Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater upconversion quality of bluray players?

I am seriously considering buying a bluray player within the next couple of months due to the WB announcement.

Ok, here is the question. I have a toshiba A2 HD-DVD player. I am very happy with it's upconverting ability of SD-DVD's.

Does anyone know how this player compares to bluray players in the sub $500 category with regards to upconverison?

I bought the A2 for $98 at walmart and now have the option of selling it for $100 locally.

Trying to decide what to do... I can live without a high def player from now until I buy a bluray, but am I going to be able to get a bluray player that will upconvert my standard dvd's as good as the a2?

Thanks
T

PS3 seems to do really well, while others are hit and miss.

Is it really not an option for you to keep both a blu-ray player and use the A2 for HD's and upconverting SD's?

I remember Tom Andry mentioned this review of the sony bdp-s300 in a couple avrant podcasts. His major complaint was in fact poor upconversion. I have zero experience with HD personaly, just a 27" crt.

I do have nice speakers though.

Khan, It is definitely an option- but I only own one HD-DVD, and if I can get a bluray player that will play more movies than my HD-DVD player and upconvert as good as the A2 I see no reason why I should have both hooked up. I could use the $100 toward a bluray player.

I need to do a little searching... I am not sure which chip the a2 is using for it's upconverison. It may be no better than the chip that is in my 3808 so I may be able to use my 3808 for scaling instead.

The only problem with that is my only other dvd player is my 360 which is pretty noisy.


I would like to keep my a2, but I wonder if I will ever power it on in 5 months.

I want to keep away from the ps3 as a bluray player due to the noise of the fan and it's inability to play DTS/MA

If the denon is better at video scaling than I guess I should currently be changing the A2 to 480i when playing SD-DVD's and letting the denon do the scaling. I need to do some experimenting I suppose.

i'm in the same boat.
all i have for my A2 right now is Transformers and a shortage of shelf space lol.

I hope paramount jumps ship and re-releases its stuff for Blu-ray just so this war ends quickly and i can stop throwing good money after bad.

Question i'm asking myself right now is this: is DTS-HD:MA worth another 250$ ontop of the cost of a used PS3 (roughly 230-280$) right now. I don't personally think it is. An option might be to get a PS3 for now, and then when more movies with DTS-HD:Ma come out and BDplayers drop in price both new and used, grab a standalone BD.

If you game at all, or have kids in the house...they'll love that move

I do enjoy gaming. I don't think that my girlfriend would permit me to get another gaming system.... she does a good job of tolerating my 360, but a PS3 may be pushing my limits (on the other hand she has been playing my 360 a lot lately.. so maybe I can convince her the PS3 is for her .... )

Plus, I enjoy online gaming and there are a bunch of guys that I have been playing with on the 360 for a couple of years now.

I am looking at the panasonic bd-30 player right now.

I may just keep my A2 for a few months and use it for HD-DVD's until more bluray 2.0 players come out and they come down in price.

I think panasonic is coming out with a BD-50 model soon that is 2.0 compliant. There is no word on release date or cost yet.

http://www.hdtvorigin.com/hdtv/panasonic-dmp-bd50-blu-ray-disc-player-introduction/

Wait wait wait... Girlfriend? Permit? I thought that only happened after marriage!

I have the BD-30 player as well as the A35 player. The A35 is better at upconverting DVDs. I tried to eliminate my nit-picky self from the equation and had the non tech savy family watch the same DVD/scenes on both the BD30 and the A35. They all preferred the A35.

Its not that the BD-30 is bad, its just the A35 is a bit better with DVDs.

As far as a currently available BR player, the BD-30 is probably the wisest choice, especially if you have a newer receiver than can decode the new codecs (or one is planned in the near future).

Anyone have experience with the Samsung Bluray player and its quality?

No experience, but reading through the AVS boards on it as well as their new dual format had me a little worried, so I opted for the BD-30.