720p Versus 1080p HDTVs. The Facts

[nordlead]

JamesCizuz said:

greenmedic88 said:

You're going to make me burn a DVD to test this, but I'm pretty sure if I burn a 1920x1080 QT movie trailer to DVD, I'll still be able to get a normal frame rate if I play it off the DVD drive of any current computer.

On the second thought; no need. Unless I could burn a 1920x1080 movie file with lower compression in the range of 30-50Mbps+ bandwidth, I know it would play off DVD for example (1080p trailers online generally run around 10Mbps which for a 3:30m clip is about 256MB or about 14 minutes of video per GB of storage).

So it's not the resolution at all that anyone should be debating, only the bit rate. Lower bit rate, higher compression 1920x1080 signal will play back just fine on DVD. Is the quality the same as a 40Mbps AVC compressed A/V signal on BD? Of course not; nobody said that. But the point was a 1920x1080p signal can be stored (and played back) on just about any storage media, assuming the data bit rate doesn't exceed the format/drive.

Technically, Nord's right on the money.

Burn a DVD, and buy an old 2x DVD drive, and run it on your computer. No matter what, you are having huge frame drops. Any computer you say? Current computer, theres the key word there. Not every DVD player is current, though I guess you can argue those old DVD players don't even have HD outputs, however older drives for computers thats a null point. Also, lower bit-rate = higher compress = more powerful hardware to decompress and stream.

but again, none of that matters when it comes to my statement that medium doesn't matter for storing 1080p video (or showing it), as it is possible. Sure, none of it is reasonablely feasible, but nothing is stopping anyone from doing it. I can say that watching 1080p on a Blu-ray drive is impossible on a SDTV, but all I'm doing is artificially restricting hardware just like you are. Obviously if people were going to make HD capable DVD drives, they would make sure the bitrate and processor power was high enough to handle the video.