matrixrok9

Wow, shot 6's comparison is impressive. Check out the building/shrine.

Qui Gon Jim

The increases in detail are not limited to one frame. Of course a fast paced action film will look better, even in motion. In fact, I think that fast paced pictures will benefit most from the upgrade in resolution.

Dead

Did anyone else notice that the images in the links to Ananad are NOT exactly the same on the left and right?

An example would be, on the image of the building, the towers on the left align almost exactly with a horizontal ledge... but, on the right, we see the tower continuing above the ledge. At the center bottom of the same image, there is a flower directly above the "Pioneer" logon on the image on the right, but it is missing (actually moved) in the image on the left.

Anyone know why this might be?

Deftones

Maybe hard to stop the frame at the exact same spot both times?

Dead

Yup, shots two and nine also have some details that pop out in the HD version. Some of the others don't show the difference nearly as much though.

Easy

The improvements I see are small things; the texture of a map, stones on a bridge, lines on a face. While I can pick them out in this A/B comparison of screenshots, I remain unconvinced they will have the same impact in a fast paced movie where they are on the screen for a very short time. Eventually, I'll see an A/B comparison of an actual movie... I'll decide then.
Of course, none of that matters to me if they don't do HD over component. I have seen absolutely nothing that would convince me to throw out my analog HDTV and buy new equipment.

kitkat

I actually think the detail might be more noticeable when the images are moving.

I recently got a secondhand 36" Wega that does a vertical squeeze when it receives a 16:9 signal. I was testing it out with my DVD player on various paused frames (coincidentally from LOTR), switching the player's output back & forth from 4:3 to 16:9. I decided that I could see a small, but definite increase in PQ, but when I started actually watching whole scenes - as opposed to single frames - I was blown away by how much better the 16:9 squeezed image looked. I fully expect to be blown away by Blu-ray/HD when the time comes.

Spiky

Sorry, those DVD shots don't look like what I see at home. Possibly because they are upsampled via bicubic in Photoshop. This is not a good comparison. You'd really have to do it on your own equipment to see what you will see.

No doubt HD is better, and no doubt I will be getting LOTR on such a disc once available to me. But the fact is that I can read all the words on the map (shot 1) at home with my DVD from my normal sitting position and my 720p HDTV, you can't in the full size DVD screenshot posted there.

Although the explanation is confusing. I don't know if he is using the original 480 DVD res or upsampled. First it says DVD are upsampled, but then says the HD version is downsampled?

DreamWeaver88

Yeah, you'll have to compare them yourself. I don't believe any of these side by side or mouseover comparisons. On the Mouseover ones, the regular DVD images look like he added brightness and decreased the sharpness and the HD ones are probably at optimal settings, just to make it look dramatic.

Hell, I could get still shots of a DVD movie with bad picture settings, then adjust the picture to where it should be and say they're DVD Vs. HD-DVD pictures and people would probably believe it.

DW

skiblet

WOW !!! If this isnt a pants-crapping difference to you, then you need to have your eyes checked ASAP. MAKE SURE YOU ARE ACTUALLY CLICKING ON THE FULL SIZE IMAGE TO SEE THE FULL RES BEFORE/AFTER. The difference is

As soon as i looked at those before / after shots i just threw my arms up inthe air and said, "ill take it. how much does it cost". I do wonder though if his image capture technique is presenting the most accurate representation of the DVD quality. I mean the DVD looks blurry compared to the HD-DVD !!

Adam Tyner

That's just an HD broadcast of some sort too. Theoretically, HD-DVD/Blu-Ray should be able to offer a higher quality presentation.

matome

Pretty impressive pics.

Spiky

Read my last post. No screenshot can tell you what you will actually see, and CERTAINLY not photos. And all the comparisons linked in this forum this week have clearly been faulty.

Edit for more:
I'd say that if I had a Qualia 004 or Sony G90 running in 1080p mode with a top BD player using a 1080p-mastered disc compared to a top DVD player of the same flick, the difference ought to be pretty obvious. But I don't have $30K to check that out right now, and the BD disc and player don't actually exist for consumer use yet, anyway.

It's CES, everybody likes going nuts over the shiny new stuff. But it isn't really that big a deal this week.

jmj713

I don't recall the DVD looking that blurry.

paulringodaman

Is it just me or do all these pics of HDDVD vs. SDVD make the DVD look as bad as possible as if they are trying to sabotage how it looks???

digitalfreaknyc

Maybe you should do a check yourself. Those are accurate.

I have an HD version of Blade Runner.

Want me to do the same sort of comparison?

Give it up.

awmurray

I think he may have been referring to pictures such as these:

Picture Quality of Blu-Ray

which obviously are setup to cripple SDVD. The only thing that picture may show is that Pioneer had a manufacturing defect that they've corrected for the Blu-Ray launch.

digitalfreaknyc

I believe he was referring to the LOTR comparison shots that most of this thread is about.

paulringodaman

Thanks for telling me my opinion, I really needed you to do that.

I am referring mostly to those Blu-Ray (expo?) shots and these LOTR. I said in another post in this thread that it does look a lot better. But it also appears to be very very bright as if there is a bias to HDDVD. I'd expect both discs to at least have the same brightness so we could have a better comparison.

sparks

Yeah, I just had my Mit 65711 HDRP TV professionally calibrated (big bucks)and OTA HD looks great and my 480p DVD's look great.

It's not that big of a leap for me for me neither between the PQ of both formats. There's 20+ million of us, and as you say, aren't going to throw out our sets. I'm really hoping some small company will come out with that HDMI to component connection for us.

candyrocket786

I do wonder what kind of setup/settings they used for the SDVD.... because I know my setup doesn't look that bad.

Michael Corvin

Looks like both are running off the Blu-Ray machine. Maybe the picture quality is sub-par when playing standard DVDs versus a dedicated standard DVD player?

awmurray

If that is true then I have to modify my previous statement to read that Pioneer currently has a manufacturing defect that they need to correct.

NEUMANN

jesus christ, i can not believe you guys are looking at web shots to figure out if dvd looks as good as hddvd or bluray,anyone that is getting hd over the air or cable,dish ect. knows the diffrence is night and day