ABC-HDTV showed Gladiator last night and it looked great, but I was wondering how much better than DVD.

After the show was over I popped in the DVD and looked at the sceens of the movie:
1. HD had clearer picture in the details in peoples clothes, faces, hair and the general background of the movie.
2. The sunset after the battle at the end of the movie looked clearer and more colorful.
3. I was paying close attention to the HD sound, but the DVD sound seemed to be crisper and to have more power than the HD broadcast.


Since I have had some time over the past 3 or 4 days to watch some true HD movies/shows, my DVD collections does not seems as cutting edge as it used to. I used to hate watching anything on TV because I knew that it would look better on DVD. Now, if I know a movie is coming on HDTV broadcast I will make the time to watch it, even if I already have it on DVD.

Anyone else having the same experience with HDTV Broadcast and their DVD collection?

but the hd image of gladiator is cropped and the movie is horribly edited.

Exactly. DVD viewing is far superior for these reasons. Plus, a DVD can be paused, you can jump to any scene, the sound is better, and there are no commercials.

ding ding ding.

I refuse to watch movies I own on DVD on television. I'd rather see a poorer image than edits and commercial breaks.

Today I just got an HD-PVR receiver from my cable company (local stations and HBO in HD). I'm going to check out differences myself when HBO runs movies I have on DVD. No sure what to expect, but I caught a few minutes of a few movies on HBO thus far and was pleasantly surprised with the high quality picture via DVI port.

I can definetly tell the difference between the two, but not to the point where it makes me think my dvd collection is no more valuable to watch.

My wife and I noticed the difference in the editing, but we did not look for the cropping.

ABC aired "A Bug's Life" a few weeks back and I thought it looked fantastic in HDTV. Not sure if it was cropped too, but it looked far sharper than DVD.

Damn, they cropped it?! I saw Gladiator in HD on ABC over a year ago and it was in 2.35:1(and yes, it did look superior to the DVD). It's really frustrating that the networks are going down the same path as HBO and cropping everything to fit into the 1.78:1 frame.