Does the average consumer not see the Blu-ray advantage?*

I mentioned to my dad (62) today - "Hey dad, thinking about going HD at all?"

"HD? Whats that? He said.

 

check this out ...

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html

 

They made some errors, such as spelling "noticeable" incorrectly, which makes me wonder how accurate their graph is.

 

If you're gonna sit 15 feet away, 60" wouldn't be too big. I sit about 10 feet from my 58". I'd want it bigger if I was gonna sit farther back. When my 58" dies or withers I'm gonna move the seats back and get a PJ and screen somewhere between 80" - 120". That's always been the plan. I have every cable I'll need but HDMI run already. It didn't exist in my founding year.

You sure could move your seating forward to limit the upward scale and price of your TV. At 50", sitting in the 8-12' range might be OK. Farther away is gonna seem like watching TV and closer up is gonna seem more like the movies, know what I mean vern.

You might wrangle a bigger TV if ya let the spouse redo some furniture. That could get purr-dy expen$ive though but could be the key to spouse approve-all....

 

Well of course they brought it out to make a profit. That goes without saying. They can even resell old stuff again remastered properly this time. The point here is that many older things look and sound a whole lot better and from my experience all new things look and sound better. To illustrate to people I put the ZZ Top DVD on my Oppo and upscale it to 1080p via HDMI to my receiver. I then put the BD of the same thing on. I can go from one to the other with the push of one button on my receiver and it takes a matter of seconds for the handshake to occur. So the comparison is virtually realtime. I then choose the same track on both and make sure that one of them is a few seconds ahead of the other. That way when I switch back and forth we are in the same spot on both the players. I have done this for 2 people so far and both say there is a huge difference. You can see it immediately. Before I had BD I thought that the ZZ Top concert was one of the best on SD. I couldn't imagine it being much better. And that was using the Oppo as well and the same display. The only thing that changed since then was the addition of the receiver and the BD player. The sound is also better but in the case of the ZZ Top DVD, there is so much reverb that it isn't a good test from that standpoint.

 

I'm 55. I know more than my kids about this stuff. My 22 year old son works in Electronics in Walmart and he asks me questions that his customers asked that he couldn't answer. My mother is aware of HD. In fact she has an HD TV and a BD player and a HT that plays SACD and DVD-Audio. She is 92.

 

That seems like a perfectly reasonable approach from someone with 10K posts that all have absolutely perfect spelling ... but I can't make that claim ... So by all means, check the assumptions and the math and alternative information and charts/graphs as I was only offering that as a possible guideline, not the "last word" on the topic.

 

It's the chart Sound & Vision use. You have to forget everything you have learned about CRT when you are watching HD but even more so 1080p on plasma, LCD. ect.

 

Nope. Not a sports fan and wouldn't watch a corporate sport if it was the only thing on TV. Whiney cry babies that make far too much money doing something they love to do. No one deserves that kind of money, thusly in my own microcosmic universe, sports don't exist.

I guess I'm just not a person that's into gadgets. I do not own a cell phone, nor will I ever. I don't need a phone that can take pictures, surf the internet, make toast, and whatever else. I see no need to buy the latest technology even if it is a step up from the last. I'm content to watch a DVD on a 26" picture tube. I don't need to feel that I'm part of the action or in the film itself.

 

I guess I'm just not a person that's into gadgets.[/QUOTE}

Like a computer?

 

Computers are a necessary evil, and there are many advantages to them and applications for them. I quite like my computer. Other technologies... not so much.

 

That chart is not totally correct...I have a 37" Lcd and by using their chart, it says that SD will look essentially the same as HD on my set at 12'.....totally wrong, as I find a very noticable difference at OVER 12" and up to about 18' or so.....im not sure HOW they figure this stuff??? IM sure to get the TOTAL every line of resolution difference...12" may be true, but saying at 12' it looks the SAME whether in SD or HD is TOTALLY wrong....so I dont think that chart is very meaningful....

 

Not being rude or disrestpectful at all, but then WHY are you in the Steve Hoffman forums?? I thought at least most of us in here have a minor interest sound reproduction or music or video at the minimum. NOT saying its a requirement, but you seem against technology or against making profits on technology, so honestly Id say you are probably not what is considered the average consumer.

 

Oh, the irony...

My folks went out at the weekend to an electrical department store to look at new 40" TV's. They had already done some research beforehand so knew the model they were after (a samsung). It turned out that, in store, they are throwing in a blu ray player with it, 'free'! So, they went ahead and ordered it (they had none in stock).

The irony is, there are 0 titles out at the moment in blu ray that they are interested in (like me, neither are big movie watchers). Still, my dad likes Jane Seymour, so maybe I'll buy him 'Live and Let Die'. Then I can compare it to my Ultimate Edition DVD!

 

As I said, I offered it only as a guideline -- and as with any such guideline there are assumptions involved ...

I think you might have misunderstood the chart in the sense that it addresses primarily the known physical limitations of the human eye to discern resolution differences ... not that there would be no difference between watching a DVD (SD) and BD (HD) of the same title --- or even broadcast SD or HD --- because you don't know how well mastered the particular title might be in either DVD or BD or how good the SD or HD broadcast signals might be, in visual qualities other than resolution alone.

