Headlines - Toshiba to combat Blu-ray with...DVD?

[SiM]

Look at this too...

[jimborae]

Yeah I've seen those before mate, as a general statement all I'll say is "wow he must have been using some cheap ass dvd player to get pictures that bad on some of those shots."

Going into more detail we don't know under what conditions those pics were taken i.e. distance from screen, how each system was set-up, what size screen etc so unfortunately not much can be drawn from it except the HD pictures do look great.

So going back to my original post, on my 42" set up, at a 10 ft viewing distance, with a good quality dvd transfer, the difference between HD & SD is not all that huge.

As for Star Wars I'll have to agree with you there in that I don't think the DVD transfer is particularly all that good so the difference will be large.

[nichomach]

One of the minor issues I have with that sort of comparison is that we watch movies, not stillies, SiM. I don't doubt that side by side comparisons of stills reflect a much greater amount of detail in the HD versions, but the thing is that in my experience that doesn't necessarily translate to a drastic change in the experience of watching a film. That's not to say that I won't go down the HD route at some point, I almost certainly will, but I'm not desperate to do it.

I'd also note that the PQ on some of the alleged upscaled DVD shots in those links is simply not what I'm used to seeing from my Panasonic

[SiM]

Yeah I've seen those before mate, as a general statement all I'll say is "wow he must have been using some cheap ass dvd player to get pictures that bad on some of those shots."

Going into more detail we don't know under what conditions those pics were taken i.e. distance from screen, how each system was set-up, what size screen etc so unfortunately not much can be drawn from it except the HD pictures do look great.

They are clearly taken on a PC with windows so the "conditions" are the same... unless the codec was deliberately tweaked to make DVD look bad

So going back to my original post, on my 42" set up, at a 10 ft viewing distance, with a good quality dvd transfer, the difference between HD & SD is not all that huge.

Ahh, I think I can see why you don't notice a big difference... your tv is 1024x768 right?
and I take it you are comparing a good quality SD transfer with a good quality HD transfer to be fair...

I'd also note that the PQ on some of the alleged upscaled DVD shots in those links is simply not what I'm used to seeing from my Panasonic

The star wars comparison was done by Colorado university and avsforum is the most hardcore av forum... afaik there is not reason to not believe them... Upscaling can not add detail that is not there... that is impossible... but most people think that is what it does... all it does is resize the detail that is there a bit better...

As for stills vs video... even though stills are an imperfect proxy of video quality, they are by far the best way to compare online... good stills implies good video 99% of the time

[jimborae]

Ahh, I think I can see why you don't notice a big difference... your tv is 1024x768 right?
and I take it you are comparing a good quality SD transfer with a good quality HD transfer to be fair...

Yeah 768p plasma, the projector set up is being reworked atm so I'm stuck with that for my movie viewing. My mate has an Optima HD80 set up with a 92" which is pretty good, then you do start to see a big gulf of difference between HD & SD.