A relative wants to buy the Planet Earth DVD set for my husband. We have an HD 1040p tv but do not yet have an HD player. Would he be able to watch the HD DVD's on our present player but with less resolution, or would they not work at all. Can you watch HD DVD's on a laptop? We do plan to acquire an HD player sometime soon.

They will not work at all. HDDVD's ONLY play on an HDDVD player. Same with Bluray discs, they need a Bluray player to work.

That said; Planet Earth IS also available as a "normal" DVD set which will work, but of course won't have the high resolution of HDDVD.

Thank you. I suspected that was the case. One more thing, if we have a standard DVD and a player that upgrades (can't think of a good word) the signal to 1080p, how good would the picture be on a 60" Sony SXRD tv? Would it equal the pics we have from HD cable which I understand is not 1080p? (Cox Cable, Fairfax, VA -- if it makes a difference)

No, it wouldn't, IMHO. I have a Sony 60" SXRD set (XBR2), an Oppo upsampling DVD player, and a set top box feeding a 1080i HD signal. While the DVD's look good, they are no match for a true (well executed) native HD signal.

But none of the HD-DVD players has what I think it takes as of now, so I'm sticking with the upsampled standard-def DVD's. While not "as good" they are certainly very good/good enough. I think the players need another generation to get it right.

Another question: I started doing some reading on this subject today and read that the tv will do upsampling. Does a DVD player which is capable of upsampling enhance the upsampling done by the tv? Or is the upsampling done by the tv enough? Well, I assume you think the DVD player enhances it as you are using both.

I appreciate answers from both of you.

Blah... every time I go to buy one I realize two things:
1) I cannot rip them to my media server
2) it'll all be downloadable soon enough

I know I'm kinda bleeding edge like that, but I really think HD-DVD/Bluray is a stopgap.

That's the magic question, and it's just a matter of what has better upsampling software

I can feed almost anything from the DVD player (iirc) - 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p. In every case, except the 1080p, the set's DRC engine will do the final upsampling to 1080p. As long as the player is connected via an HDMI cable, everything is the digital domain, and it's a matter of dueling software.

I can see a theoretical answer that you want to pass either 480i or 1080p, so that only one set of upsampling takes place, but you never know. I've yet to fully test it myself, but I've read a few reviews that say my Oppo player has a very good upsampling engine. Then again, the XBR is Sony's flagship, and I think the DRC is different than the standard SXRD sets.

Keep it all digital, and then you'll have to experiment. With my player, it's relatively easy - maybe I'll try it out soon, but the results don't really apply to anyone with any different specific hardware.

Excellent advice - a good upscaling DVD player such as the Oppo 981HD will be a perfect stopgap for you until BD and HD-DVD resolves itself.

I appreciate your input. I was hoping for a simple answer.

I read a good review of your DVD player on Consumer Reports, but it did say that it is a more expensive standard DVD player and that with the price of HD players coming down, we might want to choose an HD player. I do think that HD will win over Bluray because the price is falling faster and price usually wins.

I guess I will sleep on it.

I bought the $399 PS3 to use as a Blu-Ray player. It works great by the way. You need to buy the bluetooth dvd remote for about $25 but that's the only add-on. (Strictly speaking, you don't *need* it, but it makes it easier to use as a dvd/bd player.) The disks load very quickly and Planet Earth looks spectacular on my 1080p monitor. For some of the scenes, I wish I had a bigger monitor. I don't even own any games for it, and don't have any plans to buy any.

The combo units that play both HD and BD are still pretty expensive. The last gen wasn't very good but there's supposed to be a new one coming out soon that's gotten pretty good reviews. (I posted links to a decent review in another thread.)

What that means is that everybody else can now safely invest in HD-DVD since I also owned Beta and Beta Hi-Fi VCRs. I guess you're all lucky I didn't pick HD-DVD if player price is the most important factor in your purchase decision.

-David

A good upscaling (not upsampling) DVD player will give a cleaner image than a non-upscaling DVD player, but it will not provide high-def resolution. It's simple math: a standard definition DVD frame contains 720 pixels horizontally and 480 pixels vertically, for a total of 345,600 pixels per frame. A 1080p frame contains 1,920 pixels horizontally by 1,080 pixels vertically, for a total of 2,073,600 pixels per frame, or 6 times more information. An upscaling DVD player interpolates between adjacent pixels to create a 1,920 x 1,080 pixel frame, which makes everything look clearer. However, it cannot create information that ws not there. Incidentally, I'd be surprised if your cable HD was 1080p. Virtually all cable and satellite HD is 1080i -- that's the same frame resolution, but divided up between two fields with interlaced lines (that's what the "i" in 1080i stands for), each containing half the information of the frame.

The answer is: it depends. Some DVD players do an extraordinarily good job at upscaling, some are not so good. Similarly, some TVs upscale better than others. It depends on the combination of the player and the TV.

However, it doesn't look like the BluRay vs. HD war is going to resolve itself any time soon. However, if you shop carefully, you can find an HD DVD player for well under $200, and close to (and perhaps even better than) the price of a good upscaling standard definition DVD. I have a Sony BluRay player which cost me around $465. Because some movies I'd like to see are released in HD only, I also bought a Toshiba A3 HD DVD player from Tigerdirect for $169.

I bought a Panasonic upconversion DVD player (DVD-S52) for around $60. It requires a HDMI connection to output 1080i. With component video connection it only outputs a 720i. We also bought a PS3 which at $500 a year ago was a great deal and it does 1080p. Fortunately the Dish Network DVR only need Component video connection. There are not much equipment and content for 1080p yet.

So buy a TV with as many HDMI input ports as you can.

You can also buy an HDMI switch. My TV has 3 HDMI inputs, but I've got the BluRay DVD player, the HD DVD player, the satellite box, my computer and my HDV camcorder. I picked up an inexpensive HDMI switch (around $90 from buy.com). It comes with a remote control, so I just added it to the devices controlled by my universal remote and it automatically switches between devices.

Where did you find the 1366x768 driver for Windows? I have the proper DVI/HDMI connection but can't find a monitor driver for that resolution.

I'm not sure what you mean. I use my laptop in its docking station. When I run through the DVI connector (I have a DVI to HDMI cable), the built-in graphics card can output 1920 x 1080 at 60 Hz, i.e. 1080p.