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SvennoJ on 20 October 2014
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Hiku said:

I lived through the transition as well, but it passed me by fairly unnoticed as the only person I knew who had a Laser Disc player was my friend's sister's boyfriend. And I can't even recall what we watched on it.

The thing about progressive scan and why I mentioned when it became standard is because I don't think I was ever able to make use of progressive scan on PS2. Because in Europe we use (or used) the PAL TV system. When I tried to switch to progressive scan in the Options menu in Dead or Alive 2, I got a flickering black and white screen. I can't recall if this got fixed by using a Scart cable instead of an RGB cable though. But if it did, I wasn't thrown back by the difference. Seeing Resistance on a CRT first with an RGB cable, and then Forza on an HD TV with an HDMI cable made me very surprised though. I compare it to the time I saw Gladiator on DVD because those were the only two times I felt that.

Ah, I had moved to Canada before trying 480p mode on ps2. 480i to 480p made a big difference on my HD ready CRT tv.

PAL had the superior DVDs with 576 lines of resolution compared to 440 lines for PAL laserdiscs. I was still living in The Netherlands at the time yet PAL DVDs weren't available yet. So I was comparing the early imported 480p dvds to 440 line PAL Laserdiscs. I don't recall any real stand out DVD moments, just that it gradually improved. The early dvd rentals in The Netherlands were piss poor, burned straight from VHS masters with the Dutch subtitles burned on the picture...

HD-DVD instantly impressed me on the 34" HD ready CRT. Titles like fear and loathing in Las Vegas were like night and day, especially in the color department. Blu-ray has since steadily improved on that.

The first time I was really impressed with a so called HD game was when Gears of War came out. The first game I played on my 52" 1080p tv. It was with 1080p over component cables which that tv luckily supported. I was a more avid PC gamer at that time though. Oblivion on my 1280x1024 LCD monitor blew the xbox 360 version out of the water in 2006. It took that tv upgrade and Gears to show me what the xbox 360 could do.