Noob question: help (1 Viewer)

[Brett_M]

Hi all,

I have a Sony 55" 1080i RPTV. I currently use an Oppo 971, upconverting to 1080i.

If I went with BR, would I see any difference in quality? Bottom line: is it worth it to jump on the bandwagon?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Yes

 

[hojuguy]

Most definitely YES

 

[Brett_M]

Thanks for the responses.

So, I will see results even though my TV is not 1080p?

 

[Brian McHale]

What is your viewing distance? As long as you don't sit too far away, you will definitely be able to tell the difference between Blu-ray and upconverted DVD on a 1080i or 720p TV. Plus, the audio is better. For that matter, even if you sat so far away that you couldn't "see" the extra resolution, Blu-ray discs have much fewer artifacts.

 

[Brett_M]

I sit about 10 feet away.

One more thing:

My TV does not have an HDMI input. It's DVI. Will an adapter affect the audio or PQ in a way that the human eye or ear can discern?

 

[Brian McHale]

From 10' away on a 55" TV you should definitely be able to see the extra resolution (unless you have bad eyesight). Even though your set is 1080i, that's still quite a bit more resolution than 480p.

I don't think DVI has any effect on the quality of the video signal (I don't have any experience with DVI, but it's my understanding that it's basically the same as HDMI without the audio). Are you going to be using your TV or a receiver for audio? If a receiver, is it HDMI-capable?

 

[Lew Crippen]

So long as the display is HDCP compliant, the DVI connection will deliver the video just like an HDMI connection. HDMI also provides audio, something that DVI does not do.

 

[Cees Alons]

There are inexpensive cables and connectors doing the "conversion" (simple, because the video part of HDMI = DVI).

Here are some connectors:

HDMI-F/DVI-M @ $9.72

HDMI-F/DVI-M @ $4.95

HDMI-F/DVI-M @ $1.09


Cees

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

If your DVI doesn't work, you can always hook it up the old fashion way w/ 1080i component video -- unless your TV or player of choice somehow doesn't provide that, which seems highly unlikely to me.

I had been running my PS3 via 1080i component into my old 53" Panny CRT RPTV for over a year before upgrading my display to a Sammy 61" DLP RPTV. And yeah, quality BDs (and quality HD broadcasts in general) did look a good deal better than most DVDs on that old setup from 9-10ft away. Only certain reference quality DVDs actually come all that close to quality BDs on that old setup, but even then, the colors are rarely as convincing as quality BDs. If you have a good eye for colors, you should see substantial improvement in that aspect of the PQ -- it's not just about the pixel count.

And if your display is actually a fixed pixel digital RPTV, not CRT, you should probably see more benefit than I did from my CRT one. I've briefly tried running the old 1080i component output (instead of 1080p HDMI) to my current 61" DLP, and there is hardly any PQ diff at all in my limited experience w/ it -- essentially none that I noticed in normal viewing. And both connections look quite a bit better on the DLP RPTV than on my old CRT RPTV (except maybe for black level), which in turn looked substantially better than DVDs in most cases.

_Man_

 

[Brett_M]

Thanks one and all for your repsonses. I'm jumping on the bandwagon!

 

[Cees Alons]

Welcome, Brett!

One other point. Do you want your audio to go to your TV set, or do you have a different setup for that?
In both cases it won't be very difficult.


Cees

 

[Brett_M]

I use an Onkyo 5.1 HT. It does not have HDMI input. I'll probably upgrade the receiver and get 2 more surrounds.

 

[Cees Alons]

If your Onkyo happens to have analog inputs (5.1 or 7.1), you could even choose a BD-player capable of doing all the audio decoding and outputting over analog channels. Replacing the receiver wouldn't be necessary (at least not immediately).


Cees

 

[Brett_M]

How would that impact the sound quality?

 

[Brian McHale]

Blu-ray Discs have the capability to do lossless audio. However, to take advantage of it, you either need an HDMI-capable receiver or 5.1/7.1 analog inputs. If you have the former, you can either have the player or the receiver do the decoding of the lossless codecs. If you have the latter, the player can decode the lossless codecs and output via analog.

Don't worry if you don't have HDMI or analog inputs, though. The lossy codecs (regular DD or DTS) are better on Blu-ray than DVD (higher bitrates).

 

[Brett_M]

Gotcha. Thanks so much.

 

[Cees Alons]

Brett,

If you can use analog pre-proc inputs, the sound quality is among the very best there is. There even are one or two advantages having the player do the decoding.

(Don't forget that all digitized audio must be converted to analog finally before it can be sent to the power amps. That's exactly what happens if your receiver has analogs in.)


Cees

 

[Brett_M]

Cees,

What are analog pre-proc inputs? My receiver does have analogs in and I want the best.

-Brett

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

There is a caveat w/ using the 5.1 analog input of most such receivers though. They generally do not do much, if any, processing to the analog audio in that setup (vs plain stereo ones), so you might lose control of things like bass management, speaker distance/delay, room tuning/EQ, etc. In that case, you'll probably want to get a player than can do (at least some of) those things before pumping the analog audio out.

Personally, I think you're best off just upgrading the receiver rather than restricting yourself to a handful of (more expensive) player choices that provide full surround analog out. If your budget is tight, you might not even need to go for a fully decoding receiver -- you really only need one that can handle multichannel PCM via HDMI (and then just let the player decode and output that instead). In fact, that's what many of us do (even if we have fully capable receivers/preprocessors) since certain players like the PS3 can only output some/all of the HD audio formats as decoded M-PCM via HDMI *plus* (like Cees mentioned) there are certain advantages to letting the player do the decoding (eg. for features like PiP commentaries, etc).

_Man_