Home Cinema HD Upscaling. Is there much point in buying a HD-DVD player?

Question

Home Cinema HD Upscaling. Is there much point in buying a HD-DVD player?

Answer 1

Don't worry SD DVDs will be around for quite awhile. The newer better DVD players upconvert SD discs to near HD quality, the best in my opinion is the Oppo brand, based on their Faroudja chip set. So you do not have the guess who will win the format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

As far as quality both of these newer formats output HD signal, meaning 720p, 1080i or 1080p. As such you will not notice much diff in viewing. There are other differences between Blu-Ray and D-DVD to be knowledgeable of, however, not including costs that I won't go into and just answer your question.

A standard DVD player, without upscaling, can output video resolution at 720x480 (480i).

Upscaling is a process that mathematically matches the pixel count of the output of the DVD signal to the physical pixel count on an HDTV, which is typically 1280x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080i - and, some cases, 1080p).

To get the full impact of true high definition viewing from a disc format, you need to have either a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player connected to an HDTV via an HDMI connection and be viewing actual Blu-ray or HD-DVD disc content.

Answer 2

upscaling is never as good as Blu-ray or HD-DVD, or even as good as HD

but if you do not have a HDTV TV then it doesnt matter

plus multi channel sound on the Blu-ray and HD-DVD is amazing