To me all HD just looks fantastic, but if you want to show of the beauty of HD, just show them the water in Uncharted

You guys are kind of proving his point. The fact that you need to watch certain movies on only certain types of TVs to get a real benefit is a big obstacle to acceptance.

no i think the biggest problem lies in the perceived "upgrade" to the format.
most of us simply can't tell it is better than the dvd because we are not watching them side by side.
in most cases, it is not a dramatic upgrade, but an upgrade none the less.
and to have an upgrade which most people saw as being perfect already is quite the way our tech works. we don't need it until we don't have it.
progress happens in little steps, however like games on consoles, the format will improve in quality and consistency over time.

generally speaking we tend to favor giant leaps in tech, and dismiss improvement.

tell me if your hair is long and you shave it all off, it will have a more pronounced effect than if you had just cut half an inch off of it every week.

you probably won't even notice a difference unless you picture side by side, which is exactly how hd is sold in stores.

I've posted this before but Blu-Ray does have a long road ahead before becoming the standard format. It won't grow as fast as DVD because there's not as much of a difference between DVD and Blu-Ray as there was with VHS and DVD :

- VHS to DVD : Better quality, no rewinding, chapter navigation, multiple language tracks, extras/bonuses

- DVD to Blu-Ray : Better quality (if you have a HD-TV that is)

This thread makes me not want to bother getting a blue-ray player anytime soon. I need a TV bigger then 42" to see the big difference. I need to only play certain movies to see a big difference. You only really watch a movie once or twice anyway unless it is something you love. Too much expense with not enough bang for that buck. I would want every movie to show a huge difference.

I just want to add some perspective

That is an image from a VHS movie AFTER it has been digitally altered to improve quality, and for years people favoured VHS over higher quality formats (laserdisc) because it was less expensive and more convenient.

Now, if you look at HD-DVD/Blu-Ray comparisons to DVD (http://www.stesoft.com/hdvsdvd.html) there is a noticeable improvement but (unlike the jump from VHS to DVD) it is mostly an increase in crispness and a bit of detail rather than displaying meaningful elements.

I do agree that the TV itself makes more difference than whether or not it is 1080i vs. 1080p, but this also makes several assumptions.

1) Your TV is properly deinterlacing the signal (the one I was using in my earlier example was a very old TV, and was not). 1080i and 1080p will look more or less identical only if this is true. If not, there will be a major difference. His TV sounds like it is much older, so it is probably not doing this correctly, as it is a much more common feature on newer TV's.

2) You aren't taking advantage of a 120 hz TV which when in conjunction with some of the anti-judder/smoothing technology makes a huge difference, especially in film.

The TV itself makes the biggest difference, I agree. The contrast ratio (which can vary a lot from set to set, I am about to buy a TV with a 50,000:1 ratio) is a huge factor. The ms response time has a small effect, but for film it is kind of neglible.

HDMI cables provide some advantage too, but once again this is sort of negligible unless you are going for a 1080p 24fps signal. In general they are the better choice though.

So yes, on TV's that can display both 1080p and 1080i correctly, the difference is minimal. But on his setup there is most likely a major difference between 1080i and a TV that is deinterlacing properly.

That's a really dark movie. I'd suggest picking something with a lot more color.

Still a lot of people don't care about HD so it could be either.

Also... recommending Mr and Mrs Smith?

The best place to see the quality of blu-ray movies is:

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/reviews_video.html

I've sorted by video quality, but you can change how you sort the reviews.

Also, it took a bit of tinkering on my part to get my TV settings right, so that the BR (and HD-DVD) movies look fantastic.

So it could definitely be something with your setup.

Frankly I'm getting tired of these threads, it's very simple.

Blu-ray looks better, sounds better, and IS better than DVD. Whether you want to admit it or not is your own problem.

And a 720p/1080i 42" is one of the worse HDTV's you could get, anything larger than 37" should be 1080p.

Also, how can you say "it looks like DVD" when you didnt view the same film on DVD? You fail.