Newbie 1080p question...

stitchintime

New member
Recently I purchased a Viore HDTV 24" capable of producing 1080p resolution and I have to return it due to a faulty pixel.  I am also wanting a slightly bigger picture, maybe 26",  but similar price range.  I have not yet purchased a BluRay player to go along with it, but I will try to get a good cheap model that plays recordable CDs and DVDs. 

I am doing this so that I can watch the hi def Disney movies that people post here on my TV.  I also want to stress that I am on a tight budget, a spacial limitation, and I can't just go all out and buy anything I see.  I am worried if I don't buy a screen capable of 1080p resolution, I won't be able to watch the 1080p movies.

I have a question, and it may sound a bit basic:  Since most of the models in my price range are only capable of 720p resolution, would I be able to play a video in 1080p on a 720p screen?  Would the TV or the BluRay player downgrade the picture to 720p, or would it not play at all?  I am guessing it might depend on the model, but I am new at all of this, so I can't be certain, and I know I want to get my money's worth. 

 
I think, you should be fine, it is unlikely with that size of screen you could tell the difference between the 2 formats.  But there are a few more technically minded on here, so I would probably wait a bit for a more technical answer. 

I've a 42inch, and I would struggle with most to tell a 720p from a 1080p on that.  Using USB into play station 3 or from its HD, also after recommendations here added the WD TV Live HD, and again played though that from USB HD, cannot honestly say I notice anything different between the 2 formats.

done a quick run around the tech sites I use, and it seems its only really noticeable in text situations, if your using the TV as a monitor, 1080p screen gives crisper text.

 
Hmmmm... on smaller screens it might not matter quite as much since the format is not going to be as large as big screen (I need an expert on that one to be sure). But as stated before, it won't hurt anything and you probably wouldn't be able to tell as well.

Does your computer already have a bluray player on it? Have you considered just using it as a home theater PC (HTPC)? The video and audio cables used are very reasonable.
 
On a screen that size (unless you are 6" away from the screen) you probably won't notice the difference. You would with one covering a whole wall  :D
If you want HD videos in full HD then yes, you need a HDTV. If you don't mind them in SD then you should be able to watch them on a 720 TV.
My PC will play HD videos fine (well, a bit jerky as it's a slow PC) and they look great (but not in HD, of course) and my monitor is an old cathode ray type.
As I don't have a bluray burner in my PC, I copy to standard DVD and play back via a bluray player (cheap one) and the quality is great. I can't tell the difference between DVDs upscaled from the bluray player and actual bluray discs (so I don't buy bluray any more as I ain't getting a bigger TV)!
 
My TV is only 720p, and commercial blu-ray DVDs play fine on it. I don't see why something you burn should be any different. Of course you won't get the same picture quality as you would on a 1080p, but it's still way better than a standard TV.
 
I guess all of you are indirectly saying "Of course, it WILL play..." at the original question.  I should have thought that a 720p screen will play BluRay, not in 1080p, but in 720p.  I'm just nervous about how I spend the money.  I may just pick the same model, but the controller is awfully sluggish when I can't get in a channel.

My needs aren't totally the picture quality, especially at 24"-26"  I have heard the same things on my searches.  Googling 1080 vs 720 brings up the same points.  At such a small screen, it's hard to tell the total difference, though, when I watched 720 screens next to 1080 screens at WalMart, 1080s looked a tad bit clearer, as they should.  But they were also bigger screens and bigger price. 

Wizzard - No, my desktop computer is pretty much an antiquated Athlon, a gig of memory and the HD videos on here run slower then a standby line of Soarin' at peak hour!  ;)  My defective TV doubles as a computer monitor, but that's it.  I have an Athlon 64 X2 dual core laptop, with 3 gigs of memory and some of the HD videos play, others don't.

Thanks for the advice! 


I've been wanting to see a lot of the great stuff that people post on here for a while.




