Can you notice the difference between DVDs upconverted to 1080p and Blu-Rays at 1080p?

Answer 1

Yes. You will see a difference in pic quality when watching a true blu-ray vs. a normal up-convert

Answer 2

The other answers are not necessarily correct. Under the right conditions, certainly. BUT it depends what you watch on, and from how far away!

The picture output from a Blu-Ray disk/player will be sharper than even the best upconverting DVD player, BUT -- assuming comparison against a GOOD upconverting player (or a display (1080p HDTV or projector) with good upscaling) -- unless you connect (and ONLY IF using an HDMI cable) to a 1080p display larger than about 40" AND view from closer than about 6ft you won't see any appreciable difference.

See the article at the link. Near the end (after Table 2) it says "it would be virtually impossible to distinguish between a 42" 720p display and 42" 1080p at distances of about six feet or more." While this is really exploring the realities of 1080p, human perception and image resolution it is relevant to your question.

I've frequently seen stores "demonstrating" Blu-Ray or HD DVD on 30"-37" LCD monitors and the picture didn't look any different than normal DVD. Dumb!

Answer 3

regardless of what anyone will tell you, it is completely clear that 1080p upconverted DVD's do not look as good as blu-ray DVD's recorded in 1080p. The reason for this lies in the method that DVD players employ to upconvert. they take pixels of 480p and reproduce them around in a small area so that they occupy a number of 1080 size pixels to take the same area, but the shape is slightly modified and the color texture improved, the image is not as sharp due to this reproduction of pixels.

Answer 4

the difference remains drastic. rem the dvds are recorded on a 9.7 gig disc and thats if its a dual layer. and bluerays are recorded on a 50 gig dvd. which was recorded in 1080p. the upconvert feature fills in the pixels from the 480p that the dvds are recorded in. simply what your doing is streatching the image in a slightly better way. i.e. if you download low quality video file and try to streatch it to full screen on a lap top it will look worse the bigger it gets, so if you want the better quality ur gonna have to dl the high quality to have the whole screen filled. so save the money skip the upconvert and just wait it out till blue ray players drop in price or buy open box. alot of the time people return the blue rays for 2 main reasons 1 they load slow and 2 they don't wana spend the money on the hdmi cable wich can cost them 40$ of 80$ for a monster cable

Answer 5

Yes
The Blu-Ray picture should be much sharper and with more detail.