Video Asylum

Posted by jsm (A) on September 18, 2007 at 13:09:54

In Reply to: RE: Sony had this great hope posted by DavidLD on September 18, 2007 at 05:02:39

I recently purchased a 58-inch 720p Panasonic palsma set. I agonized over waitng a few months and buying a 1080p set that was coming out or some other sets that were already out, but this particular model has an excellent picture for what it is, and the price kept dropping. I spent a lot of time looking from various distances at this and some excellent 1080p sets and discovered what is well known. Once you start getting beyond the distance at which you can see the individual pixels, the differences start to matter less and less. At the distance I planned to view the set, I couldn't see much, if any, difference between the two resolutions. I decided to save more than a $1000 and get the set right now.

The pleasnt surprise was how good upsampled DVDs look. On my Oppo 970HD they are not as good as the best HD programs that come over the air or Dishnetwork, but they are as good as a lot of so-called HD programming that I get. That means they are very good. To put it another way, the quality of upsampled DVDs is far above ordinary broadcast TV , and watching a movie on a 58-inch screen is quite satisfying; the quality is good enough not to be distracting in the least. In fact, it is so good that for now I've lost all interest in a HD player of any kind. I'll wait until they decide on which format wins, if that ever happens.

As for comparison with a movie theater, theaters lost out for me a long time ago. I dislike the sound in all movie theaters. It is almost invariably too loud for me, and the sound quality is poor, even in highly-touted theaters. My system at home is vastly superior. I dislike people talking and standing up in front of me, sticky floors, scratched films, out-of-focus projectors, and the high prices. However, my biggest problem is finding movies that I enjoy watching. They are far a few between, but there's not much I can do about that. If I'm lucky, maybe five movies a year come out in the US that I really enjoy watching. But my HD set is a wonder for watching sports.

Joe