SD DVD material-How much pj is too much?

Will you be watching any HD sources on the new FP? If not, I'm not really sure if there's much point in upgrading. Sure, the newer unit should be brighter, have better contrast ratio, etc...but SD material just doesn't have enough resolution when you blow it up to the large image sizes. Personally I can't even watch SD material any more...but like most of the posters here my image size is over 100". Perhaps it would be more tolerable at 75"...but for me if it's not HD it's dead to me. lol

Niceguy, 2 things you need to do...

1. Replace projector: There are plenty of great quality projectors 720p and 1080p that start WELL below $1000.

2. Move up to HD material: I hear you on not wanting to go Blu-ray because of how large your DVD collection is but facts are DVD just does not have the resolution that your looking for anymore. Blu-ray players start at around $69 now and movies can be found starting at less than $5!! There's no good reason why not to go Blu-ray and replace your existing collection with their HD counterparts.

BTW... upscaling DVD players, devices, anything is not going to help. The lack of detail you're experiencing that is forcing you to try and focus your current pj is due to the lack of resolution in the DVD's themselves.

I too have a VERY LARGE collection of DVD. About 1000 movies to be exact!! My Blu-ray collection however is now growing very fast as I've been replacing the DVD's with the Blu-ray version. Just last month, I replaced 25 DVD's with Blu-ray for less than $100!!

Pretty much this, and how much detail you can stand to be without. Blowing up SD content to large screens just isn't ideal. I just replaced an older HS20, 768p and it was ok, heck I kept it for over 6 yrs. Sitting 15' from a 126" screen, most SD material became hard to watch, especially after watching content in HD. My new 1080p Epson looks so much better with the extra pixels and the improved quality of color, blacks, etc.

I do consider myself a "videophile" (well as much as I can be based on available budgets). I also have well over 1500 DVDs in my library and occasionally even watch some of them. We have an 8-foot screen with an Optoma 1080p PJ shooting on it. Using a Blu-Ray player that upconverts (They all do), we get a very satisfying image from many of those DVDs. Not HD by any means, but certainly an improvement from 480p. Remember too, that the quality of the image you ultimately get is also determined by the quality of the source material. Some DVDs just look bad, others can be very good. In the end, an upgraded PJ and a BR player would be worth the investment if you can handle it. That said, I'd go for a 1080p PJ, no matter what.

I think it's one of those things that if you do start to watch 1080p stuff or higher def stuff , it is hard to go back to lower resolution stuff.
Like when color TV came out, it was hard to watch the news in black and white.
Or now that many people have hdtv's it's hard to watch on a tube TV low resolution.
I don't know how old you are, but do you REALLY want to be one of those guys that is stuck at OLD Tech Level.
I'm joking with you , a little, because I have lots of stuff still SD quality, but guy if you are gonna buy a NEW PJ, why would you get anything less that 1080p and Future proof yourself. Also, once in a while, wouldn't it be nice to watch sports or play 360 game in high def on Big Screen or wouldn't a romantic movie in high def with girlfriend be nice too. You know how guys are, bigger is better when it comes to screen sizes and football with the guys over is not as good in 480i.

What's amazing to me is how your perception of what PQ is changes over time - and in particular - as technology changes. 10 years ago 720p and HD video was SOTA. 480i was pretty much the norm and everyone was shooting for 480p and DVI. 1080p was talked about in hushed circles as HDDVD and BD were still visions of the future. At the time, the PQ on my old Sim2 300e was considered pretty darned nice and the price for it reflected it. But now, when compared to some of the PJs and/or TVs that do 1080p for a fraction of the price of the Sim, it's no wonder that the definition of PQ is shifting.

But to answer your question as to whether we noticed the crappiness of the picture back then - I don't think we did. We were just as fussy about it then as we are now and all subject to the cutting edge of technology back then just as we are now. It was always pretty nice when compared to what was there before it - but not so nice when retro-viewed from what was yet to come. Here's a soon to be retro view for ya - Lord help us when OLED quad becomes common-place. We'll be possibly looking at 1080p LCD as old technology and asking ourselves "how did we ever put up with it?"

I like rgtaa's advise - why not get a 1080p PJ? - especially since it won't stop you from viewing SD sources. But it will also give you the freedom to go higher rez if you want to.

Yeah, I sometimes reflect on how happy I am with my 60hz TV, and yet based on the comments of some folks, how miserable I should be with it, lol. In terms of BD, it can provide technically a higher resolution (contingent on the source material). But there might be some disagreement on the value in terms of enjoyment factor. Since most of my material is DVD grade or below, and since my primary goal in AV is wide access to material, and content quality rather than technical quality, I have not made the jump yet to BD. If your current projector does not have a problem, and you are not interested in going BD, then maybe hold off for a while buying a new projector. Then perhaps if/when you are ready for BD, projectors will be even lower priced, and maybe finally a nice budget LED model (hoping).

I loved my Pioneer Plasma 1080i TV when I got it in 2005. But I bought my LED 240Hz, 1080p TV a few months ago and it makes me mad when I watch that old TV in the bedroom.

I'm not sure many of us are suggesting 1080p PJ for BR. Yes, BR looks awesome on 1080P PJ. The reason I suggest 1080p is because that is where the competition is and the BEST BANG for the buck. Also, 1080p gives the guy all the current options for viewing content. Think about it the 1080p PJ can play "black and white movies" and all old content as well as the newest content. Also, resell value is better than 720p or 800x600. Also, these PJ's could be used for business, school, patio, bedroom, den, living room to watch Sports, Porn, Gaming, TV, BR, DVD and everything else.
Why in the world would someone TODAY even think about 800x600 PJ to save a few hundred dollars.

There is plenty of 720p and 1080p content on Netflix streaming even, so if you can pay $10 month (or whatever it costs these days, I think I pay $18 for some reason), then you can benefit from an HD projector. Not to mention the PC and gaming will look like an utter blobby mess if you try to ever hook it up to your PJ on a NON-HD projector. There are so many reasons to at LEAST get 720p even if you are on a super-budget, but 1080p is the best option for many reasons.

As far as upscaled DVD's from the bluray, there are many factors in the end output. The main factor is (from my experience) the quality of the DVD itself. There are different levels of encoding or something on different DVD's (as well as how they were mastered). If the DVD is very cleanly originally filmed (probably better on films released on SD-DVD after 2009 since they were digitally filmed instead of analog cameras). I have seen a DVD look pretty decent with not too much ringing.

The main side effect to up-scaling IMHO (besides some loss of detail from loss of res) is the RINGING. You see it around text and causes a blurrier image. I have rented SD-DVD's at Redbox and BlockBuster when the bluray wasn't there in order to play on my 1080p projector.

The last one I rented was Episodes 16-20 of the TV Show Fringe on SD-DVD, they looked surprisingly decent without too much upscaled ringing. I also rented "Company Men" from Redbox and it was pretty bad, major ringing in the upscaling but it was bareable to me (just barely). I've heard a lumagen VP can reduce the ringing and scale it better (but that's a $1500 VP). I am not sure what bluray players scale the best.

In my experience, it's a shot in the dark depending on how it will look on what DVD to what projector and what setup:

1) Quality of the original SD-DVD (superbit, overall film quality, amount of noise, filmed in digital vs. analog, mastering type, aspect ratio, etc..)
2) The specific Bluray, VP, or up-scaling player (if you have the bluray doing the upscaling)
3) The specific projector (if you have the PJ doing the upscaling, but even if you don't the specific PJ still matters some)
4) The way you calibrate the HD projector for SD-DVD viewing (getting sharpness and NR and the color just right for SD).

That is about it I guess...