Dies anyone have any ideas on how good of a dvd player the Playstation 3 will be? I would love to hear some reviews from anyone who manages to get one.
Will the Playstation 3 upconvert standard dvd's to 720p/1080p? I haven't seen any specs from Sony stating that the PS3 will upconvert standard dvd's. Or do both HD DVD and Blu-ray dvd players upconvert by default?
Considering that it doesn't upconvert 720p with games or something like that...
I don't believe Playstation 3 will upconvert standard DVD's. My HD DVD add on for the Xbox 360 does not do upconversion. Just my opinion, but after seeing HD movies vs an upconverting player, I think upconversion is way overated.
Yes it will upconvert DVDs to 720p if you are using the HDMI connection to the TV. Component will be 540p I think.
The reason the Xbox 360 can't do it is because it only has component out (analog) istead of HDMI (digital).
Got my PS3 Nov 20th and BlueRay movies look good! I dont think it upconverts DVD's but BlueRay is going to replace DVD's . Now if i could just afford a 1080p projector!
Pannasonic PTAE700U 120"
PS3 HDMI + OPTICAL
YAMAHA HTR 5660
HD PVR HDMI+OPTICAL
Mixed speakers
Blu-ray has a ways to go to replace DVD.
No, the PS3 doesn't upconvert standard DVDs yet, but it supposedly will. DVDs look fine, but I'd still much rather watch them on my HD-A1.
The only Blu-ray disc I have so far is the promotional Talladega Nights. I'm hoping HD DVD wins, but I'm still a sucker for content that I like in high-definition, so with Kung Fu Hustle and hopefully Sense and Sensibility coming, I have to straddle.
I need a new receiver with HDMI 1.3 already.
C.V.
HD-DVD is still providing the best picture over Blu-Ray. There are many direct comparisons that show this time and time again. And as for replacing regular DVDs? Not for a LONG time. I mean, look at stores today, you can still get movies on VHS, and DVDs have been out in the "mainstream" for at least 10 years. Not only that, but DVDs gave you pretty much the best picture without needing to have a new TV. While a lot of people do have Hi-Def TVs, projectors, etc, the majority of the US/Canada/world does not. So upgrading for those people just to get more "extras" on a disc seems unlikely.
Good to have your enthusiam though. It counter-acts my "realistic" yet "pessimistic" view.
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HD-DVD is still providing the best picture over Blu-Ray. There are many direct comparisons that show this time and time again. And as for replacing regular DVDs? Not for a LONG time. I mean, look at stores today, you can still get movies on VHS, and DVDs have been out in the "mainstream" for at least 10 years. Not only that, but DVDs gave you pretty much the best picture without needing to have a new TV. While a lot of people do have Hi-Def TVs, projectors, etc, the majority of the US/Canada/world does not. So upgrading for those people just to get more "extras" on a disc seems unlikely.
Good to have your enthusiam though. It counter-acts my "realistic" yet "pessimistic" view.
It's not HD-DVD that's giving the better picture. Both formats use the same video codecs for their disks. What's better is the TRANSFERS, that has nothing to do with the medium itself, but rather the studio that does the transfers. Robert Heron (noted HD guru over at PCMagazine) likes HD-DVD better because the TRANSFERS are of better quality then the blu-ray ones.
As for the PS3, it's blu-ray playback is lovely and it's the cheapest Blu-Ray player around if you can even find one. Also it's much faster (as is the HD-DVD addon for the 360) at loading/reading discs then both standalone players which are slow as hell.
As for the OP, I don't think it upconverts, but I think upconversion isn't as important as some people make it out to be, garbage in, garbage out and all that. 720p signal means nothing if it's a 480i source
I watch SD movies on my projector (runco cl-410) over component and they look just fine.
As for using consoles for dvd playback? Blech. The PS2 and 360 are horrid for dvd-playback, give me a standalone player any day.
- D
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It's not HD-DVD that's giving the better picture. Both formats use the same video codecs for their disks. What's better is the TRANSFERS, that has nothing to do with the medium itself, but rather the studio that does the transfers. Robert Heron (noted HD guru over at PCMagazine) likes HD-DVD better because the TRANSFERS are of better quality then the blu-ray ones.
So, ok, then the HD-DVD TRANSFERS are proving to be providing better picture quality than the Blu-Ray TRANSFERS. So if that is the case, then isn't the image quality of the HD-DVD still superior if the transfer is superior?
