Bluray-am I the only one one to be disappointed ?

spiritus

I bought the BDP 360 last week after reading plenty of favourable reviews not just from this site.

I don't know what's wrong with me but I actually feel disappointed with the "Bluray experience". I have read several times that the difference between Bluray and DVD is as significant as the difference was between DVD and VHS but from my recent experience that isn't true.

I have a 32" LG PG6000 which is HD ready (1080i). I have watched Dark Knight and a couple of other Blurays this weekend. In some scenes I can clearly see the improvement in picture quality but there are many scenes where I might as well be watching a DVD.

I've noticed if I virtually sit directly in front of the TV then more detail is revealed but this is hardly practical unless I want square eyes in 5 yrs time. I'm presuming the other option is to buy a bigger TV but I think this would swalloy my living room up. I guess I should have been aware of this before I made my purchase.

I have also discovered that Bluray movies are not all created equally meaning that some Blurays have been converted to the format superbly (like Dark Knight) whilst others are virtually indistinguishable from a DVD. When I was Googling a list of Bluray movies that are considered to be the perfect example of the superior picture quality that Bluay offers then only 5-10 movie titles kept cropping up time and time again.

I love watching movies but to be restricted to a small bunch of titles to see a dramatic improvement over my DVD player is not worth it for me. I don't buy movies, I nearly always rent them so even a visit to my local Blockbuster was disappointing as in one corner of the store they had a section of Bluray titles whilst the rest of the store was filled to the brim with DVD titles. I know it's obvious that DVD is the more popular format but I am questioning why I bought a Bluray player when I can only see the difference in just a few titles.

I'm not having a pop at the Sony BDP 360. I just think that maybe my expectations were too high and my TV too small.

And yes, I am using the right cable.

If anyone wants to put a reasonable offer in for my one week old player then drop me a line

456789

Yes its true not all bluray's are equal

Some are taken from bad sources so aren't any better than upscaled dvd

Newer films with good graphics budgets and special effects should look really good on it - I think people got scared by the hddvd/bluray war and aren't as bothered now

kwikbreaks

The other thing is how far away are you watching the 32" TV.

Probably what you need is a nice 60" plasma

Then a surround amp

Then some really good speakers

Then...

spiritus

kwikbreaks wrote: »

The other thing is how far away are you watching the 32" TV.

Probably what you need is a nice 60" plasma

Then a surround amp

Then some really good speakers

Then...

Actually you are right.

I sit about 2 - 2.5 metres away from the screen due to the room size and shape and I know when I move closer to the screen I am much more impressed with the picture quality.

kwikbreaks

As this is a money saving site I'd recommend binoculars over the 60" plasma and some headphones over the willy waving speakers

aliEnRIK

As your tv is only 1080i then the signal also needs to be converted to work which will be at a loss of some detail. 32" is also far too small to really appreciate any differences. My 46" tv makes it very easy to tell the difference

missile

I would suggest you need a decent 40+ inch 1080P TV to see the benefit.

Your Bluray is wasted on a 32" 1080i

Marty_J

I would suggest that you try calibrating your display.

Try running the THX Optimizer, which can be found in the setup menu on one of these disks (the box will have a THX logo on it somewhere).

It won't give you the results that a professional calibrator would, or even a dedicated calibration disk such as Avia or Digital Video Essentials, but you should get a much better picture than you would get by just eye-balling the settings.

White levels (contrast), black levels (brightness), colour and sharpness are the most important settings to get correct. Turn off anything that processes the picture. Look for things like "edge enhancement", "vivid", "dynamic contrast", turn them all off before you start, and also turn sharpness all the way down. If your TV has different scene modes, "movie" is often a good place to start, otherwise, just set it to normal.

Also, make sure you do the calibration in the same kind of lighting that you normally watch TV in.

jaydeeuk1

Pretty much agree with rik. In a nutshell, yes you bought the wrong TV if you wanted a better picture experience.

The difference in quality over a decent 1080p screen over a 720p screen is more than a 720 over a 480 one. Dark knight at full hd resolution, even on my budget 40"sony is brilliant. You can get a really good lg 37lh3000 full hd which for barely more than £400 is a bargain, and won't dominate the living room.

nearlyrich

I think a lot of the HD/Blueray hoo ha is emperors new clothes, unless you are concentrating on the picture quality rather than the film content you might struggle to see any significant difference. I personally am not that into films and my DVD player is fine for the films we watch and I suspect a lot of people get sucked in to the big upgrade.

timmmers

Blueray is just a way to get more data on a disc....what people put on the disc, that's where the quality comes into it. They could use it for quanity, add out takes and additional features, or they could up the quality...but your telly will always be the bottleneck that decides what you see, and your speakers the audio bottleneck.

People often think that DVD stood for Video disc...it didn't have anything to do with video, just a handy way to store and distribute them ..ditto for Blueray.,,but with Sony owning so much movie content much more advertising make it seem like that's it's purpose.

What dot they say? Don't believe the hype?

It's the single best way to sell you something AGAIN that you really don't need and have you do that, how many remastered versions of popular movies like StarWars do you think there are now ...VHS, DVD, Digially remastered DVD Blueray...etc etc. I know someone with at least 5 different sets of those movies. All different formats, same movies

When better tellies arrive Blueray will probably be obsolete ...that's the irony.

Even more ironic is my old mate who is a real audio nut...he's been having a ball buying vynl discs for a while now...as he says rightly....in 20 years time they will still be playing and good quality, your CDs and DVDs will be dead as they have a finite life being light sensitive and exposure to light damaging them over time.

t