CES 2006 - Day 3: Playstation 3, Quarter-size Hard Drives, SED and lots of TVs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on January 9, 2006 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Blu-ray vs. DVD Image Quality
One thing we did get a good chance to see at the show was a number of live Blu-ray and HD-DVD demonstrations with real high-definition content, and honestly, we weren't all that impressed. Don't get us wrong, it looked good, just not breathtaking or anything like that.
The problem is that the jump from progressive scan DVD (480p) to Blu-ray and HD-DVD at 720p or 1080p just isn't that great, even on a 46" display. When viewed side by side with DVD content, the picture looks quite comparable, it's just that the Blu-ray/HD-DVD content is noticeably sharper (which makes sense since it is much higher resolution).
The other thing to keep in mind is that the move to HDTV from standard analog cable was so dramatic because of the very poor quality of most cable feeds. With Blu-ray/HD-DVD, the quality of DVD is already pretty high, so it's really tough to achieve the same wow-factor with just an increase in resolution and bitrate.
The larger your TV the more you will notice the difference and of course the quality and compression of the content itself is going to determine how different Blu-ray/HD-DVD look from present day DVD.
Pioneer actually had a display comparing Blu-ray and DVD with the exact same content that illustrated our point pretty well. The Blu-ray content on the left was playing back at 1080p, while the DVD content on the right was 480p upscaled to 1080p:
The Blu-ray player used in the demo was the BDP-HD1 from Pioneer's Elite line:
Again, the image quality of the Blu-ray player/content was top notch and definitely sharper than what was outputted from the upscaling DVD player, but the impact wasn't absolutely mindblowing. You will obviously have to find out for yourself, but we just wanted to aid in setting your expectations for both Blu-ray and HD-DVD.
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quanta - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
From page 8:Actually, that only exist if at least 1 dimension of display content dimensions isn't integer divisor of display's native resolution. Secondly, DLP can overcome this by shining at only the biggest subset of mirror in the DMDs that do not cause distortions, then use adjustable sets of lenses to perform zooming, with each set zooming at only 1 axis.
Kensei - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Please do a review of this thing when it becomes available. I'd love to see how its output compares to Blu-ray and HD-DVD. I'm sure it's not as good... but just how much worse is what I'd like to know.highlandsun - Thursday, January 12, 2006 - link
Samsung has pretty good scaling technology, but it seems to me this is something you only need in your display. (And Samsung TVs do pretty good upconversion already.) So, kind of silly.VooDooAddict - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Raptor X.I feel so guilty. I'm drooling over a hard drive that costs more then a 7800GT.
I've wanted a windowed Hard drive for ages though... but don't have the dremmel skills nessesary to add a window to an existing drive.
Questar - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Nobody has the dremel skills. Drives are assembled in clean rooms. Beaking the seal will be the end of a drive.Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
I´ve seen a drive approx. a year ago on the net - modded with blue light - woring - 20Gig. Damn where was it....?Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
But also found this .. it´s nothing new .......Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
This: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Transparent_20disk_...">http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Transparent_20disk_...Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
woring = working...Eris23007 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
I've noticed lately that article text seems to disappear a few seconds after page load, frequently when one of the sidebar ads appears. Can't be retrieved except by highlighting it, moving the page back and forth (so it redraws), etc. Happened on a number of articles over the past week or so...
IE6/XP-SP2