06-26-07: Leedistad
Not to be negative, but I've sat through a lot of demos of both formats, and have yet to be wowed by any of the content beyond what I've seen done by good DVD-players that upconvert 480p content...
I have a 720p/1080i RP LCD 55" Hitachi display I've been viewing for 1-1/2 years. This past Spring I experienced a noticeable upgrade by getting a cable/DVR box with HDMI input to the TV. About 3 weeks ago I also added Toshiba's entry-level HD DVD player.
My observations so far? HD programming is all over the map. Some of it has been phoned in, some of it is pretty good, and some of it is stunning. At the bad end is the cable broadcast of "Da Vinci Code." It's in 16:9 aspect ratio, but that's about it. I've seen better resolution on upconverted standard DVDs. No kidding. I wonder if that's what the Blu-ray looks like?
In cable, however, one of the best sources I've seen is the UHD channel--Universal Studios' HD. It's a 1080i channel and some of the films that come over it look great--far better than upconverted DVD.
With my own HD DVD machine, the best disks definitely look better than cable HDTV because--even though the resolution is the same 1080i max--with the faster transfer rate the picture looks sharper because fast motion does not produce pixelation. This weekend I watched the HD DVD reissue of Spartacus. Although it wasn't the sharpest image I've seen, that is mostly attributable to the source, because I could actually see the film grain consistently throughout the movie.
Finally, I got a taste of the future at a Best Buy display of a Sony 1080p Blu-ray demo disk playing into a Sony 1080p LCD Bravia direct view screen. I had to get within 14" of the screen to see dots or picture elements at all. Anything beyond that looked continguous and organic. Granted, this was a demo disk, tweaked to bring out the best in the signal chain, and some of Sony's own Blu-ray releases won't approach it in sharpness, texture, or color resolution, but it *is* indicative of the potential of the medium.
This demo elevated the paradigm. HD DVD can also do 1080p so that format can probably equal what I saw. What I saw was a picture quality that in sharpness, motion, color saturation, color gradation, and most of all, texture, exceeded anything I've seen at home or in a theater. Before seeing this demo, I'd only hoped for home theater to equal the picture experience in a good theater.
It had never occurred to me that it could exceed it.
