Can you watch a High Definition DVD on a normal DVD player?

Question

I do have a HD ready television.

Answer 1

If by high-definition DVD you are talking about the HD-DVD standard, then you need an HD-DVD player. I should tell you that there is another high-definition standard called blu-ray. They are competing technologies that both require new players and they are not compatible with each other. I would wait a couple years until these standards are much, much cheaper. In the mean time, you shouldn't worry about buying DVDs since the new players will play DVDs just fine so when you get a new player, you won't need to worry about re-buying your current DVDs.

Answer 2

Hello,

YES! it all gets rather confusing I'm affraid, so let me see if I can untangle this abit.

**The DVD movie itself is filmed from day1 specifically for high definition & produced in high definition, & then published & printed to disk as HD too. (so your DVD disk contains a HD movie).

**The problem I think in your case is that NOT all DVD players (or player recorders) were made for high definition play back. When the first reasonably affordable DVD players were available they were NOT high definition ready (pre flat panel TV's).

Its only in the last 12months really that DVD players have been made to be HD ready, to match the growth in sales of HD TV's (pre digital switch over).

**So your DVD player has to be capable of playing back (reading from the high def DVD disk) a high definition movie/film. If your player is of the pre HD ready type of DVD player it may NOT be capable of playing it back at HD, which means you wont get the extra HD quality of images sadly.

**To make life even more complex there are two competing HD formats on the market (just like the VHS verses BetaMax). The first one is BlueRay disks & players & the other is just HD but make no mistake they are different systems & they cannot be mixed or matched either. BlueRay has been heavily backed by Hollywood film studios though, & blue ray is very high quality but costs more to produce and hence movies on blueray disks also cost much more too.

**Along with your HD TV you will need to have the correct sockets & plugs inorder to connect the DVD player, in other words it all has to have the specific cables & connectors before the DVD player can talk to the HD TV and vica versa.

IR

Answer 3

no if the dvd player is not hd-dvd and the dvd is not hd-dvd compatible to the dvd player. which means you will have to go out and dish out the couple of hundred dollars to get the hd experience but truly if u like games and are into hd things get a ps3 it has blu-ray which normally costs $1000 dollars. good deal though for money and plus the ps3 has internal memory and much more than the actual blu-ray player that goes for $1,000.

Answer 4

To the best of my knowledge you will need a HD-DVD player. The disc "uses the same blue-violet 405 nm laser as Blu-ray Disc uses" (according to the Wikipidia). I don't think the laser in a normal dvd player is capable of reading the more compressed information of the HD-DVD.

Answer 5

you need an hd dvd player, regular dvd players cant play those

Answer 6

no, you need a special (and very expensive at the moment) hd-dvd player.

Answer 7

no, you would need to buy a blueray dvd player or hd dvd player.

Answer 8

no