Blu-Ray...or however you spell it

MacLeod

I havent kept up too much on the new goings on of high def video lately but today I decided to run into my local Circuit City to look around. They had a demo set up of Blu-Ray DVD running thru a Sony XBR LCD tv.

I couldnt believe it! I stood there dumbfounded!!

I couldnt believe the image quality! One of the clips was from RV and it was just breathtaking with the rocks, water and mountains looking better than they would in real life! They also had a clip where they showed split screen a DVD picture and a Blu-Ray picture and the difference was more drastic than VHS and DVD!

I had no idea they made such leaps in picture quality.

Ive been putting off home theater purchases til next year when (hopefully) we will be buying a house and that has been a good restraint for me. What scares me is when we actually do buy a house and my credit rating improves. Im not sure if Im going to be able to resist having a setup like this of my very own!

Im going broke doing this car audio competition habbit. What am I going to do when I have to support my new found home theater habbit as well!

I may have to venture up to Tweeter tomorrow and see if they have a Blu-Ray demo set up on my favorite monitor, a Pioneer Elite. Although, that XBR wasnt too shabby either!

Frank Z

Ah yes, another convert!!:D

michael_w

We have a similar demo pushing the samsung bdp-100. They have it hooked up to a samsung lcd (lns4092d?) doing picture in picture vs a samsung dvd player and it looks absolutly amazing. I thought they had some scam going where they used some terrible copy of a dvd vs a good bluray disc but I checked it out myself and it's actually a pretty fair comparison. Bluray just looks that much better and I never really noticed until it was put into perspective for me.

I'm not a huge movie fan but after seeing bluray in action I have a lot more confidence in the format. I've never seen one of our samsung bluray players move but it's still new and at a grand for the player it's a bit of a tough sell.

Yes come over to the dark side. You know you like it

MacLeod

Bad thing about the home audio side of the force.....the price tags!

Im killing myself trying to save up the $700 needed to get a processor I desperately need for my system. That wouldnt even be a down payment on a good 1080p LCD!! :eek:

bobman1235

When are the combo players (HD-DVD / Blu-Ray) coming out? I know they're in development....

I'm dying to get one or the other, but I'm definitely waiting as the prices come down....

Schwingding

If you compare a lousy, $50 DVD player to the picture of a Blu-Ray player (I have the BDP1000), you will be amazed and dumbfounded. However, if you've been using a good or very good upconverting DVD player over the past year or so, you will still notice some improvement, but it will not be a jaw dropper. It'll make you grin, but not jump up and down. Animation/CGI is the stunner with blu-ray as far as I can tell.

The other thing that comes to mind is that the BDP1000 is an extremely good (IMO) upconverting standard DVD player - the PQ on standard DVDs far exceeds any of the upconverting players I have owned. It is as good as a bad blu-ray disc, and they are not all the same by a long shot.

I like my blu-ray player, I consider it an excellent standard/upconverting DVD player that will also play blu-ray discs.

One of the biggest benefits to me is the uncompressed LPCM soundtracks on many of the blu-ray discs, if your receiver supports hdmi 1.1 you can get all the glory of high definition audio from your blu-ray player by using hdmi. The audio is where I find the jaw drop comes with blu-ray.

Gaara

The comparison part is such BS IMO. We had our Toshiba rep in to show of the HD-XA1 HD Dvd player and had a similar comparison. It was a battleship or something and it was panning across, half the screen was dvd 480i and half was HD 1080i. Of course there was a night and day difference, only the 480i section looked like VHS. We had it running on a 62in toshiba 1080p dlp, and I personally was not to impressed with the clips we were seeing.

We compared the trailer for I think Constantine between the toshiba and a $500 onkyo, toshiba won but not by much. The differences were not nearly as drastic as the demo made it out to be. When we tried the Onkyo vs the Toshiba both running DVD the Onkyo won, again not a huge difference between them.

I have been yet to be impressed by either format. Most recently I saw a Sony Blu-Ray player running on a 60in 1080p SXRD XBR, it looked damn good, but not as good as my Elite with my tweaked 34XBR960.

