My Thoughts on HD Players as of today. Subject to change of course.

[TBoneit]

As some may have figured out I just went HD in the house last Friday/Sunday That would be July 28/30, 2006.

Friday the Dishnetwork 622 Dual Tuner DVR was installed.

Sunday I bought a 32" Westinghouse, On Sale, 480i, 720p, 1080i HDTV.

Having looked at some of the HD offerings including a couple off of Cable through the tuner. TNTHD doesn't look any better than Standard DVDs. Standard DVDs look much better to me. Some HD Channels look really good. Mixed bag there.

That seems like bad news to Blue Ray and its competition. I suspect that like many having jumped and seeing how much better standard DVDs look I'll be holding off on HD DVD formats.

Has anybody else decided like me that DVDs look pretty good. To heck with any HD DVD format for now. I'm thinking that maybe they'd look even better if I was using HDMI instead of Component to feed DVDs to the TV.

[Nelson37]

Similar TV (32" Panasonic CRT), DirectTV, component connections, similar results. I am not seeing a huge difference from HD channels compared to a DVD. The TNT and Universal HD channels not much better than SD, HBO and HDNet look pretty good, possibly slightly better than DVD but also noticeable pixelation at times. Also fairly common, very brief audio dropouts. Fewer commercials, correct aspect ratio, and higher quality SVideo output for capturing are significant benefits. Also less pixelation than SD channels, even premiums.

DVD comparison is with a Progressive scan unit with component out. Looking at my old 27" TV on an APEX non-progressive player, comparing THAT to either the HD feed or the new DVD player, definitely a noticeable difference and worth the cost. I guess I expected that kind of difference with HD. I really wanted to swap the Apex to the new TV and the Progressive player to the old, but the Apex died right after I made some brief tests. 8 or 9 years old, good value for $99.00.

My thinking is we need to be in the 42" or larger range to really begin to appreciate HD, but at this point I'm not gonna make the investment to find out.

I think I'll wait for the Super Whizzo 3000 to come out.

[adam]

I don't think you should judge HD-DVD/Blu-ray quality based on HD broadcast quality. HD broadcasts are usually overly compressed to reduce bandwidth. The broadcaster can provide ~3 channels in optimal quality or ~7 channels in mediocre quality. They usually opt for the latter, and sadly most customers prefer it that way too. I still find that the HD channels in my area far exceed DVDs though.

But HD-DVD/Blu-ray don't have the bandwidth concerns so I believe the quality should represent more or less the best that HD can be, (once mastering process is settled and matured) which you probably haven't seen yet judging by your description of your HD provider.

[Conquest10]

There is a big difference between DVD and HD. The majority of stuff on TNTHD is regular SD upconverted to HD so I wouldn't use that as an accurate comparison (newer movies, Law & Order and their original new shows however are really great, as well as the NBA games). I can definitely tell the difference on a 26" screen. On a 52" its even more apparent. Some HD channels are more compressed than others but its nothing compared to the SD digital channels.

Watch MHD, INHD, or Discovery HD and tell me that there is only a slight difference between HD and DVD.

[TBoneit]

Some channels their is a big difference. My point was that DVDs I already have look so much better I'm not about to rush out and buy again. Plus as the cost of HDTV comes down even more the players will have to be in the <$100 range to be accepted and the media same or lower priced than current DVD offerings. I sort of hate to say this but their is, IMHO, a huge mass of people that are indifferent to picture quality. They are still sitting around watching that fuzzy, grimey kids fingerprinted SDTV and recording at EP on VHS cause they can buy fewer tapes that way and they are happy. Look at the posts here about how many hours can I get on a DVD and I'm not really worried about quality posts. They're happy at the 8 hour setting on a DVD recorder. Hey it looks about as good as the VHS EP they are replacing.

The sad part to me is that on TNTHD in the shows I watch the
commercials are usually better image quality than the movie. Last night I watched the Mummy it was Ok, however some of the adverts picture quality was much better. To me that Shows TNT could do better but isn't bothering. Some channels really look spectacular.

FWIW I'm watching via Dishnetwork's VIP622 DVR and I'm not sure which channels are mpeg4and which are not by appearance which tells me that their mpeg4 technology is working.

I'm using a Phillips 5960 Ultra Divx player to feed through component set to progressive 16:9. It suppsoedly can also upscale via hdmi only? Why only HDMI? Oh well, when I bought it ahead of time it said upscaling and I didn't know enough to RTFM and find out the caveats. the 622 came with a component cable and I bought a HDMI cable with the TV and thought I was covered. That's life.

Cheers