Are you guys forgetting that Blu-Ray "won"?

John

shh..... we don't want to tell them this was actually a popularity contest. :)

Interesting list. It's hard to believe that anyone would have a Gateway anything at the top of the list. From what I have seen so far I believe Guitar Hero World Tour is superior to Rock Band 2. I will likely be getting that for my son so I (I mean he) can rock out. He's right on about the i7. I just discovered Hulu yesterday so i can't comment yet. So far it looks like there is something there (maybe even better than Vimeo).

He's totally right about Blu-Ray. I still can't believe that there has been so much confusion and problems with this product. Generally by now the media would have dropped fairly drastically. I simply will not pay that much for blank media and I'm not going to buy movies that cost $10 more than their DVD equivalent. For one we won't notice much difference on our 720p TV. Also, some of the Blu-Ray are just DVD upsampled so even on the best TV the difference is neglible. I know this has been discussed so I'm not trying to start another discussion on this. My main point is in how much the media costs and the fact that this product seems to be in limbo.

I just discovered Hulu yesterday so i can't comment yet

As someoen who's watched stuff on there, it's like OTA DTV complete with the occational drop out (i'd say that's my connection). Check out "dr horribles's sing along blog". Nathan Fillian + Niel Patric Harris = win. :D

"Are you guys forgetting that Blu-Ray "won"?"

Personally I think we would have been much further ahead by now with HD DVD.... but Blu Ray is here and it's to ALL our benefit to have it stick around now. At present it's the only real way to get hi def (at a reasonable length) onto a disk. It's also pretty fool proof and dependable..... so long as you're using a game console for playback :)

"Also, some of the Blu-Ray are just DVD upsampled so even on the best TV the difference is neglible."

Care to provide the name of a Blu-ray release that is just an upsampled DVD?

Right on John!

I don't get the Blu Ray bashing, and this is coming from a guy that OWNS an HD-DVD player :) I'm not defending the technology, I agree that it's a middle step till the next big thing but it's here, it looks great, and I can rent Wall E or Iron Man from Netflix or the local video store.


This is pulled from another article that Christopher Null wrote.

"That upscaled DVD players, which can be had for $50 or $60, look almost as good as content played on a Blu-ray player."

Well, in my opinion, they don't. I've been hearing this from a variety of people lately and I'm beginning to wonder if they just have some sort of vision problem or it's a problem with their set up. In my experience DVD's look "soft" compared to Blu Ray, when I'm watching DVD's I just want to reach out and roll the cameras focus just....a...bit...

If anyone is interested in discussion about the Picture Quality of various Blu Ray flicks check out the PQ forum at AVS:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=858316

They do have a listing for the worst looking Blu Ray stuff.
From AVS:


"TIER 5 -COAL- (ABC)

Only slightly better than DVD.Visible artifacting, softness, quality rivals upconverted DVD.


28 Days Later Video: AVC | Audio: DTS-HD MA | AR: 1.85:1 | Fox | *Note: Filmed in SD
AC/DC: No Bull Video: ? | Audio: PCM / TrueHD | AR: 1.85:1 | Sony BMG
Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band: Live in Dublin Video: AVC | Audio: PCM | AR: 1.78:1 | Sony
Bullitt Video: VC-1 | Audio: DD | AR: 1.85:1 | Warmer
Capricorn One (UK Import) Video: ? | Audio: ? | AR: 2.35:1 | ITV DVD
Coma Video: MPEG-2 | Audio: DD | AR: 1.78:1 | Sony
Dirty Dozen, The Video: VC-1 | Audio: DD | AR: 1.78:1 | Warner
Fifth Element, The Video: MPEG-2 | Audio: PCM | (Original) | AR: 2.35:1 | Sony
Fugitive, The Video: MPEG-2 | Audio: DD | (Bobbed) | AR: 1.85:1 | Warner
Full Metal Jacket (Original Release) Video: MPEG-2 | Audio: DD | (Bobbed) | AR: 1.78:1 | Warner
Home Alone Video: AVC | Audio: DTS-HD MA | AR: 1.85:1 | Fox
House of Flying Daggers, The Video: MPEG-2 | Audio: PCM | AR: 2.35:1 | Sony
Lost Boys, The: The Tribe Video: VC-1 | Audio: DD | AR: 2.40:1 | Warner
Mortuary Video: MPEG-2 | Audio: DTS | AR: 1.85:1 | Echo Bridge
Punisher, The Video: MPEG-2 | Audio: DD / DTS | AR: 2.35:1 | Lionsgate
U2: Rattle and Hum Video: MPEG-2 | Audio: DD / DTS | AR: 1.85:1 | Paramount "

