[AlanY]

I was out shopping today and spent my first real chunk of time looking at HDTVs. I'm a hard person to impress, but IMHO it is definitely true that the HDTV picture quality is amazing in comparison to regular TV.

However, I was less than impressed with the quality of DVDs played on HDTVs. The store I went to had a variety of configurations, including several upconverters with the Faroudja chipset, and to be honest I thought the picture quality ranged from grudgingly acceptable on the better units to rather poor on others. Even with the best upconverters, there's no way I'd be fooled into thinking I was watching an HDTV source. The visual artifacts are pretty obvious.

To me this was really kind of disappointing. I don't watch much TV at all, but I watch movies a lot. I can't imagine building my DVD collection after seeing how poor the picture quality is, relatively speaking, compared to what it could be. Is anyone else in this situation? Do you still buy DVDs even if you have an HDTV?

(BTW, I wish Blu-ray and HD-DVD would come out sooner, but they both look like they're still two years away, practically speaking, since neither group has working production-ready prototypes yet and the first units commercial produced will undoubtedly cost more than I want to spend.)

 

[steel102]

yes, because what other choice is there if you want to watch movies?

 

[virometal]

I am with you on upconversion. Most dvd's do not look that good. The higher resolutions of hdtv's are good at exposing the artifacts from the film.

There are some movies that are spectacular though.

Batman Begins, Star Wars Prequels, newly re-mastered Casablanca and Citizen Cane, Hellboy, Sin City. Recent films shot in digital or films cleaned up with good digital transfers look great.

 

[Kirosia]

Also, realize that a lot of HDTVs aren't really that good, just like how some audio equipment. Make sure you do your research before taking a leap. My relative had a dell something or other, it looked alright, but I personally can't stand LCDs for movies/music videos. The video in general though looks much cleaner/sharper.

I only have a crappy mono 19" from the olden days, but dvd looks fine on it.

 

[AlanY]

Quote:

Originally Posted by virometal Batman Begins, Star Wars Prequels, newly re-mastered Casablanca and Citizen Cane, Hellboy, Sin City. Recent films shot in digital or films cleaned up with good digital transfers look great.

Interesting. One of the movies the store was using for demos was Star Wars ROTS, and it's true that the picture was bright and had a lot of contrast (on some TVs it looked more vivid than it did when I saw it in the theatre), but the actual resolution was still low. There are many face closeups towards the end of that movie, and when people are talking I found the low resolution artifacts visually obvious, even with the Faroudja chipset.

Of the demos I saw, I think the Pixar movies were the least distracting to me, perhaps because subconsciously I know it's all computer graphics and not that realistic looking anyway.

 

[AlanY]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kirosia Also, realize that a lot of HDTVs aren't really that good, just like how some audio equipment.

Yes, there were good ones and bad ones. HDTV broadcast sources were astonishingly good on some of them. I was more impressed than I expected to be by HDTV. On the best TVs, ironically, DVDs looked the worst. Perhaps like very resolving audio gear and poor recordings.

 

[mulveling]

I have an HDTV and a large (300+) DVD collection. It's true that HD kills DVD in pure resolution, but DVD can still look very good. If there are major artifacts, then either the DVD encoding or the setup is at fault. You shouldn't see major artifacts; you should mainly notice a lack of resolution/detail compared to HD. I use a Denon DVD2910 into a Sony KD-34XS955 via HDMI. This same setup looks poor via component - each TV and DVD player has its own quirks (the Denon has poor component outputs for some reason), and it takes experimentation and calibration to get a good working system. In fact, the colors and dynamic range are superior on my DVD setup over HD broadcasts from my HD cable box - I don't have access to calibrate the HD box, so I'm left with an image that has mediocre colors to go with the spectacular detail. I've seen a lot of crappy looking DVD + HDTV setups at stores, so be wary of drawing conclusions from that.

Yes, the argument that most live-action DVDs looks like crap is somewhat valid - however, as mentioned above, alot of the newer movies have managed to look amazing. So it is possible for DVD to look great. Also, most of my DVD collection is anime - the newer 16:9 anime series look practically as good as HD, and I doubt they'd benefit from the extra resolution as much as live action material would.

No, I'm not a big believer in upscaling (unless you have a fixed-pixel display, which I don't), and in fact on my set DVD looks best in its native 480p. It certainly doesn't add detail, though it will smooth out the image on certain displays.

 

[virometal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlanY There are many face closeups towards the end of that movie, and when people are talking I found the low resolution artifacts visually obvious, even with the Faroudja chipset.

Hmmm....I thought it looked pretty damn good at 720p and I use a Faroudja. Of course, I get less picky near the end of a movie when the story has a hold on me.

What remains is the sad fact that I can name more movies that look worse than better. Minority report is a good movie but the noise was so bad I couldn't even watch it. It is bad at 480p but 720p just magnified it. My equipment is pretty good too.

For you there really is no point is there? With HDTV's getting cheaper and 1080p becoming the standard, might as well wait a couple of years.

 

[Edwood]

I still buy DVD's and have a Samsung 720P DLP HDTV.

I use a HTPC with Power DVD doing the upsampling duties, outputting to DVI to the TV.

As for BluRay or HD-DVD, I'm not going to early adopt that one, going to wait and see, they are already shooting themselves in the foot with the DRM restrictions. At least they are sorting out the regional coding nonsense to something better. (well, for non-Europeans, that is).

Other than that, I expect BluRay or HD-DVD to be the next LaserDisc, in the best case scenario.

-Ed

 

[star882]

DVDs and other 480p content looks fine on my PC with a Dell 1905FP. Not as good as proper 1080i or 720p content, but better than playing it on a 480p monitor.
Oh, should I mention about my old HP p1130? Forget 1080i, that old unit could do 1440p! It runs very hot and takes up too much space, though.
http://tinypic.com/21qtlz
EDIT: I should have mentioned that I used that same monitor to watch the 2004 Super Bowl. It shows everything nice and clear, a little too clear as I found out.

 

[bpm2000]

Yup, and I think upconverted on my Panasonic S77 to my Panasonic CT-34WX15 looks great as long as its transfered well.

 

[acs236]

I think DVDs look good through my progessive scan dvd player (which you really don't have to say anymore) and my calibrated HDTV.

I don't put much stock into how things look at the store because the color balance is way off, and the sharpness, brightness are generally turned way up.

I have digital cable and get a couple HD movie channels. They generally look a little bit better than DVDs, but I don't have much faith in the cable companies signal -- I'm guessing DVHS movies would look a lot better. Still, DVDs are still pretty good in my book.

Still, I'm looking forward to the next standard. I can't wait to buy all my movies again!

 

[ken36]

I buy mostly foreign movies that will never get shown on television here in the US. Additionally HDTV movies are shown over and over. I TIVO some of them.

 

[no1likesme]

Quote:

Originally Posted by star882 Oh, should I mention about my old HP p1130? Forget 1080i, that old unit could do 1440p! It runs very hot and takes up too much space, though.

you cant beat the good old trinitron tube crt's
i will keep mine until it explodes

 

[zotjen]

Quote:

you cant beat the good old trinitron tube crt's

Speaking of CRT's, would DVDs look better on a CRT based HDTV than they do on plasma or LCD?