I was at Best Buy yesterday to help my sister with a TV and they mentioned HD DVD players... How do these work? Is it woth upgrading to this?
Presently I have a Pioneer Elite 530 HD TV and a JVC DVD player/recorder DR-M10. I actually just got it a few months ago, but I really don't record much b/c I have the Comcast DVR--- not much need for recording onto DVD... (Actually, when I receive our wedding DVD I wonder if I can make copies of it somehow with the JVC or maybe on Apple Powerbook using DVD burner..???)
Anyway, I'm curious about these HD players... What are your thoughts? Would I see a difference? What brands are best?
OCA
Unregistered guest
Posted on
Hello Valarie,
The "HD DVD" players mentioned are not really "HD". They are known as upconversion DVD players which upscale the picture to only near HD quality. In other words, these players give you fake HD picture.
Fortunately Toshiba has announced that they will be releasing HD DVD players, this holiday season , that support "True HD" resolutions.
Bad news is that these new format players would not support the format of current DVD disc which will soon be obsolete.
arodriguez1006
Unregistered guest
Posted on
Thanks OCA......Ive been searching endlessly for an answer like yours. Do you think that this Upconversion DVD player shows nice, good quality. Would you say its 20, 50, 100 percent better than 480p quality viewing?
When you say the HD-DVD won't support the current DVD formats do you mean you won't get HD from them or that they won't play them at all?
Anonymous
Posted on
Arodriguez, you'll see the difference between the standard 480p and the higher resolutions in terms of color, smoothness, and overall clarity of the picture.
Dennis, from what I have read, no, the new Blu ray (also an HD format) and or HD-DVD formats would not be compatible with the current DVD formats. In order to watch a DVD Disc you will need a DVD player to view the content. To watch HD-DVD you'll need an HD-DVD player (not an upconversion) to view content. The same goes for the Blu ray Discs as well.
*Note* In recent news, HD-DVD and Blu ray are working to unite the two formats.
Thanks Anonymous, 4 times. I guess that means I'll have an extra component in my collection. There might be some movies in my collection that I'd want to upgrade to HD quality, but others will be fine just on DVD.