BD video quality

[jeffc52053]

Hi All,

I've been enjoying a Samsung 61 inch 1080P television now for about six months and what's odd is my BD players (I have a Sony and a Samsung) don't measure up to over-the-air 1080i broadcasts. Even 720P over-the-air broadcasts look amazing. At 30 bucks a disk I'm pretty dissapointed. So I've tried changing the frame rate to 24 FPS and checked all the settings and everything is ok. I use a HDMI cable from the player to the TV and both the players up-convert standard DVD's which look as good as the Blue Ray disc.
Am I missing something?

[JonMarsh]

Either you have exceptional over the air broadcast quality (which we don't have in the SF Bay area), or there's something with the setup on your players, your set, or whatever- I have a couple of players, both selected for well above average picture quality, including DVD upscaling, and DVD looks NOWHERE near as good as Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Of course, Blu-Ray disk mastering is by no means a universally well done task, and in the earlier days of HD Sony and others were held to task for poor mastering quality compared with HD-DVD releases. (I have about 50 HD-DVD disks and a couple of the top of the line players with the HQ Realta chipsets from Toshiba, so I have a pretty good idea of how good HD-DVD can look, too).

A good place to check reviews of players for the fine points of video quality is Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity.

I'd suggest getting a calibration disk, or at least one of the Sony disks that has some setup/calibration patters. Use these to check for gray scale tracking and white balance.

Be sure both the player and the TV are setup for 1080P outputs- cross scaling will kill resolution faster than you can say "Minnie Mouse". Again, a calibration disk will help spot problems.

Even well recorded TV shows on Blu Ray such as Dexter or Heros will show off the benefits of the medium, to say nothing of good movies- you can pick up the new Star Trek for only $20 in Blu-Ray locally at the big W stores.

[jeffc52053]

Thanks Jon,

The calibration disc sounds like a great idea. I live in central New York and can get 6 HD over-the-air channels. three are 720p and three are 1080i and the pictures are incredible. I thought it was the Sony B/R player that I boughht 18 months ago so I bought the TV and a Samsung B/R player in March when our Circuit City was going out of business (got half off on both)
Both players tell me that the res is 1080p, but so far I don't see any difference with the B/R format over SDDVD.
The B/R does SOUND good
This is what I've got:
Samsung 61" DLP rear Projection
Samsung B/R
Sony B/R
Yamaha 7.1 ch receiver
2-10" JBL subs Driven by a 240WPC amp
Mains and Satelites are home made W/Morel Tweeters and Audax Midbase (6.5")
Center is a MTM W/Morel and Audax

[whoaru99]

Are you getting disks of "true" HD content, or just your old favorites that are probably nothing more than upconverted SD content?

Have you tried something like Planet Earth?

[jeffc52053]

You hit the nail on the head with that one, cwhoareu99. I bought the new Star Trek yesterday and it's incredible. I think now when I buy movies I'm gonna do B/R only on new (2006) titles. All else will be SDDVD.
Thanks for the help all!

[BlazeMaster]

There are a lot of catalogue titles that looks fantastic on BluRay as well. Generally I'm pretty disappointed with the quality of transfer on most Blu Ray titles compared to HD DVD. IMO, HD DVD is still superior to BluRay, in terms of price and quality. That's why I still have a lot of HD DVD titles that I kept.