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Observations of a recent Blu-Ray convert

23skidoo

Admiral
Admiral
(I considered putting this in Miscellaneous, but considering this involves enjoyment of TV and movies in general, I think it fits here.)

If anyone has been paying attention to my comments on the topic of HD and Blu-Ray (and I hope you haven't because I'd like to think people have a life! ;) ), I have been somewhat unimpressed by the formats. Not so much the improvement in picture and sound, but other factors including the fact that past experiments with friends and relatives' HD sets and Blu-Rays have left me rather disappointed in how older movies, shows, and DVDs look on the new sets.

That said, I knew the writing was on the wall. The last few major releases (Watchmen Ultimate Cut, for example) I've had to order via Amazon for DVD because local retailers in my city of a million people were starting to not bring standard DVD in (even, annoyingly, titles only available on DVD). I knew I'd have to convert over eventually, but I wasn't looking forward to it because I have spent thousands of dollars on DVDs over the last 10 years and as a student of film I was not looking forward to seeing, say, Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina rendered grainy and unwatchable by the HD set-up (as it was when I experimented with HDTV/Blu-Ray in the past).

This Christmas I was stunned when my family gave me not only a Blu-Ray player for Christmas, but also a 42-inch plasma set to go along with it. I was thrilled, but also, I admit a little concerned as to whether I'd be able to still watch my older DVDs.

So far, however, I have been very surprised, pleasantly so, at how well both new and old releases look in the set-up I received. And I found out the secrets to how to achieve the best of both worlds, enjoying HD and BR while not having to throw away the 1,300+ DVDs in my collection.

First, DON'T get an LCD or Projection set if you plan to watch a lot of DVDs. I got a plasma. My past experiments involved projection sets and LCDs. Both make older films and definitely TV series look like crap unless they've been remastered or upconverted. So if you paid $200 for that Emma Peel 15-disc megaset from A&E if you watch it on LCD or projection, it's not going to look very good. On plasma the picture quality is on par (and in many cases better) than standard TV, which is what I would expect. I've tested everything from a 1914 Charlie Chaplin short to Kino Video's remastered Metropolis to the 1956 film Rock Around the Clock, as well as TV shows like Saved by the Bell (guilty pleasure, so sue me) and 1960s-era Doctor Who. All look fine. (And, of course, the picture format can be adjusted to 4:3 if desired for pre-widescreen productions).

My only concern about plasmas is that they allegedly have a limited lifespan (then again, so do LCD sets). The days of tube-based TVs lasting 30 years are gone. Even so, my set is apparently guaranteed to run at least 50,000 hours, which translates to about 6 years of 24/7 operation. I like TV, but I won't be watching TV 24/7 for the next 6 years!

Second, and this was a surprise but my brother spent weeks doing research while picking the set for me and found this out - if you plan to watch a lot of older DVDs and movies and TV shows, getting the top-end 1080i resolution is not the best option. The set I got is in fact something like 720 (I forget the exact number). Frankly I see little difference between 720 and 1080 in terms of picture quality on new-release Blu-Rays. But apparently the lower resolution is more friendly on older releases on DVD, as well as broadcast TV.

That brings me to the third observation. So far it has been a bit difficult (hard on the eyes, actually) to watch regular broadcast TV on the new set. Unfortunately here in Canada only a limited number of HD channels are available and you have to pay extra to the cable company to get them. I'm told, however, that if I play with the settings on my set I can improve the picture quality and remove the glare. Since I watch very little actual broadcast TV anymore anyway except for news and things like Mythbusters, it's not a huge deal. I have until V and Doctor Who return in the spring to figure things out.

My initial biggest criticism of Blu-Ray was the fact that many releases are "vanilla" and lack the extras of DVD. (And I'm aware I'm in apparently only the 2% or so of consumers who care about extras - and I don't care, I like them and have often bought DVDs for the extras more than the movie.) This criticism still stands. As I started shopping for Blu-Ray releases over the holidays (taking advantage of Wal-Mart's Boxing Day specials), I picked up a number of what I would call replacement copies for DVD releases I already own. I figure there are about 30-40 movies of recent vintage that I have on DVD that I will gladly upgrade to BR when the opportunity (and budget) allows. Unfortunately, however, in several cases I've found I need to keep the DVD versions after all because the BRs have none of the extras, or they're missing ones. I already know Resident Evil: Apocalypse's HD release is missing the blooper reel that was a highlight of the DVD release (though I'll still get the movie itself on BR). But for example I bought Sin City on BR but it has none of the extras of the DVD, in particular the bonus comic book. So I need to keep both. I bought Golden Compass and while it has most of the extras of the DVD, the version I have on DVD includes a Best Buy bonus disc with extra features and it's not on the BR.

