I have an epson hc 720 projected onto a 110" BOC. I understand that its only 720p but I wanted to know if anyone else experiences this. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that I see very little difference between blu ray movies and upconverted dvds. There are a few exceptions but for the most part, I have to really sit and nitpick to see the difference between the two formats. Either my blu ray output is bad or my upconverted dvd output is really good. I'm using a ps3 to play both and I know I shouldnt expect top notch quality out of BOC, but is this pretty normal to have so little of a difference between the two?

Get a 1080p projector you'll see the diff, its a no brainer.

I know that....I have a 1080p tv that blows everything 720p away.....I'm just trying to figure out if this is normal or if my upscaling is really good or blu ray is not as good on my setup

For some people, resolution is not the most important part of their visual experience. (For me, resolution is very important). However, you would certainly see an improvement if you used a 1080p projector, rather than 720p.

Even if resolution isn't noticable, the BDs should have better colors.

It also depends on which BDs you are playing: some have been noted to not look super-duper sharp (for a myriad of reasons, including director's intent or just a sloppy transfer), and so you might not see the "wow" factor. Check out the BD SW forum for the PQ-rating thread and pick out a title near the top, and then note whether you see a difference.

Plus, of course, make sure you have the PS3 to actually send out video as 720p, and isn't defaulted to 480p or something. And I presume you are connected via HDMI.

IMHO, YMMV,

shinksma

First question, did u calibrate your PJ yet? Are u sure your PS3 is outputting 720p correctly (it does have the worst user interface btw so that's why I'm asking). Ask in the "Epson 720 Owners" thread....u'll probably get better specific answers related to your PJ.

Off topic, if you check Bruce's thread called "Screenshot War", you'll find some of the amazing BR shots are actually off older 720p PJ's (

A higher resolution doesn't automatically will blow a lower res away. There are other factors like contrast, black levels, shadow details, 3D pop, etc that contribute to a overall looking picture. Resolution is simply one factor. Plus the jump from 720p to 1080p is not all that huge unlike what the BestBuy employees (and some people here) tell you.

A well calibrated 720p PJ will still give you excellent results with good HD transfers. On the same note, NOT ALL BR movies will 'blow you away'. There are some BR movies with bad or low bitrates so the 1080p transfer is not all that great over DVD. There are still some older 720p HD movies with high bitrates (Chronicles of Riddick is one) that will put some of the bad BR transfers to shame.

The same goes for standard DVD's...some are encoded at higher bitrates and when using a good up-convertor, such DVD's look very good....not HD but still way better. This is a shot of "First Sunday" regular DVD, off my HTPC and using FFDShow to scale the picture upto 720p.

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/7173/firstsundaysa2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/firstsundaysa2.jpg/1/w640.png (http://g.imageshack.us/img389/firstsundaysa2.jpg/1/)

I hear people say they can't see the difference between SD and HD all the time on 720p, but my experience has been the exact opposite. BDs and HDDVDs look SO much better on my 720p projector, it's tough to watch a regular DVD now.

Umm, having owned the HC720 before, the Blu-rays and DVDs are night and day difference. Heck you should notice it even on the FBI warning screen and how much crisper it is. If you can't see the difference, get your eyes checked. Seriously, or your PS3 is outputting at 480p.

It all gets down to opinions and eyeballs. At the end of the process it's what YOUR own eyeballs tell you and, as already posted, what creates an acceptable Theater in the Home experience for you that matters.

In our experience, we are extremely happy to enjoy our 720p Panasonic projector while being able to continue to enjoy our literally hundreds of standard def. dvd movies and suffering the consequences of saving a TON of cash very content to wait for the cost of both 1080p projectors and the very high cost of BluRay dvds go down significantly over the next year or so as they will without question.

Up Conversion makes ALL of our dvd movies look very darn near true HD even stretched to create a 10 ft diagonal image - to us - and that's what counts for us.

