Blu-Ray on High Definition Native 1280x720 Pixels?

Question

I have a Panasonic PT-AE700U Projector with a 120" diagonal screen. I am considering purchasing the Sony Blu-Ray Player but my projector is Native 1280x720 Pixels. It will support 1920x1080 Pixels as its Maximum Display. Will I get better picture quality than my current DVD Player as the Blu-Ray Player will have to Upsample the image?

Answer 1

Your projector can handle 720P / 1080i based on the info you've provided.

Blu-Ray takes full advantage of 1080P (your projector will have a scrambled picture with this setting, but it will put out the 1080i image or a downgraded 720P image if your Blu-Ray player supports that option).

Your projector will be able to play Blu-Ray and it will look great, but it won't take full advantage of full Blu-Ray imagery (1080P)

You will get a better picture than a standard DVD player with the new Blu-Ray as a standard DVD player usually only goes up to a 480P resolution.

A general rule of HDTV is that you won't really notice a difference in different HD formats (1080i. 480P, 720P, 1080P) unless you have a really BIG TV (which you have at 120" projection) and truly awesome source (Blu-Ray, which you also have) but your projection unit only provides for 1080i and up to 720P - which will make a difference on that big of a screen.

h**l, I have only a 55" HD1080 Mitsubishi as my main HDTV - and I notice a difference between 1080i and 1080P - so this will be noticed much more on a screen that's more than twice the size that I have!

The simple answer is Yes - you'll have a better picture with the Blu-Ray in relation to a regular DVD player, but it won't be the best picture possible that could be brought by the Blu-Ray player because your projector doesn't offer the full 1080P option.

End result: You'll be OK... for "Now".

Enjoy your HDTV and I hope that I've helped a little with this info. :D

Answer 2

I would guess the picture quality should be just fine because the projector is probably able to reset the resolution each time you start up a device.

And yes, you will get a much better picture quality using blurays.

Answer 3

You will get a much better picture from blu-ray.  The blu-ray will not "upsample" the image.  The image is 1920x1080 on the BR disc, and the player will output that as either 720p or 1080i, both of which your projector will accept.  You can work two ways:

1) set the BR player to 720p to match your projector; the BR player does the scaling

2) set the BR player to 1080i; the projector does the scaling.

So it depends on which does a better job of converting 1080 to 720.  it is easy to try it both ways, so pick whichever looks better.  (My guess is that you won't see the difference, but if there is any, the BR player scaling is probably better only because it is more recent in design.)