hey. will the PS3 pay PAL movies? will it play burned copies of movies? anyone know? and will i notice a HUGE improvement over my Pioneer DV400-K upconverting dvd player to a blue ray player? can someone post comparison pictures of a blue ray vs upconverted 1080p from a regular dvd movie? TIA!!!

I do not know about the first two questions, but in terms of PQ, a BluRay copy of a movie is night and day difference from an upconverted DVD. You simply cannot "manufacture" more pixels from a 480p DVD, and expect it to look as good as a true 1080p movie. A 480p movie has 480 * 720 = 345600 pixels. A 1080p movie is 1080 * 1920 = 2763600 pixels which is 6 times the resolution. Upconverting will never produce anything that looks like that resolution.

I will buy the Blu-Ray version of movies that I want to watch over and over again simply because one you watch a movie from a BluRay source, you wonder how you watched standard DVD before. It is kind of like moving from VHS to DVD. OTOH, since I have two 400 disc DVD changers, I buy the DVD version of many movies also.

The same people who say that an upconverted DVD looks just as good as a true HD movie, are the same people who say that feeding an HD signal into a X-1 looks just as good as the same HD signal into a true 1080p projector. It is merely people trying to justify not spending money on a new projector.

The cool thing about the PS/3 though is that it will play mpeg, WMV and MP3 files from your computer using software that is freely available. The one I use is called tversity http://tversity.com/home which is freeware, and works quite well.

As to burned movies, I cannot condone piracy.

Reedl

I agree....no comparison between real 1080p sources and upconverted DVDs....I dont even watch DVDs anymore.

thanks for the info. you don't have to condone piracy (it is NOT illegal in Canada to copy/download movies, music etc btw) and i also copy all the movies i buy so that i do not ruin them. i will probably do the same with the blue ray movies.

does the PS3 play PAL? anyone know? i was very impressed with the Benq W9000 right out of the box...but i would not say that the upconverted image of a normal dvd was SOOOO much better than on my 720p projector, but that may be due to the upconversion which is why i want to go to blue ray now. so you think i'll be BLOWN AWAY with blue ray huh? i'm going to go get one, and play the same movie both ways..i guess i'll know that. i'll post some screen shots to compare. any further infor you can give would be great. thanks

well all..i went and got a Sony PlayStation 3 and all I can say is OH MY FREAKING GOD is blue ray the B O M B ! ! ! and upconversion on this thing is incredible!!! and how about Call of Duty 4??? holy crap..i had no idea what i was missing out on. here are a couple of screen shots (as best as I could do that is) but they just do NOT do it justice!!!

btw..turning the IRE (iris) to 7.5 from 0 is a HUGE improvment in black levels and colour richness...and just overall image quality..just amazing. i'm thrilled!!!

first Blue Ray images
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i95/jinxfrt/warnerbrotherssidebig.jpg

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i95/jinxfrt/warnerbrothersfront.jpg

and next a couple upconverted images from Hell Boy
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i95/jinxfrt/hellboymansuckedinblackhole.jpg

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i95/jinxfrt/hellboyfishman.jpg

damn it! PS3 does not play PAL!!! ugh!