Schwingding makes a good point, my cousin thought Blu-ray was jaw dropping because he had a $69 toshiba dvd player, this is not a fair comparison. When making statements about my elite vs the toshiba my coworkers said it was not a fair comparison because the elite sold for $900. This of course makes no sense to me because we were comparing it to $800 player. Of course there is one caveat to all of the above, I have spent close to 50hrs tweaking my tv in normal menus and the service menus. The dvd players and tvs in our store are lucky to get anything done to them out of the box, that is unless the price pays and then it looks amazing.

Jared

AndyGwis

Yeah, I think BluRay looks great, especially with vivid colors and anything CGI looks supple and wonderful.

But, going from a HTIB non-progressive scan to a decent progressive scan / upconverting DVD player made a really big difference. And, going from the $150 MSRP Samsung HD-850 to my Pioneer Elite DV-59avi ($1K + retail) was a similar jump in quality.

I think BluRay or HD-DVD is just the next step in the right direction. If I went from my old HTIB DVD player to BluRay, I would probably think I had just found Jesus. . . again.

BIZILL

i've jumped aboard with the hd dvd camp. depending on what happens with the format wars (hd dvd vs blu ray), then i'll get me some blu ray action as well. my xbox hd dvd drive looks sharper and cleaner than my hd cox cable.

shawn474

In listening to the blu-ray vs. "upconverting dvd players" debate, I guess my question would be this. If there wasn'ta direct side by side comparison in a controlled environment, would the difference be as noticable. I am going for the OPPO 981 because that's what my budget allows, but wonder how much better the blu-ray would be without being compared side by side. Not trying to start anything, just want others opinions. Thanks.

BIZILL

smaller displays will not benefit nearly as much as, say, a 55" plus. on my 65", it's night and day.

Emlyn

BIZILL wrote:

smaller displays will not benefit nearly as much as, say, a 55" plus. on my 65", it's night and day.

I agree. Any display under 40" diagonal probably won't make the improved video resolution of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray worth the expense. Color depth improvements may be noticeable. Sound quality improvements may be noticeable depending on the audio gear used.

On a larger display, especially a newer 1080P capable display, the side-by-side video differences of the HD discs on my system are night and day (compared to Toshiba HD-XA1, Denon 3910, Sony 9100ES, and Oppo 971 output of standard definition DVD to 1080i).

PolkWannabie

While I wouldn't call them night and day ... They ARE clearly better ... Regardless of how sophisticated the hard / firm / software is in upscaling machines ... you can only do so much with SD ...

BIZILL

again, on my 65'er, it's night and day. and that's referring to my oppo 971 being night and the xbox 360 hd dvd player being day. just as the difference was night and day going from my old 480 progressive scan dvd player to my oppo 971 up-converting player.

the only real question is, which format will stand the test of time? will blu ray go the way of the betamax? time will tell. i hope hd dvd wins, but i'm partial to my gear and i've grown a distaste for the name 'SONY'.

Fireman32

A co-worker of mine showed me some articles that he had up on his computer which showed that HD-DVD will win the format war and blu-ray will be more for a mass storage option. They also pointed out that hd-dvd has been out longer and the cheaper price tag. I have to get the links to post them so everyone can read them for yourselve's. Myself i'm waiting a while untill some of the bugs get happered out with hd-dvd and then i'll pick up a player.

BIZILL

just pay a visit to the hd dvd / blu ray section of the avsforum.com and you'll see all sorts of info about hd dvd winning out. even many industry insiders are leaning toward hd dvd. but it's still too early to tell who will win out. either way, they're both great!

Schwingding

I keep on remembering the betamax vs VHS war. If I recall correctly, there was almost universal agreement that the betamax was a superior format. It lost due to other factors.

Read all the articles you want. Nobody can predict what will happen between these two formats, there are too many variables, and no one can tell you what the consumer really will do given such a choice. Early leads evaporate, technical superiority loses out to studio support, or wins, nobody knows. Flip a coin, buy that one. Don't look back.

