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Sony had this great hope

Posted by DavidLD (A) on September 18, 2007 at 05:02:39

...that every family would just have to have a PS3 and then "accidentally" get a Blu Ray player That could (conveniently) play Sony's HD format. But sadly, PS3 never quite has lived up to Sony expectations in that regard, and many families (stubbornly) continue to live with Xbox or Wii.

Meanwhile, I watch my 720p Panasonic front projector, the one Projector Central is claiming it would "take a video critic" to see any difference between the picture on that unit and the picture on a native 1080p unit all of which cost about twice as much, or more. And besides, they claim, it does the most spectacular job ever of upconverting a well-made 480p disc to make it look like it is really a higher resolution disc.

Guys, there is a lot more to the world of video clarity and the entire video experience than just the native resolution of the equipment. To argue that the best video experience comes from the equipment with the highest raw numbers, that any 1080p video experience will be obviously clearer to everyone in the room than something running at 1080i or 720p regardless of manufacturer is quite a leap, a leap I'm not willing to take.

In audio, I suppose the best sounding speaker is the one that tests to have the flattest, broadest frequency response, and presumably a speaker rated at 30-20,000 Hz + or - 2 db should sound better than one rated, say, at at 40-15,000 Hz + or - 3 db. But MOST audio buffs would not want to reach that conclusion w/o using their own ears first. There are always a few, however that want to leap to that conclusion.

Similarly, the entire video experience is the embodiment of a whole series of factors that determine whether it is satisfactory or not. The raw resolution is justy one of many factors. Everything else being equal, equipment capable of higher resolution should produce a clearer picture than lower resolution equipment, but like in everything else, the law of diminishing returns applies. Plus there is all these other things going on that affect the experience, overall brightness, color saturation, whiteness of the whites, blackness of the blacks, shadow detail, etc etc that at the end of the day may have more to do with the quality of the experience than the raw resolution number.

As I sit in the real movie theater on Saturday afternoons, I can't help but judge what I am seeing and try to relate it to my in-home theater experience. I think at this point what I see at home appears to me to be every bit as bright, sharp and clear as what I see in the movie theater I go to Saturday afternoon. And isn't that the entire point of the home theater experience, to in essence, recreate inso far as possible the experience at the theater. In this world, the raw numbers really do not matter, now do they?

David

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