Not all releases are this way, of course. Recent releases have the same extras and usually more stuff than the DVD, so I had no qualms at all about replacing my Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy with the fantastic BR versions, and at least in my neck of the woods last week's release of Jennifer's Body marked a milestone as being the first release that I've seen in which the DVD was vanilla and the BR had all the extra features. And the upcoming Doctor Who 2009 Specials box set is supposed to have the same stuff in both DVD and BR.

So I guess the moral of the story for anyone still considering moving to BR and HDTV and who, like me, sees the writing on the wall is:

- Do your research. Not all HDTV formats are created equal and you may find a plasma is more suited to the type of stuff you want to watch than an LCD or a projection.
- Likewise, don't assume 1080i is the be all and end all. If all you plan to ever do is watch the latest releases (and there's plenty of examples of people here indicating that if it's not brand new they aren't interested), or sports HD broadcasts, or those nature documentaries you always see playing in the stores, then of course go to the top. But if you enjoy older film and have an investment in DVD, going down a notch is not a bad thing and you probably won't even notice the difference. (For all I know, there might be a 1080 set that allows on-the-fly switching of resolution down to 720 or whatever, so if you can find one of those, good on ya.)
- Don't make the mistake people made when CD came along and assume everything ported from DVD to BR will be automatically better. When CD came out, often vinyl albums would be released with songs removed due to space limitations, or not released at all (people had to wait years for the Beatles to come out on CD). Likely you'll be able to replace a number of your DVDs with BR right away, all extras included, but leave a little room on the shelf for archiving of you don't want to give up that Sin City special edition with the comic book and actually-very-useful 10-Minute Cooking School bonus feature on how to make breakfast tacos.

Alex
 
I've been thinking about converting to Blu Ray at some point... probably not all that soon, but down the line. Like you, I love those extras, and the newest Blu Ray releases are coming with more extras (like Star Trek) than the standard DVD releases. Like you, I'm kind of reluctant, so I found your post very helpful and informative--thank you! It's nice to hear the perspective of someone who wasn't initially gung-ho about the new format and upgrading. Enjoy that Blu Ray and plasma TV! :)
 
I have a Sony 40 Bravia XBR and a PS3. I reserve my Blu-Ray purchasing for must-have titles, and I try to keep the musts down to manageable status. Its A Wonderful Life and Gojira looked cleaner in Blu-Ray, but I was going to get those almost no matter what, so its hard to tell. ST-TOS BR is brilliant, and it may not have looked this good when it was first broadcast. Angles allows you to ditch the re-done SFX (for the record, I would have redone Charlie X's faceless victim). Willy Wonka 71 really brings out the colors. Harry Potters 1-5 (haven't opened 6 yet) sometimes look like video. When Spike showed SW:ROTJ in HD, the Endor scenes looked like they were being filmed live--or with footage from a 'Making Of' special. ST 2009 is harder to quantify, except it looked as good as in the theaters, with more detail visible on home viewing. Batman 89 was a mixed bag-cleaner than ever, with little details I never took in. Alicia's disfigurement comes through harsher here, but you can frequently see Keaton's razor stubble.

I hope that if/when War Of The Worlds 1953 comes out, they do some sort of remastering on the strings. I will swear that they were never visible until I saw it on DVD, and PS3's upscaling only doubles this.

My rec : Get one, but build your library according to taste. And wait some titles out--I got ST-TOS S1 used for 20-25 off. I got Blazing Saddles (cleaner again but not a must) for 9.99, so don't kill your budget.
 
As an LCD owner, I can testify that in my opinion a properly calibrated LCD can display standard def content with same or better quality than it would have on analog. A lot of it depends on how good your upscaling is. I use a Sony player, which generally has great upscaling of DVDs.

Having said that, I do agree Plasma has the better picture and when/if I upgrade to 1080p from the 720p I am currently using, I will probably go with Plasma. At the time I bought the LCD, I thought that I would be doing more gaming on it (not so).
 
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I'm not sold on Blu Ray as a necessity.
I will be getting one though cause
A)My DVD player is 12yrs old so time is against me(my VCR lasted 15yrs till it died last year)
B)Target has them on sale at half off on its Sony&Memorex models

I will not have a plasma or HD TV so any benefits will not be seen by me. Still I've not been overly impressed when I've seen the set up as it should be. My next TV upgrade is still 3-5yrs away baring a real blow out by my set.
 
Of your 3 observations, only the third one appears to have any basis in truth.

