The way DVDs look on HDTVs! (1 Viewer)

[Glenn_Jn]

typical living room isn't big enough to hold both the set and the couch at the proper viewing distance

My feelings exactly. Why on earth do people need screens so big?.

If you have a dedicated HT room big enough for it that's OK but in a normal size room I don't get it.

 

[Jeff Adams]

Mitch, sorry to hear that you had such a horrible experience with viewing dvd's on an hdtv. I have quite the opposite opinion. I have owned many different display devices. Front projection, direct view and rptv and by far my current 64 inch 16x9 hdtv blows them all away. Yes some transfers do look like crap on it but that is not the hdtv's fault, it is the fauly of the crappy transfer onto dvd. The reason I purchased my hdtv is because of the stunning picture I get from a progressive scan dvd player. I didn't even buy it for hdtv, although soon I will be gettin an hdtv tuner. Anyway, me and my guests are always stunned by the picture quality of my set, I love it! And also I have a pretty nice 27 inch flat screen direct view tv that I have a progressive scan dvd player hooked up to that doesn't come close to the picture quality I get with my hd rptv.

 

[Jeff Kohn]

Add to the above the more immersive experience of watching a film on an 82- to 110-inch-wide screen, and there you go.

This I will agree with, and that's why I want a dedicated home theater with a FP setup in my next house. But you can still get a fairly immersive experience from a RPTV, the only difference is in the viewing distance.

 

[Steve_Tk]

I find it hard to believe that a calibrated HDTV looks worse then an analog 27 inch.

I have the 40 inch XBR and it absolutely floors any Sony analog tv out there with DVD images.

 

[Mitch Stevens]

Well, like someone else mentioned, that an HDTV, will show way more flaws in the source recording than an analog TV can. I never said it looked WORSE though, but it looks nowhere near FILM-LIKE! Anyone who thinks so, really needs to go to a THX certified cinema immediately and compare the two.

I guess I did have extremely high expectations when it came to HDTVs. What have I learned from this thread? A lot actually....I finally learned what FPTV is, and RPTV, although, i'm still not sure that Direct view is.

What would a Plasma TV be considered? I have seen Plasma TVs on store displays, but they are NOT calibrated at all, but still look quite vivid, and life-like. The colors are bright, and images appear very sharp. I'm very interested in seeing one of these properly calibrated.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Mitch,

I know what my eyes tell me, and looking at DVD's on my display makes me think i'm watching film rather than video which should be the goal for a HT set up. It just looks that way because the image doesn't have any of the give away tell tale signs of video i.e. chroma noise, scan lines, jagged edges etc, and the characteristics of a projected image makes it look like that even more so.

Film-LIKE, doesn't mean film-EXACT, obviously. It's the ILLUSION of film that i'm talking about.

And to be honest, and this is just me, I really don't care for plasma displays at this point. They look very cool, but just about every one that i've seen exhibits excessive pixelation, you can actually see the pixels that make up the image and that's a big turn off for me. Besides, last I heard plasma's can't be calibrated to NTSC standards, but that was some time ago, that may not be the case now.

The only reason I see for getting one is for sheer boasting rights to the neighbors..."Hey Bob, guess what I got? One of those futuristic tv's that hang's on the wall like on Star Trek, isn't that cool!?"

When they improve things with plasma's maybe i'll give one a shot, but right now I can't justify spending that kind of money on anything less than perfection. They aren't worth the price tag, all flash...and very little substance.

Give me a good tried and true RP monitor anyday.