I have a Sony Bravia 32 inch TV, and I recently bought a Panasonic player with 1080P upconversion. But soon realized that 'upconverting' a regular DVD just does not get the quality of HD or Blu-ray. So I asked them whether I can exchange my Panny player for a PS3, since it has a blu-ray player. But the fellow there said that with my 32 inch TV I will not see any difference between a blu-ray and a standard dvd, and he went onto describe some technical terms I did not fully understand. Is this true? I couldn't argue with him because I'm fairly unexperienced with all this High Definition stuff, so can you guys help me please? Was he lying or telling the truth?
If your tv is able to display 1080p HD then he is blatantly lying to you. An upscaled DVD is not HD, if you are within the exchange period go back there immediately and get the product (PS3) you want. If you want to learn a bit about BD vs DVD vs HD-DVD and get a free BD movie check out this link http://www.blurayvt.com/mainPortal.php register and take the tests provided.
Thank you for your reply. My TV is a Sony Bravia KLV-32U300A. It says on the manual that 'The HDMI jacks only support the following video inputs: 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i and 1080p. So it supports 1080p, right? The funny thing is he had a Sony Bravia TV (the very same model of mine, also 32 inches) in his store. Is he purposely lying to me or is he just misinformed?
The guy at the store has a point, in a manner of speaking. This is the graph we use to determine when 1080p starts to make a difference. http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html See this article too: http://www.carltonbale.com/2006/11/1080p-does-matter/ It's a factor of screen size and viewing distance. For your example, with a 32 inch screen you will start to see a benefit to 1080p when you sit about 5 1/2 feet from the screen. If you go further than that then there may not be a visible benefit. The other factor to consider is your source. I think anything below 40 inches may not show you that much of a difference between upconverted material and 1080p material from BluRay or HD DVD. The benefits of the HD formats become really evident when you have screen sizes 50" and above. (I have a Sony 1080p projector on a 110" screen and you can really see the difference there.)
Thanks for the info. But I'm really thinking I'm missing out something by using standard dvd's. You see some of the dvd's have some slght pixelation problems, and the pic seems somehwhat grainy (via HDMI), when I upscale to anything above 580p the pixelation becomes more apparent. So basically I'm not making use of my 1080p upconversion facility at all! All this money I spent on this so-called 'upconversion' player is a waste. Do I need to tweak my settings on the TV?
I have over 15 TVs, ranging in size from 15" to 62". Most of them are HDTVs, including a 15" LCD widescreen, a 32" LCD widescreen, a 32" CRT fullscreen, a 40" CRT fullscreen, and a 62" DLP widescreen. My theater has the 62" 1080P DLP TV and the theater bathroom has a 15" LCD widescreen. Whatever is playing on the big TV also plays on the small TV. Both screens look amazing when I play HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs compared to when I play a standard DVD. By the way, my Blu-Ray player is a PS3. I bought it for the lower price and the benefit of getting a game console, but when the formart war is over I will by a stand-alone player. I was never even slightly impressed with my expensive upconverting DVD player.
