BlueRay DVD P

I have a BlueRay DVD player that I almost never use. However, recently I tried to play a DVD with it that was produced in 2018. I assume the DVD is a standard DVD. I'm a bit confused about DVDs.

Anyway, in playing this new DVD it was totally surprised that the picture looked like something like SD. I read that a BlueRay player will only display either BlueRay or SD format. NO HD format.

Is there ANY HD DVD players? I see several that claim to uplink to 1080P. In a search on the net, I can't find any DVD player that claims to be a HD player.

I have a ton of DVD's, but none are in BlueRay format. With all the streaming going on, DVD players are probably next year's 8 track players.

Short version, should I tank the BlueRay player and get one that advertises upscale to 1080P. I have a 4K TV and would like to see my DVD's in at least 1080P. Can someone clear this up for me?

Thanks

I'm confused by your questions.

DVDs are 480i. (480 horizontal lines, interlaced). They are either "full screen" or "wide screen". "Full screen" refers to the old TV format, which was a 4:3 aspect ratio. If you display that on a normal 16:9 flat panel TV, without stretching or cropping the image, you get vertical black bars on either side of the image. "Wide screen" is to match the 16:9 ratio, although some movies may be letterboxed (horizontal black bars, top and bottom) to show a wider aspect ratio.

BluRay disks are 1920X1080 (1080p), which is a 16:9 format. The "p" is for progressive scan. They may be letterboxed too, and some old movies aren't natively in that format, so they may be displayed in a lesser aspect ratio.

UHD (4k) disks are 3940X2160 (2160p), double the number of pixels of a regular BluRay.

I use a UHD player, and it upscales DVDs just fine, including the few "full screen" ones that I own.

I think that my cable service provides HD as 1280X720 (720p). The SD stuff can be weird: some of it is 4:3, and fills the screen vertically, while some is 16:9 but which would have to be zoomed to fill the screen (using the TV). That's Comcast xFinity.

Incidentally, there was a format called HD DVD that was pushed by Toshiba in a format war vs. BluRay. Toshiba lost.

starflyr said:

I have a BlueRay DVD player that I almost never use. However, recently I tried to play a DVD with it that was produced in 2018. I assume the DVD is a standard DVD. I'm a bit confused about DVDs.

Anyway, in playing this new DVD it was totally surprised that the picture looked like something like SD. I read that a BlueRay player will only display either BlueRay or SD format. NO HD format.

Is there ANY HD DVD players? I see several that claim to uplink to 1080P. In a search on the net, I can't find any DVD player that claims to be a HD player.

I have a ton of DVD's, but none are in BlueRay format. With all the streaming going on, DVD players are probably next year's 8 track players.

Short version, should I tank the BlueRay player and get one that advertises upscale to 1080P. I have a 4K TV and would like to see my DVD's in at least 1080P. Can someone clear this up for me?

Thanks

DVD resolution is SD by definition, that's why your DVD disks "look like something like SD"

A disc player (or television/monitor) with good upscaling capabilities can make a SD source look a bit better on a higher-resolution monitor but it will not really add any detail that wasn't there in the first place.

I've been learning a lot about DVD and Blu-Ray formats lately as I recently decided to rip all my DVD and Blu-Ray movies to mp4 and store them on hard disk for playback.

Over the counter DVD movies store information in a 720 by 480 pixel arrangement. They handle widescreen and standard aspect ratios through PAR (pixel aspect ratio). For a standard screen PAR is 8/9 which multiplies out to 640x480 or 4:3 aspect. For widescreen they use a PAR of 32/27 which multiplies out to 853 x 480 which is a 16:9 aspect. So in either case it's SD having 480 lines, but one is widescreen and the other is standard screen.

As I'm trying to phase out all of my DVDs I just replaced a bunch of them with Blu-Ray. Though there's a couple movies I can't get on Blu-Ray. I have an odd one out that uses an 8:9 PAR with a letter box. That was fun trying to get that one set up right with the encoder I'm using. Tricky to get it fit right on a 1080p screen. The 32/27 PAR is way more common and a lot easier to deal with.

Whatever the case, DVD is pretty much a dead end when it comes to ripping disks. It's hugely easier to use Blu-Ray with a PAR of 1/1 and 1920x1080 video storage. Though Blu-Rays can have such gigantic title sections it can be difficult to figure out which tracks to encode.

Thanks, I never knew. I remember when I bought my first DVD player back around '98 if I remember correctly, I paid around $450! No upscale as none was needed for my SD TV.

I just assumed as newer players came out, they supported HD. In truth, I very seldom watch video anymore from a DVD player. We missed "Doc Martin" during the first run (PBS 2019) and when I saw the series available on eBay, I snapped up a copy. Was very disappointed in the video when I the DVD on my BlueRay play to my 4K monitor. I KNOW this DVD series was made last year ('18) as that's when the series was produced.

I won't be buying any more DVD's unless they're BlueRay.

starflyr said:

(snip)

I won't be buying any more DVD's unless they're BlueRay.

No 4k (UHD) disks? It's only money.

For me I'm sticking with 1080p Blu-Rays. The 4K UHD optical disks use an encryption key that makes ripping them a bit more involved, need the key first. I'm trying to get away from using the optical disks themselves since it's a lot handier to play the mp4 files which you can access anywhere with any player. Of course the resolution is four times better with UHD, but really you only benefit from it with a large screen. I don't use any screens that big. Also the files are a lot bigger and disk space is always a premium, at least for SSD which is all I use.