 
Yes, the screen resolution is the deciding factor. You can't get more pixels than there are.
When you watch in a store, they usually use the best things they can - the gold plated leads etc and yes, decent leads can make a huge difference. The better the lead, the less signal loss and the better the picture. You cannot have HD on a scart by the way - you need an HDMI connection for that.
If you buy the 1080 TV, at least you can (a) play bluray and (b) watch existing DVDs at a better quality by using a HDMI cable from your proposed bluray player.
A 720 TV will forever give you SD only - regardless of what you put into it so no point in a bluray player if you get that (unless it's an "until I get my 1080 TV eventually") as you won't get HD.
 
In regards to your statment about "some HD vids play others do not", do you mean they just outright refuse to play? If so that sounds like a codec issue, which should be fixed for free.

If you're not uncomfortable upgrading ram and optical drives you might even consider changing out your memory and drives for more modern stuff.


eyore said:
When you watch in a store, they usually use the best things they can - the gold plated leads etc and yes, decent leads can make a huge difference. The better the lead, the less signal loss and the better the picture.

I'm going to have to call you on that one, the 99 cent HDMI cables vs the $2,000 ones produce such a marginally different picture quality that only people using percise measurement would even notice/care. Monster refuses to comment when they were called on having cables that are capable of handling technology that doesn't exist (as in they made up features that have no bearing on consumers).

What happens in stores is they boost settings, such as brightness, to give the look of a better quality picture when next to 8 other models. If you did that in your own home you would probably not like it nearly as much.
 
Two things.
First, Who said that about some HD vids playing? I can't find that anywhere.
Secondly, I upgraded from very cheap scart leads to the cheapest gold plated leads and the difference was quite remarkable. I couldn't see that any better picture would result from more expensive gold plated leads though so I agree with that.
My original scart leads were £2.50 and the gold plated ones £12.99 - I think that's around $4 and $16. Both cheap in my opinion. I'd forgotten that you can pay rather a lot for leads.
My HDMI leads are the ones supplied in the box (cheap I suppose) and they are great. I won't bother upgrading those to gold plated as the picture is fine.
Should have made that clearer, sorry. I was talking scart (that's one word for it) .  ;D
 
keep in mind, hdmi is digital and and scart(FBAS,Y/C,RGB) is analog

so easy said..

bad signal quality on analog leads to degraded picture
bad signal quality on digital leads to no picture at all (or dropouts maybe)

 
eyore said:
Two things.
First, Who said that about some HD vids playing? I can't find that anywhere.
Secondly, I upgraded from very cheap scart leads to the cheapest gold plated leads and the difference was quite remarkable. I couldn't see that any better picture would result from more expensive gold plated leads though so I agree with that.
My original scart leads were £2.50 and the gold plated ones £12.99 - I think that's around $4 and $16. Both cheap in my opinion. I'd forgotten that you can pay rather a lot for leads.
My HDMI leads are the ones supplied in the box (cheap I suppose) and they are great. I won't bother upgrading those to gold plated as the picture is fine.
Should have made that clearer, sorry. I was talking scart (that's one word for it) .  ;D


It was said earlier by the OP "I have an Athlon 64 X2 dual core laptop, with 3 gigs of memory and some of the HD videos play, others don't."



What I was comparing were HDMI cables, they have done tests (quality measures, loss, etc.) against cheap 99 cent HDMI cables and high end monster cables (and the $2,000 one just for kicks) and the difference not noticed beyond statistical measure.

Now if you're using cheaper scart cables you might run into that issue.
 
I know this has mutated a bit since the original question, but I'm finding that 720p is really better, at least in terms of online media.  The bitrate needed for 1080p makes file sizes way too big (at least for me to justify producing a 720 source for anything).  If I do anything, I'm just about 100% sure it won't be 1080p, even if the source is 1080p.

ISP caps and just the time it takes isn't really worth the payoff.

I watch just about everything on a 55" 1080p capable machine.  I can tell when something is HD vs SD, but I wouldn't have the same certainty in my answer if asked if it's 720p or 1080p.

To make a short answer long, 720p is fine, ESPECIALLY at < 42"
 
Wizzard419 said:
It was said earlier by the OP "I have an Athlon 64 X2 dual core laptop, with 3 gigs of memory and some of the HD videos play, others don't."
What I was comparing were HDMI cables, they have done tests (quality measures, loss, etc.) against cheap 99 cent HDMI cables and high end monster cables (and the $2,000 one just for kicks) and the difference not noticed beyond statistical measure.

