Up-converting DVD players worth it?

[rowech]

The idea of me having 100+ DVDs and buying a BR player and to try and replace all of them sounds insane to me. So, I'm looking then at these up-coverters. Are they worth it? Do they actually make things close to HD?

[Travis]

The idea of me having 100+ DVDs and buying a BR player and to try and replace all of them sounds insane to me. So, I'm looking then at these up-coverters. Are they worth it? Do they actually make things close to HD?

A lot will depend on your setup, but in my opinion, while they improve DVD's, they still don't reach the same level as Blu-Ray's (never watched HD-DVD in person, though I'd assume similar results). That said, most BR players will upconvert as well, so depending on the price difference, you could get the best of both worlds, upconverting your currently library and if you end up preferring the look of HD over up conversion, then you can start to build in that format.

[stevew]

Buy a ps3, and then just start buying new movies from here on out on Blu Ray. Upconvert is better than standard, but not nearly as good as blu ray. A lot depends on the scaler in your tv too, better TV's can do good shit with upconverted dvds.

[DaddyTorgo]

all the DVD's I have...the stupid studios can suck my big meaty cock. There's no way i'm replacing my $4k in DVD's.

[Logan]

As Travis said, if you really don't plan on EVER going Blu-Ray, just buy yourself a cheap Toshiba A-2 and use that as your upconverting player. The cost will be pretty close to a decent upconverter. You'll have better results and you can load up on cheap HD stuff once they officially "lose."

edit to add "officially" so MBBF doesn't jump on me :).

[Travis]

As Travis said, if you really don't plan on EVER going Blu-Ray, just buy yourself a cheap Toshiba A-2 and use that as your upconverting player. The cost will be pretty close to a decent upconverter. You'll have better results and you can load up on cheap HD stuff once they officially "lose."

edit to add "officially" so MBBF doesn't jump on me :).

Sorry, I should clarify. I was trying to be relatively neutral in my first post, but my suggestion for getting a HD player would still fall in the BR camp (and more specifically a PS3 based on valuation for performance as a BR player). If for no other reason than to open up the possibility of starting a HD movie collection in the future. Assuming the current trend continue s in the HD "war" there'll be a massive sell off of HD-DVD (already started in some ways), but if you're not sold on going HD now, hard to sink the sort of money into that fire sale to make it worth going the HD-DVD player route while the product is still available.

As far as future proofing yourself, the PS3 is solid in the sense that it will be upgraded regularily to comply with BR advances as well.

[stevew]

The HDA-3 comes with 2 movies 300, bourne identity(and I think 5 free ones via mail). It's around 150. A pretty good HDupconvert is going to be around 100 anyways. Obviously not to be bought as a format solution, but pretty solid deal for an upconvert(like logan said).

[rowech]

Does the PS3 upconvert regular DVDs?

[stevew]

yes

[stevew]

Rebuying a lot of movies on blu ray is probably not an option for the financially normal ones of us, but there's no reason not to consider buying the ps3 right now and blu rays from this day forward. I bought cassette tapes for a year or two too long, now I regret that I didn't upgrade and buy cd's.

[rowech]

If the PS3 upconverts then it's a no-brainer for me....I didn't think it did.

[Shepp]

I would need to double check to be sure but I think I read in the cnet.com review of the PS3 that it did upscale DVD's as well as play Blue-Ray.

[Mr. Wednesday]

The idea of me having 100+ DVDs and buying a BR player and to try and replace all of them sounds insane to me. So, I'm looking then at these up-coverters. Are they worth it? Do they actually make things close to HD?

It depends on your TV. I would expect a TV with good scaling to do at least as well as a cheaper upscaling player. I'm not sure how the best TVs compare to the best upscaling players.

[Tigercat]

PS3s do upscale, it became possible with one of PS3s firmware fixes.

[Synovia]

The idea of me having 100+ DVDs and buying a BR player and to try and replace all of them sounds insane to me. So, I'm looking then at these up-coverters. Are they worth it? Do they actually make things close to HD?

Not really. Most large TVs have pretty good upconverters in them at this point, so unless you're topping the $150 mark for an upconverting player, you're not going to see any improvement. If you do top the $150 mark, you're better off buying something like a Toshiba HD-A3 (HD-DVD player, does a great job upconverting, 7 or so free movies) or saving up some more and buying a blu-ray player.

