What's the difference with an HD DVD Player and an HD Upconvert?

Question

Why does it matter and, should I go with HD DVD Player or Blu Ray?

Answer 1

High Def picture is considered to have 1080 lines of resolution. And an HD DVD has all 1080 lines stored on its disc, which is displayed by your TV.

An upconverting player takes a DVD, which has 480 lines of resolution, and using a mathematical algorithm, attempts to fill in the picture to reach 1080 lines of resolution. The extra detail isn't there, but the technology does its best guess approximation. The end result is a better than DVD picture quality, but worse than HD picture quality.

To get the best picture quality, you'll need either and HD DVD player or a Blu Ray player. Both are equal in quality, but Blu Ray is supported by more companies while HD DVD is cheaper. I'd tend to side with Blu Ray if I picked one, but I wouldn't buy any existing Blu Ray players outside the PS3. Current HD DVD players I would buy, and at a cheaper cost. But know that HD DVD has a lesser selection of titles than Blu Ray.

Answer 2

HD upconvert of a regular player will raise a signal up to 1080p.
it does that by filling in the missing holes. HD players will do this also if the source DVD is not HD.

an HD player doesn't fill in anything because all the info is available on the HD disk. A regular DVD player won't play these disks.

viewing both on a 1080p set will show much sharper detail with the HD dvd - assuming u have an HD disk and a regular DVD.


blue ray vs hd - jury is still out on that one.