Now if you're using cheaper scart cables you might run into that issue.

My apologies - must get new glasses!
I agree 100% re HDMI cables.

Kirky, my HDTV (a cheap one) has a button on the remote that brings up whether the picture is displaying at 720 or 1080. Don't know if that's from my settings or from the source as it displays SD signals for TV (digital, we don't have analog TV in the UK any more, of course) as displaying in 1080.
Still, the picture is good.
One thought is to take a portable player (or even your own DVD player) into the store and ask if you can run your discs through the TV with it to check the quality.
I've done this a few times over the last few years (just to check all my burned stuff will still play and look as good) and they seem more than happy to do it for me. They probably run and hide when I enter the store now.
Helps me decide on which model anyway as their stuff is usually boosted or whatever  so that they can show the best quality they can  get to make the sale.

 
I'd expect it to get me free access to the Disney vault as well at that price. You were robbed!  :p
 
Hahahahaha!!

Hey, everyone.  I bought a Sony BDP-S270 at WalMart a few days ago and I have been watching wonderful HD Disney Videos.  Dolbyman, DarthVader, and PuntaGordaBob's videos all work fine playing from data DVDs.    They all look great on my screen which I have yet to exchange.

Unfortunately, my player won't run anything Divx HD or Divx, so I'm out of luck on Martin's videos,  (Major bummer there!  I love his stuff) but I do have a Divx DVD player (SD) to help with that and that player has an HDMI hookup. 

So, things are good.  Loving those videos, albeit some of them being a little heavy on the size. 
 
Never thought about trying them as data DVDs.
Do they still play as HD though or do the data discs have to be bluray?
My Bluray player doesn't work with Divx either.
 
Yeah, Eyore, they play on data DVDs.  You can put a few videos on each. 

I had a bright idea of hooking up my external Hard Drive into my Bluray unit's USB, but unfortunately it doesn't support the drive. 

There are some AVIs that won't work because of Divx encoding on my system, and I have run into problems with some MKVs, but all are in glorious 1080p and looking like I'm peering through a magic window on The World. 

I am just devastated we're not gonna get to go for my birthday this year.  I don't know when we'll be up there in the flesh, so this will tide me over a bit I guess. 

 
stitchintime said:
Hahahahaha!!

Hey, everyone.  I bought a Sony BDP-S270 at WalMart a few days ago and I have been watching wonderful HD Disney Videos.  Dolbyman, DarthVader, and PuntaGordaBob's videos all work fine playing from data DVDs.    They all look great on my screen which I have yet to exchange.

Unfortunately, my player won't run anything Divx HD or Divx, so I'm out of luck on Martin's videos,  (Major bummer there!  I love his stuff) but I do have a Divx DVD player (SD) to help with that and that player has an HDMI hookup. 

So, things are good.  Loving those videos, albeit some of them being a little heavy on the size. 

Nice Blu-Ray Player. I have a 46" Sharp Aquos Quattron (Red, Green, Blue, Yellow Pixels) TV. I love it. I have Never Testing Divx HD on my Sharp BD-HP24 (or any other DVD/Blu-ray unless it is Commercial) but I do know that my PlayStation 3 will play Divx HD.
 
eyore said:
Never thought about trying them as data DVDs.
Do they still play as HD though or do the data discs have to be bluray?
My Bluray player doesn't work with Divx either.

I think the only time a bluray has issue with playback is when it's the image of a bluray disc stored on a green hard drive that has the C drive (if using partitions). I've heard that the playback can be choppy at times due to resource limits. I've actually heard that it's all drives that have the issue but green ones are the most likely because of power.

As long as it fits on the device/media, compression levels will remain unchanged.
 