I find it funny that "quality rivals upconverted DVD" is a metric for the worst of the Blu Ray offerings.

Anyone else have thoughts on HD quality or Blu Ray?

Ok, I;ll bite.

I have a Sony PS3. I bought one BluRay movie (Hellboy II) and will not be buying anymore movies on BluRay.

My 60" television does a maximum of 720p or 1080i. The 1080i looks awful. 720p looks much better.

My upconverted DVD's look as good as the down-sampled BluRay, and they play quicker from start.

Last year (2007), I spent about $3,000.00 on DVD's. This year, I am on target to have spent more.

I will have my television for another 5 years, or so. By then, I will see what the media of the day will be and make a choice. Right now, BluRay is just not worth the added expense. If the price comes down to current DVD levels, then I would consider buying some of the movies on BluRay, but not all due to the time it takes just to load the movie to play it.

Yes, I consider BluRay a failure for the moment due to many factors. It is still a moving target. The specification has not been stable for any period of time yet. The media is expensive. Most BluRay players are horrifically slow at playing the discs. Small production houses cannot afford to have thier productions mass produced on BluRay due to the outrageous costs involved.

"Care to provide the name of a Blu-ray release that is just an upsampled DVD?"

No but what causes a lot of these comments is that the majority of the back catalogues that the studios hold are at such low resolution that there's little to nothing to be gained from watching it at higher resolution. Any movie shot more than 20 years ago and some shot even today are already pretty low resolution. Optics and film stocks have made big advances in recent years.

Of course in many cases the studios will not spend the money to scan the camera neg and just work from a print.

Bob.

[edit]

I should mention that the same applied (still applies?) to many audio titles released on CD. At least one I know of was struck from vinyl and a rather worn out copy that my mate had at hand.

Anybody that can't see the difference between upsampled DVDs and Blu-ray discs have no business editing video for a living. There, I said it. No one in their right mind would say that upconverted DV footage could ever look as good as even HDV footage, much less full HD.

On of my all-time favorite movies is the 1951 Robert Wise film, "The Day The Earth Stood Still." I have studied this movie over and over and I am intimately familiar with every single frame. I have seen it in theaters and the first copy I had was a VHS that I recorded off of WTBS back in the late 70s. I subsequently got the DVD release and was amazed at what I had never seen before, even in the theaters. I just got the recently released Blu-ray version and I was absolutely blown away at the transfer. I saw detail in the movie that I had never seen and heard things I had never heard. I found myself studying the texture of the fabric of the clothes and saw stuff happening in the background that I had never noticed. This movie is 57 years old. I thought the DVD release was great, but it absolutely sucks by comparison and, yes, I have a decent upscaler. I have a lot of other Blu-ray movies in my collection that positively smoke the DVD versions and a lot of these movies are much older than 20 years.

I sit about 6 feet away from my 1080p HDTV, if you're watching yours from across the room, of course you won't notice the difference. The reason that we sat so far away from SD TVs is that they looked like crap close up. The beauty of HDTV is the ability to get up-close and personal and let the 16:9 aspect ratio fill your field of vision.

John, if you read my post. I am stuck at 720p.

I agree that at 1080p, it is a new world. But the downsampling of a BluRay to 720p is really not any better than an upsampled DVD to 720p. Both conversions have thier own set of artifacts/issues.

I will say this. The PS3 sucks for upconverting a DVD. It is horrible. For down sampling BluRay, I am not sure if it is any better. My old Sony DVD player does a better job with the upconversion to 720p.

