Sony reminds me of Max Baer in Cinderella Man.

Is there any advantage to 1080p60? I read this from another post:

"Movies are captured at 24 Frames-per-second, so there is no need to store them on a Hi-Def disc at anything greater than 1080p/24, it would just waste space on the disc."

Has anyone been able to do any comparisons between 1080i, 1080p, and 720p so we can see the differences?

I'm sure it would be a little difficult to do but I would like to see how much of a difference there is between the 3.

On certain types of video-based material, there could be. Not for film.

The only simple, direct comparison would have to be on a CRT projector that is capable of all 3. And then some source material in each res. I've done comparisons on my 720p monitor of various football games at both 1080i and 720p. 720p sources were silky, and 1080i were not, but they did have more apparent resolution. Watch the grass while panning for the difference between progressive and interlaced sources. I'm not talking about mistakes/artifacts, but the smoothness of progressive becomes clear. The worst problem is HDLite, downrezzing and bitstarving the signal.

I think you will find the following, in general:

1) Which res your TV outputs will actually matter less than the source, although 1080p will be preferred. So....
2) 1080i sources are the jumpiest.
3) 1080p sources are to die for.
4) 720p sources are nice, but not as much detail as the other two.
5) Assuming a decent job done in the studio/truck and no over-compression or downrezzing (other than to display on 720p), they all look fucking awesome when done well. And beat DVD fairly handily.

I just wish there was some visual comparison out I'm sure someone must have done one.

The results are going to vary from equipment to equipment. The goal is to find the "sweet spot" that works best for your display. It isn't the sort of thing you can do a screen-cap of.

None of the Best Buy stores got any of the releases today. They always had the other releases. Oh well.

I'm waiting for Firewall and Perfect Storm, but Amazon don't even show any of this week's releases. I'll pay BB premium if I "have to" (i.e. nothing else HD to watch). I'm finding it harder and harder to settle for a SD movie.

They have them. I ordered Firewall today. Search under "dvd" and they'll turn up. Sometimes it takes them a few days to add the titles to their HD list.

Firewall: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...v=glance&n=130
Perfect Storm: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...v=glance&n=130

Thanks for the links, I have them both ordered.

Bumped it because I changed it to both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

Mods: Can you please change the thread title to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray?

Thanks.

Changed.

Well today I was looking around the stores, and I stopped in both Best Buy and Circuit City on Route46 in Wayne, NJ. These two stores seem to be heavily slanted towards BD just from the setups. Best Buy had the BD movies on an endcap straight up the middle, while the HD-DVD's were above the PSP games. However even though the BD's were more noticeable on the endcap, the HD-DVD's still got front row billing next to the new release section. However there was some standing signage announcing BD's presence. The BD display was a Samsung TV hooked up to the new Samsung player. The TV was directly eye level, but, I have to say I wasn't liking what I saw of the picture. Now maybe my perception is colored by what I have heard from people critiquing the picture here, but when they were showing that watch demonstration there seemed to be a lot of shimmering around edges that I don't know if it was intentional, but didn't look good to my eyes. My friend next to me who is completely ignorant of either format said it looked off in some way.

I moved over to the HD-DVD display and was disappointed. Previously it enjoyed the same setup as the Samsung, but on a Westinghouse tv. Now, it sits crookedly atop a shitty looking wooden tv stand that is way below eye level. It is attached to an open box Sony tv. Surprisingly, I saw more people stopping to watch the Toshiba than I did the Samsung. It still looked great, and when the King Kong clip came on the set my friend remarked how clear it looked. It helped that we were just watching King Kong on standard DVD so the difference was fresh on his mind.

Heading over to Circuit City I looked around and spotted the BD on a huge rear projection tv at the rear corner of the store. It's actually a very prominent location, and again I noticed the same artifact shimmering type problems as I did over in Best Buy. My friend commented that it looked off again. I asked the salesman where I could find the HD-DVD since I couldn't locate it myself, and he said "you mean Blu-Ray?" No, I said HD-DVD. He told me they only have Blu-Ray. I overheard another salesman explaining the difference to someone buying an inexpensive dvd player and he actually sarcastically offered it to her, then scoffed and said "999 bucks. Crazy right?"

I don't remember where I saw the BD movies, but they did have HD-DVD movies all set up on an endcap. Weird since they don't even sell a player there.

I just thought I would let you guys know that HD is definitely facing an uphill battle when they have to compete in this kind of atmosphere. It sucks that the two formats can't get equal prominence in a store and have a fair faceoff.

My Best Buy also replaced their nice HD DVD setup with BD. I didn't even notice what they were showing. They had the movies stacked below it. Couldn't find the HD DVD player or movies anywhere. Mine usually has them all in stock. A big to the change.

