Trying to decide between blu ray or upcoverting players (1 Viewer)

Is blu ray going to be that much better than a upconverting dvd player. I had my eye on a pioneer elite dv-48av which is a definitely a good dvd player for the money, or a denon dvd-1800bd which is like three hundred. Is the difference that much more with blu ray if you already have a really good tv?

Upconverters upconvert more than just the pretty parts of the picture -- they also upconvert every artifact that is part of the DVD. Halos around people, strange jpg-like squiggles, blockiness, all that gets upconverted too.

Definitely a Blu-ray player.

Especially if you have a good TV, you will see the difference clearly. The better and larger your display, the bigger the difference. Blu-ray all the way!

Agree with all of the above.

There are good points about upconverting DVD players. If you put
in a finely mastered DVD, it is going to look that much better on your
display.

However...

Despite arguments for and against Blu-ray's longetivity, I believe that
the format is going to be around for a while. The advantages of BD over
an upconverted sDVD are quite noticeable. BD delivers those deep colors
and film-like picture that you will not see from an upconverted sDVD.

Besides, I think all BD players out on the market have the capability
to upconvert sDVD to 1080p, so you win as far as having a player that
will deliver gorgeous BD quality while making your DVDs look better
than ever.

Well you persuaded me easily enough, blu ray it is!!

Let us know what you decided to buy.

This is a very important point. A BluRay player gives you the best of both worlds -- high definition BluRay discs plus the ability to upconvert your existing SD-DVD's. The entry level players from Panasonic and Sony both do a very nice job of upconverting SD-DVD. Since the price of these entry level BluRay players have dropped to around $200, it's not that much more expensive than buying a high quality upconverting DVD player.

Yeah Im not sure what I want to buy though. Love denon products but its at least 400 for the dvd-1800bd and was thinking a ps3 since I want to play games anyways.

My PS3 makes my SD DVDs look very good with my 64 inch screen (diag). And it is a fantastic BD player as well as a very versatile device (media centre, games). There are some standalone players that are even better at upconversion for SD DVD, but none is as quick with BD (on discs with "warnings" that it could take 2-3 MINUTES to load the menu, I get a menu in under 20 seconds, so far). And as PS3 games are BD hi-def, gaming looks very good (with the limited selection I have--and none of them is considered the best in terms of graphics).

All in all, the PS3 is a fine alternative to standalone players, though those have certain advantages in audio connectivity among some models--if that is a concern.

I've owned a Std upconvert Region-Free (hardware mod) PIONEER DV-400V player for a while and am satisfied with the conversion quality but that said, I'm mainly a TV/DVD collector who watches a lot of 4:3 DVD's. I watch my DVD's on a PANASONIC 50" Plasma TV Model TH50PZ85U . I do see what the posters are saying here regarding the upconversion of transfer imperfections when watching my Std DVD movies though. It's "liveable" for me for now. Since I'm a Region-Free player owner, I've been waiting for the BR players & technology to get further down the road with the R-Free capabilities (I posted on the BR R-Free thread recently). When the R-Free prices come down further and I can get some info on them regarding my TV's capibility of viewing the PAL-standard 50 FPS input, I'll probably buy my 1st BR player.

Question for current BR player owners: In the early days of the format & players, I read some things about lengthy loading of Std DVD's, long times to navigate through the menus, etc. Are those issues mostly resolved with current players?

I do not remember reading about anyone having issues with load times for DVDs. I have the much hated Samsung P1400 and I don't think that it has these problems. Load times for Blu-rays can be very, very long. Maybe I am just use to the long Blu-ray load times so the DVD load times seem to be great

I have the Sony 350 and standard DVD's load much faster than BD's, my neighbor and I came to the conclusion that since BD's have so much more info on them that that is the reason for it. Of course, we could be wrong!

I've had the same experience with my Sony BDP-S350. SD-DVD's load just as fast as they did on my old Panasonic RP-91 480p player.

The Toshiba XDE-500 is probably the best upconverting DVD player on the market. I own one and can tell you that with a good DVD transfer the "SHARP+COLOR" mode on a properly calibrated display really does render an experience that is close to cable HD quality.

However, the problem right now is that the studios don't seem too interested in making good DVD transfers anymore. The recent "The Dark Knight" DVD looks horrendous upconverted on this player due to all the digital artifacts in the transfer. By contrast, the older "Batman Begins" DVD looks fantastic.

While "The Dark Knight" Blu-ray Disc has been criticized for its varying aspect ratio presentation as well as some light EE, it still looks 10 times better than its DVD counterpart.

So the bottom line is that if you own an HD display and you want your favorite movies to look like film (as opposed to video) then you're going to have to purchase a Blu-ray player.

Of course, the best of both worlds would be a Toshiba Blu-ray player with the XDE upconversion for the standard DVDs. But I guess we'll never see that ... *sigh*