I've found the the PS3 has a very acceptable DVD upscaler, there must be something else in your system that's making it look so bad. The PS3 has at least one scaling adjustment in the settings menu, it also has a couple of color space settings. During playback, there are adjustments for overall noise reduction, as well as block noise and mosquito noise reduction. Perhaps fiddling with a combination of these will improve your image.

Maybe it upscales to 1080p well, but to 720p it is quite bad. I have played with the various paramters (firmware 2.52) and have also asked on the Sony forums about it. I was really disappointed as I wanted to move the current DVD player to the bedroom, but that is not going to happen.

Maybe I am spoiled. My $1200 (I do not have the model number with me at the moment) Sony DVD player displays a wonderful image at 720p. Like I said, it is just as good as a down-sampled BluRay.

I have made comments in prior posts that I felt the differences between upconverted DVD and BD is minimal. I was making these comments from watching my 720p LCD screen.
I have since upgraded to a new Samsung 52" 1080p LCD, and I do now definitely see a difference between a Blu Ray disc and a DVD.
So unless you have a 1080p screen don't bother getting a blu ray player

Blu Ray (on 1080p) is far more sharper, and on my set it gives me a sense of 3D. Quite stunning.
Having said that I still think that at this point the media prices for these discs are outrageous and too high. Hollywood titles are running around $30-$40.
I also have a BD burner that I have owned since August of this year.
It came with a re-writable 25G disc, which I have been using all this time.
I have YET to purchase any BD media to burn to hoping the price will come down more.

Ted

<<My 60" television does a maximum of 720p or 1080i. The 1080i looks awful. 720p looks much better.>>

Be sure that your DVD player is set to output 720p which is apparently the native resolution of your TV.

This is probably the most misunderstood factor in HDTV today among 720p set owners. I've had a number of people who thought because the 720p native TV would accept 1080i signals that they should set their DVD players to 1080i. So when upconverting SD DVDs to 1080i and then the TV downconverting this signal to 720p you go thru two conversions and end up with a mess.

I knew the set's native resolution was 720p (actually 768p) when I got it 4 years ago. That was when 1080p was a pipe dream.

I have the DVD player and the PS3 set to output 720p. I tried 1080i just for giggles, and it was quite horrible, but I expected it to not be very good.

Not to rehash all this nonsense again, but the quality varies from movie to movie. THAT is the problem and not the technology. The cost is the issue and always has been. I wouldn't care if a Blu-Ray or HD DVD were not as good as the last one I bought if it didn't cost any more than an SD disc and neither would the average consumer. That is why I predicted that SD would win over a year ago and time has proven that premise. When they finally get it, the industry will be able to move Blu-Ray discs.

John

"When they finally get it, the industry will be able to move Blu-Ray discs."

I'm not so sure it has much to do with "getting it". (IMO), providing of course the price tag dips to a more reachable number, this will all be more (and always has been more) of a MIGRATION than anything else.

Blu Ray is not like VHS to dvd where all you had to do was unplug one player and plug another one in. You need an entirely new system. This is not , and never was something that was gong to happen over night. I suspect when everybody goes digital you will see an upswing in system updating which in many cases will involve a Blu Ray player... again though... depending on whether they get a little smarter with the pricing....

I beg to differ. For those that can afford a good setup, bluray is fantastic. I haven't watched a DVD since I got mine.

Just one guy's personal opinion doesn't matter much. It would be different if this had been a huge poll.

I just bought a Panasonic DMP-BD35K. Very nice player. My TV is 1080i 62" Toshiba DLP. The Dark Night looks great in the Imax scenes. It is the small details that you notice. They are very sharp. And I agree with John, I am about 8 foot from the screen and that is far enough. The recommended distance is too far.

@John_cline: Care to provide the name of a Blu-ray release that is just an upsampled DVD?

The first "Fifth Element" movies were up-sampled DVD. I also think that one of the terminator movies was, but I could be wrong. You quickly saw studios stop that.