At 720P, is Blu ray worth it?

eyetrip

eyetrip

eyetrip

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Now I know there will be those who will say go Blu ray regardless of how they compare, but I am looking for impartial advice, please.

I have a 37" 1366x768 (720P/1080i) screen and wondering if I would really notice much difference between upscaled DVD's and Blu Ray?

At that res and on a screen that size, is there a night and day diff, or would I really have to be looking very hard to tell quality difference between the two?

If it's night and day, then I may consider forking out £150 for a player, but if it's not a very noticeable difference, I would rather wait until decent players are sbu £100.
 
Yes.

I've had a 720p 32" set and the difference is clear. As well as the obviously improved picture and sound, I also appreciate the cleaner text in the menu options, titles and credits. :p
 
Depending on your eyesight I doubt if it will be 'night and day'. It should however provide a very noticeable improvement to the quality of the picture.

Despite having a blu-ray player combined with a HD projector and TV I still continue to purchase SD DVD. I do not think that the improvement in picture quality of blu-ray justifies the £10 to £15 extra that I have to pay for the discs.
 
Sorry Harry, but it's not a ridiculous question. How the hell would I know unless I had seen them side by side? The only HD movie experience I have is a couple of downloaded HD movies through my Xbox, which didn't really look much better to me than upscaled DVD's.
 
My films would more than likely be rented, so not worried about the cost of the discs. It's just the cost of the player putting me off.
 
ffallic said:
Sorry Harry, but it's not a ridiculous question. How the hell would I know unless I had seen them side by side? The only HD movie experience I have is a couple of downloaded HD movies through my Xbox, which didn't really look much better to me than upscaled DVD's.
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Then you either downloaded lower than HD resolution videos, they were crap quality re-encodes, or your eyesight sucks... true HD material, even at 720p will blow anything upscaled out of the water.
 
upscaled DVD can give a nice picture but can never get close to HD on a decent sized screen.

there's a bigger difference between DVD to HD than moving from 720p to 1080p.....don't let the 720p resolution get you down it can still provide an equally stunning picture as 1080p for most setups.

but your 37" screen isn't bringing out the best in a HD picture which is most likely why your Xbox HD movies didn't impress you......the bigger the screen the more impressive the difference between DVD/HD :)
 
Memphis said:
Then you either downloaded lower than HD resolution videos, they were crap quality re-encodes, or your eyesight sucks... true HD material, even at 720p will blow anything upscaled out of the water.
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Well, these were available through the Live Marketplace rentals (not random pirated movies), so I assumed they would have done a decent job on the encoding side.

And what's with the tone of people in this thread. Is there some reason you simply can't be civil and polite (well, two of you anyway)

Thanks to those who provided friendly and helpful advice thus far.
 
Massive difference, unless you sit 20ft from your set and have the eyesight of stevie wonder :D

Downloads will never be that great quality, there are always limitations regarding file sizes and the effort involved int producing a good encoding. A full 1080p blu ray image will look geat on a 720p set, hell I owned the 42 Pioneer kuro, which still beats 98% or all 1080p sets out there.
 
the difference will be huge

i've got a cheapo hannspree 37" lcd, and 720p content looks outstanding on it
 
massive differance, much more than the jump between 720 and 1080, which is nice, but nowhere near so impressive.

be prepared to be dissapointed with all DVDs from now on though.
 
at 37" im not sure there will be much difference between 720p and 1080p unless your sat close to the screen. Dont expect to me amazed.
 
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They tested this on an episode of the gadget show a few weeks ago. Actually, they probably had 1080 compatible TV's but with that they said the difference was massive and they could tell straight away.
 
ffallic said:
Well, these were available through the Live Marketplace rentals (not random pirated movies), so I assumed they would have done a decent job on the encoding side.

And what's with the tone of people in this thread. Is there some reason you simply can't be civil and polite (well, two of you anyway)

Thanks to those who provided friendly and helpful advice thus far.
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I think the films on Live marketplace are just encoded in WMV-HD at 720p with stereo sound to keep the file sizes down, so even though they are HD they arnt the best HD encodes you can get. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are both encoded in a different codec to WMV-HD and are both in 1080p with full HD audio (not saying that WMV-HD isn't a good HD codec, just saying hte Live marketplace videos are not the highest bitrate etc)

I use HD-DVD's on a 720p projector and compared to upscaled DVD's (using ffdshow) there really is quite a noticable difference in the picture quality. Obviously with a big screen you'll notice more of the detail but you should get the same effect with most sizes of TV.

I guess a good way for you to test it would be to try some HD content first before buying a BD player. Apples movie trailers are usually decent quality and I think the BBC's Planet Earth HD clips are also decent enough (but are only 720p WMV-HD and DRM'd up)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/planetearth/hd/
 
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ffallic said:
Sorry Harry, but it's not a ridiculous question. How the hell would I know unless I had seen them side by side? The only HD movie experience I have is a couple of downloaded HD movies through my Xbox, which didn't really look much better to me than upscaled DVD's.
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You've answered your own question there. Go to a demo room and do a propper comparison. Failing that get some propper video clips off the net for comparison.
 
ffallic said:
Well, these were available through the Live Marketplace rentals (not random pirated movies), so I assumed they would have done a decent job on the encoding side.

And what's with the tone of people in this thread. Is there some reason you simply can't be civil and polite (well, two of you anyway)

Thanks to those who provided friendly and helpful advice thus far.
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Sorry mate, my post was meant more as a joking jibe, not slagging you off :). Maybe should have used a smilie or two ;).

The Live Marketplace stuff is not always a true HD video. Even some of the downloads that are stated to be 720p are just upscaled versions of an already existing digital video, not a true re-capture of the film.
 
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