HD-DVD officially pronounced dead

Prime Junta said:

That HD plasma screen will only look better than a regular plasma screen of comparable quality if your source is high-def. If you're watching DVD's and standard-rez TV, there is no benefit to the extra pixels on your screen, up-rezzed or not.

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I believe there are means of upscaling so that your DVD will look better. Don't know what the results look like.
I use a vga connection between my dad's laptop and the HDReady TV vor playing DVD's. This does the trick for now, because I'm unwilling to purchase BR yet.

Bartacus said:

I believe there are means of upscaling so that your DVD will look better. Don't know what the results look like.

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Upscaling means inventing pixels. There are certainly lots of ways of doing it. Some TV's do it well; some DVD players do it well. If you have a DVD that does it, try both and see which one looks better.

The main weakness, though, is the connection: regular TV connectors -- S-VHS, SCART, composite video -- are bad. The main benefit of an HDMI connector is that it's a foolproof way to get a good signal through; a component video connector is just as good technically but it's fussier, since it's possible to connect it physically wrong, and you might also need to change some settings on your DVD player to make the most of it.

I use a vga connection between my dad's laptop and the HDReady TV vor playing DVD's. This does the trick for now, because I'm unwilling to purchase BR yet.

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Then the quality depends on the computer -- and it's most likely not going to be as good as, for example, this 70-euro DVD player.

Prime Junta said:

That HD plasma screen will only look better than a regular plasma screen of comparable quality if your source is high-def. If you're watching DVD's and standard-rez TV, there is no benefit to the extra pixels on your screen, up-rezzed or not.

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I have to disagree. My Philips has a upscalling feature built in for TV/Cable signals. It's not the night and day difference that you see with HD vs. SD, but I can definitely tell a difference.

Additionally, I went from a standard DVD player (that interfered with Philips upscaling so I had to turn it off) to using my A2 to upscale and I can see a difference. Again, it's not near as much a difference as HD vs SD, but it does seem to look better.

The trouble is that most regular TV's (and most HDTV's, for that matter) aren't very good -- and the signals usually fed to them are even worse. The only ways to get a really good signal to your TV is through component video or HDMI; if you plug your DVD player into it with SCART, S-VHS, or (shudder) composite video, the picture will look much worse than it could. The difference is dramatic -- I'd say even bigger than the leap from maximum-quality standard-def to high-def.

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I'd agree with that! I went from an old Toshiba 50 inch that had a very, very low resolution for a screen that size (but I got it for free so I can't complain) to the Plasma, and it was amazing how much different it was, and Philips is by no means a high end TV maker.

I spent about 2 months hyming and hawing about what to get, what to spend, etc. Finally (with some 'gental' prodding from my wife!) I figured that ANY HD display was going to be such an improvement over what I was used to that I should buy in the medium range and then maybe on the next one really splurge. I was right.


BTW, I've never heard of a non-HD Plasma. Not saying there isn't, but never heard of that.

blatantninja said:

BTW, I've never heard of a non-HD Plasma. Not saying there isn't, but never heard of that.

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Most plasmas were 480p (EDTV) until a couple of years ago.

I started a reply about the rest of your post, but when looking up stuff for it, I found this article that explains it all much better than I could.

Great article! Thanks. A friend of mine had a Sony EDTV, and I remember the picture looking really great. Didn't realize that it meant it was 480p!

I guess the Philips technology (called Pixel Plus 2 IIRC) does a pretty good job.

I just read about it today... it's a shame really.... oh well let's hope the prices will start to drop anyway!