TV & Home Theater

[hil0803]

Hello. I want to buy my boyfriend a Blu Ray player. He has a Samsung 1080i television that is maybe 2 years old. The Blu Ray player I am looking to purchase is a 1080p. A friend of mine told me not to buy the player becuase the picture quality will be the same as watching a regular dvd. What do you think?

[Coolbballer21]

Well the Blu Ray player will upconvert that image to 1080i, so it will be a better picture than a traditional DVD player(unless it was a upconverting one....). The hiccup in this equation is the TV, if it does not support 1080p(which you said he told you it was only 1080i) then save your money and just buy an upconverting DVD player(they can be had easily for $50-80), and run a DVI or HDMI(probably had one on his TV) and he will be plenty happy with the picture. I would only recommend spending the $200 on the Blu Ray player if down the line he/you plan on changing out that TV for one that supports 1080p, or spend a bit more and get him a PS3, then he can game, watch DVD's in 1080i, and still has blu ray if/when DVD format gets dropped and you had a tv that supports 1080p, I hope I didn't confuse you here.....

[Aaron-BBY Community Connector]

Hey hil0803,

Many Blu-ray players currently have the ability to upconvert standard DVD’s in addition to playing Blu-ray discs, so if you’re concerned about video quality it’s generally recommended that you look for a player with this function. On top of that, most Blu-ray players currently available allow users to select what resolution they output video footage in – you’re only limited by the maximum supported resolution of the TV itself.

You’ll want to keep in mind though that simply upconverting a standard DVD to a higher resolution does not always give the same kind of picture quality as playing an actual Blu-ray disc. The upconvert process can sometimes reveal artifacts (visual errors and distortions) that were previously unseen, and may simply date a good number of the movies in your film library!

Hope this helps you out!

Agent Aaron
Geek Squad® Community Connector
Go Ahead. Use Us.