I have a 37" Olevia 337h.

Is it worth it to go Blu, or should I just get a really good upconverter (ie Oppo) and be done ?





My issues:
I got this 37” 720p HDTV and hooked up my DVD player to it and was underwhelmed.
I got an LG RC797T to upconvert my DVDs – they look great, however the HD TV shows I am watching really puts my upconverted DVDs to shame, and the biggest grievance I have: the RC797T upconverts 4:3 TV shows by STRETCHING THEM OUT TO FIT THE SCREEN ! ! There is no setting on the Olevia to fix this. 480p over HDMI is nice looking, but still stretched (not screen filling, but still definitely not in the correct ratio). So, I’ve been watching my TV show DVDs 480p over component. Unacceptable.

Clearly, I needed a better upconverter, so I’ve had my eyes on the Oppo 980h for some time now, and whatdoyaknow ???
For the cost of a discontinued Oppo, I can actually go Blu !
I was not expecting that.
So I wanted to run it by you experts before I go off on this new costly adventure.


Will I really see anything that extraordinary hooking up a Blu-ray player to my Olevia ??

Yes, go Blu.

I would feel a lot better recommending Blu-Ray if you had a 1080p HDTV.

And it depends how large your DVD collection is and how much you will double-dip. I have a rather large collection so my double dips are few and far between. I'm getting Blu-Rays of newer movies or movies I never got on DVD.

I have also sold a significant amount of DVDs to legitimize my Blu-Ray purchases.

You can "go blu" for ~$100 now, and your BD player can be a really good upconverter.

Go blu.

How far back are you sitting? If it's more than 7 feet back, you won't be able to get the most out of 720p. At 8-10 feet, the difference will be more subtle.

I agree with bboisvert on this, you can go Blu now for $100 and most BD players upconvert fairly well. The other thing is with a 37" 720P you won't really see a significant difference anyway,so might as well kill two birds with one stone

See my sig.

Yup. There really is no compelling reason not to go Blu if you have an HDTV. Even if you only occasionally use the BD features, at least the capability will be there.

I have seen nice players from the major CE's for ~$100. Small investment, IMO.

No. Invest in a bigger tv first.

Yes. You'll find some deals coming up on Blu-ray players and discs. And then get a bigger TV.

Unless you are planning on buying used (often at a premium), I believe Oppo has stopped manufacturing DVD players, in favor of going exclusivly Blu.

Do you watch any other HD material?

Are there films on BD that you would like to watch or own?

Do you plan on getting a larger tv with better quality anytime soon?

My answer would be no at this point.

nah....

Anyone telling you to avoid Blu-ray on a 37" display, even of marginal quality, is misleading you. Most Blu-rays will be a substantial upgrade on color space issues alone over dvds. Unless your vision is so poor that you can't distinguish between true 1080p content and upscaled dvd, going Blu-ray is the best choice now and for the future.

Why not go blu at this point? As mentioned before, prices of players are getting cheap and movie prices are coming down, too (many new releases can be found for $20 or less). I believe you'll notice a difference, even if it isn't as great of one if you had a bigger TV with 1080p. My TV isn't that big, but I notice a huge difference. If you don't want to spend money on double dipping on older titles, you can just buy newer releases and you'll still have the option to upconvert for the DVDs you already have. Then if you decide to upgrade your TV down the road, you'll already be set with a blu-ray player and some blu-ray movies. As long as you have an HDTV, from this point on, I don't see a point in buying an upconverting DVD player over a blu-ray player.

+1

I used to have a 26" TV and the difference was obvious even then.

Thanks, everyone. I think I got it figured out:

#1 Even at 720p, Blu-rays will still look worlds better than DVDs, and should be on par, or even better than, the gorgeous HD programming I am enjoying. And I can enjoy all the extra features on Blu-ray.

#2 my next TV will definitely be 1080p, so my investment in Blu-ray now won’t go to waste (in fact, I predict that Blu-ray will be the final format of physical media we will see – any Blu-rays I buy now will never be replaced by yet another media)

#3 I am inevitably going Blu someday anyway, so making the switch now will prevent the double dips of current and future titles.



Now on to the next questions:
I am concerned about getting a player that will not play Blu-rays.
I should get a profile 2.0 and update the firmware immediately out of the box, yes ?

As Mac would say, "Absolutley."

There's no "should" about this. If you can see the difference between your "upconverted" DVDs and true HD programming (either via OTA or Cable/Sat), you'll see much more with Blu.

At this point, yes, get a profile 2.0 player. Personally, I could do without BD-Live, but by now it's so common on players that you might as well get it. And, yes, update the firmware when you get it.

BD-Live is useless. 100% agree. However, some of the players now have YouTube, NetFlix etc. that make the 2.0 feature actually useful. The content on discs, so far, has been disappointing. Besides a few exceptions the whole service just seems like a giant portal for advertisements and trailers.

I am not as concerned about BD-Live, NetFlix or YouTube as I am about having a player that works.

I keep reading horror stories about players that can't read the latest Blu-rays.

I suppose if I get a 2009 model from a real company with a UBS port and LAN connectivity, I will be able to continuously update the firmware ?

I'd hate to have to buy a new player to be able to play the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern Blu-ray, for example.

Maybe for you, but I'd say that it is debatable....for the most part, yeah, it is just the trailers and advertisements as you mention, but there are some discs that have actually had some decent downloadable material, like Transformers, T2, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and the Star Trek TOS seasons....

I did say exceptions.

Though, in Sarah Marshall's case some of that stuff was on the DVD (oops) and the other few things (few minutes of SD content) could have easily been tossed onto the Blu-ray but Universal wanted to force people to login to BD-Live.

Transformers stuff probably could have been added to the spacious 50GB Blu-ray disc as well since that content was on the HD DVD internet service. And the other stuff added a year later was promotional Transformers 2 fluff that could have (maybe it is?) been on the Blu-ray. Not sure on the Trek stuff though since I don't own them.

For the most part, BD-Live consists of Trailers, Advertisements and a few snippets of stuff that could have easily been included on the Blu-ray disc. I think Disney abandoned their BD-Live Chat/E-mail features as I didn't see it on Up or another recent kids release (Snow White?). All that stuff was prominent on Wall-E and Sleeping Beauty last year and I was chatted up on it by PR people on how they were moving full-steam ahead with BD-Live.

They need drop ALL Registrations and make the portal not feel like a Geocities page from 1998. Make a universal login that works for all these portals. I've been through well over a hundred BD-Live titles and can't really think of anything that made me go 'wow'. I missed TDK chat, but that appears to have been a one time thing.