Blueray vs upconvert DVD - not seeing $200 worth of difference

[Fritzo]

When DVD players came out, there was so much difference in quality that I stood in line to get a DVD player.

I was kicking around getting a Blueray player, but I was looking at the picture quality in a Best Buy "theater" setup (where they showcase their products in a home setting), and I could not tell the difference between Casino Royal in Blueray and upconverted DVD. In fact, they looked nearly identical.

The BB salesguy then showed me a pre-made video of DVD vs Blueray quality and they had this side by side picture. I LOLed---they made the DVD video look like it came from a VCR tape after is was recorded over 30 times.

I think the reason Blueray players aren't selling is there's not really enough of a quality jump to justify it like there was from VHS to DVD.


moving to HT forum from OT
vi

 

[pulsedrive]

Too true. Sadly HDDVD was MUCH better quality. I have been horribly disappointed in Blu Ray.

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
Too true. Sadly HDDVD was MUCH better quality. I have been horribly disappointed in Blu Ray.

There's no significant difference between the two media formats. Some of the original issues between the two were more to do with the transfer than the format it was moved to. Some of the initial Blu Ray transfers were very badly done.

As for the discussion of the OP - it's really title and system dependent. Some titles simply are much better champions of the format than others. I found the colors and sharpness in "Last of the Samurai" to be incredible vs. the DVD. The soundtracks have much better distinction between channels and the LFE tracks are usually much more energized. But you need a higher end setup to take advantage of the high def audio codecs.

I don't own a projector, but I guess the difference it makes there in terms of PQ is just stunning.

When you get used to watching & listening to Blu-Ray movies, many DVDs just feel "flat" in terms of color and sharpness.

Not something you really understand until you watch them for a while and you know what you are missing out on.

Upconverting simply can not add sharpness or color or energy to soundtracks.

 

[jtvang125]

3 things holding back BR:

1. Not enough people have HDTVs to take advantage
2. High price of players (much cheaper now but under $200 is sweet spot)
3. High price of movies

For me, I can't stand watching standard def material now. Even with upconverted dvd it's still pales in PQ to true hidef.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: jtvang125
3 things holding back BR:

1. Not enough people have HDTVs to take advantage
2. High price of players (much cheaper now but under $200 is sweet spot)
3. High price of movies

For me, I can't stand watching standard def material now. Even with upconverted dvd it's still pales in PQ to true hidef.

I'd like to add to that list:

4. The improved PQ is not only dependent on a person first having an HDTV, but also what type of HDTV. Crappy HDTV equals comparable PQ between DVD and Blu-ray. The size of the HDTV also plays a big role. Blu-ray on a 40" HDTV sitting 12' away almost negates all the PQ advantages Blu-ray will have over DVD.

5. Studio transfers. This I believe is what is REALLY hurting Blu-ray. Studios don't really have a standard. They can basically release a DVD quality movie on Blu-ray and never remaster it (see Predator - Blu-ray). So when people see this they say, "I don't even see a difference." Not all Blu-rays are created equal which is a BIG problem. When you buy a Blu-ray movie, you're not being guaranteed a better looking movie. All you know is that you have a format CAPABLE of a better looking movie (compared to DVD).

This all being said, I've never gone back to DVDs even since I got my HD-DVD player and then my Blu-ray player (PS3). When I buy a movie, I want the best looking picture, period. Blu-ray prices are not THAT bad. I never go to the movies, so this actually comes out cheaper. Why go to the movies when you can bring the movie experience home.

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
Too true. Sadly HDDVD was MUCH better quality. I have been horribly disappointed in Blu Ray.

I have never seen a more blatantly false statement than this. For shame. :roll: I'd have to search for the comparisons, Universal movies made for HD DVD then later redone to Blu-ray specifications, improved the image quality by a significant amount. But let me guess, you hate film grain and love a smooth picture, right? That's the difference between HD DVD & Blu-ray, Blu-ray has the bit-rate to accurately reproduce film grain, while HD DVD's bit-rate cannot and studios were forced to filter out grain before encoding.




As for Best Buy displays, they are crap, they blow the contrast and saturation waaayyy off of normal settings. Your hdtv at home, properly calibrated, or even roughly calibrated, will look far better than anything you'll see at Best Buy.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
Too true. Sadly HDDVD was MUCH better quality. I have been horribly disappointed in Blu Ray.

I have never seen a more blatantly false statement than this. For shame. :roll: I'd have to search for the comparisons, Universal movies made for HD DVD then later redone to Blu-ray specifications, improved the image quality by a significant amount. But let me guess, you hate film grain and love a smooth picture, right? That's the difference between HD DVD & Blu-ray, Blu-ray has the bit-rate to accurately reproduce film grain, while HD DVD's bit-rate cannot and studios were forced to filter out grain before encoding.




