OK, so I set up the BluRay player today and took it for a spin.

The player is hooked up to the LCD TV via an HDMI cable. Apparently the 
TV is in 1080p mode. (Presumably that means 1080 scanlines with 
progressive scan?) I've played some DVDs and some BluRay disks.

There *is* a difference. But it still seems quite small. The main place 
you see it is actually in the setup menues, weirdly enough. The 
texturing seems sharper. Once the film itself is playing, you don't 
really see a whole lot of difference. Except sometimes in shots that are 
very still, or have lots of close-up detail.

I can only guess that most of the time, large parts of the frame are out 
of focus anyway, so there's no extra detail to capture except on the 
foreground objects which are in sharp focus. And also, if the objects 
are moving around a lot, there's so much motion blur that you don't see 
any extra detail.

So in summary, apart from the occasional shot where you go "oh, that 
looks a little sharper than usual", there's not much to see. (And most 
especially, when you first start watching it seems a little sharper, but 
after 20 minutes you've forgotten all about it.) It's certainly not the 
"OMG, your eyeballs will drop out of your skull in sheer amazement" 
effect that everybody keeps promising.

Now I've got Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The box contains 
the exact same film on BD and DVD, so I can actually compare like for 
like. But I haven't done so yet.

The main thing is, I can now throw away the *useless* DVD player we've 
been using! :-D

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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