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Thinking further - I havent replaced my 'old' plasma TV simply because it hasnt broken yet. Its so old it can only truly display 540p! Anything above that, it downscales back. (bought in Jan 2005!)
Sky/ BBC/ ITV etc broadcasts a lot of programmes recorded in HD (probably 720, maybe 1080) via the SD channels which in turn look great even on a normal TV. Our HD TV (1080i) shows SD channels with HD material pretty well. Film 4 show a lot of remastered films which outperform their DVD counterparts especially on an old telly like mine.
Back to upscaling - all that does is bump up the relatively low resolution of DVD up to the large screen size. It does nothing to improve the picture. The native resolution of a DVD would be a small box on a current Full HD display.
Progressive scan is where its at - this does a hell of a lot to make a standard picture better and as the hardware has improved tenfold since my days in 'the business' (£120,000 upscaler anyone?). I forget the ins and outs but I remember stairs and 'jaggies' being the biggest problems in making a picture look good on a 30 foot Stewart Cinema screen. jaggies were the edges of buildings that would literally end up like zig zag edges, stairs would strobe so the then progressive scan hardware would smooth this lot out.
Blu-ray does away with all this as its storage capacity allows for a huge native resolution when compared to DVD. If DVD is a tennis table, Blu-ray is a tennis court. *and I'll add that progressive scan has been on displays for years as part of the very nature of how these displays work.
*edit: Here you go - DVD is 720-576, Blu-ray is 1920-1080, VHS is 333×480
Sky/ BBC/ ITV etc broadcasts a lot of programmes recorded in HD (probably 720, maybe 1080) via the SD channels which in turn look great even on a normal TV. Our HD TV (1080i) shows SD channels with HD material pretty well. Film 4 show a lot of remastered films which outperform their DVD counterparts especially on an old telly like mine.
Back to upscaling - all that does is bump up the relatively low resolution of DVD up to the large screen size. It does nothing to improve the picture. The native resolution of a DVD would be a small box on a current Full HD display.
Progressive scan is where its at - this does a hell of a lot to make a standard picture better and as the hardware has improved tenfold since my days in 'the business' (£120,000 upscaler anyone?). I forget the ins and outs but I remember stairs and 'jaggies' being the biggest problems in making a picture look good on a 30 foot Stewart Cinema screen. jaggies were the edges of buildings that would literally end up like zig zag edges, stairs would strobe so the then progressive scan hardware would smooth this lot out.
Blu-ray does away with all this as its storage capacity allows for a huge native resolution when compared to DVD. If DVD is a tennis table, Blu-ray is a tennis court. *and I'll add that progressive scan has been on displays for years as part of the very nature of how these displays work.
*edit: Here you go - DVD is 720-576, Blu-ray is 1920-1080, VHS is 333×480
What the hell does HDMI-Ray-anamorphic-plasma mean anyway? 
