Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions HD Player or Blu Ray?

Thanks for all the replies so far! I guess I will be saving my money for now and stick with my beloved Oppo!

But make no mistake, HD is HD, upconverted DVD's is not HD. You will never get that "wow" feeling of watching Transformers in HD that you will when only in SD DVD...it is seriously a different world.

My sammy is a 1080P and am going out to get transformers in a few minutes. I'll watch it and give my opinion on the pq/aq with the xa2 and the sammy @1080p. As for other sd's going high def, I agree on not getting doubles as the sd's pq are good enough for some movies. I have polar express coming in hd and have a sd and will give my thoughts later on the difference. I really haven't compared any movies of the same in different formats.(Wow; I guess I enjoy HD and the movies too much to really notice a big difference on conparing the two.)

I still think that for Transformers, I am just going to borrow a lower end (gen 2) HD-DVD player than try to find a way to buy an XA2 right now. I hear rumors (lots, and lots of rumors) of price drops closer to the holidays. Makes sense, but I want to have my movie night soon without having to feel like I could have saved $50-$100 or whatever by waiting a month.

I have Polar express and I believe the exras are in SD so you can just switch back and forth on the menu to compare PQ. Imo it is huge.

Nick, a second generation player should be fine in watching the Transformers, the real difference the AX2 makes Imo is on SD DVD's with it's reon processor. I would also suggest that you grab a couple more HD HVD's if possible just to see what it can do with different movies. I've read a couple reviews on the HD version of the Transformers and the rating of the PQ goes anywhere from an 8 and up, there are no Tru HD sound tracks on it, but the DD is supposed to be so well done that everywhere I've read gives the sound quality a 10.
I'm going out in a few minutes to find the movie also, perhaps we can all compare thoughts.

I was looking at the XA2 for the analog audio output (since my Pioneer Elite doesn't do the HD audio decoding), but I may just go with a trial test run on a 2nd or 3rd gen player, and save up for something else down the road, either a dual player that does the audio decoding onboard with analog outs, or a new receiver that does the HD audio processing... Something at least a year from now away unless prices REALLY drop. Better yet would be if I could ever build that HTPC that has a dual Blu-Ray/HD-DVD reader and a HD Decoder sound card, then I would get REALLY good SD upconversion, and have everything in one box, plus my HD OTA tuner, DVR, etc... Maybe for 2009...

I wonder how well the upconversion is with the "other" chipset than what the XA2 has in comparison to my Panny S97 upconverting DVD player. I think that my S97 does a really good job, so as long as I get that good or better, I am fine for now...