Walmart Drops HD-DVD, Blu-Ray Seems To Win DVD Wars

[jonv112]

Component is the "best" connection it can do

That must be why you can't really tell the difference. A lot of next-gen discs (Blu-Ray and HDDVD) have advanced copy protection on the disc, and in order for the full 1080p image and HD sound to be displayed from the disc, all components (Player, TV, AV receiver) must meet the copy protection specifications on the disc (AACS, HDCP, etc). The only way the player will know that your TV and AV reveiver will have copy protection is through a 2-way connection, such as HDMI. If you only use component, then the player can't verify that your TV meets all of those specifications, and will downscale the 1080p image to 540p (compared to DVD's 480p) in order to prevent pirates from having access to the full 1080p image.

To sum it up, if your TV and Blu-Ray player aren't connected by HDMI, then you won't get the full picture or sound.

 

[sikiguya]

Blu Ray Player

We got ours at the Sony Outlet store as a refurbished model for $249. It works flawlessly, although we only have 1 DVD for it as of yet.
I like the fact that it can play regular DVD's too. We have a 400 Sony DVD changer but it's no fun to have to open that up and remember where you put it when you have a rental DVD to watch.

 

[mattl]

540p --- not true

It is clearly stated in all the documentation of every HD and Blu-ray player I've looked at the component output is 1080i. That is the best component can do, it can't do 1080p. If they limited the output on HD and Blu-Ray they would cut their market substantially.

Now, standard DVDs are upconverted to 480p and the output is limited to that on component outputs but that is easily worked around. A number of people I talk to are simply ripping the dvds and storing them on their hard drive and plying back via HTPC.

 

[tolivac]

HDDVD and BluRay players sold in the US have a diffrent standard than machines sold in Canada.If you have a TV that has component video and will accept 1080I-the player will give a 1080I signal to the TV over the component video connections.Its for the 1080P that the HDMI digital connection is required.You have to go to the setup menus in both the TV and player to configure them to 1080I.The player won't upconvert standard DVD to 1080P.It will play them in standard 480P-which most Tv's will take interchangeably.However there is a protocol in the BluRay and HDDVD disc mastering program that allows the disc producer to prohibit playback in 1080I.The disc producers have not used this protocol for fears of loss in disc and player sales to people that have older HDTV's that can't work with 1080P.Lets hope they don't use the protocol.so far they won't.If that protocol is activated by the disc mastering producer-the playback will be 480P instead of 1080I-In that case to get 1080P you will need to have a TV that has the HDMI connections.So far no BluRay or HDDVD has been recorded in that manner-thank goodness-would be very foolish for them to do-you would cut off the market to folks that have older HDTV's-imagine the loss of sales if that happened.Probably BluRay would die as well.

 

[jonv112]

Well, it says 540p in my PS3 manual, but after a bit of research I found out 540p is equivalent to 1080i, so my bad.

 

[Acerone]

I have a 1080P and PS3 and the picture is amazing. Before the PS3 I had the HD DVD player and it to was amazing. I sold it days after Warner Brothers announced they were dropping HD DVD.

 

[DADoES]

I have some HD channels now ... but the tuner is connected by s-video because my plasma has only one component input and it's used by my DVD player. The tuner claims to be outputting 1080i, assuming s-video can carry it. The picture is widescreen but quality isn't much better than non-HD. I have an accessory video switcher that perhaps will work to feed both the tuner and DVD via component, if that'll even make any difference.

 

[jonv112]

s-video

You can only get maximum 480i picture through s-video. You need at least component to get the HD picture. The only difference between s-video and composite (the yellow plug) is that the brightness component of the image is separated from the colour component. S-video has slightly better image than composite, which can be seen on older equipment, but nowhere near the image quality/resolution from component or better.

 

[DADoES]

Success! An input switcher allows both the HD satellite tuner and DVD to run on component. There *is* an appreciable difference on HD vs. non-HD for a broadcast signal.

However, the fact remains that, for whatever reason, I could not see a justifiable difference on HD-DVD (1080i) vs. standard DVD (480p) ... and the HD-DVD player WAS running on component.