Is DVD the new VHS?

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1

I recently took the plunge and upgraded to a plasma television, mostly because I want a decent native resolution for my home theater PC under Windows Media Center Edition 2005.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/11/is-dvd-the-new-vhs.html
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For the record, the “superbit” Fifth Element DVD I have is not even close to either of the Windows Media HD Terminator 2 sample clips (low and high res), or the MCE 2005 video calibration videos. So I figure that’s as good as it’s going to get.

I was very surprised to find this out. On the analog set, I couldn’t see a difference, and I didn’t think 852x480 was THAT high of a resolution… enough to expose MPEG2 and DVD weaknesses.

It also makes me glad I didn’t spend another 2k+ for a “true” HDTV set that can do resolutions greater than 852x480.

3

I’ve found that having poor eyesight makes watching a DVD on a HDTV quite nice. Upscaling helps…