My Blu Ray player will ask me if I want to continue where I stopped watching on DVD’s or Blu Ray discs that I watched from six months or more ago.
Regardless of whether or not anything is “wrong” with it, it’s a clear visual indicator that you’re watching the SD channel and not its HD version (assuming you’re watching modern programming).
I may have mentioned that I don’t have cable or Dish and therefore do not watch any channels. I think the Buster Keaton films I found recently may have blank space on the sides of the screen but I watch the show and not the borders.
My ex-gf used to want to watch the SD stuff on my HD tv all stretched out because the borders annoyed her. I thought it looked crappy that way but I had to pick my battles with her.
I’m probably not referring to your situation when I mention the difference between SD and HD channels then.
The two players I have owned were supposed to but it was always hit or miss.
35mm film has been the standard for decades and many older movies have been released in HD on Blu-ray.
I’ll buy a BD if the movie is something I think merits the extra vig–especially those splashy action-adventures-- because I do notice the sound difference (hooked into a low-budge but effective AV system). Not sure I notice much visual difference between DVD and BD, as we only have a 32" 720p display.
Also, I think BD copies that promise “interactive extras” are an annoying waste of time, money, and space.
-and get off my lawn!
The economy tanked, around the time Blu-ray was being pushed.
Nobody wanted to pay for it, then.
And now? Few care.
I agree as well. The thing is, the video image in most movies and TV shows has a lot of filters and foreground and background movement. This movement means our eyes can perceive less fine detail, and the filter blur away fine detail. In addition, most movies and TV shows, the important details to the plot are very large and low resolution. For example, text that the viewer is expected to read tends to be very large font and in bold letters. Actors and actresses have all kinds of makeup to conceal flaws in their skin which also has the effect of lowering how much information there is to see.
So in practice, a 720p vs 1080p movie or TV show, you can barely tell the difference. However, if you fire up a video game you can tell the difference instantly if you are not blind. A PC game running on a high end computer with a graphics card capable of 60fps is a very different experience than a movie or TV show, and you need a better display.
That would be widescreen vs standard, i.e 16:9 vs 4:3, not the difference between SD (Standard Definition) and HD (High Definition).
I rent SD movies from iTunes rather than HD because they are a buck cheaper, not because my TV can’t play full HD movies.
I have a couple of movies on DVD that I also have the Blu-Ray version of. (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and HP and the Chamber of Secrets). The BD discs have a heap of extras and not spread over two discs like some movies that have lots of extras on DVD (Mary Poppins). The picture is noticeably better even on my 32" Sony.
But, the BD discs cost about 50% more than the DVD versions. Or even more. I just found “2001 A Space Odyssey” at The Warehouse on-line store. The 2 DVD set is $6.99, the BD one is $12.99 Okay, not a recent release, but you get the picture.
That’s why I’m not interested in blu-ray. I don’t want to see the actors warts and all.
People seem to be so proud to be blind, like they’re pointing out some emporer’s new clothes conspiracy and there’s not actually a difference.
Skip around to some of the examples here. Can you really not see a difference?
I own hundreds of DVDs and a few blue rays, but I don’t remember the last time I watched one. I can find and stream a movie on my iPad too easily to justify looking through my unsorted physical discs.
We never bothered fooling with Blu-ray due to the expense. The increased quality was simply not good enough to justify buying a new player and paying more for the discs. Even the pirated Blu-ray discs are more expensive than the regular pirated discs.
As has been said over and over, if you placed two sets side by side, most people can see the difference. People are saying that they don’t care about the difference enough to justify the difference in price. This is especially true for people who aren’t gamers and don’t generally watch genres like fantasy where the difference is the most striking.
This would be true for me but Blu-Ray players are cheap, I never buy media and it’s only like $2 more a month more to be on the Netflix Blu-Ray plan. So the difference in price for me is negligible.
You need to buy blu-ray disks if you want to watch in 3D at home, so there’s that in their favour.
I’m going to venture something here- maybe they’re not talking about letterboxed 4:3 content, or zoom-to-fill stuff.
I bet they’re talking about old NTSC content that’s been upconverted(or whatever the term is) and then broadcast on an HD channel. Like if HBO decided to show old Sopranos episodes on their HD channels, or for that matter, if you watch DVD content on a HD tv. You’ll have the entire screen filled without any letterboxing, but the actual content is still standard definition
You kind of have to see the two versions side-by-side or in close temporal proximity to each other to realize what you’re missing in some cases, especially if it’s a long-running series that flipped to recording in HD somewhere in the production run.
True, I was meaning content originally recorded on video like TV series and documentaries created for television.
That hasn’t been my experience (my wife is a chronic watcher of 4:3 content on the SD network channels) but I’m not in everyone’s living room.
Or am I?