My Cart - DVDs were a huge leap forward from VHS video cassettes. The picture and sound quality improvements were simply massive. Do you remember watching your first DVD after you upgraded? I suspect that I’m not alone in having a jaw dropping moment when watching my first DVD.
As ever in the world of technology, things have moved on and now and DVD players are steadily being replaced with Blu Ray players or Games consoles that can play Blu Ray discs. I really like Blu Ray, but I don’t think it gave me the same ‘wow’ moment that I got when I first experienced DVD.
Recently, Upscaling DVD players have made an emergence onto the market. Their cost is, generally, somewhere between that of a DVD player and a Blu Ray player. They promise to bring the picture quality of a DVD disc up to something ‘near’ that of a High Definition Blu Ray disc. They sport a HDMI connection to plug into your High Definition TV allowing for more picture bandwidth (detail) to be sent than would be possible with a Scart connector found on an ordinary DVD player. High Definition screens have more pixels on display than the Standard Definition screens. Upscaling works by the player analyzing the colours in a standard definition picture, and then doing its best to add in pixels of a similar shade to bring the pixel count up to that of a HD picture. Whilst there is undoubtedly an improvement in picture quality, it is often quite subtle if at all noticeable.
One of the good points about stepping up to a Blu Ray player is that it will still able to play DVDs. This is a really good thing if you have shelves full of DVDs. There are lots of people that spent a fair amount of money replacing their favourite movies on VHS with the superior DVD version. Blu Ray players have the ability to upscale as well as play full high definition Blu Ray movies. An upscaling DVD player will only ever play DVDs it is never going to be able to play a Blu Ray, so it is less future proof.
If you’re considering upgrading your DVD player then it’s probably worth spending the extra and investing in a Blu Ray player. This at least gives you the option to watch all of your movie collection and keep it growing by adding Blu Ray discs for the best quality.
