paulr

What do you think and where are you getting the dvd's from, rent or buy. What equipment have you got. From what i understand this is the ultimate in quality,so whats its like.

thanks
Paul.

fast bloke

I have a PS3 and 1080p Pannny Viera. I turned on the old Sony 42" RP the other day to watch the rugby and couldn't believe how bad it was. Movie rental from xtravision, but I think they might be a Northern Ireland only chain. Tesco have a reasonable looking scheme.

The only downside is that there isn't that much stuff on Blu Ray as yet. The market may determine that HD DVD is the future, but there will always be PS3 games. I would think that buying a dedicated Blu Ray player now might be like buying a betamax video recorder in 1978.

paulr

What dvd's have you watched in Blu Ray, impressive?

Who are Blockbuster going with. Surely that will decide the format wars.

fast bloke

You just get used to it very quickly. Watched (erm can't remember) the weekend I got it. Thought it was amazing. Watched Casino Royale last week and thought it was normal - then turned on the old TV and thought it was faulty.

There are big names backing both Blu Ray and HD DVD. Sony have gone (invented really) Blu Ray, Microsoft and Intel have gone HD DVD. Neither have backed a complete loser before, but it won't be practical for studios to produce both formats, so one will more than likely disappear. If Blu Ray disappears at least you know Sony will still produce games, but if you buy a dedicated player it might be defunct in a year or two

Deep Singh

If you're talking about the Panny plasma it is not true 1080p. It has a 1080p processing chip but is not 1080p

Carl Davey

iTrader: (3)

I plumped for HD-DVD over Blu-Ray and bought a Toshiba HD-XE1 to go with my 1080p Sony KDL40W2000. I then asked the gf for a PS3 for Xmas.

There isn't a great deal of titles available on HD-DVD that i don't already have on DVD. I've preordered the Planet Earth box set and the Matrix Trilogy arrived today. Both from Play.com and not too expensive either, the Matrix set cost £23.99. I'm also supposed to be due 2 free DVD's from Toshiba (an offer with the DVD player) although i can't remember what i ordered.

Quality is excellent and if you buy a DVD player that upscales (most HD-DVD players do this anyway AFAIK) it'll even improve the quality of your current DVD collection.

I agree with FB regarding how quickly you get used to it though. I've been watching the England game in HD this evening and although the quality was impressive for the first few minutes i soon grew used to it.

Patt@firstime

I have a 1080p and PS3 and WOW!

fast bloke

Didn't quite get to grips with this bit. I got it very cheap. The salesman looked a bit shifty when I asked him if it was 1080p and answered - "Yep - Its got a 1080p chip" - I was getting a TV that was listed at £1099 in Argos and Currys for 500 quid, so I didn't delay too long. - Cheap as chips as one might say

What is the difference between 1080p and a 1080p chip?

Geezer

That's a very good question! Well true 1080p has (at least) 1080 vertical pixels, chip has 768, so why they say it's 1080 at all I really don't know.

I have viewed Blu-Ray and PS3 stuff on my 1080p telly, and it was very impressive indeed.

Geezer

PeteBrant

I have a PS3 and a Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD and it's stunning.

Iain Young

The panny screen is 1080i, not 1080p. The 1080p chip inside the screen downscales the 1080p input source down to the size that the screen can display.

Sounds bad, but to be honest I've compared 1080i and 1080p screens side by side, and your nose has to be practically touching the screen to tell the difference.

As for the HD-DVD thing, why not get an upscaling dvd player with hdmi output? I've just bought myself one of these (a Pioneer), and the picture quality I'm getting from normal dvd playback is much improved, and almost on a par with hd video. It's good enough that I'm sticking with normal dvd until the format war is over...

GazTheHat

What player was it?

Iain Young

The pioneer dv-600av-k...

DV-600AV-K Pioneer Blu-ray disc, DVD Players - Blu-Ray, DVD & Pro

Does a really nice job

corradoboy

Within a couple of months there will be multi-format BD/HDDVD players hitting the shops, thus ending the format war. One movie studio is already playing with multi-format discs in the event this doesn't happen, but the players are already there and waiting for the legal bods to hack their way through the licensing to allow their sale. Hold off and you can avoid being a Betamax victim.

If you must buy into BD now, get over to AV Forums to get the knowledge on the US players. The US machines can play US, Japanese and European discs, opening up a massive catalogue of titles some 10x or more larger than what is available to a UK only player.

As for upscaling, the processor in a Panasonic Viera upscales a 480p SD DVD signal to 768p anyway, so the only benefit to an upscaling HDMI player is if the scaler is of better quality, or if HDMI gives a better picture than component with your player/panel configuration.

fast bloke

Cheers Iain - still none the wiser though - does it convert a 1080p signal into 1080i or does it do it all in 720? and just pretend it is a big hitter. Is there really a difference between i and p for those of us that never felt the urge to buy a golden core scart lead.

Anyway - I think it is excellent quality for the price. The new (in June) Sony LCD (x series Bravia?)at 3 grand looked better, but it wasn't 6 times better, so I couldn't justify it

Iain Young

True, however the picture from an upscaling dvd player is better. The viera doesn't do a bad job but it is coming from an analog signal. The upscaling dvd player, reads from the dvd, upscales, and transmits digitally over the wire at the required resolution. The omission of the stages where the signal gets converted to an analog component signal, (and then back to digital again inside the tv), means less signal loss and atrifacts. I've compared the two side by side (upscaling hdmi play vs an expensive Sony player via component), and the difference in picture quality is huge.

p.s. There's no such format as 768p

See here for definition of the formats

720p - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Iain Young

No, they look pretty much the same unless you stick your nose on the screen or buy a 60" tv

InvisibleMan

the xbox is supposed to do a pretty good job at upscaling dvds to 1080p better than some of the reasonably priced dvd players

i need to take a pic of a native 1080p game with the flatscreen crt vs 1080p to see the actual detail increase.

Im sure there has been threads about it in the past, anyone got any comparison pics?