imo if you have a upconvert player that does a nice job, as i do there is no need to pay big bucks for a new player
i would hold off and wait for a sale like black friday or longer for price drops
That was the point of this thread. Since I do not have a 1080p display but do have an upconvert capable DVD player, why spend the money on hi def DVDs and a new HD player. It seems that Blu Ray definitely needs the 1080p display to make it worth it, but there are some who think that a 720p display with HD DVD will provide a big jump in pic quality over my current setup which is Denon 2910>Hitachi 720p. Would just like some more input here before I go running around spending more money
Upconverting does improve image quality, but not to the level as a native higher def image. It's like saying why waste money on 24 bit recording. I can always just record 16 bit and up convert with Sound Forge or something. You then become dependent on the upconvert algorithm to accurately guess what the missing information is. Sometime is is right, sometimes not.
FWIW. I just picked up a HD-DVD player for the $100 deal they had at WalMart. It was a one day deal but I'm guessing it may show back up.
Basically in all of the reviews I have read when it comes to actual image quality between BlueRay and HD-DVD there is no difference. There are some slight capacity advantages to BR, but as of now there is no content that takes advantage of them. It is more of a driver for data storage when those drives begin to take off. HDDVD is making up some ground there though so the jury is out.
For me it was a matter of cost of playback. BR players are all still in the $400 range. Toshiba, the main HDDVD manufacturer is running a deal where you get 5 free movies by mail so basically for the cost of 5 movies, I got the player for free.
You will definelt see a image quality improvment moving from any standard DVD or upconverting player to a native HD device and content.
The 720p vs 1080i argument can be content dependent. Fast moving content can sometimes have artifacts when there is a lot of motion such as sports or action movies. The overall quality boils down to being content dependent somewhat. Either one looks much better that standard def 480i.