I went into the local Best Buy today. Both BD and HD were in a separate section from the DVDs. The Samsung player was hooked up to a Samsung TV with the contrast and brightness clearly set to 100. It looked beyond awful. Blacks were a murky gray and the whole image was just blasted to hell. I saw the watchmaker demo that everyone says is so far the best any BD disc has shown, and it looked worse than any original flipper DVD. I don't blame the player, though, as it was clear the TV was completely fucked up.

HD-DVD wasn't even hooked up, but they had a nice selection of movies (at awful, awful prices) next to the player. When I called the store a few days ago the lady I spoke with said they only sold the players as a special order. Yet they had one HD-DVD player and one BD player on the floor. So I asked a salesperson if I could buy the HD-DVD player. And he said, "No, we don't have any." And I pointed at the one on the floor, the one with the price tag on it, and said, "What about that one?" And he said, "That's our display unit." And I said, "It's not hooked up to anything, what are you trying to display?" And he just said, "We can't sell that one. It's for the store." And I then asked if he could sell me a BD player, and his response was the same. So at least he didn't push BD on me.

But honestly, if all BB stores set up their BD displays like this one did, no one will buy it. I've seen VHS movies with better picture quality. Again, I don't think it's a problem with the format or the player, but with the TV.

After that, I did notice that there was an HD-DVD endcap in the DVD section, featuring the discs. No special BD endcap. On the other hand, they used to spread the HD-DVD discs through the DVD section on special slots that stuck out from the shelf, so even the endcap gave it less exposure.

I will be going to Magnolia tomorrow and see if they've got any kind of setup.

The thing I can't understand is that Toshiba, who has at a least a billion dollars riding on this along with the various studios, and they did not have specialists to come out and set up a kiosk of some sort like the XBox 360. I think that is just pure stupidity from a business and marketing standpoint. If you want to get this thing into people's hands make sure that it blows people away.

It probably stems from them trying to rush out the players before Blu-Ray but damn make sure that you get displays properly calibrated and get the images to look good.

Blu-ray looks to be no different either from what everyone is saying about its launch.

I simply can't understand the idiots at Toshiba or Samsung.

I went into Circuit City today. They have a Blue Ray set up, so I sit on the couch knowing that will bring forth the red shirts. They have King Kong on it. I ask (already knowing it isn't a BR disc) if it was a BR disc and they tell me it isn't. It looked about like you would expect an upconverted dvd to look. He tells me the BR on display is over "there," which is a demo disc running on about a 26" LCD tv. It was underwhelming.

Anyway, he asks if I am interested in getting Blue Ray. I tell him that I am but that I am a little put off by the price and the delays compared with HD-DVD. He tells me that the reason to buy the BR is because it alone does 1080p while the other only does 1080i. I ask him to show me their tvs that will display 1080p. He wasn't sure if they had any, but was going to check on that. I think they may have had 2, one of which was the tv they were using on the Blue Ray display that had King Kong on it.

I finally got a little frustrated and asked him flat out, "Why do you seem to be pushing BR when you can't even sell it to me today, nor give me a firm date on when it will be out? You can sell me the HD-DVD player today, but you seem to not want to." He finally said that the BR was what they were told to promote. I found that to be very odd. What the hell do they care so long as they make sales?

Higher profit margin on BD, plus I'm sure Sony is financially rewarding these stores for pushing BD.

I've also noticed several people mention that BB and CC employees are claiming that only BD can do 1080p, why hasn't anyone grabbed an HD disc and point to where it says "1080p transfer"?

Because it does no good to point that out when they most likely don't even know what 1080p is. They just parrot what they are told.

I find it odd that they would be using a HD DVD only title, King Kong, to promote on a BD demo setup.

I recieved an email this morning from Best Buy promoting both HD DVD and Blu-ray. They were shown side by side. The prices were not shown until you clicked on one of them. Too bad that their in store displays are not so equal.

Bad word of mouth is going to have a much bigger effect than the apparent bias at BB and CC (especially CC).

When the stores start filling up with returned BR players that will definitely eat into their profits. You can already start reading the stories of the returns to BB on avs now. And when these people return it with reasons like, "Too high price, and my HD-DVD player blows it away", the stores will take notice. You can only sell a turd once.

Don't forget, CC was pushing DIVX, too. DigitalfreakNYC sold lots of them for CC, if I remember correctly, too...

Well, lets see what Sony and Pioneer put out (whenever they FINALLY release their players)....I love my Samsung DLP tv, but they are terrible at DVD players and this poor quality BD/DVD player is not surprising to me.