What's a regular DVD looked like when played on a Blueray or HD player?

Question

And what happens if you play a Blueray DVD on a HD player and visa versa? Reason I ask is I work at a electronics store and people ask. Getting complicated again, you think?

Answer 1

I'm not sure I'd agree with the above answer exactly. Here's how I'd put it.

Blu Rays and HD DVDs will only play in their respective players, not each other. So you can't play a Blu Ray in an HD DVD player. It simply won't happen.

Both will play DVDs, and the DVDs will look the same as they do now EXCEPT, almost all HD DVD and Blu Ray players will upscale DVDs if you hook them up via HDMI cable. And upconverted DVD will look better than a normal DVD, but inferior to Blu Ray or HD DVD. Essentially a program helps guess what information is missng from the DVD and tries to improve the resolution.

Where I disagee with the post above is that the TV will do this for you. Using the player to do it is the way to go. Some TVs have some improvement in them, but not that many and I'm not sure any are as good as a good upconverting player.

Answer 2

You can't play an HD DVD in a Blu-Ray and vice versa, unless you have an LG Combo player that plays both.

HD/Blu-Ray plays do play regular DVDs and users have two options
a) Set the player at 720p or 1080p and the player will scale up (upconvert the DVD movie)
b) Set the player at 480i and let their HDTV do all the scaling and upconversion . Many modern HDTVs do a far better job in upconverting than HD (or standard DVD) players.
Either way, regular DVDs should look pretty good.