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Blue-Ray Player on Older TV's

post #1 of 9
11/13/08 at 9:44am
Thread Starter 
Hi,

Please excuse these questions if they sound naive!

I haven't purchased an HD TV yet and was wondering if you can connect a Blue Ray player to an older TV?

If so, how will the movies look?

Again sorry for what may seem like dumb question, but since I hope to be getting a new TV in the near future I would prefer not to spend money on DVD's that are not Blue-Ray.

Thanks,
Sal
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post #2 of 9
11/13/08 at 10:08am

Re: Blue-Ray Player on Older TV's

Yes, you can. BD players have composite and component video outputs in addition to HDMI and output on composite is limited to 480i (what an NTSC TV is capable of displaying). If you want to use the component outs, you'll have to adjust the resolution output in the player before hooking these up. You can do this by hooking up with the composite output first and going to the setup menu. There, you'll adjust the output to 480i and then you'll be able to hook up you component outs. If you try to adjust through the component outs, all you'll get onscreen is an unintelligible mess and you'll have to guess at the settings.

As for how the movies will look, when I first hooked up my HD DVD player to a 480i display, the improvement was very subtle. Certain details resolved more cleanly, and colour was cleaner as well. This was using the component outs.

As has been discussed elsewhere on the forum, you can hook up your receiver through the optical out for surround sound, but you'll be limited to what your receiver can decode i.e. Dolby True HD will output as Dolby Digital, DTS HD MA will output only the core DTS signal, etc.
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post #3 of 9
11/13/08 at 10:09am

Re: Blue-Ray Player on Older TV's

Most have composite and component video outputs, so it's possible. I haven't tried it myself, but my experience connecting another HD video source (my DVR) to an NTSC television is that you do get a clearer picture, thanks to less compression and better color.
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post #4 of 9
11/13/08 at 4:41pm

Re: Blue-Ray Player on Older TV's

I too have noticed that the SD DVD output of my BD player (PS3) is slightly but noticeably better than my well-rated SD DVD player. Via the component outputs. I attribute this to the much larger bandwidth of the chips/circuits involved...but it could be something else. I doubt it's because I'm getting "more info" from the discs in SD, it's just what I'm getting is less deteriorated by the higher bandwidth.
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post #5 of 9
11/13/08 at 6:25pm

Re: Blue-Ray Player on Older TV's

Exactly. Higher bandwidth+ better compression= less artifacting.
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post #6 of 9
11/13/08 at 7:57pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Blue-Ray Player on Older TV's

Thanks for the info ... so if understand the posts I should be able to hook the Blue-Ray player to my older TV and play Blue-Ray DVD's as long as I set the output to 480i ... is that correct?

Again thanks,
Sal
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post #7 of 9
11/13/08 at 9:43pm

Re: Blue-Ray Player on Older TV's

By George, I think you've got it!
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post #8 of 9
11/14/08 at 7:14am
Thread Starter 

Re: Blue-Ray Player on Older TV's

Thanks ...
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post #9 of 9
11/14/08 at 11:49am

Re: Blue-Ray Player on Older TV's

Oh, and welcome to the HTF!
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