Need some 720/1080 Schooling please!

[mtbound10]

A friend and I were having a conversation yesterday about my new tv and blu ray player so on and so fourth.... I was telling him that they had some good deals going on at this store on blu-ray players when the story took a turn for the worst and he told me how his tv was only a 720p Plasma and purchasing a Blu-Ray would serve no purpose.... Is there any truth to this???

Guys, help me out here...

He went out and purchased a Samsung 720p Plasma tv. By doing so, I know this limits the reproduction capabilities of the TV but would it technically nullify the point in purchasing a blu-ray player for this tv?

Do you need a TV that can either reproduce a picture in 1080i/p to get the effects of a blu-ray player?

Even if your DVD player or Reciever can upconvert from 480 or 720 it does not mean your TV can upconvert from 720 to 1080 unless the tv is 1080 correct?

Any information on this matter would be greatly appreciated. I went directly from Trinitron to 1080p HD so I never really had to worry about the question. But he does raise a good point and I am always looking to learn more...

Thanks in advance for the help!

Cheers!

 

[Adam]

Your friend can likely still benefit from a blu-ray player in regards to video. Probably the easiest way to find out if he would want one is to bring your player over to his place and hook it up to his TV (if you're willing to do that). I say "want one" because his ability to see a difference might not be that high, depending on the size of the display and how far away from it he sits (which both combine into the field of view). A 720p display isn't a bad idea depending on the field of view because there's a point at which humans can't differentiate between 720p and 1080p, and there's another point at which some people just won't care.

I'm no video expert, but here's my take on it. DVDs contain video in 480i, so they need to be both deinterlaced and upscaled for his 720p television. There are only 480 lines of information, so the TV (or upscaling DVD player) needs to interpolate the information to derive 720 lines of video. Blu-rays can contain video in 1080p, so some information would need to be removed, but none needs to be "guessed at" and added.

There's also the audio side of things. Blu-rays can contain the new lossless codecs (e.g. Dolby TrueHD), and some people can really appreciate a difference between those and the lossy codecs (e.g. Dolby Digital and DTS)

 

[MidnightSensi]

Blu-Ray still looks better on a 720p TV and the sound quality is better.

These numbers are resolutions, so the distance you sit away from the TV is really if it will make sense or not. For a 50-inch TV, if you are sitting 15-ft away, 720P starts to make a difference. If you are sitting 10-ft away, then 1080P will start to look better than 720P. Now, for a front projection system, where screen sizes are very big, 1080P makes much more of a difference than if your using a LCD or plasma where the screen size is smaller. For most people, a plasma or LCD is fine with 720 resolution.