Home audio & video forum: BluRay vs Upconvert

...keep in mind the better the original source, the better the displayed picture will look {period}. DVD's at their best are 480 lines... upconverted {using extropolated/interpolated/wobulated whatever lol} to the higher signal. B-Ray and HD-DVD the disks are recorded at higher 1080 lines... then broought down to 720 will look NOTICEABLY better than the other way around. However, is the difference worth the price..{???} I can not answer that for you. Hope this helps. Good luck!

You describe a situation that I was in last January. My recommendation is that you consider how much you are willing to spend and how important it is to you to have a pristine picture. Since the TV is NOT 1080p you will not achieve the ABSOLUTE best and you must be accepting of that. The TV is capable of 720p and 1080i most likely so it is a matter of getting the highest signal the TV can reproduce. Someone already posted a suggestion that you purchase a Playstation 3 and that is not a bad move at all. You would obtain the most options with that move - plays standard DVD and upscales them (with updates this last year) and plays up to 1080p with Blu-ray. I ended up buying an Oppo upscaling DVD single player and a Playstation 3 and a new TV! My first purchase of a Blu-ray DVD was Pearl Harbor which I also own in standard format. Naturally I ran the "test" to see difference. I froze frames and switched back and forth on inputs and also watched segments. There IS a difference but it is most noticeable in the background detail (to me). One example was a scene where the airfield was being bombed and a utility truck and black car was in the background. In the blu-ray format you could see the car dash gauges and the hubcaps were shiny and the tire tread was noticeable on the utility truck. That detail was lacking on the upscaled standard format viewing.

I too would recommend the PS3 for you. If you watch a lot of movies though, it does take time to load and responds somewhat slower than a regular DVD player. The nice thing is that the PS3 can update and meet the new blu-ray standards too on your wireless or hard-wired network. I ended up re-buying everything. I am glad I have a good picture but it was expensive and not necessarily worth the price - hey now they have 120hz and better pictures! There is no end and consumers have to be make very careful buying decisions that include market timing.