High Def Forum - Your High Definition Community & High Definition Resource - View Single Post - Blue Ray may not be worth it for it for me.

strawberry · 07-09-2005, 02:19 PM

Yes, sir- I would imagine that the combination of your Denon + the ability to relieve your TV of doing the upscaling duties is the reason you're seeing improved results with that setup. I'm certainly not trying to convince you to ditch your upscaling player- you're getting great results with it, and it sounds like it's doing a great job for you.

As for some of your TV shows looking better on DVD than in an OTA HD broadcast- I would suggest that you don't take it to heart very much when considering the next-gen formats. Nobody is doing a poorer job of handling HD braodcasts than the networks right now- the bitrates are very low (which leads to a lot of artifacting), and the image is very soft compared to HDNET, HBO HD, etc. HD broadcasts use notoriously low bitrates, and, as of right now, they're all using MPEG-2 transport streams for delivery, which is a dated, non-efficient method. The new codecs that we'll see in use on the next-gen players are a huge step forward compared to MPEG-2.

When looking ahead to the next-gen formats and comparing them to your current upscaling player, I would also bear this in mind: the pixel count for DVD video is around 350,000- and upscaling players cannot do anything to effectively change that. The pixel count for HD-DVD and BR is going to run at almost 2.1 million. I wouldn't suggest to anyone that they take a chance on BR or HD-DVD until the format war is over and prices go down (probably a few years away)- but once we get to that point, the difference between HD discs and your (or any of ours) current setup will be night and day.

07-09-2005, 02:19 PM	#8
strawberry HD is the Lord. Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Lawrence, KS Posts: 1,635	Yes, sir- I would imagine that the combination of your Denon + the ability to relieve your TV of doing the upscaling duties is the reason you're seeing improved results with that setup. I'm certainly not trying to convince you to ditch your upscaling player- you're getting great results with it, and it sounds like it's doing a great job for you. As for some of your TV shows looking better on DVD than in an OTA HD broadcast- I would suggest that you don't take it to heart very much when considering the next-gen formats. Nobody is doing a poorer job of handling HD braodcasts than the networks right now- the bitrates are very low (which leads to a lot of artifacting), and the image is very soft compared to HDNET, HBO HD, etc. HD broadcasts use notoriously low bitrates, and, as of right now, they're all using MPEG-2 transport streams for delivery, which is a dated, non-efficient method. The new codecs that we'll see in use on the next-gen players are a huge step forward compared to MPEG-2. When looking ahead to the next-gen formats and comparing them to your current upscaling player, I would also bear this in mind: the pixel count for DVD video is around 350,000- and upscaling players cannot do anything to effectively change that. The pixel count for HD-DVD and BR is going to run at almost 2.1 million. I wouldn't suggest to anyone that they take a chance on BR or HD-DVD until the format war is over and prices go down (probably a few years away)- but once we get to that point, the difference between HD discs and your (or any of ours) current setup will be night and day. __________________ Home Theater Setup ISF-Calibrated Hitachi 57S500 HDTV Denon 2807 AVR 7.1 JBL Venue Series Speaker System Toshiba HD-A1 PS3 60 Gig Xbox 360 Premium Moxi BMC 9022 DVR Logitech Harmony 880 Last edited by strawberry; 07-09-2005 at 02:22 PM.