Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Oops Alan

Guys, guys, guys relax a bit would ya!

I got one kid who's sick the other ones are running around to all sort of Christmas events, had my wife's company Christmas party to go to, etc, etc, etc. Cripes I just posted it last night. (Thank you Chessaroo). And Bridgman, you nailed it. There is of course plenty of reason to watch BR/HDDVD on ANY High Def screen. What Alan says about the device being unable to display the extra pixels is indeed true. However, prior to the arrival of BR/HDDVD the best option for those of us who owned an HD set and wanted to watch movies on disc was regular DVD played on an upconverting player. These upconverting chipsets have evolved by leaps and bounds. But no matter how good they get the simple fact will always remain: What they do is take non-HD 480 resolution, blow it up to 720p or 1080i, then tries to imagine what should go into all the empty spaces. It's amazing technology thats very impressive to look at on screen. Now, (without going out and buying a 1080P set), hook up a BR player, pop in a BR disc and you can discover that there is absolutely no comparison between the above mentioned technology and a technology that simply takes 1080P resolution (with 1000's of times more digital audio and video "information" by the way) and downconverts it to (Hi Def) 1080i or 720p. Better yet, an easier experiment would be to simply compare what you view on Discovery HD Theater to your old DVD player. No comparison.

There is indeed a point to getting a video source that delivers 1080P even if your set only displays 1080i or 720p.

Thanks,
Tom L Ipswich,MA

p.s. - I faithfully read everything Alan Loft has to offer because he is an A/V guru. This is the only inaccuracy I have ever seen from him and felt it was an important thing to point out.

p.p.s. - At this point and time (for various reasons I wont go into here) I do not recommend that people jump onto the HD disc bandwagon....yet.

Good post, I'm sure all will be forgiven - this is a very laid back and friendly forum.

BTW, I (and I bet others) would love it if you would go into the details about why we shouldn't jump on the HD disk bandwagon since many of us are considering it.

I have a 4:3 Toshiba Cinima Series TV 55" I bought new in November of 1998, and I am sure it's 1080i and doesn't support 720p.

It still works and has a great picture. Only cost me 4 grand at the time.

Paul

Cameron, I'm not trying to answer for Tom, but though my experience I don't believe enough of the bugs are worked out of these devices and formats to be put on the market ... my A2 has been very close on several occasions of getting tossed out of the window due to aggravation from the thing locking up, pausing and skip jipping through movies and I'm a consumer who is supposed to be half way knowledgeable about this stuff, can you imagine the average Joe who spent 400 bucks on one of these players who doesnt know a thing about firmware updates and right out of the box it locks up and quits due to not having the firmware update? Good thing I bought mine cheap through that Wal-Mart sale otherwise it would have been back to the dealer. These are only my thoughts.


Welcome aboard Tom!

Reasons not to go to HD - DVD or Blu-Ray yet:

1. There is a format war going on here, can we say BETA?
2. Another format to deal with, I have too many of these little round discs that only work in specific devices as it is.
3. HD and Blu Ray Discs cost more.
4. As brotherbob points out, technology is still buggy.
5. Not all Video stores rent HD discs.
6. As this is still very new, chances are you frineds and family will still be lending you SD DVD's
7. Up-scaling DVD such as the Oppo DV-981HD will play all SD DVD"s and, although not as good as HD DVD, look very fine. The price may be higher for the unit, but you won't have to replace existing DVD's and pay the exta for new ones. Cheaper in the long run.

8. If someone cracks the DRM, then they can arbitrarily kill all the players (internet connected) that have the cracked code on them. Or just release disks that can't be played on older units.
9. They have the option of downscaling the output to 540i if you use component video cables.

I also have a Toshiba HD 2001 32" model that supports 1080i but NOT 720p, just like Wolfzara. $2K for me.

Ummm..... the codes have been cracked for sometime. Hd-dvd was a bout week after initial release and subsequent ones take about as long and BR was about the same. There are even a couple of programs out there that will burn HD-DVDs and BR's.

They've been cracked, but only based on particular software, as I understand it. BD+ has not really been cracked; that one can be closed easily--by deploying firmware updates. AACS has been cracked, but I'm not sure if that's fixable or not.

Tom, although your follow-up clarifies what your disagreement with Alan's comment was, it still appears that what he said was correct. Those older sets that he was referring to can't even accept a 1080P input, a capability which has appeared only relatively recently in 1080 sets.