I think that we are really getting at the same thing. There is more "capability" with Blu-Ray with its larger capacity (which is always advertised, IE: PS3 ads, as being why it is so great) but the transfers look more "compressed" showing more artifacts, and less sharp of an image (and some color tone issues), but HD-DVD still looks better at this point. (Thanks to the better transfers.)
Either way, they should look pretty "kick butt" compared to regular DVD. I wish I could borrow either one for a day.
Yeah, other than all the DRM unpleasantness...
What do I want from Christmas?
I want PS3 to fail miserably... and blu-ray along with it.
:P
/scrooge mode off
Tell us how you REALLY feel!
(not that I totally disagree with you)
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It's not HD-DVD that's giving the better picture. Both formats use the same video codecs for their disks. What's better is the TRANSFERS, that has nothing to do with the medium itself, but rather the studio that does the transfers.
Not true in all cases. I'm not entirely up to date on this, but the initial Blu Ray discs used the DVD standard MPEG-2 compression, whereas HD-DVD uses the newer VC-1 or MPEG-4. Direct head to head reviews of the same movies, ie, same transfer, found the HD-DVD to be (slightly) superior.
I believe for the second wave of Blu Ray movies , Sony solved their authoring problems, and they now use the newer codecs.
Even newer movies are still having "transfer" issues for Blu-Ray. Month after month, the side by side reviews still give the vote to HD-DVD for better video. I am sure that it will all get better as we get further into this whole "format war". I mean, if Blu-Ray was using standard DVD encoding, it is already making leaps forward, but it is still playing catch up to HD-DVD.
A couple of usually reliable people told me that the initial crop of Blu-Ray disks is only using half of the available disk capacity so they require more compression than the corresponding HD-DVD offerings. Blu-Ray has more potential capacity than HD-DVD, but not if you only use half of it ;(
Nobody was sure why Blu-Ray disks were coming out at half capacity (and obviously I'm not 100% sure it is even true) but nomination for the "criminal stupidity in a product launch" award was mentioned a couple of times
Well, they were using single-layer (25GB, versus HD DVD's dual-layer 30GB) discs, I think due to yields on dual-layer discs being low. So there was only 5 GB of difference, but being that they also used MPEG2, it was harder to pull off. Apparently newer dual-layer releases that still use MPEG2 look closer to HD DVD's quality. Also, it will be interesting to see how reviews change now that Sony has their player on the market. Supposedly the Samsung that was the first to market was slapping the image quality around in a couple of ways.
Overall, I think both launches were pathetic, but HD DVD's was less pathetic by a mile. I think it's crappy that the second generation Toshiba player with HDMI 1.3 is at the same price as Blu-ray players, though. There went their main advantage.
C.V.
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Nobody was sure why Blu-Ray disks were coming out at half capacity (and obviously I'm not 100% sure it is even true) but nomination for the "criminal stupidity in a product launch" award was mentioned a couple of times
Yes it is true; they couldn't make their double layer discs work (not to mention Sony's promised triple layer discs) so they only had 25 gigs of single layer space to work with, vs HD-DVD's dual layer 30 gigs.
The good news is that there will be "combo" (play both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) players soon. At least they will be available as internal drives on PCs. Many thought it wouldn't be until Q3 of next year, but I am very confident that you will see them shortly in Q1. That should lead to much lower prices by next holiday season.
Rich
And boy, if combo drives work as well as universal DVD-A/SACD drives... there will still be market confusion.
The HD's may be slow, but it's well worth the wait. The image on these disks are gorgeous. I don't pay much attention to the 'reviews', because I've liked every disk I've got so far and some had pretty bad reviews. The are all vastly superior to SD dvd. Hell I even bought and watched Casablanca the other night for the first time. I couldn't sit through it before in a crappy old VHS format, but in HD it was quite enjoyable. Damn good movie too! Now I know where all those 'one liners' come from....."Here's looking at you kid" and others....
I'm probably going to pick up a blue ray player too. it's a little frustrating when half the movies are being put on HD and the other half on BR.
I just picked up the Corpse Bride in HD, the images are just stunning compared to the SD version.
I was impressed with Casablanca on HD DVD, too! It looked very sharp. I didn't really think I'd be able to tell much of a difference from the normal DVD, but the difference was there.
C.V.