As for Best Buy displays, they are crap, they blow the contrast and saturation waaayyy off of normal settings. Your hdtv at home, properly calibrated, or even roughly calibrated, will look far better than anything you'll see at Best Buy.

Also, many times the displays at Best Buy will have one source run through a myriad of splitters to display it across 30 screens at once. All the splitting adds signal degradation, which ends up resulting in a significant loss of quality compared to the original source. Using the displays at Best Buy to judge anything is really not the most accurate way to compare.

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: jtvang125
3 things holding back BR:

1. Not enough people have HDTVs to take advantage
2. High price of players (much cheaper now but under $200 is sweet spot)
3. High price of movies

For me, I can't stand watching standard def material now. Even with upconverted dvd it's still pales in PQ to true hidef.

This.

I will go out of my way to watch HD material over SD material. Even if I have easy access to an SD movie, such as a DVD, I'll try and rent the BD version if I can. Even with the PS3's upconversion for DVDs, BD blows it out of the water on my 720p LCD. Sure, the upconverted image looks far superior to the SD image or if the TV itself handled the upconversion, but the lack of dimensional depth, texture sharpness, and enhanced detail across the entire image, really shows when comparing upconverted SD material to true HD material.

Some people just don't have the eye for spotting the difference, or have such a negative mindset toward HD that they'll convince themselves that they cannot see a difference. Easy to do when going into a demo with bias. Hell, it's even possible that there is a lack of will to even care, and the impartial mindset leads to a lack of ability to discern very real differences.

Hell, the sound upgrade alone is also worthy in my opinion, but without a decent surround setup, then that might not be even brought into consideration.

 

[pennylane]

I'll echo everything everybody has said. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD look identical for identical transfers. Blu-Ray unfortunately has some bad transfers out there but for the most part they look very good.

Also, while blu-ray may not "wow", I feel like it's the way a movie should look and sound. Going back to DVD after watching blu-ray is such a let down. It's just so flat and lacking in detail.

 

[spidey07]

Where you'll see the difference the most is in the color. Now if the transfer to Blueray isn't good then maybe I can conceivably entertain not seeing a difference. But even then the color depth and added resolution are still huge.

 

[s44]

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
Too true. Sadly HDDVD was MUCH better quality.

Credibility was too big of a burden, huh?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Rent The Fountain, or Curse of the Golden Flower or Rattatoulle. Or Speed Racer, but only if you like the cartoon as a kid.

I don't go "Wow!" at every blu-ray disc, but I'm only paying an extra $1 a month to rent them from Netflix so I don't mind.

 

[bigdog1218]

After this holiday season I don't see how anyone can justify buying an upconverting DVD player over a blu-ray player. I just picked up the Panasonic BD-35 at sears for $149 on Sunday, what's the cheapest Oppo player go for $170?

 

[erwos]

Well, your mistake was demo'ing at Best Buy. Lord only knows what they set those TVs to. Go over to a serious HT enthusiast's setup, and I guarantee they'll be able to show you a difference.

 

[sivart]

At 100" from 12' away, the BD / HD DVD combo player I have is worth the extra price for the increase in picture quality. (Plus the fact that I bought some new first run HD DVD's for less than their DVD counterpart doesn't hurt).

Sadly, most will be satisfied with 'reduced quality' HD and streaming HD (even with worst picture quality) and upconverted DVD's will probably never let BD to take hold. Similar to how CD sales have dropped because the reduced quality MP3 format is okay for most listeners.

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: cubby1223

As for Best Buy displays, they are crap, they blow the contrast and saturation waaayyy off of normal settings. Your hdtv at home, properly calibrated, or even roughly calibrated, will look far better than anything you'll see at Best Buy.

QFT

DVD upconverted by my PS3 looks good on my Samsung 52" 1080p TV.
Blu-Ray looks AWESOME.

But as mentioned previously, it is very Title dependent. Sweeping outdoor vistas (such as seen in "Planet Earth") seem to show the most difference.

I do think that the quality jump from VHS to DVD was bigger than DVD to Blu-Ray.

Now whether it's worth the price difference is up to you.

 

[Fritzo]

Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
Too true. Sadly HDDVD was MUCH better quality. I have been horribly disappointed in Blu Ray.

I have never seen a more blatantly false statement than this. For shame. :roll: I'd have to search for the comparisons, Universal movies made for HD DVD then later redone to Blu-ray specifications, improved the image quality by a significant amount. But let me guess, you hate film grain and love a smooth picture, right? That's the difference between HD DVD & Blu-ray, Blu-ray has the bit-rate to accurately reproduce film grain, while HD DVD's bit-rate cannot and studios were forced to filter out grain before encoding.