1) nothing wrong with LCD, and most LCD sets now are just as good as, if not better than the Plasma sets. While weighing less, using less power, lasting longer, and not risking burn-in on static images. had this thread been posted in 2004, you'd be right, but if a couple-million:1 contrast ratio doesn't get things black enough for you, you should use a sharpie on the screen. Looks perfectly fine if you've calibrated things properly. The industry has pretty much moved away from Plasma at this point, and seems like LCD has 'won', although there will always be at least a slight market for the higher-end plasmas. LCD used to be too expensive to compete at the larger panel sizes, but they've overcome that, and LCD pretty much runs the market at this point, and companies have slowed production of plasma to change over for the demand.

2) short of watching on an old tube tv, old releases aren't going to be great, but reducing the quality and resolution capability of your $1000 tv to do so isn't the answer. Just not going to look the same as blu-ray, but I don't have much problem throwing a regular dvd in and watching it. Upconverting players are a waste if you bought a halfway-decent TV, as the TV has the same capability, but throwing the old dvd in the blu-ray player can't hurt, it might have a better upconverting chip. Either way, going 720p over 1080i or 1080p doesn't solve anything. At best, you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, because you're trying to improve the look of old DVDs by limiting the upper-end resolution of your HD and blu-ray content. Half the value of the HD stuff is actually seeing things in the full resolution, but you've prevented yourself from doing that by buying HD equipment that can't do full HD, instead of just watching old movies on an old tv if you can't stand them on the new tv. Good cables make as much difference as anything else (and NOT Monster cables, just the correct type of cable. Monster Cables are just a way for the stores to make profit, charging $100 for a cable that cost them 50 cents, and can be bought online at places like monoprice.com for about a buck.)

3) this one is true (old broadcasts looks a bit shitty on a new tv), but only by comparison. Watch it, and you're ok, but not as good as it used to be. you'd survive that, except that you can compare it to the HD broadcast, and then you get upset at how shitty things look on the regular channels. Thankfully, my cable company has transitioned most of the channels to HD by now, so i rarely have to go outside of the HD channel band. Not a huge deal either way, though, as most of the broadcast shows are more about the story/characters than the kewl effects, so if it's only on an old channel, it's not so bad sometimes.

Things like sports, though, HD has wrecked the SD channels for me. Used to be fine with how baseball, football, etc looked, but now I get disappointed when i go somewhere and watch on a SD tv. I miss seeing the grass, or the light rain, the spin of the ball, etc.
 
Although I'm not interesting in making the move to HD, i have been utterly amazed at just how fantastic Star Trek TOS and the movies have turned out on it, so i will be keeping HD purchases for those really special TV shows and movies.
 
I like the remastered stuff (new special effects, backgrounds, planets), but haven't been overly impressed with the details from the rest of it. Nicer, but it doesn't feel up to the same blu-ray snuff, so I haven't replaced my purchased DVDs with the remastered ones. Friggin things cost me $100/season the first time, so will just suck it up and watch them for now. :p
 
Blu-ray and HD TV looks great on my LCD. Some SD TV shows look pretty good, while others look pretty bad, but I have the full range of Sky HD channels, so there's not much I watch in SD anymore. My Sony Blu-ray player also does an excellent job of upscaling movies and newer TV shows on DVD. For older TV shows on DVD that don't upscale well, I keep an old 4:3 CRT TV handy.
 
I'd disagree that an upscaling DVD player is a waste of money. If you are connecting your old DVD player via those RCA cables, with only 1 yellow cable to carry the video signal, it will never upscale correctly. All upscaling DVD players connect either by component (3 cables for video) or better yet, HDMI, and this makes a lot of difference. In fact, I've found that anything connected by bad analog cables looks pretty bad on HD TVs. Always safest to go with HDMI and keep the digital signal digital.

And going with a 720p TV was probably not a good choice, especially on such a large screen size. The 1080p TVs will make your blu rays look a lot better - why are you more worried about your back catalog then all of your future purchases?

Also, if you found some old DVDs of yours to be unwatchable, then something was certainly wrong. DVDs should looks just fine on any half decent HDTV set when connected correctly.

Also, with Blu Ray players, you have to be really careful with which ones you buy. If they don't have network support you are automatically out of luck with Blu Ray live - a feature that might become very interesting in this future. Also, the Blu Ray spec always changes, and if your Blu Ray player doesn't have upgradable firmware DO NOT buy it! It will be out of date within a year. I'd say don't buy that Memorex.
 
Oh also another thing to keep in mind: Make sure you are watching your 4:3 DVDs in 4:3. Stretching ruins everything.
 
