Question for a blu-ray & upconverter dvd player EXPERT...?

Question

I work in the elec. dept @ walmart, been there for 4 years, so I know alot of my stuff. But last night (yep, 3rd shift..blah) my manager came to me w/a puzzling ?. Our fact tags for the blu-ray players and the upconverters say the same thing "upconverts basic dvds to 1080p."With that said, if 1080p is the highest you can go right now, then why spend $400 on the blu-ray, and $30 on the dvds, when you can spend $50 on an upconverter and use your existing dvds to get the same picture? Since the blu-ray upconverts to 1080p, with basic dvds, what is the point in buying the blu-ray discs, since you can't go any higher right now?the upconverters boost to 1080p, but after filtering & distorting, drops it back down to around 720p, which player is the most deceiving, and will consumers ever catch on?This is just for the basic picture quality, not disc special features, online capabilities, etc.I know the picture quality won't be identical, but how do I explain this to my customers?

Answer 1

A regular dvd with upconversion will not look nearly as good as a bluray. The regular dvd takes a 480p signal and electronically changes it to a 1080p signal. In that process, there are millions of "guesses" that the electronics use. This makes for lots of artifacts (jaggy picture, rough edges, etc.). The bluray disc has all the info and doesn't do any electronic conversion (well, if you have a 720p tv it will down convert but that's much better than up-conversion).

You can honestly tell your customers that the bluray will have a considerably better picture than the regular dvd upconverted. Now, a bluray player playing a regular dvd will have the same problems as an upconverted regular dvd but that's the point in buying/renting bluray discs.