I'm going to do a test on mine to make sure as I may be confusing the Bluray Player with the actual TV (the TV takes SD cards/USB etc but can't recognize Divx files). I know one of them only accepts Divx TV (so a hunch it's the TV then).
I'm presently downloading the recent Martin vid of the Pixar Play Parade which I will copy as data onto a DVD+RW disc (in case it doesn't play) - I know the Bluray player accepts them - and see what happens.
Fingers crossed.  ;)
 
OK, a problem.
Looking at the manual, it says it does play Divx (and then there's a bit about having to register to play the protected Divx stuff) -  (it's a Philips BDP3000 player).
I burned the file to a DVD disc as data and it come up "unsupported file format" .
On the support page, it says this under the Divx section:
"Your player can’t play DivX HD, MKV, Q-pel, or GMC formats".
So that answers that. Bummer!
That may possibly apply to other Bluray players as far as HD is concerned. Plays Divx files fine, not Divx HD though.
Shame that wasn't written on the box. You'd think a Bluray HD player would play HD stuff, wouldn't you.  :mad:

OK, another question. Is it possible to have a lossless avi file to retain the HD?
If I could convert the Divx HD file to a format it can (or may) play, I may still be able to get it in HD form - or is that to simple? I'd really like to watch the files on my 32" TV instead of the PC monitor.
Any suggestions/solutions guys?
I'm just not up to scratch on HD stuff.
 
I think it is possible, but other than possibly handbrake there are no free apps for it. But handbrake may be all you need anyway.
 
I suspect the problem with a "SD" file with HD resulotions is your player would not be able to handle the bitrate needed, even if Divx supported a real HD resolution (which is a distinct possibility).

Honestly, for the problems you're trying to solve, it's probably cheaper to get a bluray burner and just burn HD movies on that.  Or, probably even cheaper to get a media player of some sort (I think we went through this in another thread) like a WD Live, or Popcorn Hour, and p[lay the files off the HD.  Both are in the $100 range currently and solve a ton of problems.




 
Kirky, I suspect you are right. The other thread was regarding using storage mediums to play direct through the TV rather than a Bluray player.
The whole point was to copy the data files (smallish) to a recordable medium which would then play HD via the Bluray player rather than burning each to a Bluray disc (saving space and cost). It seems that resolution and bitrate both come into in (in simple terms, the player plays Bluray discs in HD. All other media (CD-R, DVD etc) play in SD only. Standard Divx play fine, of course and the picture is in 1080 although the quality isn't HD of course. I got this from some video forums wher ea similar question was asked so going on trust there.
Whether burning as data to a Bluray disc would work I don't know.
Scouring the Internet it seems there are some players that will play Divx HD but they are a little out of my price range.
I have to be honest, burned to a standard DVD, the quality is still excellent so I may let this rest now.
Thanks for the replies.
 
Well, I've gone and done it. The "buy now" option was only £1 above the minimum price (plus £10 shipping) so I bought it.
So many of you have recommended a media player I thought I'd give it a try and give you all a rest  ;D
Thanks for the link Dolbyman.
Fingers crossed.....................
 
I have a hard time remember life before my home theater pc.  Doesn't help that there's a PC on each TV in the house all running XBMC with a central "NAS" device for content.  One of the PCs is a TV server and distributes a TV signal to all the PCs (and thus the TV) with the capability of recording shows, timeshifting, etc.  I've got 6 tuners in the TV server, so recording is never a problem.

I would also suggest getting USENET access.
 
Indeed, HTPC's are great. If you've got a home network but don't want the investment of an HTPC you could even just go and buy an xbox 360 or ps3 as both have HD output and can stream data.
 
Now I usually find I buy something new and there are no sockets for what I already have on it (my second-best video camera has RCA outputs, my DVD recorder doesn't have RCA inputs, for instance. I now need adapters to get the video in via scart).
I'm hoping the Popcorn just plugs in via HDMI to the TV (I do have a spare socket for that), I plug in a HDD and away it goes.
Experience tells me (a) it isn't going to be as simple as that and (b) I'll spend the next few weeks searching for accessories/leads/adapters etc or buying new HDDs as half of mine are FAT32 (so I could swap between two PCs).
I'll also have to find a way to link it up to the home cinema audio (already sharing that via a multiple selector for the TV and 2 DVD players and something else I'm not sure where the wire goes to).  ;D
What have I done.....................
 