You all need to get Blu-Ray players and convert to HD as soon as possible. The sooner Blu-Ray becomes as common place as regular DVDs, the sooner Luca$ will release Star Wars in HD. :p
 
I'd disagree that an upscaling DVD player is a waste of money.

Feel free to disagree, but you're not right. Unless you bought a really shitty TV, the TV should have better upconverting ability than the dvd player. I mean, do you want to trust the upconverting chip in your $50 dvd player, or your $1500 TV?

If you are connecting your old DVD player via those RCA cables, with only 1 yellow cable to carry the video signal, it will never upscale correctly. All upscaling DVD players connect either by component (3 cables for video) or better yet, HDMI, and this makes a lot of difference. In fact, I've found that anything connected by bad analog cables looks pretty bad on HD TVs. Always safest to go with HDMI and keep the digital signal digital.
That's certainly true. No sense in trying to upconvert a picture if you're going to use the RCA red-white-yellow cable, which can only carry the 480 signal you had to being with.

And going with a 720p TV was probably not a good choice, especially on such a large screen size. The 1080p TVs will make your blu rays look a lot better - why are you more worried about your back catalog then all of your future purchases?

Also, if you found some old DVDs of yours to be unwatchable, then something was certainly wrong. DVDs should looks just fine on any half decent HDTV set when connected correctly.
agreed. Downgrading your new tech to try and support old stuff slightly better is silly, and limits your abilities with the new stuff it's actually designed for...
 
I'd disagree that an upscaling DVD player is a waste of money.

Feel free to disagree, but you're not right. Unless you bought a really shitty TV, the TV should have better upconverting ability than the dvd player. I mean, do you want to trust the upconverting chip in your $50 dvd player, or your $1500 TV?

But if you are using an old sub $100 DVD player, the RCA cables are probably exactly what you are using. Thus you probably need to upgrade anyway... Unless you used progressive scan, in which case you are OK.
 
I'd disagree that an upscaling DVD player is a waste of money.

Feel free to disagree, but you're not right. Unless you bought a really shitty TV, the TV should have better upconverting ability than the dvd player. I mean, do you want to trust the upconverting chip in your $50 dvd player, or your $1500 TV?

But if you are using an old sub $100 DVD player, the RCA cables are probably exactly what you are using. Thus you probably need to upgrade anyway... Unless you used progressive scan, in which case you are OK.

You can buy a Blu-ray player for $78. Upconverters aren't much less than that.
 
Feel free to disagree, but you're not right. Unless you bought a really shitty TV, the TV should have better upconverting ability than the dvd player. I mean, do you want to trust the upconverting chip in your $50 dvd player, or your $1500 TV?

But if you are using an old sub $100 DVD player, the RCA cables are probably exactly what you are using. Thus you probably need to upgrade anyway... Unless you used progressive scan, in which case you are OK.

You can buy a Blu-ray player for $78. Upconverters aren't much less than that.
Well I never said you shouldn't buy a Blu Ray player ;-)
 
I have a 46" Full HD LCD, so based on the original post DVDs should like pretty bad on it, but they don't. When upscaled to 1080p they actually look pretty damn nice.
 
I made the conversion a couple of months ago. I've only bought a few titles (2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Dark City, and The Prisoner: The Complete Series) and recieved a few others as gifts. All the Blu-Rays I have look great.

The problem with Blu-Ray at the moment is that most of the titles being released have substandard transfers and fewer special features than they had on DVD. The studios are trying to make money off little investment (thus, the same transfers they used for DVD and fewer special features means fewer royalties), so be sure to read a few reviews online before buying anything. At least 75% of titles will probably be the victim of a double dip in the next 2-3 years, so be wary.
 
We bought a PS3 for our family Christmas gift, and honestly we're enjoying our Netflix instant streaming feature more than any title on disc. We bought a 46" LCD last summer, and we were watching upconverted DVDs and broadcast HD (Chicago suburbs) on it, and from our viewing distance it looked fine, even old Doctor Who on DVD.

I'm in no rush to replace my nearly 1000 title strong DVD collection (way bigger figuring in multi-disc sets), but as we go forward we'll probably pick up new releases on Blu (esp if they also include a DVD version), and any catalog titles we never got around to picking up on DVD. The only Blu's I have now are Up!, Harry Potter 6 (both of which also have DVD versions included), and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes which I found used and picked up for the extended cut not available on DVD ( I have every other Apes title on DVD already, including both TV shows). I've got my eye on 2010:TYWMC since the old DVD wasn't 16x9 (even though it was mis-labeled as such), but the PS3 seems to do a decent job of upconverting it so I may wait on that.
 
^ What's nice is that Blu-ray players can breathe new life into DVDs for those of us with HDTV sets. My DVDs have never looked better.
 
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