As for Best Buy displays, they are crap, they blow the contrast and saturation waaayyy off of normal settings. Your hdtv at home, properly calibrated, or even roughly calibrated, will look far better than anything you'll see at Best Buy.

Also, many times the displays at Best Buy will have one source run through a myriad of splitters to display it across 30 screens at once. All the splitting adds signal degradation, which ends up resulting in a significant loss of quality compared to the original source. Using the displays at Best Buy to judge anything is really not the most accurate way to compare.

They have home theater centers at a lot of stores now, where they hook up their best equipment in a "home" setting (chairs, tables, dark room, dedicated video feed from a player using "Monster" cables, etc) to show it off. This was the situation here.

 

[MikeyLSU]

I can barely see the difference in upscaling DVD vs DVD.

But I love my HD movies on blu-ray.

 

[dainthomas]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Rent The Fountain, or Curse of the Golden Flower or Rattatoulle. Or Speed Racer, but only if you like the cartoon as a kid.

I don't go "Wow!" at every blu-ray disc, but I'm only paying an extra $1 a month to rent them from Netflix so I don't mind.

Forbidden Kingdom was quite well done also. The colors and detail were great.

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: pulsedrive
Too true. Sadly HDDVD was MUCH better quality. I have been horribly disappointed in Blu Ray.

I have never seen a more blatantly false statement than this. For shame. :roll: I'd have to search for the comparisons, Universal movies made for HD DVD then later redone to Blu-ray specifications, improved the image quality by a significant amount. But let me guess, you hate film grain and love a smooth picture, right? That's the difference between HD DVD & Blu-ray, Blu-ray has the bit-rate to accurately reproduce film grain, while HD DVD's bit-rate cannot and studios were forced to filter out grain before encoding.




As for Best Buy displays, they are crap, they blow the contrast and saturation waaayyy off of normal settings. Your hdtv at home, properly calibrated, or even roughly calibrated, will look far better than anything you'll see at Best Buy.

Also, many times the displays at Best Buy will have one source run through a myriad of splitters to display it across 30 screens at once. All the splitting adds signal degradation, which ends up resulting in a significant loss of quality compared to the original source. Using the displays at Best Buy to judge anything is really not the most accurate way to compare.

They have home theater centers at a lot of stores now, where they hook up their best equipment in a "home" setting (chairs, tables, dark room, dedicated video feed from a player using "Monster" cables, etc) to show it off. This was the situation here.

In my experience, BB still does a crappy job of calibrating TV's, even in the HT parts of the store. It's really sad. If I were a HDTV manufacturer, I'd send technicians out to these stores to calibrate MY TV's so the competition's TV's would look like crap.

Still, if you can't see the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray, then it doesn't matter as long as you're happy with what you have.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Originally posted by: vi edit
There's no significant difference between the two media formats. Some of the original issues between the two were more to do with the transfer than the format it was moved to. Some of the initial Blu Ray transfers were very badly done.

This. A crappy transfer equals a crappy BR (or HD DVD) movie. There are many variables that go into making a BR movie master, and the quality is dependent on those variables. But the tech specs of BR are not the problem.

 

[Pacfanweb]

Originally posted by: destrekor

Hell, the sound upgrade alone is also worthy in my opinion, but without a decent surround setup, then that might not be even brought into consideration.

And I realize it's somewhat subjective, but most stuff I've read indicates that there is little to no sound difference with these "HD Audio" formats on the BR discs, over regular DTS and DD.

I'd like to get a preamp that will decode those formats and see for myself, but I don't see how my system could sound much better, unless I got some seriously nicer speakers. Don't think a new audio format is going to do it.

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: Pacfanweb

Originally posted by: destrekor

Hell, the sound upgrade alone is also worthy in my opinion, but without a decent surround setup, then that might not be even brought into consideration.

And I realize it's somewhat subjective, but most stuff I've read indicates that there is little to no sound difference with these "HD Audio" formats on the BR discs, over regular DTS and DD.

I'd like to get a preamp that will decode those formats and see for myself, but I don't see how my system could sound much better, unless I got some seriously nicer speakers. Don't think a new audio format is going to do it.

I'm not so sure on that. The rear channels just seem to have much more seperation and activity to them and the LFE tracks seem to run a lot more hot than any DVD's that I've played.

 

[Koing]

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showp...p?p=617171&postcount=5

http://www.zonadvd.com/modules...=viewarticle&artid=710

I notice quite a big difference on a 50" screen and my dads only 720p.

BR prices are starting to get 'reasonable' now also, which is a great thing!

Koing

 

[zhougong]

I love my HD movies on blu-ray.