[Synovia]

PS3s do upscale, it became possible with one of PS3s firmware fixes.
And they do a DAMN good job of it, better than most of the sub $200 upscaling players.

[rowech]

So a couple of you are confirming that the PS3 does upscale?

[Tigercat]

So a couple of you are confirming that the PS3 does upscale?

Yes, was added as part of 1.80 firmware upgrade. Been watching old DVDs in higher resolutions since I got the PS3 last week.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9722723-1.html

[rowech]

Well....that pretty much does it for me then. Just a matter of when now.

[SackAttack]

I know my PS3 was capable of upscale from the first firmware update I applied, but I admit I didn't look to see if it could prior to that firmware application.

I just know that once everything was applied, I started poking around in the options and found an option to turn upconvert on/off.

[Tigercat]

So I am watching Lawrence of Arabia on the PS3....

Amazing.

I had no idea such an old movie could look this good on a HDTV. Of course we aren't talking about a run of the mill movie in terms of cinematography, but still, I didn't expect it to look this good with the upconvert.

[MizzouRah]

I'm not paying $400 for a blue ray player, period.

Look for the Toshiba A3 player or something similar, which run about $100. Heck, you can get an HD-DVD player with 10 free movies for about $100-$150, which will also upscale normal DVDs.

[SnDvls]

so is there a converter to play BR DVD's in a "in car" player?

if not I'm sticking with the same sucky Disney Princess movies so the kids can watch them in the car vs. BR which are worthless to me in the car.

[cartman]

so is there a converter to play BR DVD's in a "in car" player?

if not I'm sticking with the same sucky Disney Princess movies so the kids can watch them in the car vs. BR which are worthless to me in the car.

Nope, you'd have to replace your DVD player in the car with a Blu-Ray player, and I really haven't seen any mobile BR devices, but I'm sure they are coming down the pike.

There are utilities you can use to rip BR to a hard drive then re-encode so it will fit on a DVD, but it is a pretty time consuming process.

[Subby]

all the DVD's I have...the stupid studios can suck my big meaty cock. There's no way i'm replacing my $4k in DVD's.
I wonder what all those shut-ins at DVDTalk.com are doing. Some of those guys have...like...billions of movies.

[Daimyo]

there really isn't any reason to replace DVDs you already own. they look really good up-converted.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Nope, you'd have to replace your DVD player in the car with a Blu-Ray player, and I really haven't seen any mobile BR devices, but I'm sure they are coming down the pike.

There are utilities you can use to rip BR to a hard drive then re-encode so it will fit on a DVD, but it is a pretty time consuming process.

That's not totally correct. Blu-ray discs will have a standard-def version of the movie on the disc that can be transferred to a memory card. The process isn't time consuming at all, lasting no more than a couple of minutes.

You can buy portable DVD players for the car that run $150 and up that will accept memory cards. Those players should be available for as little as $100 by the upcoming holidays, which isn't much more expensive than the portable DVD players currently available. The movie can be played on any media device that accepts memory cards (video iPod, video MP3, portable and home DVD players, PS3, PSP, etc.).

In other words, you don't need a Blu-ray player in every location to watch the movie.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

there really isn't any reason to replace DVDs you already own. they look really good up-converted.

Also, HD visuals on a 6-8" monitor won't look much different (if at all) than the standard def version, hence the reason that the portable movie file included on BR discs is standard def.

[Synovia]

there really isn't any reason to replace DVDs you already own. they look really good up-converted.



It really depends on the DVD. Some of the DVDs out there are essentially just the VHS tape upscaled and copied onto a disk. With (most) blu-ray movies they've gone back to the original film masters and recopied the film.

Some films, its a drastic difference. Some stuff (like 28 days later, blair witch project, etc) were just shot with so low technology that nothing we do will make them better. Some stuff, like the bond films, were shot on 60/70mm films, and look MUCH better with a new telecine job.


If the original source is really good (and the transfer is good), the movies on blu-ray look much better. If the original source isn't good, theres not a damn thing you can do about it.

[Kodos]

I wonder if Belichuck's tapes transfer over well.

[cartman]

That's not totally correct. Blu-ray discs will have a standard-def version of the movie on the disc that can be transferred to a memory card. The process isn't time consuming at all, lasting no more than a couple of minutes.

