Quote:

How about the difference between standard TV to DVD or VCR to DVD in comparison to DVD to H-DVD/BR?



I posted this at the AVS forums.

Moving from SD broadcast television to HD broadcast television I saw a huge improvement. Going from SD DVD to HD DVD I was not as impressed. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would score it as follows:

VHS gets a 1.

SD television (documentaries or movies) gets a 2 or 3.

SD DVD's, assuming a top quality transfer, get a 5 to 6.

HD broadcast tv (not TNT HD movies which suck) like Discovery HD theater, 9

HD-DVD, Batman Begins the only HD-DVD I have so far, 8

HD-DVD Documentary, hopefully a 9+ when they arrive.

I watch on a 106" screen in a dark room with a Sanyo Z4 PJ. Toshiba A2 goes HDMI to my Onkyo 604 and HDMI to the PJ. Comcast cable and Sony DVD player go component to the 604 and component to the PJ.

The question for others and myself is why have I not seen as big a jump in PQ with HD-DVD as I have with HD broadcast? My answers are that going from SD broadcast Discovery channel programming to Discovery HD is moving from about the worst quality image to about the best so of course I'd see a dramatic improvement. I think everyone would agree that SD-DVD's are quite a bit better than SD tv so naturally the move to HD-DVD doesn't have as much room for improvement. Also, documentaries are often shot in HD as opposed to being transferred from film so there is an advantage there as well. Furthermore, movies may be shot for mood and visual effect whereas HD documentaries are all about a big gorgeous image.

The biggest improvement I saw with Batman Begins is in the fine detail, titles and text. Maybe this movie isn't the best exampe? And FWIW, I had both versions playing last night about two minutes apart. I would watch two minutes of the SD version and then two minutes of the HD version.

The guy I bought my A2 from lied and said the three documentary titles I wanted were in stock but of course they didn't ship with my player. So I now wonder if anyone who has a documentary HD-DVD, how does it compare to broadcast HD programming?

I am not disappointed in HD-DVD, I just haven't had the same wow factor I got the first time I saw lions in the Serengeti on my screen and it seemed like they were right there. Maybe part of it is the 16:9 HD signal filling a full 16:9 screen and Batman being 2.35 there is less visual impact with the smaller screen area?

Curious how others would rate the image quality of the different formats.

Greg

I have since learned that Batman Begins is a good HD-DVD movie, but not a great one. Supposedly King Kong and Hulk are quite a bit better than Batman Begins.


Last edited by GregM; 12/28/06 09:48 PM.