Blu-Ray for 50" 1080i Pioneer over upconvert?

I have a 50" Pioneer plasma, with HDMI, that is only 1080i....couldn't afford the Pioneer with 1080p when it was new. I did buy an upconverting Sony DVD player though, and it is connected via the HDMI cable to my TV.

My question to the more knowledgeable community is....will a Blu-Ray DVD player give me a noticeable difference in picture quality since my TV cannot generate the 1080p output? I generally sit between 6-8 feet from the screen.

Thanks!

Welcome to the forum! :hithere:

I have one of my BD players connected to a 720p display and I can see the difference so it is worth it IMO as your 720p Pioneer plasma (it only accepts a 1080i signal or is a 1080p model, since only Hitachi made a 1080i plasma) should look very good too. It depends on the BD movie though as occasionally they do not remaster before they encode it on a BD disc, but most will likely much better if at the proper distance from the proper size screen.

Welcome to the forum! :hithere:

I have one of my BD players connected to a 720p display and I can see the difference so it is worth it IMO as your 1080i Hitachi plasma should look very good too. It depends on the BD movie though as occasionally they do not remaster before they encode it on a BD disc, but most will likely much better if at the proper distance from the proper size screen.

I believe PFC5 meant to say Pioneer...

I believe PFC5 meant to say Pioneer...

Thanks!

I confused this poster with another that had a 1080i Hitachi since he did say it was a 1080i plasma. I also altered the post further to explain this difference and that he likely had a 720p Pioneer plasma if it will only take up to a 1080i signal.

I have a 50" Pioneer plasma, with HDMI, that is only 1080i....couldn't afford the Pioneer with 1080p when it was new. I did buy an upconverting Sony DVD player though, and it is connected via the HDMI cable to my TV.

My question to the more knowledgeable community is....will a Blu-Ray DVD player give me a noticeable difference in picture quality since my TV cannot generate the 1080p output? I generally sit between 6-8 feet from the screen.

Thanks!

At 8' or more you will notice a marginal difference. If you are 6' to 7.5' or so you will see a large difference with BDs rather than DVDs. Remember even with upconversion a DVD image will only look marginally better than it's original 480 encode. I have done many comparisons of movies I have owned on both DVD and HD DVD/BD and in most cases it's not even viable comparison.