PolkWannabie

BIZILL wrote:

again, on my 65'er, it's night and day.

On/Off ... Black/White ... Night/Day ... On my 71"er, it is none of those ... But as stated, it's clearly better ... One can narrow the gap with good calibration of the display, but SD will never be as good no matter what you do to it as HD.

BIZILL

the hardest difference for me to see is the difference between hd dvd and cox cable provided hd programming. hd dvd is slightly better.

PolkWannabie

Agreed ... If HD DVD out and display in are at 1080p then it should be at least a little better. Signal compression on cable could also be an issue.

sickicw

BIZILL wrote:

the hardest difference for me to see is the difference between hd dvd and cox cable provided hd programming. hd dvd is slightly better.

True, it is only slightly better, but my dish service has way, way more HD movies than on any disk right now. The only big technical advantage in blu-ray or HD-DVD over paid programming is that the audio is much better.

BIZILL

sickicw wrote:

The only big technical advantage in blu-ray or HD-DVD over paid programming is that the audio is much better.

but regrettably not so with my xbox 360 hd dvd add on.:( it's a known issue that it'll down-convert trueHD and other higher formats to plain jane dolby digital, being that it only offers optical output and no 5.1 analog out nor hdmi. but microsoft is working on a fix to make the less than spectacular sound become down-converted to DTS and bring back some of the WOW factor.

on the stand-alone blu ray and hd dvd players, the sound is supposed to be superb.

sickicw

BIZILL wrote:

on the stand-alone blu ray and hd dvd players, the sound is supposed to be superb.

Yea, sound is good for the few hd-dvds that i have. I just cant get into the formats too much until the players can decode all the formats (including dts hd master), or we get some sound processors that can do the job as well. Also the lack of good material is keeping me from buying many hd-dvd. Now if they ever put out some good shows like battlestar galactica or some hbo dramas (old school somponos, deadwood, or rome), im gonna go on a spending spree.

jakelm

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8021767&st=hd+dvd&type=product&id=1158323325814

Thats pretty cheep for an HD DVD player.

But my Denon upconvert will have to do untill the war is over.

jakelm

Ok...Im alittle confused...

Now why is HD DVD half the price of Blue Ray? Is there something I'm missing here?

Jake


Ok so 1080p for Blue Ray, istead of 1080i for HD

bobman1235

jakelm wrote:

Ok...Im alittle confused...

Now why is HD DVD half the price of Blue Ray? Is there something I'm missing here?

Jake


Ok so 1080p for Blue Ray, istead of 1080i for HD

The real reason for the price difference right now is production problems. HD-DVD essentially uses the same production methods as regular DVDs, so the infrastructure was all in place. Blu-Ray uses a whole different disc (it LOOKS the same, but there are internal differences) so there was a much bigger up-front cost to it.

I'm pretty sure they both can handle 1080p in theory though...

PolkWannabie

The A2 is 1080i ... The about to be out XA2 will do 1080p ...

jakelm

bobman1235 wrote:

I'm pretty sure they both can handle 1080p in theory though...

Well my 55'Mit will only handle 1080i. So the extra cost for 1080p is not worht it, being I'm not planning on buying a new tv any time soon.

jakelm

The HD player in question above will be 1080i over component? Since there is no DVI? I do have HDMI on my Mit but I always prefered the softness of component.

BIZILL

i probably would have waited a bit to see how the format war plays out, but with the xbox 360 add-on, it was too cheap not to get my feet wet($160 + tax after $40 off in-store circuit city coupon). and i'm only going 1080i through component and the PQ blows me away. and yes, many of us still are limited to older 1080i tv sets. not a problem for me. PQ is astounding.

hd-dvd 1/2 as ex$pen$ive as blu-ray, and equal in performance, if not better right now. the only thing i would prefer blu-ray for is the larger storage amount. but it's said that the br discs are more succeptable to failure due to scratches on the surface. hd dvd can be handled just like a regular dvd.

if both formats remain, then i'll probably get a ps3 in the future.

bobman1235

Haha, I love how 1080i is considered "older". Hilarious.