Video Asylum

Posted by David Aiken (A) on November 05, 2009 at 16:08:42

In Reply to: RE: DVD advice needed, i'm not sold on 'upconverting' posted by NuWave on November 04, 2009 at 21:45:42

A 1080 display has to display in 1080. If it's getting a standard def signal, it has to upconvert and, of course, the big reason for a high def TV having upconversion is simply so that you can watch standard def channels as well as high def channels.

There are a number of old movies being mastered to Blu-ray. So far the oldest I've bought is "Casablanca" which I also had on DVD and the BD disc looked, and sounded, a hell of a lot better than the DVD. If there's a good film master and the transfer is done well, BD should always look better than DVD, even when the DVD has been done well. About the only time when you're not going to see anything more from BD done well is if the master was a standard def digital video source. That kind of source is standard def, period, and you can't get any more resolution out of it. If the source is film or a high def digital video source, then you can get better results with a good BD conversion than you can with DVD.

Whether all of the old movies you, or I, would like to see in better quality ever make it to BD is another question.



David Aiken