OK, it arrived today (the Popcorn) and even for a dork like me, it was pretty easy to get up an running (yes, really a plug in, let it load, connect the HDMI cable to the TV, plug in the USB and select the video (I chose the Pixar Play Parade DIVX HD as mentioned) and play  ;D
The popcorn seems to have 1001 other functions (and a 112 page manual which was missing but which I found on the Internet).
Seems like it's just what I needed  ;D ;D
Thanks.
 
eyore said:
Seems like it's just what I needed  ;D ;D
Thanks.
Maybe now you'll start listening to us?  ;D

Glad you like it...  What I will suggest, and I'm not sure if it applies to that device, is heed the suggestions on how to store your collections.  I was resisting the directory structure on movie storage until finally one day i spent more time getting something to work than it took to watch the movie.  Finally I bit the bullet, followed the suggestions on the net for movie collection organization and WOW, Everything just worked!

Again, not sure if it applies to the Popcorn Hour device, but I know XBMC and others seem to follow a structure that's been hammered out over the years and makes the devices so much more usable.
 
Liking things simple (and this device does not have a HDD built in for storage but one can be added) my intention is still to store stuff on several HDDs (plus  data DVD backups - just in case) - and copy them from the PC either to flash drives or maybe even a dedicated external HDD to watch on the bigger family TV.
My organization is, I'm afraid, non-existent at the moment but I'll get around to it (how many years have I been saying that now)  :D
At the moment, I'm just delighted to be able to watch the videos without having to convert them or burning them to standard discs. My PC can't handle HD anything - it's just too slow - even with VLC player.
I'll be playing around with the different formats now to see what it will/will not play.
Takes me a while to adapt to all the new stuff these days having grown up with vinyl records and B&W TV.  ;D
 
Sorry to bring this up again but I'm having a problem with my Popcorn  :D
Some of the park videos I had were now on DVDs. I though I'd rip them back to the PC and transfer them to my dedicated HDD drive to play through the Popcorn A-100 on my TV.
They were ripped to video_ts files (VOB BUP and IFO) in folders with the video name on it (eg Splash mountain). Also the empty audio folder is in there as well, of course.
Trouble is, the A-100 sees the folder but reports it as 0kb on use of the info button. It doesn't open so I can select the video_ts folder or anything, just reverts to the splash screen with the "backup your hard drive" reminder.
I've already checked there are no "extra" files in there that may cause problems.
The A-100 is supposed to play vob files but I'm stumped.
Any suggestions from those of you that have this media player would be welcome.
Thanks.
 
Yeah, I think most of these media players support ISOs.  I like to keep everything intact.

I just found out, I can do PAL easily as well, so no more need to worry about conversions that don't work right anyway...  Even been toying about with 3D films.  No 3D TV, so I'm using the red/cyan glasses...
 
Thanks, I'll try the suggestions. I'm really green when it comes to some things technical like this. There's a whole chunk about the popcorn hour (in the manual they don't supply with the unit - only a quick start guide so you have to get it on the web)  and networking which means nothing to me (I tried to network my PCs together several times and failed although I did manage to get them all to use the same wireless router) - all about only being able to view ISO and Vob via NFS or SMB  :'(
Which, to cut a long story short, means it can't mount a DVD from an external HDD, I think  :mad:
My head feels like a cauliflower after reading all this.
I'll let you know how it goes.................
 
I don't think you have to mount it.. just open it.. like vlc does

that should work from either local drives or remote fileshares alike
 
Updated the firmware and it certainly plays single Vob files now (from a Flash drive).
Now to test on the HDD.
Nearly broke it - I was going to update the A-100 - had a quick look - oops, A-110  ::)

EDIT:
Plays VOB files but only if they are on their own (ie not with the BUP IFO files)
Nope, won't play from a video_ts folder and won't play ISO files (black screen).

The support page says this:
DVD support in .iso is only supported via NFS/SMB connection at this time.
Yes, clear as mud. It seems I can only view them if I get them from a network ???
I'm too old for this.


Edit:
Rebooted the thing several times and - it played an ISO file. The wind must have changed or something. Too exhausted to try it a second time!
 
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