All we know is we experience a very acceptable WOW and feel like we are "at the movies" every time we Up Convert a dvd and project it and feel no need to consider all of our wonderful dvds obsolete to achieve what to us is a marginal improvement in visual experience.

It is very subjective and personal for us all - similar to sound equipment - I know people that actually believe they can hear a significant difference between a $2,000 mid-range or tweeter and those that cost $8,000.00.

I am just as happy with my years old Onkyo stereo system with my big Cerwin-Vega floor speakers - that, to me, is true High Fidelity - to those audiophile heads - it barely has any fidelity.

Anyhow, we are satisfied with our 720p Panasonic PJ and our movie experience using it with Up Conversion. You just pay attention to your own eyeballs and create what is satisfactory to you - maybe in a year or two something better than B.Ray will emerge that will make us all glad we didn't rush in and buy into it - same with 1080p - by then improved image processors may be able to take ANY video quality content and make it better than 1080p - or even turn it into 3D (that's actually possible)- LOL!
GoodLuck

Upconverting DVD no matter how well done will not give you any more resolution than 480p. That's a fact plain and simple. You can't spin gold from a sow's ear or whatever that saying is. Prior to BluRay I spent a lot of money converting my Denon 2910 DVD player to SDI output and even more on a Lumagen ProHDP scaler to scale it to 720p, 960p, or even 1080p, depending on the projector I was using. You can't get much better upconverson thanthat. Sure it looked good for the time, but not even close to the same league as a 1080p digital projector and a BluRay source. The cost nowadays of even an entry level 1080p is less than a 720p of two years ago. I say there is no better time ever than now to go 1080p.

I have an epson hc 720 projected onto a 110" BOC. I understand that its only 720p but I wanted to know if anyone else experiences this. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that I see very little difference between blu ray movies and upconverted dvds. There are a few exceptions but for the most part, I have to really sit and nitpick to see the difference between the two formats. Either my blu ray output is bad or my upconverted dvd output is really good. I'm using a ps3 to play both and I know I shouldnt expect top notch quality out of BOC, but is this pretty normal to have so little of a difference between the two?

What's your viewing distance? Sure, 720p *should* look better than 480p (assuming everything other than resolution is equal), but if you sit far enough away they'll look almost identical. I find your situation a bit odd, because with my 720p Mitsubishi HC3000 decent Blu-ray transfers look a ton better than even superb DVD's.

Since the OP never responded back, I bet his PS3 wasn't setup to display 720p!!! I know that cos I did the same thing when I first hooked up my PS3 to my VP4001.

Under display options, you have to select 720p. If u only select 1080i, then for some reason, it will downscale some material to 480p!!

Since the OP never responded back, I bet his PS3 wasn't setup to display 720p!!! I know that cos I did the same thing when I first hooked up my PS3 to my VP4001.

Under display options, you have to select 720p. If u only select 1080i, then for some reason, it will downscale some material to 480p!!

No, I'm still here...I did have by ps3 set to 1080i and 720p. I sit anywhere from 9-14' away. I just think that some of the DVDs i've been watching lately just looked really damn good. I rented kung fu panda on dvd last night and it looked like absolute ass. Strangely, that made me feel much better.

I see a huge difference on my Epson HC720 between BR/HD DVD and upconverted SD DVD.

Keep in mind that just because a movie is on BR or HD DVD doesn't mean that the picture quality will be better than SD DVD. There are many movies that won't look that much better in HD than in SD.

You should check out this site: http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/reviews.html

Check out a few movies that were rated highly on that site. You will see a huge difference in picture quality. Of course you need to make sure the player is outputting the proper resolution. I would recommend setting it to 720p for the Epson HC 720. Set the player to 720p, set the projector to through mode and image size to larger. That will give you 1:1 mapping and should give the best PQ. 1080i will work but I feel 720p looks a bit better. I wouldn't send 1080p because the Espon HC720 doesn't handle it well. I saw lots of jaggies at 1080p.

Some movies in HD look unbelievable. The first time I watched the Matix on HD DVD I couldn't believe how good it looked on the Epson HC720.