blu ray question

[friendly_jacek]

Hi, to keep up with the father's day theme here, let me mention that I just got a blu-ray player gift ($125 Magnavox at Walmart special).

So far I'm not impressed. I watch some HDTV (free over air HDTV) on my 44' Panasonic LCD HDTV and appreciate good resolution, especially from PBS in 1080i format. So, I know that my TV is capable of beautiful, high resolution picture.

Blu-ray is a different story. I hardly saw a difference vs DVD in the first BR movie I saw (Revolutionary Road). The output settings are correct (1080p). I know I should have tried Planet Earth or animated movies to test BR, but my local Blockbuster has few BR titles that interest me (no Planet Earth).

Since I'm mainly a renter, I'm not convinced I want to keep the BR player. It has no MP3, Divx, multisystem or multizone playing capabilities like my old Philips DVD player. My A/V receiver is maxed out, so cannot connect both for HD.

Anyone with BR experience here?

 

[buster]

Blue Ray quality will vary depending. Some look better than others. I'm using PS3 as my BR player.

 

[pidster]

Did you connect the player to your TV with an HDMI or at least component cable? Or a regular A/V cable? Using a standard AV connection will look like [censored].

 

[friendly_jacek]

Originally Posted By: pidster
Did you connect the player to your TV with an HDMI or at least component cable? Or a regular A/V cable? Using a standard AV connection will look like [censored].


If I used a composite video cable, I would not ask this question.

 

[digitalSniperX1]

Yes I have a blu ray player.

It is better than standard def (640x480i) on a 46" display (mine). It's not hugely better, but it is better.

HDTV vs. NTSC has S/N advantages you don't get with blu-ray vs. standard def video discs (i.e. standard def DVD players have low video noise while cable/over the air NTSC is generally higher).

Since you're using the component video out from the blu-ray, it could be something as simply as lower quality video DAC's/video filtering/video bandwidth on/from the player. You might try the HDMI/DVI output from the player to the tv to see if it's better.

The player I have is a Sony PS3.

After having said that you might want to compare different blu ray discs to different standard def discs (I'm sure some blu-ray discs were not properly converted from their sources)

 

[JustinH]

I'm not sold on this technology at all.

In our household, we have 2 HDTV's, and one regular DVD player that burns also.

Redbox is picking up steam around here, and for $1 per day, I rent a few times per month.

The regular DVD looks "just fine" on my 37 inch HDTV in my living room.

Nearly as good as high def cable content.

I can't justify buying a high dollar player to have picture and sound a hair better.

On demand is the future here.

 

[buster]

Originally Posted By: pidster
Did you connect the player to your TV with an HDMI or at least component cable? Or a regular A/V cable? Using a standard AV connection will look like [censored].


HDMI to a Samsung 40", 720p. Movies look incredible.

Comcast has an HD movie sections. It's OK.

 

[StevieC]

I have a Samsung Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo player that also upcoverts standard-def DVD's for superb quality, it puts out 1080P at best. (Using DVI Cable)

I also run a dual-tuner PVR Digital cable box that offers 1080i
(Using DVI Cable)

It's all hooked up to my 52" Sharp Aquos Special Edition 1080P LCD screen that is 4ms, 10-bit DAC and 120Hz.

I'm in the process of rewiring the living room for a new 7.1 surround sound receiver!

It's sweet theater style experience at my house on movie night!

 

[friendly_jacek]

Thanks everyone! Let me clarify my point: in my setup, HDTV at 1080i or even 720p looks incredible, yet Blu Ray at the 1080 looks only a little bit better than DVD and worse than over the air HDTV.
Digital sniper is probably right and the cheap Magnavox player could be the culprit. On the other hand, I found a lot of bloggers stating that BR is overhyped and they may be on something. The MPEG4 in BR has way more compression than MPEG2 in DVD. If I understand correctly, over the air ATSC is also based on MPEG2.

 

[StevieC]

Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
Thanks everyone! Let me clarify my point: in my setup, HDTV at 1080i or even 720p looks incredible, yet Blu Ray at the 1080 looks only a little bit better than DVD and worse than over the air HDTV.
Digital sniper is probably right and the cheap Magnavox player could be the culprit. On the other hand, I found a lot of bloggers stating that BR is overhyped and they may be on something. The MPEG4 in BR has way more compression than MPEG2 in DVD. If I understand correctly, over the air ATSC is also based on MPEG2.
Not on mine, looks real life like the characters are going to walk off the screen both for TV & B-DVD.

 

[bretfraz]

With BR you are very much dependent on source material. If the images on the disk aren't very good, all the processing and converting in the world isn't going to make a huge difference.

 

[StevieC]

Could it be that the OP isn't sitting far enough back from his HD-TV set? I remember when we first got our 52" and it looked a tad grainy... We moved it further away and the picture got much better.

Maybe that's the problem?