn't great from DVD.

You know what's really weird?

If I take a movie and encode it from DVD to H.264 using Handbrake, and then stream it to the Xbox 360, it actually often looks much better on the 360 than it does direct from DVD. The upscaling of H.264 Quicktime video seems to be better or something.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Eug 

If I take a movie and encode it from DVD to H.264 using Handbrake, and then stream it to the Xbox 360, it actually often looks much better on the 360 than it does direct from DVD. The upscaling of H.264 Quicktime video seems to be better or something.

MPEG2 may be too "heavy" of a format to do a lot of data processing on. But I've noticed this too when I started ripping my DVD collection in.

The 360 doesn't play back rips as well as an upscaling DVD player, but they still look better.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by goMac 

MPEG2 may be too "heavy" of a format to do a lot of data processing on.

Eh?

I suspect it's just because they use a completely different set of code for DVD playback vs. non-DVD video playback, and one set of code is just much better than the other.

Similarly, if I play high bitrate HD DVD H.264 on the 360, it's as smooth as silk. If I play 12 Mbps Quicktime H.264 on the 360, there are frequent pauses in the video. I already know that the H.264 code for Quicktime H.264 is separate from the HD DVD H.264 code, so that makes sense (although isn't ideal).

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Eh?

I suspect it's just because they use a completely different set of code for DVD playback vs. non-DVD video playback, and one set of code is just much better than the other.

Similarly, if I play high bitrate HD DVD H.264 on the 360, it's as smooth as silk. If I play 12 Mbps Quicktime H.264 on the 360, there are frequent pauses in the video. I already know that the H.264 code for Quicktime H.264 is separate from the HD DVD H.264 code, so that makes sense (although isn't ideal).

What I meant is that an MPEG2 frame or set of frames are going to be larger in memory, so they may be "heavier" to push around the system.

Generally, the up-converting routines for all video content should be the same. Whatever the format, they're all going to be dumped into a bitmap, at which point any algorithm should work on that bitmap data. You just need different codecs to dump the frames into bitmap buffers.

The XBox specifically would take those uncompressed bitmaps and pass it through it's ANA co-processor, which is where I become really baffled as to why the XBox's upconversion sucks. It has a dedicated upconversion chip. Perhaps the ANA chip really isn't that great.

My idea is that because MPEG2 frames may be slower to pull from disk, the XBox may cut corners compared to MPEG4 upscaling.

[mrtew]

Originally Posted by exca1ibur 

Man, If you think DVD looks as good as Blu-ray, I don't know what to say...
There is no need to repurchase your DVDs when you get a Blu-ray player. The SMART thing to do is buy your FUTURE movies on Blu-ray and play your exisiting DVDs you have on the same player. 'backwards compatibility'

I think we are in total agreement even though you sound like you think you are disagreeing with me.

[jokell82]

Samsung BD-P1500 (profile 1.1) to hit $150 for Black Friday:
http://gizmodo.com/5062492/dealzmodo...n-black-friday

[Peter]

Originally Posted by Eug 

How big's your TV, and how close do you sit?

The further you sit, the harder it is to tell, particularly with say a 42" TV or smaller and higher quality DVDs.

32" 1080p and sitting 8 or 10 feet from screen ...

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Peter 

32" 1080p and sitting 8 or 10 feet from screen ...

I find that HD helps things a bit, esp. if you're close up to the TV. However, at 9', it doesn't help that much, at least compared to good quality progressive scan DVD.

I had a 34" CRT and HD helped a bit from 6' but even then, it didn't help that much.

I now have a 26" LCD and HD helps from a bit further away, but again, it doesn't help that much.

Originally Posted by jokell82 

Samsung BD-P1500 (profile 1.1) to hit $150 for Black Friday:
http://gizmodo.com/5062492/dealzmodo...n-black-friday

That's a pretty damn good deal. I'm hoping for Boxing Day (Dec. 26) to get a second player for around that price point. We have no Black Friday sales here in Kanuckistan.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Peter 

32" 1080p and sitting 8 or 10 feet from screen ...

That's why you can't tell the difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray. At that screen size and distance, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between 480p and anything hi-def. At that size you'd want to sit at about 5 feet away. Sitting 10 feet away you'd need a 42" set minimum, and a 50" set to see any benefit from 1080p.

[Super Mario]

Wowawowee this thread still running and jokell still talking nonsense.

[jokell82]

Here's some more nonsense for ya:
http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/12/09...o-screen-size/

[Cold Warrior]

This is a nonsense-free zone. Nonsense = incitement and personal issues (which go to private message, BTW).

[Dakar V]

Wow, what a sig. That's worse than this thread being alive by a long shot.

[Super Mario]

Originally Posted by Dakar V 

Wow, what a sig. That's worse than this thread being alive by a long shot.

There, new sig and relevant.