You can buy portable DVD players for the car that run $150 and up that will accept memory cards. Those players should be available for as little as $100 by the upcoming holidays, which isn't much more expensive than the portable DVD players currently available. The movie can be played on any media device that accepts memory cards (video iPod, video MP3, portable and home DVD players, PS3, PSP, etc.).

In other words, you don't need a Blu-ray player in every location to watch the movie.

You keep mentioning "memory card" as something generic, but the docs mention "Memory Stick" which is a Sony format. I have yet to see any examples that mention Compact Flash or SD as formats this is going to work with.

[Synovia]

You keep mentioning "memory card" as something generic, but the docs mention "Memory Stick" which is a Sony format. I have yet to see any examples that mention Compact Flash or SD as formats this is going to work with.



Except for the MacWorld demonstration that didn't use a Memory Stick?


The PS3 doesn't know the difference between different memory card types. It doesn't care.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Except for the MacWorld demonstration that didn't use a Memory Stick?

The PS3 doesn't know the difference between different memory card types. It doesn't care.

Yeah, I'm not sure why cartman carries on this debate. It's a file that will work for all save formats, not just the Sony memory card. The PS3 alone has 4 memory card slots that can be used for this specific purpose and only one of them is a proprietary Sony card format. Also, the universal HDD option in the PS3 makes it perfectly clear that they aren't using the PS3 as a way to make money off of proprietary products.

[cartman]

Except for the MacWorld demonstration that didn't use a Memory Stick?


The PS3 doesn't know the difference between different memory card types. It doesn't care.

The Macworld demo showed him adding the copy to iTunes, so it could be used on an iPod or an iPhone. That is basically the same functionality announced before where you could put a copy onto a PSP or Memory Stick. The PS3 does know which port a memory format is plugged into and its format, and there can definitely be rules applied to which types of format can receive certain types of content.

[cartman]

Yeah, I'm not sure why cartman carries on this debate. It's a file that will work for all save formats, not just the Sony memory card. The PS3 alone has 4 memory card slots that can be used for this specific purpose and only one of them is a proprietary Sony card format. Also, the universal HDD option in the PS3 makes it perfectly clear that they aren't using the PS3 as a way to make money off of proprietary products.

Show me the documentation that references other media than Memory Stick, and I'll admit that it will run on any kind of memory card format. Everything I've seen references PSP/Memory Stick.

[Subby]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png

Nice. :)

[Synovia]

Show me the documentation that references other media than Memory Stick, and I'll admit that it will run on any kind of memory card format. Everything I've seen references PSP/Memory Stick.


Show me the documentation where it says it wont run on anything but memory stick. You're speculating with no evidence. Given the flexibility of EVERYTHING ELSE on the PS3, I think its much more likely that they ARE able to use other formats. They wouldn't have put sd-flash readers in the PS3 if they intended to lock that format out.

The PSP plays Mpeg-4, right? Why do you think its going to be anything but that?

[cartman]

Not sure why the PS3 is the focus of your posts. I'm talking about the "portable copy" that is slated to be included in the BR2.0 spec. The only public demonstrations of this so far include a Memory Stick/PSP demo, and the Steve Jobs putting a copy into iTunes for an video iPod/iPhone to be able to play. I'm not aware of any other demos of this upcoming feature, if there are I'm interested in hearing about them. Both of those scenarios that have been done could include DRM components. Not sure how that equates to "speculating with no evidence".

[Synovia]

Not sure why the PS3 is the focus of your posts. I'm talking about the "portable copy" that is slated to be included in the BR2.0 spec. The only public demonstrations of this so far include a Memory Stick/PSP demo, and the Steve Jobs putting a copy into iTunes for an video iPod/iPhone to be able to play. I'm not aware of any other demos of this upcoming feature, if there are I'm interested in hearing about them. Both of those scenarios that have been done include DRM components. Not sure how that equates to "speculating with no evidence".

You do realize that Sony's press release mentioned NOTHING of the PSP, or Memory stick, right? Thats just whats been put in during media coverage. The press release said "laptops and other devices". I see no reason to believe this is some sort of Memory Stick conspiracy like you seem to believe, especially once PC style drives become more common.