Also, the chart only deals with the matter of resolution whereas some of the ways in which (in particular) BD is superior to DVD has to do with its elimination of macroblocking inherent to DVD (and more problematic for some decoders than others) and other forms of video "noise" that often affect DVD.

The assumptions also include the concept of visual acuity of an "average" level, not accounting for individual variations in visual acuity where one person has better and the other has worse than "average".


I think the chart is meaningful in the way it helps to cut through some marketing blather and makes people aware of the fact that there are more factors than resolution alone that should be considered when making the decision to buy a HDTV. That there is a relationship among screen size, resolution and expected viewing distance (and your own visula acuity of course!) that could very well mean that you don't have to spend extra money for something you'll see no genuine benefit from. But of course, if money is no object then the decison making process might be different than it would be if on a budget.

 

Expanding on what IIRC IORR said above, the chart is best understood like this:

If you are watching a 720p HD broadcast on a 37" screen at 15 feet, it will look about the same if you take that exact same broadcast and downcovert (display) it at 480p resolution on the same TV. The extra detail is not perceptable to the eye at the distance/sizes described in the charts. It's just a limitation of 20/20 human vision.

 

Didnt mean to say it was totally wrong, but I think they are being a bit pessimistic on the distances. I wear glasses and have perfect corrected eyesight with them, but just think its off a few feet or so at least with how my set up measures. I DONT have a top notch TV at all, or anything. Perhaps with my glasses I DO have better than average eyesight and maybe they are being a bit pessimistic for the viewing distances. Without my glasses, the distance becomes not 12 like they say, nor about 15 like I see with glasses, but a lowly uh....uh.....6 feet approx, so yes eyesight is the MAJOR factor in this chart obviously.

 

Yeah I see what you mean, im just wondering if they are using actual video footage or static resolution images or what to determine this. So I guess the resolution is just a PART of why HD looks so good obviously.

 

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-HeMgRlNvmon/learn/learningcenter/home/tv_faq.html

http://myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html

http://www.thehighdefinitionstore.com/tv/tv-viewing-distance-72.html

http://www.cnet.com/1990-7874_1-5108580-2.html

 

Prices are starting to drop on players. Sears is selling the Sharp Aquos Blu-Ray player for $179. Maybe between that and the amount of commercials that are being run on TV touting Blu more people will start buying.

 

They need to drop the movie prices as well to around $20 imho, but this is a great start.

Another plus is that my local Blockbuster has lots of titles for rent.

 

I was just at my local BB where they were showing Wall-E on BlueRay. I couldn't tell the resolution of the smallish monitor but I was blown away by the crispness of the picture. It was like looking out a window rather than at a recorded image.

I really want to get an HDTV and a BR this year but the current economy severely curtails my disposable income. However this has me staring to compromise my goal somewhat as I am starting to consider the consumer line of plasma sets rather than the videophile (Kuro) models. The PS3 plays BR but I'm not sure if it can take advantage of the newest itteration of goodies. Also, I'm unsure if it upsamples regular dvds.

If the market would just help me out a little bit, I'd get a new A/V receiver with hdmi, BR and a new monitor by Superbowl time.

 

They need to drop the prices to around $15 before people will really respond. With DVDs priced well below $20 most of the time on new-release day, Blu-ray is still going to look too expensive. Price DVD and BD the same and they'll start seeing some action. When people are apathetic toward a new technology like they are with BD, they aren't going to jump at just a minor price drop. They have to be given an the "why not" opportunity, and equal pricing is it. I don't see them working very hard to cut the prices to "must have" levels, however. They're just knocking the players down to the point where they will sell, or pairing it with other things, which will artificially inflate the numbers to make it look like BD has saturated the market after Christmas when in fact there are simply a bunch of BD players still playing DVDs. And I highly doubt the economy is going to be helping things - people are going to be even more reluctant than ever to start replacing their old DVDs with BD, and will be looking to cut corners on the future discs they do opt to buy. I don't see a bright future for BD, sorry guys. A combination of bad timing, technology-upgrade burnout, and not enough bang for the buck.

 

Blu-ray has plenty of bang! The bucks being asked for software is weighing it down like cement overshoes....

 

One step at a time. BR Player prices are finally reaching affordable prices (below $200). That's well below the $600 to $1000 these players commanded when first introduced.

Yeah, the software (movies) is still too expensive and this should be the next hurdle. But my guess is that the 'industry' assumes Blu-ray will prevail and that's why prices aren't dropping as fast as we would like. I don't think anyone at any studio is thinking to themselves "we need to drop movie prices so we can get market penetration". I suspect they're looking at it like Blu-ray is a better product and it costs more to manufacture than DVD's, so naturally everyone should expect to pay more. Especially now that there is no competing format... (not saying I agree with this or want this). I do think that the future of BD could be guaranteed with more competitive pricing though...

I know this has been said about 100,000 times already, but the "bang for the buck" is the picture!!! And isn't this really what it SHOULD be about? Seriously, it shouldn't be about extra's, BD Live (wtf is this anyway?), or on-line download crapolla!