{"id":845,"date":"2006-11-19T23:49:44","date_gmt":"2006-11-19T12:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=845"},"modified":"2010-02-15T07:21:27","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T20:21:27","slug":"so-is-blu-ray-really-any-better-than-dvd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=845","title":{"rendered":"So, is Blu-ray really any better than DVD?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img src=\"http:\/\/www.hifi-writer.com\/blog\/graphics\/bd-dvd-kinghtstale.jpg\" alt=\"'A Knight's Tale': Top is DVD, Buttom is Blu-ray\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"3\" align=\"right\" \/> Well, judging by the detail of the pictures shown to the right, it most certainly looks like Blu-ray is much better than DVD. The discs concerned are the Region 4 DVD of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0183790\/\">A Knight&#8217;s Tale<\/a><\/em> and the Blu-ray version thereof. The top picture is, of course, the DVD, with a close detail of a scene around 38:01 into the movie (it&#8217;s a little later with the Blu-ray version since this operates at 60 hertz and, therefore, the timing is accurate).<\/p>\n<p>In both cases the picture was paused. I had the DVD player, a Denon DVD-S52, set to &#8216;Frame&#8217; for its still mode to ensure that it wasn&#8217;t halving the vertical picture resolution when it was paused (DVD players do this if they think that the picture is interlaced, and since almost all PAL discs are incorrectly flagged &#8216;interlaced&#8217;, they do just that). The Blu-ray player was the Panasonic DMP-BD10. In both cases, the player was connected to the projector with a HDMI cable. The output of the Blu-ray player was 1080p, while that of the DVD player was 576p.<\/p>\n<p>Hah, gotcha, you may say. If the DVD player was scaling up to 1080p, then the picture quality would be better. But I&#8217;m afraid not. I initially used the new Denon DVD-2930 for the DVD shot, with its output set to 1080p via HDMI. But this produced an even softer, less detailed image than the Panasonic DVD player. The reason I switched was that I had intended to ensure that the Denon was in frame still mode, but couldn&#8217;t find an option in its setup menu for that. Thus the swap.<\/p>\n<p>The projector was the new Panasonic PT-AE1000E, a 1,920 by 1,080 LCD projector which retails for $AUS7,699. That&#8217;s a fine projector indeed.<\/p>\n<p>I took the photos with my new Pentax K100D digital SLR, tripod mounted, using a remote shutter release. The exposure was around a tenth of a second.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, judging by the detail of the pictures shown to the right, it most certainly looks like Blu-ray is much better than DVD. The discs concerned are the Region 4 DVD of A Knight&#8217;s Tale and the Blu-ray version thereof. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=845\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,16,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":846,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions\/846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}